Chamber and committees

Further to your point, Dr Williams, I asked our previous witnesses who should be responsible for holding rights. They suggested that that responsibility would sit with the NHS or the diagnosing clinician. If the service is already under strain, as you suggest, does that give you cause for concern?

My question is probably for Lyndsey Turfus.

We have talked about the journey that is involved—it is not just an intervention, but a journey. Following initial intervention, support will be needed on an on-going basis. You talked about people who are hard to reach.

What role do you think that the third sector has to play in all this? How can we better integrate statutory and third sector organisations? I feel that third sector organisations have a big role to play when it comes to capacity and on-going treatment.

Listening to my colleagues, I am struck by the disparity between what we are trying to do here and the reality on the ground. I have spoken to a lot of healthcare professionals in an acute environment where staffing levels are putting them under extraordinary pressure and are a danger to patients.

There is, in some cases, a disparity between what is legally required and what is happening on the ground. Like my colleague Sandesh Gulhane, I think that it would be to our advantage to have the minister or the cabinet secretary come here so that we can discuss that.

Good morning. I must declare an interest, in that I have two grandsons in the academy—who, it has to be said, are having a great time.

I was involved in last session’s Health and Sport Committee, when the SPFL and the SFA were brought in to speak to that committee and the Public Petitions Committee about the treatment of those in the academy—you have said that it is not a big number, but it is about 3,000, so I think that it is a reasonable number. Of those 3,000, only 0.7 per cent will ever end up in football, which is fine—the problem is the way in which the other 99.3 per cent are treated. When they are cut, they are cut adrift.

Surely, there should be a link between the academy, the cut, and community football, which should be a destination for 100 per cent of those footballers. That disconnect is where I have a concern. We brought in the SPFL and the SFA, and they certainly did not take enough care of those who were being cut.

I urge sportscotland to consider what happens to those children who are, in some cases, quite brutally cut from the academy—surely, sportscotland has a responsibility to ensure that there is a sports destination for them.

I agree with you, but if everybody is in agreement with that, why do we keep cutting the budget? Yesterday, when I spoke to the users of that climbing facility, who are recovering from all sorts of addictions and whatnot, it was clear that the cost of treatment would be exponentially more than the cost of that facility. That is the point that is not getting picked up. Is sport an easy option when it comes to cutting funding?

That was a good plug for the SAMH event tomorrow night, which I am hosting.

I come back to this point, though: the active schools network, although quite patchy at the moment, is a really good delivery mechanism. One of the big problems with it was the extracurricular angle and the issue of how kids got home afterwards, but now that there is free bus travel, that problem has been taken away.

Now the question is: how do we connect what is taught through active schools to the community? How do we ensure a pathway in that respect? As I said, despite all the good work that you are trying to do, the reality is that physical literacy in the country is significantly declining, and I say that as a coach of 30 years, watching the kids who come to me. We are having to go further and further back in their literacy journey to get them ready to participate in sport, so how do we connect active schools to community sport—that is a massively important question. Indeed, how do we utilise delivery mechanisms such as the 1,140 hours of free childcare so that we have active play and start to teach our kids physical literacy again? You are right that local facilities are closing all over the place and are under extreme pressure. In this instance, though, we potentially have a delivery mechanism that is not being fully utilised.

On top of that, I have a question about utilising the school estate. Has there been an audit of all the facilities that could be available but which are currently not being fully utilised?

I appreciate that your angle with active schools is that it should support PE, but as an aside, I think that PE should align itself with the community, too. I do not see the point of doing six weeks of basketball and getting kids really enthusiastic about it, and then moving on to something else if there is no outlet for them to move on to. I think that there is a disconnect in that respect.

I was at an event at a social enterprise yesterday that is phenomenal. It uses a big climbing wall in a former church in Kilmarnock, and it has moved into outdoor canoeing and all sorts of stuff. Those activities are for people in recovery. They are not about teaching people sport but about teaching people through sport and bringing people together and creating confidence, resilience and aspiration through group activity. To me, that is investing in health and not just things like recovery beds, needle exchange and so on. What it is doing is giving people a different direction. I think that that is not understood particularly well. Like many other similar sports organisations—including your organisation—that social enterprise is under extreme financial pressure. Do you think that the Government understands the impact that sport can have in the community, not just for the sake of sport, but for education through sport? Are we doing enough to promote that impact?

Although your budget is now £10 million less than when I came into the Parliament.

Thank you for letting me come back in, convener.

I want to ask about the legacy issue. It is clear from looking back at the 2014 games that a successful legacy of that was the club together programme that was run by Scottish Athletics. Consideration was given to mirroring that in swimming and cycling. That involved investment in the provision of 15 hours of professional help in a club, which was paid for by the sponsor club and the local council. It was their job to look at how we recruit. The results of that programme were measurable. Over that period, an extra 3,000 people were involved in all aspects of it.

Do you think that it would be worth revisiting that model and looking at how we could expand it?

Unfortunately, with that framework, you are getting less and less investment from central Government, which means that you have less and less ability to invest. For me, that model is not working. You will not be surprised to hear that I think that we should be investing much more heavily in this sort of activity, but the model is obviously not working.