Chamber and committees

Yes, we will certainly come back to that.

We have time for a very quick question from Jack Middleton before we move on.

That moves us seamlessly into talking more about the grass roots and the barriers in that area.

It is welcome that the primary school swimming programme that you mentioned is going forward, but a question remains about facilities. Outside the central belt, sometimes there are facilities and sometimes there are no facilities, so it is hard to see how, in practice, that programme could be delivered to everyone. I am not sure that anyone has an answer to that, but I would be happy to hear your views.

That would be great. I am sure that we will come back to that.

As we are short of time, I would appreciate short questions and answers so that we can get through everything. Although it has been great to hear about the success of Commonwealth games 2026 and what has come out of that event, we will move on from elite sports to look at grass-roots and health and wellbeing issues. They have been touched on already, but we are obviously very interested in those aspects, and Heather Anderson has a couple of questions on them.

It is great to hear about all the work that Scottish Disability Sport is doing, particularly with organisations on the ground. Following on Paul McLennan’s question about coaching, I will come back to Forbes Dunlop.

There are some terrible stories out there about coaches, and some of us have seen or heard them. We are very dependent on the grass-roots and volunteer coaching. My question is about how the performance of coaches is managed—by performance, I do not mean how the kids are doing and whether they are qualifying, but whether the kids are being looked after well and coaches are not shouting at them or screaming at young kids in the dressing room.

That certainly happened in the past, when my daughter played football—her coaches did not do that, but it was well known that such behaviour happened. Sometimes, that behaviour was associated with very well-known clubs that had a real focus on performance in terms of, “You have just lost to some team that is not at the top of the league,” for example.

How can you manage all of that? It is very difficult to get enough coaches, and coaches are at risk of being accused of things that have not happened, but equally we have to protect children, so what kind of programmes do you have for managing that?

Good morning, and welcome to the fifth meeting in 2026 of the new Health, Care and Sport Committee. We have received no apologies.

Our main agenda item is on building on the Commonwealth games 2026 and widening access to sport and exercise. This is the first time that the committee has focused specifically on sport, building on recent major events and those issues. We will hear from two panels of witnesses who can offer a broad perspective on the legacy of the games and issues affecting sport and physical activity. We have up to 90 minutes for discussion.

I am pleased to welcome our first panel. Jon Doig is chief executive of Commonwealth Games Scotland, Professor David McGillivray is co-director of the Glasgow 2026 legacy network, Gavin Macleod is chief executive officer of Scottish Disability Sport, and Forbes Dunlop is chief executive officer of sportscotland. Thank you for joining us.

We tried to add Scottish Women’s Football to our panel to cover the issue of female participation—I realise that the witnesses who are here can also talk about that—but we were disappointed as it could not attend today. We might have a follow-up evidence session at another time.

Several witnesses sent us written statements in advance, which saves time for discussion. The committee has looked at what we have been sent, so we will not have introductory statements now. Thank you for the time that you spent on your submissions—and thank you for keeping them short, which is always a blessing.

We kick off with a question from Jack Middleton on the overarching issue of the legacy of the Commonwealth games.

Thank you. If I got you correctly, it is already a struggle to get volunteers, perhaps more so than it was in the past. That is the same for almost anybody who uses volunteers. Some of that might be because of increased regulation, but a lot of it is because people are really stretched—for example, women working full time and looking after their families—and that is cumulative.

It is perhaps not only money that could help with that situation. Do you have suggestions about what would really help in the circumstances that you have described, where you need to do extra to get extra?

That is hopeful.

I should mention that we received some statistics from local authorities on how much it costs to hire their pitches—I thank them for providing that information quite quickly—so we have some background information. However, Forbes Dunlop is right in what he said about the need for people to have access to facilities to go with that. If people want to have a football game, there needs to be a toilet for them to go to, but that is sometimes not the case.