Chamber and committees

I have never cleared a venue so quickly.

It gives me great pleasure to be able to bring this debate to the Parliament this afternoon to celebrate all that is Scottish rugby. I thank all the members who supported my motion and helped me to secure the debate.

As a Scottish rugby fan, I acknowledge that we have our fair share of highs and lows. Our national team brings us tears of happiness and—yes—frustration, but we live every minute of those matches with the players and we feel every up and every down. Losses do not affect our passion for the game and we always believe that this is the year that we can win that grand slam—I do anyway.

When it comes to rugby, we can set our political differences aside and admire the skill, commitment and passion of our national teams. I am sure that the minister will agree about that.

I was delighted to host a reception in Parliament recently to celebrate those successes. I thank all my colleagues, especially the Presiding Officer, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and the Minister for Public Health, Women’s Health and Sport, who were able to make it along that night. I also thank Sharon and Roger Hill, the parents of our former colleague and friend David Hill, who were able to attend while we also remembered David on the night. It was great to have a reception like that after two years of lockdown; it felt like old times, but it was sad that David was not there to enjoy it with us. I also thank Scottish Rugby and the players and coaches from both the men’s and women’s teams who came along.

Scottish rugby has such a rich history, with many of the past greats, such as Doddie Weir—who I was thinking about during the members’ business debate on motor neurone disease this week—John Jeffrey and Finlay Calder coming swiftly to mind. We all have our favourite players and moments of the past. However, Scottish rugby also has such a bright future, and that is what I want to focus on today.

Scottish Rugby recently launched its new strategy for encouraging more women and girls to enter the sport and find a career in rugby. Post-pandemic, we have seen a rise in the number of women and girls taking part in rugby, which is fantastic to see. However, we are ambitious for the future. There are currently more than 6,000 woman and girl players in clubs throughout Scotland, but the aim of the strategy is to increase that substantially by 2025.

The strategy will grow participation and visibility of women’s rugby nationwide and is based on four Ps: participation, pathway, pipeline and performance.

Scottish Rugby has committed to more than doubling its spend on women’s rugby and will invest an additional £2.5 million next year. That is welcome news in developing rugby for all throughout Scotland. At the reception a couple of weeks ago, Jackie Dunbar raised the point that both of our daughters played football, but there was no option for them to play rugby. I hope that that situation will improve.

We all know how sport can enhance every aspect of our lives, including physical and mental health. I know that, as a Parliament, we would welcome initiatives that encourage more women and girls to pick up a ball and play sport at every level. Whether it is a casual game in the park or playground, getting involved in a club or playing for Scotland, participation at any level is key, and anything that we can do to encourage it has to be welcomed. It would be good to hear from the minister what the Scottish Government can do to help with the level of participation.

We also want to see more parity with the men’s game in terms of rugby as a career. At present, there are only five women on contracts in Scotland, but the aim is to grow that to 30 following the world cup this year, which of course our amazing women’s team have qualified for. I wish the team the very best in the competition in New Zealand. [Applause.]

Scotland has one of the top referees in the world—the groundbreaking Hollie Davidson, who takes charge of not just top women’s games but men’s test matches. Hollie will also be heading to the world cup.

I want to mention an exciting initiative in my area of North East Scotland that will build more participation and make rugby accessible to more people. In May, Scottish Rugby launched a new partnership with Aberdeenshire Council and the University of the Highlands and Islands to deliver increased rugby and physical activity for secondary school pupils and adults in further and higher education in the north of Scotland. Aberdeenshire Council education team will have added to it four rugby development officers and three community coaches, who will operate for local rugby clubs. They will deliver a 16-week rugby programme as part of the curriculum for pupils in secondary 1 to S4 across 17 schools.

That is the first time that a specially designed rugby programme will be delivered as an on-going part of the curriculum in the local authority. The initiative will provide enhanced opportunities for young people to focus on their health and wellbeing and to enjoy outdoor learning, working in partnership with local communities.

I completely agree with Brian Whittle. Rugby really is showing the way.

As a boy, I was lucky that, at the local comprehensive school that I attended, rugby was part of the core curriculum but, sadly, that is not the case for many and is really quite unusual.

Scottish Rugby is also working on widening its engagement with Scotland’s ethnic and religious minority communities. It is looking to make rugby more diverse, and I hope that the Scottish Government will join it in making the game more representative of our country as a whole.

Given all that good work, I was pleased to see that the contract of Scottish Rugby’s chief executive officer, Mark Dodson, has been extended to 2025.

I must also mention the work of the School of Hard Knocks charity, which delivers life-changing programmes for children and adults across the United Kingdom. Using rugby as a medium, it works with adults to find and sustain employment and with schoolchildren who are at risk of exclusion to help them to re-engage with education. The charity is now in its 10th year and is doing great work in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Last but certainly not least, I want to mention the amazing work that is being done around clan rugby. A couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of attending the match between the Holyrood Parliament team and the Edinburgh Clan. What a fantastic game it was, with smiling faces, fun and inclusion—it was brilliant to see.? Clan rugby brings together able-bodied players and those with a physical or learning disability to compete in one unified game. Clan rugby demonstrates what a fully inclusive sport rugby can be, with people of all abilities playing together and having an incredible time.

It has been great to speak to the Parliament today in celebration of Scottish rugby, and I look forward to hearing the contributions of other members with their stories of how rugby has impacted them and their local areas. Rugby is growing in our nation, and we can all be incredibly proud of our teams, players, coaches and amateurs who love the game, love playing the game and just love getting involved. We must thank all the coaches, volunteers and parents up and down the country who give up their time for the love of the game. Scotland has rugby at its heart and, as a Parliament, it is our privilege to acknowledge that today.

What would you like to change? If it was up to you, what would you like to see being done differently? Whether that is around paperwork or staffing costs, what would you change?

You mentioned that the specific grant has been cut going forward. From the Government’s point of view, is that not justified given that, up until now, local authorities have not spent the grant that they have been given?

I guess that we do not have the full picture. As the convener pointed out, there are big local authorities, such as Glasgow City Council and Aberdeen City Council, that we are not seeing data for. There are huge gaps in the data that we have.

David Robertson, you went through the process.

It has occurred to me that local authorities do not really have any building or capital costs, so I guess that there is not a level playing field in that regard either. That is probably why they can pay their staff more and, I would imagine, pensions are more generous, too. Therefore, it is even harder for private providers to compete with local authorities when they have all that for free. Would that be correct?

My final question is about the two-year review that Sarah Watters mentioned. Will there be opportunities for local authorities to bid back in for capital funding—for example, for new facilities that they want to build for the service?

I will follow on from that line of questioning about the robustness of the data. I was surprised to read in our briefing paper that, after the first financial template went out in June 2019,

“significant data quality issues were identified”.

A revised template then went out, but only 17 returns were deemed sufficiently accurate and robust to include in the analysis. Can we have confidence in the data from the 17 for which we have figures? On the variances between authorities, the 2021 data for Aberdeenshire Council, for example, shows that 54 per cent of its specific revenue grant was spent on ELC, but Argyll and Bute Council spent the whole 100 per cent. There seem to be huge differences between local authorities. Is the data that we have from those 17 robust enough? How can we ensure that we have data from all local authorities going forward?

David Robertson might have a view on this. Some of the underspends have been because of Covid, with people not taking up their full entitlement and so on over the past couple of years. Could that change?