Chamber and committees

PE1916, lodged by Councillor Douglas Philand and Councillor Donald Kelly, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to instigate a public inquiry regarding the political and financial management of the A83 Rest and Be Thankful project, which aims to provide a permanent solution for the route. Again, that was part of our session with the cabinet secretary on 2 April, when we heard that capital funding will be made available when it is needed to progress various stages of the A83 project, and that the estimated cost for the permanent long-term solution is between £408 million and £510 million. The cabinet secretary also told us that the process for commenting on draft orders for the medium and long-term solutions ended in February.

Transport Scotland officials talked about the civil engineering challenges of the project and suggested that the procurement stage could take 12 to 18 months, followed by three to four years for the construction period. That indicative timeline, of course, depends on factors such as whether a public inquiry on the draft orders is required, and weather conditions during the construction period—members will be aware of the particular risk of landslips on the route.

Do colleagues have any suggestions for action??

Thank you all very much. We very much appreciate your participation. It has been a fascinating morning for us. We have been able to give the issue the attention that it deserves and have heard from two panels of very high-quality witnesses.

I suspend the meeting briefly before we proceed with the next agenda item.

Item 2 on the agenda is the consideration of continued petitions. The first of those is PE2018, which was lodged by Helen Plank on behalf of Scottish Swimming. I gather that she is with us in the public gallery.

The petition was last considered in January this year. It raises issues that I think the whole committee were concerned to see addressed fully, and, at that meeting, we agreed that the right way forward was for us to hold a round-table discussion on the issues.

At the meeting in January, we also agreed to seek further information from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and individual local authorities. In advance of today’s meeting, we received written responses from COSLA and Dundee City Council and another submission from the petitioner. We have also received representations in support of the petition from MSP colleagues Tim Eagle and Beatrice Wishart. All of those submissions are in the committee meeting papers.

We have two panels of witnesses with us this morning. On the first panel are John Lunn, who is the chief executive of Scottish Swimming; Derek McGown, who is a coach at the East Kilbride amateur swimming club; Duncan Scott OBE, who is an Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer and Scotland’s most decorated Olympic athlete, adding a touch of lustre to the rather dry proceedings of the Scottish Parliament; and Abi Thomson, who is a young volunteer programme champion with Scottish Swimming. We will hear from the second panel of witnesses later.

We are also joined by our colleague Neil Bibby, who has taken an interest in the petition. He was with us when we last considered it and decided that we would go with the round-table discussion. Mr Bibby joins us for the first panel of witnesses and will, I think, leave us after that.

We will move straight to questions. Please indicate to me if you would like to speak, or you can nod to one another and decide whether you are going to speak. It helps if we say who is to speak, because the Official Report folk will not necessarily know who is speaking, and it will allow me to invite you to contribute, through the chair.

I turned 66 over the recess. When I was at school, swimming was not seen as just a recreational hobby, as some people seem to think of it now. Learning to swim was seen as a vital and essential life-saving tool. We learned to swim because we might be in a circumstance that meant that we needed to know how to swim, given that we are an island nation that has always had great interest in water and the sea. Therefore, I was very surprised to find, when we first considered the petition, that that is not now normally the case.

I had a look around my constituency of Eastwood, and it seems that we are quite well served there. We still have school swimming pools, and all the schools have programmes whereby everybody is encouraged and has the opportunity, as part of the curriculum, to learn how to swim. I am pleased about that, but it is not necessarily the norm any longer.

We understand that 40 per cent of children now leave primary school unable to swim. Why is the focus on swimming no longer there? In the future, what effect will the closure of swimming pools around Scotland have on the ability of young people to swim? In some cases, we are now talking about fairly significant geographical distances between where somebody lives and the nearest available pool. I would be interested to get your perspective on your experience of coming into swimming and what you think the consequence of that might be.

Our next petition is PE1962, lodged by Lynn and Darren Redfern, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to improve licensing enforcement on motorhomes to ensure that they are parked only in designated and regulated locations.

We last considered the petition at our meeting on 15 May 2024, when we agreed to write to the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government’s response to the committee highlights the £4 million budget allocation for the rural tourism infrastructure fund, and the £2 million that was delivered through VisitScotland, which includes support for activity to spread visitor numbers more equally across Scotland.

On the visitor levy, the Scottish Government states that it remains open to discussion with stakeholders on the issue of a levy on motorhomes and camper vans, and will consider any developed proposals that work to support the visitor economy. The submission states that discussions with council and land management stakeholders have highlighted significant issues with such a levy, including potential difficulties with its application, with administration and with compliance.

A written submission from the petitioners highlights a number of concerns about safety and what they believe is a disparity between the licensing requirements for campsites and a lack of regulation for landowners. The petitioners call for all locations that offer overnight motorhome parking to be required to obtain a licence, including car parks and laybys.

The committee has also received a written submission from an individual, Mr Ed Hall, who raises questions about when land should be considered a campsite with the requirement to obtain a licence under existing legislation.

Do colleagues have any suggestions for action?

You can both come in, but I am conscious of time.

Welcome back to this meeting of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee. We have just concluded our first round table and we now have our second round-table discussion on PE2018, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to recognise the value of swimming pools and provide financial relief to help to keep pools open.

We are joined by Dianne Breen, coached programmes manager at Sport Aberdeen; Kirsty Doig, director at the Darcey Sunshine Project; Jillian Gibson, policy manager for sport and physical activity at COSLA; and Ben Lamb, chief executive at West Lothian Leisure, which is also known as Xcite. A warm welcome to all the witnesses.

If you are content to do so, we will move straight to questions. I hope that you will take the opportunity to use the answer to any question to articulate any additional views that you have.

I invite my colleague Maurice Golden to open the questioning.

You are speaking to a committee that is sometimes referred to as the awkward squad, in as much as we tend, irrespective of our political parties, to unanimously be a thorn in the flesh of everybody.

Thank you. I asked quite a bit. I think that we are developing themes rather than pursuing specific points. I should also say that we have now been joined by our colleague, Maurice Golden.

When young people learn to swim, do the majority of them learn in a swimming pool as opposed to open water?

Before I bring in colleagues, I note that you mentioned the position throughout the UK, and you will obviously understand what is happening elsewhere. Our concern is the provision of opportunities for people to acquire this life-saving skill here in Scotland, but is the trend that we are discussing also being felt across the rest of the UK? Are your colleagues who compete elsewhere similarly concerned about what is happening, or does Scotland perhaps have a swimming pool estate that is older and more susceptible to closures?