Reporters' Inquiries
I apologise to members for the late circulation of my interim report on football, but when I talk the committee through it I do not think that members will have difficulties with the recommendations within it.
We will deal with my report first. There are two issues, one of which is youth development. I concentrate on the senior clubs in Scotland, with which I had dialogue. An independent report by PMP Consultancy has been commissioned by UK Sport and the Scottish Executive and is due to be published at the end of April 2003. Therefore, my recommendation is that a future committee should have a presentation on that report and work with all the agencies. The independent report will be a fairly monumental landmark for the future of youth development in Scottish football and we need to move forward together on it.
The second issue is supporters' involvement, which arises from a petition that came to the committee some time ago; the petition was geared around the idea of supporters trusts. We have moved on significantly on that matter. The recommendation is that the incoming committee should continue to monitor the situation and should be kept informed of developments.
There are still issues to do with how some of the senior clubs in Scotland involve fans. There are different models; the key point is that no one model will suit every club in Scotland. We should not try to impose on people models that do not fit the situation in which they find themselves. Changes are taking place with supporters trusts, which on the whole are widely welcomed, but we must continue to monitor the situation in the months ahead. Again, that will be a matter for a future committee.
What I have seen so far of the convener's report on football is highly interesting and I concur with much of it.
In the light of the report by PMP Consultancy that is being commissioned independently and given that we are winding up at the end of the parliamentary session and that this is a matter of importance, I suggest that the future committee might consider taking oral evidence on it. Some interesting aspects of the youth game in Scotland require detailed representation from a number of groups. Oral sessions, which would generate a degree of public interest, would be useful. I recommend that we include that suggestion in our legacy paper.
I am happy to do that.
We will move on to the report on early-years education from Ian Jenkins.
Members will remember that I brought this subject up a long time ago.
You were in the early years.
Yes, I was.
I hoped that the subject would be taken on by the committee and that we would appoint a reporter and so on, but that has not happened. When I was asked to do the report myself, I thought that I would try, but I have failed miserably to get down to it—largely because it is a huge-scale project. The report is a starter paper and I hope that it is recognised as such.
I have outlined that I believe that there have been so many changes and initiatives in early-years education that it would perhaps benefit from someone standing back and considering the way in which the whole area is being dealt with and investigating whether the developments and projects cohere in a sensible way. I have outlined many areas that would merit investigation. As it happens, the Executive has just brought out a paper about integrated services for children in the early years, which clearly ties in with the report.
The report briefly mentions
"health promotion, physical activity and so on"
and there is now regulation of care. All such issues, which are not strictly to do with education, could be considered. The paper speaks for itself. The issue is complex and extensive. A future committee might pause before taking on the subject, but it is important and should be on a successor committee's agenda. If it were, a big investigation would be needed and advisers would have to be taken on to help.
Thank you. The paper is helpful in progressing matters. If the issue is to be taken forward, an investigation would have to be on a similar scale to our investigation into special educational needs and would require substantial support from advisers as well as a substantial amount of committee time for visits and assessments of the provision that is currently out there.
Ian Jenkins has produced a helpful starting paper. In the legacy paper, I would recommend an investigation by a future committee, but I wonder whether we should make slightly more explicit the issue of universality versus targeting disadvantage. Many of us have debated the issue of the first three years of a child's life affecting their life chances in the future. It would be useful simply to have a much closer look at how the programmes fit into tackling disadvantage and securing equality of outcome. Currently, some provision is universally provided across the board.
We proceed to traditional arts.
I am sorry that there is a lot in the paper, but it just kept growing. The paper is clearly not a comprehensive outline of everything that is happening in Scotland, but is an effort to give a flavour of the good work that is under way.
A number of recommendations have been made as a result of issues that people have raised with me. It appears that we do not appreciate the value of traditional arts and their contribution to Scotland's culture. I hope that the report will make us appreciate and value that contribution.
It is clear that we are nowhere near recognising the importance of traditional arts centres in Scotland—I should remind members that one thing that the petitioner who is mentioned in the paper sought was a traditional arts centre in Edinburgh. Although a considerable amount of work has been done—most recently in the ceilidh culture project and other work that the arts officer has done in the Edinburgh area—there is still no commitment to an arts centre. However, the important issue for the committee is the work that is under way in schools, the different approaches that are being taken, and the work that has been done by voluntary arts projects through the fèis movement and so on. As one would have expected, there is a feeling that better resourcing might mean much more work being done or that the work that is done will be valued.
I commend Cathy Peattie's excellent report, which gives a good snapshot of the current situation and useful pointers to the future. We might disagree about one or two recommendations and how to take things further through establishing a federated national company that is directly funded, for example. Having said that, I think that the report is excellent. Given that this is the final meeting of the committee, how can we ensure that the report is available to others? I presume that the reports will be on the web, but can we at least arrange to have the paper disseminated to the witnesses and others, and perhaps to a wider audience?
I will ask the clerks to have the report circulated as appropriate and to have the matter placed in the legacy paper for a future committee.
It is important that the petitioner and the people who have participated in the report have access to it.
It will be posted on the web.
I thank all members who have produced individual reports for the committee over the past four years. Given the pressure on our timetable, I think that they have helped us to develop areas of work that we might not have been able to develop if the issues had had to be addressed at full meetings of the committee.