The second item on our agenda is a second oral evidence session as part of the committee’s inquiry into healthcare in remote and rural areas. Today, we will hear from academics with expertise in rural health and wellbeing, nursing, geriatric care, delivery of rural healthcare and wider issues in remote and rural healthcare.

I welcome to the meeting Dr Stephen Makin, who is a senior clinical lecturer at the University of Aberdeen and honorary consultant geriatrician at NHS Highland; Dr Rebecah MacGilleEathain, who is a research fellow in the division of rural health and wellbeing at the University of the Highlands and Islands; and Professor Annetta Smith, who is a professor emerita at the University of the Highlands and Islands.

We will move straight to questions and to Carol Mochan.

Thank you.

I propose that the committee does not make any recommendation in relation to the negative instrument.

Members indicated agreement.

The second instrument for the committee to consider is the Feed Additives (Authorisations) (Scotland) Regulations 2023. The purpose of the instrument is to implement the decision made by the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health on 13 feed additive applications. It authorises the placing on the market and use in Scotland of 10 new feed additives, renews two authorisations with modifications and renews, modifies and authorises a new use for one other additive. The instrument also includes a transitional provision concerning an existing authorisation for one feed additive, which is renewed subject to a modification by the instrument.

The policy note states that the instrument

“aligns Scotland with England and Wales and with similar EU legislation for these feed additives.”

It also states that Foods Standards Scotland and the Food Standards Agency have concluded that the feed additives

“as described in the applications are safe for the target species, users, consumers and the environment.”

The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee considered the regulations at its meeting on 21 November 2023 and made no recommendations. No motion to annul has been lodged.

As there are no further comments, I propose that the committee does not make any recommendation in relation to the negative instrument.

Members indicated agreement.

I have a brief supplementary question. Dr Makin, you spoke about co-production, community engagement and redesign of services, but this question is not just for you specifically. What is the difference between redesigning services in a remote rural setting and doing that in an urban setting?

The committee has seen other submissions and heard from other panels about workforce shortages and difficulties in recruiting in remote and rural areas, so I am not going to ask you specifically about recruitment. However, I am keen to hear from you, as academics, about how you see training and learning opportunities for staff in remote and rural settings. Are those areas attracting people to come to, and live and work in, those communities?

Professor Smith may want to start on that.

Our next item is consideration of two negative instruments.

The first is the Food (Scotland) Act 2015 (Compliance Notices) Amendment Regulations 2023. The purpose of the regulations is to correct an error in the Food (Scotland) Act 2015 (Compliance Notices) Regulations 2023, specifically to substitute an incorrect reference to regulation 6(2) of the Novel Foods (Scotland) Regulations 2017 with a reference to regulation 4 of those regulations.

The policy note states that the correction

“will allow Authorised Officers (AOs) to use compliance notices to deal with breaches of the requirements in the Novel Foods (Scotland) Regulations 2017.”

The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee considered the instrument at its meeting on 21 November 2023 and made no recommendations in relation to it. No motion to annul has been lodged.

Do members have any comments?

That is based on written evidence and evidence that the committee heard in its sessions. Simple things such as lighting in parks or on cycle paths would make them much safer places for women, and they would certainly feel safer there.

The Scottish Government’s commitment to doubling investment in sport and active living to £100 million per year over the current session of Parliament is welcome. However, a significant proportion of that funding needs to be targeted at increasing rates of female participation in sport and physical activity, particularly among those who face intersecting barriers to participation such as disability; ethnic, religious or socioeconomic background; or being from the LGBTQ+ community. On that subject, the committee heard evidence in support of greater use of equality impact assessments to ensure that sports infrastructure and facilities are designed to facilitate access for all.

Imagery and messaging aimed at encouraging greater participation in sport and physical activity should actively promote inclusion and diversity. We should be improving equalities education in schools to help overcome stigma and discrimination that might otherwise discourage girls who face intersecting barriers to their participation in sport and physical activity. Moreover, decision makers need to work together to identify and promote positive role models who properly reflect diversity and inclusion, and to pursue strategies aimed at recruiting a greater diversity of female applicants into coaching and leadership roles.

Although we have come a long way in recent years, there is still much further to go if elite female athletes are to achieve anything approaching parity with their male counterparts. The Scottish Government should consider setting up an independent women’s sport trust for Scotland, which could help grow revenue from women’s sports and reduce reliance on men’s sports for funding.

Women in elite sport need sustainable career pathways that enable them to pursue their sport while earning a sustainable income. The industry also needs to do more to produce clothing and equipment that meet the needs of women in elite sport.

In addition, there is a chronic lack of research into female physiology and the impact of menstruation and women’s health conditions on training and performance. Women in elite sport still lack appropriate support when it comes to decisions around pregnancy. It cannot be right that so many elite female athletes continue to be forced to make a choice between continuing their career and starting a family.

Sexism and abuse are on-going concerns. To address them, our report calls on the Scottish Government to consider setting up an independent body to tackle cases of misconduct and abuse in elite female sport. The media, too, has a crucial role to play in its promotion of women’s elite sport. There has been progress in that respect, but much remains to be done. Shockingly, the Scottish women and girls in sport advisory board’s 2019 report “Levelling the Playing Field” found that more than a fifth of online news articles relating to women’s sport included sexualised reporting and images. That has a hugely damaging impact on self-confidence and self-esteem, and undermines female participation at all levels.

Television sports coverage remains significantly skewed towards male sports. While the quality and quantity of the coverage of major women’s sporting events has improved, levels of coverage outside the window of those events drop to a small fraction of the overall sports coverage in the media. At the same time, there is evidence to suggest that the public has a real appetite for following more women’s sport in the media. The number of people watching TV coverage of women’s sport in the first half of 2022 doubled to more than 36 million compared with the same period a year before.

To further stimulate and encourage growth in coverage of, and public interest in, women’s sport, our report recommends that the Scottish Government consider whether additional public investment might be needed and, if so, where to target it for maximum effect. It would also be helpful to receive an update from the minister on the planned Scottish sport media summit and on what bearing the outcomes from the summit might have on further improving the quality and quantity of future media coverage of elite women’s sport.

For good or ill, social media have an undeniably huge impact on female attitudes to, and engagement with, sport and physical activity. Sports organisations and governing bodies can play an important role in disseminating and amplifying positive messaging around the health benefits of regular participation in sport and physical activity by girls and women, and in challenging misogynistic attitudes and behaviours.

The Scottish Government can also play a role by providing support and guidance around social media strategy development. The United Kingdom Online Safety Act 2023 could also provide a framework for stronger action, including sanctions, to address the harmful impact of the negative body image content that exists on social media.

In order to effectively benchmark progress towards closing the gender-based participation gap, we recommend commissioning a new population-level survey to give us an accurate and comprehensive picture of current rates of participation in sport across all segments of the population. We should also explore incentives to encourage research organisations to direct additional resources towards research in sports science, with a specific focus on women.

In conclusion, I look forward to hearing both the minister’s initial response to the findings of our inquiry and the other contributions in this debate. As our inquiry found, breaking down the many persistent barriers to female participation in sport will require on-going determination and focus.

I move,

That the Parliament notes the recommendations contained in the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee’s 7th Report, 2023 (Session 6), Female participation in sport and physical activity (SP Paper 445).

As convener of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, I am pleased to open this afternoon’s debate on female participation in sport and physical activity. On behalf of the committee, I thank everyone who engaged positively with our inquiry for their input and place on record the committee’s thanks to the clerks for their work.

I joined the committee as convener at a late stage in the inquiry, but I know that it was originally prompted by a key finding from the committee’s previous inquiry into the health and wellbeing of children and young people, which found a significant decline in the number of girls participating in sport and physical activity as they reached puberty. The current inquiry subsequently found evidence of a gender gap in the rates of participation that persists up to women in their early 40s.

We wanted to find out more about the reasons behind that worrying trend. The purpose was to identify key barriers to participation in sport and physical activity for females of all ages and to make recommendations for breaking down those barriers.

Teenage girls face particular barriers when taking part in sport and physical activity, both in and outside of school. A lack of understanding and awareness of menstrual health and negative attitudes among boys are important factors that contribute to the decline in girls’ participation from the age of adolescence. We need to improve learning and normalise discussions in school about the impact that menstruation can have on girls’ participation and to remove the stigma around managing periods. We must also do more to tackle misogynistic attitudes and foster mutual respect between boys and girls when they take part in sport and physical activity.

The committee heard about the positive impact that the active schools programme has had in broadening girls’ access to a wider range of sports and physical activities. However, the most recent full evaluation of active sports took place almost 10 years ago in 2014, and an updated evaluation of the programme is needed, with a particular focus on how it is helping girls to access the same range and quality of opportunities for sport and physical activity as boys.

Beyond school settings and teenage years, a lack of understanding, education and appropriate support creates barriers to the participation in sport and physical activity of women of all ages. It means that they lose out on the benefits of remaining physically active, with knock-on impacts on their long-term health.

Leadership is equally important in giving more women the confidence to be physically active. We need to do more to break down the barriers that prevent women from putting themselves forward for coaching, leadership and volunteering roles. That will create a virtuous circle in which the existence of more positive role models will encourage more women to participate at all levels. We also need to find solutions that will help to make it easier for women with childcare and other caring responsibilities to be able to participate regularly in sport and physical activity, including in leadership roles.

Sadly, the inquiry heard extensive evidence of girls and women being subjected to harassment and abuse while exercising. That is completely unacceptable. In sport and physical activity settings, we need to improve processes for receiving, handling and dealing with complaints to ensure that they are clear, transparent and easy to navigate. Too often, sport and active travel infrastructures and facilities are designed, constructed and maintained in a way that fails to take account of basic safety requirements for female users. Our report recommends encouraging the systematic use of feminist town planning to improve the safety of basic infrastructure, so that it is better suited to the needs of female participants.

Can Willie Rennie expand on what he, as a man, thinks the male population can do to tackle the misogyny that women experience in sport and physical activity?