Chamber and committees

I thank my colleague Tess White for bringing such an important debate to Parliament, and I whole-heartedly associate myself with the statements that Michelle Thomson and Tess White made in their speeches.

I cannot remember a point when I was growing up when sport was not a major factor. In primary school, I played in badminton competitions for Juniper Green, represented Edinburgh in school competitions and travelled to Wales to play for the Lothians.

At university, I had to choose between playing hockey and playing badminton. I chose hockey, and I threw myself into playing in the 1990s—I have given my age away there. At that time at the University of Edinburgh, there were only three women’s teams. It was great fun—you could always find me and my pals at Peffermill, playing or umpiring, and I made friends and memories for life.

After I graduated from university, sport—especially hockey—continued to play a pivotal role in my life. I balanced a busy corporate career with all my sport, including Watsonians hockey, where I was the Watsonian Hockey Club president and manager of the under-16s and under-18s teams. I became the east district youth team manager and then east district president.

I also umpired all through that time, which included umpiring men’s and women’s hockey at the top of the Scottish game; there were not that many women umpiring men’s hockey. Now, as injury and age catch up with me, and when time permits, I assess budding new umpires.

All that gave me life experiences and friendships that span decades and continents. I would not change a thing about my experience, and I hope that other girls and woman can have the same positive experiences that I did. That is why I wanted to speak in the debate: to highlight the unfairness that many now face in female sports.

We will all have either seen or heard about some of the controversies surrounding that issue during the Olympics, and then again in the Paralympics. Nowhere was that more apparent than in the women’s boxing in Paris, with the controversy over the gender eligibility of two competitors. Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting were cleared to compete at the Paris Olympics, despite being disqualified from last year’s world championships after they were said to have failed gender eligibility tests. Both fighters won Olympic gold medals. I think that we can all agree that that has shone a damning light on an issue that clearly needs addressing. As Tess White explained in far more detail, males of equal weight and size punch 160 per cent harder on to a less dense bone structure. Therefore, biological sex is a crucial factor in ensuring that female athletes are not disadvantaged or put at risk.

In 2023, British Cycling banned transgender women from competing in the female category of competitive events, tightening its rules around participation in order to safeguard the fairness of the sport. The new rules, which came into effect at the end of 2023, divided cyclists into female and open categories. The female category remains for those with sex assigned female at birth and transgender men who are yet to begin hormone therapy. The open category is for male athletes, transgender women and men, non-binary individuals and those whose sex was assigned male at birth.

Sebastian Coe, the president of World Athletics, has voiced his views about the transgender debate. Last March, in accordance with his long-stated belief that biology trumps gender, he banned athletes who had gone through male puberty from the female category in world championships and Olympic games, in order to preserve fairness in athletics.

However, the problem exists not only at the elite levels of sport. On the journey to elite sport, women will be at a constant disadvantage as they strive to win against males who are biologically stronger and taller and have increased muscle mass. Those men will take podium places from those women and their spaces in teams, excluding many women and girls from taking part at all.

We cannot escape the biological reality. It is vital that we stand up for single-sex categories in sport across all levels, from grass-roots to elite level. That should be protected. You cannot settle for protecting the 0.01 per cent at the top if you then ask every other woman and girl to accept being placed at a disadvantage. That is why I am backing Tess White’s motion, and why I will always champion single-sex categories in sport.

To ask the Scottish Government what financial impact its proposed heat in buildings bill will have on home owners. (S6O-03771)

The reality is that for thousands of Victorian tenements in densely populated parts of our cities, such as Leith and Partick, and in cottages and homes across the country, the costs of meeting the standards that are outlined in the bill are not deliverable or affordable; they are of a scale that neither the individual nor the Scottish Government can ever dream of affording. Owners could, in effect, be blocked from selling their homes, which would have a catastrophic impact on the property market and on the lives of those who would be trapped in homes that they cannot sell.

Does the minister accept that the proposal would aggravate Scotland’s housing crisis? Will he commit to introducing an appropriate exemption to the proposed scheme?

Earlier this week, MSPs were told in a briefing that eye pavilion services would be accommodated in facilities across NHS Lothian. The eye pavilion sees around 1,500 patients a week, with an average of 152 out-patient clinics a week, using 40 consultation rooms every day. Patients and clinicians will now be scattered across the city and I can only imagine the chaos and confusion that that will cause, all of which comes before we take into account the devastating impact on clinical care.

For months, I have been asking NHS Lothian for a back-up plan. Will the cabinet secretary finally give patients and staff the assurance that alternative and purposeful options are being arranged outside the existing NHS Lothian estate, whether that be in central office space, additional capacity in private opticians, or in hospitals and clinics?

Anne, would you like to go next?

Those are some helpful examples.

The other three panel members have talked about additional support needs, but I wonder, Laurence, whether you can focus on the care-experienced young people angle.

Thank you very much. That was super.

Thank you all for joining us today and for your evidence. As with our first panel, we had a lot to get through, and I am glad that we got through it all in time, even with the little hiccups that we had at the beginning.

That concludes the public part of our meeting. We will allow our witnesses to leave and then we will move into private session to consider the final items on our agenda.

Thank you.

The next item on our agenda is an evidence session on the Education (Scotland) Bill at stage 1. Today, we will hear from two panels of witnesses. First, I welcome Gillian Hamilton, who is the chief executive of Education Scotland; Janie McManus, who is His Majesty’s chief inspector of education for Scotland at Education Scotland; and Fiona Robertson, who is the chief executive of the Scottish Qualifications Authority. Good morning, ladies.

We have a lot to get through this morning, so we will move straight to questions from members, starting with Liam Kerr.