“A performance overview of sport in Scotland”
Under agenda item 3, I invite the Auditor General to brief the committee on "A performance overview of sport in Scotland". We will discuss what action to take later in the agenda.
Each year, as part of our work programme, we conduct a small number of studies that attempt to look at what you might call policy areas in Government, where the spend and the expectation of delivery is divided between different types of public agency. We thought that it might be appropriate to do that in relation to sport in Scotland.
The report attempts to outline the structure and funding of sport, which may not be well understood by many people in Scotland, and considers performance against national targets, in so far as we could find reliable performance information.
The report mentions some of the financial implications of hosting the 2014 Commonwealth games and the risks that are associated with staging major events such as the games. I am not suggesting that those risks are particularly significant in relation to the Commonwealth games in Scotland. However, given the type of project, it is right that we should go into the planning of the event with our eyes open, both as auditors and as Government, and acknowledge that the risks need to be managed.
Each year, the public sector spends on average more than £558 million on sport. Most of that is spent on providing and maintaining sports facilities, encouraging participation and supporting individual athletes. Councils are responsible for around 90 per cent of the spending. In addition to on-going spending on sport, almost £300 million of public money has been committed to preparing for and hosting the 2014 Commonwealth games.
The expenditure should make a significant contribution to the three policy objectives of increasing participation in sport, promoting social inclusion through sport and achieving excellence in sporting achievement. Sport can also help people to enjoy healthier lives, address obesity, improve wellbeing and build supportive communities.
We have found that it is not necessarily the case that there is joined-up action across Government and between central and local government. For example, only half of the 32 councils have publicly available sport strategies and only four of those have performance measures that align with key national objectives. In the report, we suggest that the Government's development of an outcomes-based approach to performance management provides an opportunity to clarify the links between national and local strategies.
The level of public participation in sport in Scotland has declined. In 2001, 49 per cent of adults took part in sport at least once a week, but the figure had dropped to 42 per cent in 2006. Unfortunately, more recent data are not yet available to us. Participation by younger people also falls well short of targets in some instances.
Adult participation, perhaps not unsurprisingly, varies depending upon age, disability, gender and geographical location. For example, exhibit 11 on page 23 of the report shows that, in 2003-04, weekly participation rates were over 50 per cent in most council areas. Five councils had weekly participation rates of 60 per cent or more, but six councils in the west of Scotland had weekly participation rates of 40 per cent or less. The wide variation within Scotland is striking.
Targets to be achieved by 2007 were set for younger people's participation in physical activity and school-based physical education. It is not possible to assess whether those have been met as the data are two years out of date, but the available data suggest that those targets are not likely to be met. In 2005, only 5 per cent of primary schools provided a minimum of two hours' physical education each week. Seven per cent of secondary schools provided the minimum of two hours for pupils in the first four years, but none met the target for older pupils. That does not compare well with England where, on average, 70 per cent of pupils aged 14 to 16 and 30 per cent of pupils aged over 16 receive at least two hours of physical education each week.
Better progress has been made on the aim of achieving excellence in sporting achievement—what might be called elite athlete performance. As the report says, 283 Scots were medallists in international competitions by 2007, against a target of 250. That is encouraging for our representation at the Commonwealth games.
Moving on briefly to sporting facilities, councils have a responsibility to provide such facilities and, in Scotland, we have about 7,000 of them. Between 2002 and 2007, councils spent £385 million on capital projects to build and improve facilities such as swimming pools and outdoor pitches. Funds that come from the Scottish Government and the national lottery funds are also used to improve sports facilities. For example, the national and regional sports facilities strategy has committed £48.5 million to improving sports facilities. However, as we attempt to show on exhibit 7 on page 15, progress on delivering the strategy is slower than expected. By March this year, two approved projects had been withdrawn and, of the remaining eight, only four were on schedule to be completed on time.
Scotland has many examples of high-quality sporting facilities, but it is true to say that a large number of the facilities need upgrading. Sportscotland's national audit of sports facilities in 2006 resulted in an estimate that about £110 million a year would be needed for the next 25 years to bring them all up to an acceptable standard. That highlights the need for a national strategic approach to facility planning and investment, which is integrated with the local plans that are developed by local authorities.
The public sector has committed £298 million to the cost of staging the Commonwealth games, with the Scottish Government providing 80 per cent, or £238 million, and Glasgow City Council providing 20 per cent, or £60 million. The arrangements for delivery are at a very early stage, but I thought it important in the report to mention the risks that are involved in staging such events. We have looked at the early experience of planning for the Olympic games in London to identify the main risk areas. The first risk—the one from which it could almost be said that the others flow—is that, because the deadline for the games cannot be moved, there might be significant pressures on costs and quality standards in the effort to stick to the timetable. Robust project and financial management, strong governance and delivery structures, good risk management and effective procurement practices need to be in place. Finally, of course, the proposed legacy plans for the games must be clear about the anticipated lasting benefits and costs, and about who is responsible for delivering them and by when.
I have asked Audit Scotland to monitor progress and, in particular, to keep under review how those risks are being managed. I will arrange to report to the committee in future if there are concerns.
In your summary, you say:
"Targets for young people's participation are not being met, and adult participation is declining. Performance is better against the target for elite athlete performance."
We all share your aspirations for successful participation at an international level by athletes from Scotland. However, if the price of that is a concurrent decline in participation by young people and adults, that would be profoundly worrying, because it would have not only significant social implications but significant health implications. That is a major challenge for us, because we cannot afford to target only elite athletic performance. Do you have any sense that what you have seen historically is beginning to change, or is this a problem that is being compounded as we go forward?
As I mentioned, we struggle a bit because the data are rather out of date. It is possible that recent initiatives are helping to turn the situation round. In a moment, I will ask the team if they have any feel for that.
Sports participation rates in Scotland compare not unfavourably with those that exist across Europe. We have tried to capture that in exhibit 12 on page 25, which shows that Scotland is well into the top half of European countries in terms of the percentage of participation. We are not starting from a poor position relative to other European countries. However, as I think that your question implies, it is concerning that there is a fairly dramatic variation in participation rates between parts of Scotland, with particularly low participation, relatively, in the west of Scotland.
Has a mapping exercise been done to examine the links between poverty and deprivation and participation in sport?
We could not find any reliable information on that to include in the report, which is why we make no more than a general reference to the possibility of such links. Several factors are involved, including access, quality, affordability and whether the right type of facilities are in place. We have not analysed that.
The team may be able to help with the points about whether better information exists and whether there is any information on the links with deprivation and poverty.
Irene Coll (Audit Scotland):
On elite athlete performance compared with general participation in sport, elite athlete performance is handled by the Scottish Institute of Sport, which, until recently, received its moneys from lottery funding, so sportscotland has spent relatively small amounts of money on achieving excellence. Paragraph 25 on page 11 states that, in 2006-07, the funding for sportscotland's three priorities totalled £18.2 million, but only £0.1 million of that was spent on achieving excellence. The rest of the money was spent on participation and on what sportscotland calls pathways, which involves getting people to participate in sport and then developing them through the club structure. Until recently, the elite aspect has not received a lot of sportscotland money.
Many people are concerned about the link between low levels of participation in sport and social deprivation, and sportscotland has commissioned research on the issue. Although there is a link between deprivation and lower levels of participation in sport, there are also links between participation rates and gender and various socioeconomic factors, so deprivation is not the sole reason for lower participation rates. One big issue that sportscotland and others are grappling with is the west of Scotland phenomenon—why participation rates in the west of Scotland are so low compared with those in the rest of the country. Even when we factor in deprivation, it does not provide the full answer. Academics are examining that.
The report is wide ranging. I have a couple of questions. I will start with the balance between funding for wider participation and funding for elite athletes. Part of the argument for funding elite athletes is that, by increasing the number of medal winners at Olympic and Commonwealth games, we create role models, which encourages more young people to take up sport. Have you considered that and, if so, did you find any evidence that having more elite athletes helps to increase participation levels in sport, particularly among young people?
Angela Cullen (Audit Scotland):
We did not go into that level of detail—we did not consider whether links exist between role models and increasing participation.
That would be an interesting piece of work, although perhaps it is not for Audit Scotland. It would be interesting to find out whether a link exists, as that would help to justify the spending on elite athletes.
The Scottish Government recently put out for consultation the legacy plan for the Glasgow Commonwealth games, and consultation responses are expected on such issues.
I have a question on a completely different subject that the Auditor General covered in his opening remarks: the Commonwealth games preparations. One potentially alarming feature in the background is the huge cost overruns for the Olympic games in London. I read recently that they are the largest cost overruns for any public sector project in history. We do not want a replication of the Olympic games saga in Scotland, with the implications that that would have for the Scottish Government's budget. Paragraph 53 of the report points out:
"As the guarantor of 80 per cent of public funding for the Games, the Scottish Government bears"
the financial risk. What is your sense of the current position?
Clearly, there is potential for substantial cost overruns. In paragraph 53 you state:
"The Government should develop a plan for monitoring the cost and income risks."
In paragraph 56 you state:
"The Scottish Government should develop a framework of timely progress and risk reporting."
The wording and tense that you use suggest that that work has not yet been done. Are the plan and framework to which you refer now in place, or do you know when they will be in place?
The Commonwealth games project is at an early stage of development. As we all know, Scotland was successful in securing the games only last November. Since then, there has been a wide range of activity to put in place the basic infrastructure for overseeing the games and managing the programme. In the report, we have described those arrangements, which involve the establishment of a strategy group and a company limited by guarantee. The chief executive was appointed only a few days ago.
In my opening remarks, I said that we are not suggesting for a moment that the risks that we have identified will crystallise. However, it must be in everyone's interest for us to draw attention to the risks that exist and need to be managed. There is a significant difference between the Olympics and the Commonwealth games. Not only are the two events intrinsically different in size, complexity and the challenge that they pose, but the volumes of capital investment in infrastructure are different. As we all know, investment in the Olympic games will be very substantial. The latest estimate of the total cost of the games is in excess of £9 billion. The issue has been considered by the Public Accounts Committee at Westminster.
The infrastructure costs in Scotland are less significant, but they do exist. Glasgow has about 70 per cent of the games infrastructure in place, but £67 million of capital investment—additional investment via the national and regional facilities strategy—is anticipated. In the next few years, there will be a need to watch carefully what happens to construction costs in Scotland. As I have mentioned before—the committee has also touched on the point—there will be a huge volume of construction activity during that period. I refer to construction both for the Olympic games, through to when they are held, and for other major capital projects in Scotland. Construction inflation will need to be watched carefully.
The running costs of the Commonwealth games will be just over £300 million. Clearly, there is a risk of overruns, which is why we say that the highest-quality risk management and financial control procedures need to be in place.
You mentioned the potential cost overruns that might derive directly from the London Olympics, not least because of wage inflation in the construction sector and a lack of availability of skilled labour. Are you confident at this stage that those potential additional costs have been factored into the calculations?
It is too early to say how the project will run. The budget for the games provides for a 10 per cent contingency—the sum of £40 million—which is the minimum that would be acceptable in a project that is pushing towards £400 million. Proper provision has been made at this early stage, but the issue will have to be monitored over the next few years.
My question builds on and gives substance to the comments of Hugh Henry and Murdo Fraser on councils' focus when they spend their money. We would expect the money that is spent per capita on sports facilities to correlate with sports participation rates but, perversely, the opposite seems to be the case. Glasgow City Council spends by far the most per capita on facilities but has the worst participation rates. In contrast, Western Isles Council or Comhairle nan Eilean Siar—I think that I have pronounced that wrongly—spends little per capita on facilities but has good participation. I know that there is not just one culture in Scotland—Glasgow is different from the Western Isles, which is different from Shetland, which is different from East Lothian—but it seems glaringly obvious that there has to be a study into councils' focus, and that best practice might be learned one from the other. I would like the Auditor General's view on that.
Sometimes, as I might have mentioned in the past, the analysis that we provide in reports raises questions rather than answers them. I think that this is one of those occasions. As was mentioned earlier, it is by no means clear why the numbers vary so significantly in different parts of Scotland. It might even have something to do with the quality of the data that are captured.
There is three years' difference between exhibits 4 and 11, for one thing.
We strongly encourage the Scottish Government and the local authorities to address some of the issues, not least through the new single outcome agreements and the development of indicators and portfolios, to allow us collectively to get a handle on the issues.
I think that Irene Coll mentioned that sportscotland is examining the matter. Do we know whether it has a date for reporting to anyone?
Sportscotland has academics from Stirling University examining the situation, and I think that they anticipate producing further work by the end of the year.
Is that work based purely on the west of Scotland?
No. The original study examined regional participation rates and why they varied, and tried to find correlations between the various factors that I mentioned earlier. Following on from that, the academics said that we needed to get to the bottom of more fundamental questions. My understanding is that the academics have been commissioned to do further work and are due to report at the end of the year. We could clarify that timing with sportscotland.
I am slightly hesitant about asking questions on participation in sport, because mine is confined to an hour and a half every second Saturday at Tynecastle—
That does not count.
—and at Love Street at away matches, but there we are.
I agree with the Auditor General and Jim Hume that lots of strange questions arise from the report. There is no correlation between spending and participation or deprivation and participation. East Ayrshire and Midlothian are very similar ex-mining areas, yet Midlothian has high participation and East Ayrshire has low participation. According to exhibit 12, Scotland has quite high participation, but Portugal is down at the bottom, although it is doing a hell of a lot better at football than any of the United Kingdom countries.
I will keep off the subject of participation and ask a question about the Commonwealth games, on which Murdo Fraser commented. With respect, I say that we do not have to look at the Olympic games alone; we have had two Commonwealth games in Scotland, and I remember both of them, because I have been around for a long time. The more recent games got into terrible financial trouble, and the late, unlamented Robert Maxwell supposedly rescued them. I wonder whether any of the books from those games are still around for the Auditor General and sportscotland to examine, see what went wrong and ensure that it does not happen again.
I would not inflict an investigation into Robert Maxwell on anyone.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, he is no longer available for interview. Such an inquiry would be too complicated and difficult for us to do, and I am not sure that the benefits would justify the effort. The serious point is that enough evidence is available on the experience of planning not only the London Olympics but events such as the Sydney games that it is clear what the half dozen major risks are. We should encourage people to concentrate on those in their planning.
Are the people who were involved in the Commonwealth games still around? Was Peter Heatly one of them or was he involved in 1970? If we look back, we might find some people who were involved in planning the more recent games rather than the 1970 ones.
There are separate issues. Others are charged with drawing on past experience for planning purposes, and it would be helpful to draw to their attention the people to whom you referred. From an audit perspective, there is probably no great value in doing that, but those who are currently involved in the Glasgow experience might want to discuss it with those people so, if you have contacts, we could use them.
I will not comment on Robert Maxwell—my experience is political, not sporting—but I will comment on the differences between different areas, particularly in Glasgow. I am disappointed that we spend £X and there is no participation. There has been no audit of deprivation, but should there be an audit of sporting facilities and the choices that are offered in areas where there is less take-up? Irene Coll mentioned women's participation in sport. It might be worth while for someone—perhaps not Audit Scotland—to compare what is offered in the Western Isles and Glasgow or West Dunbartonshire, where the bulk of money is spent on sport but nobody seems to participate in it. We should examine that to find out whether the available choices are what people want.
I am glad that Mr Black said that there is a great deal of difference between the Olympic games in London and the Commonwealth games in Glasgow, where 70 per cent of the infrastructure is in place. I accept the report, which is excellent. We should monitor where the money goes, but it is not all doom and gloom. Unfortunately, that is what has been picked up, because the analysis is based on the London Olympic experience, which has been bad for taxpayers and bodies that are not getting lottery funding because it has been taken away for the Olympics. We should not concentrate too much on the doom and gloom aspect of the Olympics. I am glad that Mr Black raised the point that the Commonwealth games experience is different: a lot of infrastructure is in place—70 per cent, as he admitted; the Government and Steven Purcell, the leader of Glasgow City Council, have stated that a legacy will be left; and we are considering the construction industry's need for skills and apprenticeships.
I welcome the report and take on board the six points that Audit Scotland makes on the Commonwealth games. The Scottish Government should put in place an action plan, as recommended in paragraph 50, because we should audit exactly what goes on. We should tell people that the games are a golden opportunity and we should not portray them so gloomily. I do not want to use the word scaremongering, but some comments have been pretty scaremongering. The fact that the analysis has been based on the London Olympics bid should be mentioned in anything that comes out of the audit, the committee or anywhere else. It has been based not on potential risks that Audit Scotland perceives for the Commonwealth games but on actual risks in the London Olympic games.
Mr Black mentioned that Audit Scotland will monitor the situation and report to the committee. Is that correct? Will there be reports every six months, every year or what?
I suggest that Willie Coffey ask his questions now and Mr Black can answer both. After that, I intend to draw the item to a conclusion, because we are beginning to run late.
I am proud to be able to say that I ran a couple of marathons in my time, achieving a best time of three and a half hours. However, that was a considerable time ago.
I will ask Mr Black for his views on the problem that we appear to have in the connection between national and local sporting objectives. Exhibit 10 on page 22 of the report shows us a range of targets, most of which were unmet. One stands out as fairly spectacularly unmet: to provide two hours of physical education a week for young kids at school. Were the targets unrealistic—could they never have been achieved—or were they basically ignored? There is a huge disparity between the targets and what was achieved. Does Audit Scotland have any feel for whether local authorities signed up to them as doable?
I return to Sandra White's relevant and useful points and endorse what she said about provision in Glasgow. Audit Scotland's committed work programme includes an examination of leisure facilities and leisure management, but as that report will be about local government services it will go to the Accounts Commission and not to the committee. I am not sure whether anyone who is here from Audit Scotland can say to what extent that report will cover the issues that have been raised.
The work has still to be scoped, but some messages from the overview report will be built into that work, as they provide a useful starting point for examining correlations between activity and spend, for example.
I can answer Sandra White's question about which sports are popular and which are not. Sportscotland collects such information. The data show that the most popular sports are walking, cycling and football. In general, the popularity of team sports is declining; people are participating more in individual sports and adventurous outdoor sports such as mountain biking. Programmes elsewhere suggest that street-game sports such as skating and skateboarding are becoming much more popular with young people. Sportscotland is considering the implications of the decline and growth in popularity of sports, so a body of evidence is available on that.
Questions and responses have fully covered the variation in spend, but we are also dealing with the historical position on expenditure. Each area's number and quality of sports facilities has differed. In considering expenditure, we must think of the wider context of the existing facilities and the upgrading and maintenance that they need, which could skew the interpretation of some figures.
On the quality of financial planning and whether there is a risk of being excessively pessimistic about how everything will turn out, I agree absolutely that we must not send out a message that we think that things are going wrong. I preface all my remarks by saying that it is important that we go into the Commonwealth games with our eyes open, but that that does not mean for a moment that the risks will become a reality.
I remind the committee that the Finance Committee considered in detail the financial memorandum that accompanied the Glasgow Commonwealth Games Bill and produced a positive report in January, which we have read carefully, as members can imagine. It says:
"The Committee found the provision of this full financial context helpful, and sought to examine some of the assumptions and unpredictability relating to these figures. The Committee acknowledges the significant level of scrutiny that the estimates have been subject to so far. It also acknowledges the apparently prudent approach taken to income and expenditure assumptions, and the governance arrangements intended to ensure robust management of delivery."
That gives us some assurance that we are starting from a good firm base.
Mr Coffey asked whether the national targets are realistic. The setting of targets is a matter of Government policy, but I am sure that the Audit Scotland team can help with a description of the targets.
The targets in exhibit 10 are from sport 21, which was the national strategy for sport from 2003 to 2007. They were developed in consultation with the sector—with councils and sports governing bodies. The targets were not imposed on the sector; they were developed through an extensive consultation process. The sector says that some of the targets were aspirational and that it wanted them to be fairly challenging. Whether the target of two hours of PE is reasonable has been questioned. In our report, we compared performance with England, which also has a target of two hours of PE. Performance in England is substantially different from that in Scotland.
Thank you. I conclude the discussion and thank everyone for their participation.