Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)

Meeting date: Wednesday, May 4, 2022

Official Report 1034KB pdf

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National Walking Month

The next item of business is a debate on motion S6M-04256, in the name of Maree Todd, on walking: improving health and strengthening communities. I invite members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request-to-speak buttons now.

16:44  

It is my pleasure to open today’s debate to celebrate national walking month and to discuss how walking and wheeling play a huge role in improving the health and wellbeing of the Scottish people.

This Government is committed to delivering a more active nation. We have pledged to double the investment across sport and active living by the end of this session of Parliament, and we have made record levels of investment in active travel to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to take part. Walking and wheeling is central to our vision.

Being active really is the best medicine. It helps to prevent many illnesses and diseases, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes and a number of cancers. In addition, it benefits our mental health and helps us to maintain a healthy weight.

Walking and wheeling are the easiest and most accessible forms of physical activity for most people. However, there are loads of pressures in society that lead us towards less active lifestyles and many Western European countries are seeing a decline in activity levels. The good news is that we in Scotland are bucking the trend. We have generally maintained the overall proportion of people who meet physical activity guidelines, and we have seen an increase in the number of people participating in recreational walking from 59 per cent in 2012 to 68 per cent in 2019.

The impact of the pandemic on those trends is still to be fully understood, but it seems clear that the overall picture is of a greater impact on those who are already facing barriers to participation. For example, we know that deconditioning among older people has the potential to cause long-term issues around increased frailty.

We are determined to focus even more strongly on the need to address inequalities in a recovery from the pandemic. Our additional investment in active living will target health inequalities across the spectrum of sport and physical activity. For walking and wheeling, we have increased our financial support for Paths for All, which will increase the number of health walk projects in Scotland—an activity with disadvantaged groups and communities—as well as leading a refresh of the national walking strategy.

Alongside that investment, the active travel budget will increase to £320 million by 2024-25, accelerating progress towards our ambitions for Scotland to be an active nation and our commitment to reduce car kilometres.

Those strategic ambitions become reality on the ground through the efforts of a huge number of highly motivated and skilled people across Scotland, who are helping to enable and support people to be more active more often in schools, workplaces and communities.

It is always a great pleasure to celebrate the hard work and innovation that the people of this country are capable of. There is no better example than the daily mile. That idea, which was born in Scotland, has spread throughout the world.

Established in 2012 as a school-based programme, the aim of the daily mile is clear: run, jog or wheel in the fresh air with friends for 15 minutes a day, a minimum of three times a week. Doing so has been proven to improve the physical, social, emotional and mental health and wellbeing of our children, regardless of age, ability or personal circumstances. One recent study has also suggested that it helps with children’s memory and cognition, so doing the daily mile has made them more clever.

I am sure that all members know that I am a huge advocate of the daily mile and that I always prioritise my day to allow myself the time and space to get outdoors and exercise in the fresh air. I thoroughly recommend that to everyone. Only last week, I attended the daily mile’s 10th birthday event in Dundee, where I participated alongside almost 800 schoolchildren in completing the mile to celebrate its evolution and the positive impact that it has had over the past decade.

With more than 164,000 children and young people participating in the daily mile currently, from more than 900 schools across all 32 local authorities, we are leading the way to improving the health and wellbeing of our future generations. We are on track to becoming the first daily mile nation in the world by the end of 2022.

We often have particular advantages in Scotland when encouraging people to walk and wheel more. We have a truly unique natural environment, which can be a huge asset to our health and wellbeing. We want to ensure that that is as accessible as it can be. Our green health partnership programme is supporting and encouraging people to be more engaged with nature and the outdoors.

I agree with the minister that going for a walk is probably one the greatest things that someone can do. In 2005, local authorities were committing £16.5 million a year to help maintain outdoor access facilities and provide rangers. That has now dropped to £11 million, and five local authorities have nothing at all within their budgets for outdoor access. Does the minister not think that it would be a good idea for local authorities to buy into this in the same way that the Scottish Government does? Will she give them the funds to do so?

Certainly, my party has made commitments to increasing access to participation in physical activity and I am absolutely keen to support anything that I can in central Government so that all of our local authorities—newly elected tomorrow—make progress on that issue.

In central Government, we are doubling the budget on sport and physical activity over the course of this parliamentary session. Big increases are coming in terms of investment in active transport, and I think that that will make a fundamental difference.

I have recently approved further funding for the green health partnership programme, which supports and encourages people to be more engaged with the outdoors and with nature. I am very keen that that programme continues the great work that is taking place. I saw some of it for myself during a recent visit to the Highland green health partnership, where the community woodland in Evanton, near Dingwall, is being used for a whole range of activities, including buggy walks, health walks and forest bathing. It is wonderful. Using local assets in that way can bring a community together. It makes connections between generations and develops a common sense of belonging. There is a clear social benefit as well as physical and mental health benefits.

The Government is prioritising the importance of investment in walking and wheeling. We recognise that that is central to our vision of a more active Scotland because of all the benefits that it brings to our health and our wellbeing and because it strengthens communities. We are always open to ideas on how we can continue to improve our approach, and I look forward to a constructive discussion about what more we can all do to encourage and support people to walk and wheel more often.

I propose that the Parliament support the motion and that we commit to working together to deliver a healthier and more active Scotland, up to and beyond 2030.

I move,

That the Parliament recognises National Walking Month and agrees that everyday walking and wheeling play a huge role in improving the health and wellbeing of people in Scotland; notes that the Scottish Government is committed to inclusive opportunities for everyone to walk and wheel, helping to connect and strengthen communities, reduce some of Scotland’s biggest health inequalities and reduce pressure on the NHS, and further notes that the Scottish Government is committed to doubling investment across sport and active living, allocating record levels of investment to active travel, working with partners to reduce barriers to walking and wheeling and helping to make these the default choice for short journeys, leisure, socialising or as part of longer public transport journeys in Scotland, which will also contribute to Scotland’s journey to net zero.

Thank you, minister. I call on Paul O’Kane to speak to and move amendment S6M-04256.1. You have around five minutes, Mr O’Kane.

16:52  

This debate is extremely important as we mark national walking month. We should take the time to thank all the organisations that have engaged with and briefed us ahead of today’s debate, in particular Paths for All, sportscotland and the Scottish Rights of Way and Access Society. Their engagement in the debate and more widely on the issue of walking across Scotland is hugely important and they make a vast contribution.

We also start with a degree of consensus on the vital importance of getting out and walking or wheeling, and on the improvements that that simple activity can make to our physical and mental health and wellbeing. I am sure that, like me, members across the chamber rediscovered what it is to take time to walk or wheel during the lockdown periods of the past two years. Many people found huge benefit from going out for that daily walk or wheel, whether in our beautiful countryside, beside our lochs and mountains, in our urban parks or along canals. In many ways, people rediscovered the joy of what was around them and saw huge benefits for their health and wellbeing.

We know from evidence that a 20-minute walk can reduce the risk of a number of preventable health conditions, including certain cancers, depression, heart disease and type II diabetes. Supporting people to be physically active is vital to our public health mission in Scotland and active travel is vital to reducing health inequalities, meeting our climate targets and relieving pressure on the national health service. It is not just walking, of course; associated activities such as running and cycling also have an impact and must be supported.

The national walking strategy is hugely important for encouraging people to walk. As the strategy was originally launched in 2014, I hope that the minister will say more about its refresh and update, particularly as we recover from Covid-19 and hope that people sustain that level of activity. There are many strong recommendations in the strategy and it points to the work that we still have to do. Figures from local authorities in 2019 show that the proportion of trips made on foot ranged from 39 per cent in Dundee to just 11 per cent in East Renfrewshire. As I hail from East Renfrewshire, it is clear to me that we need to do more locally and nationally to get those numbers up.

Another key recommendation in the strategy is that there must be

“Better quality walking environments with attractive, well designed and managed built and natural spaces for everyone”.

That brings me to the Labour amendment. Although, as I have said, many people in our communities rediscovered walking in the lockdowns, they also discovered that paths are often inaccessible or covered in litter, that too many pavements are cracked and broken, and that too many parks are dark, unlit and unsafe to go to, particularly for women on their own. Councils are struggling to keep up with repairs and it is becoming harder and harder to sustain

“attractive, well designed and managed”

areas for walking, wheeling and cycling.

The truth is that, since 2013, the Scottish Government has cut £6 billion from local authority budgets and, right now, there is an eye-watering outstanding roads repair bill of at least £1.7 billion. That bill has been accumulated under the Government, and it makes already dangerous conditions worse—and that is even before we come to pavements. People will not walk if the infrastructure is not there to support them. Understandably, cash-strapped councils have had to prioritise other issues.

That has had an adverse impact on our most deprived communities and has limited the options for people to get out and take the most cost-effective form of exercise. We on the Labour benches have called for active travel spending to be increased to 10 per cent of the overall transport budget, to give priority to encouraging and enabling people to get out of cars and on to bikes, and to walk more, which will benefit their health and the health of our communities. We have also called for additional measures to improve women’s safety, including a pilot of physical space safety audits and providing planners with guidance on how to make communities safer.

That brings me to cycling, which we believe is a key component of the wider active travel agenda and is highlighted in our amendment. In last year’s election, the Scottish National Party promised free bikes to all school-age children who cannot afford them. In August 2020, the Greens called for all children from low-income families to receive a grant towards bikes and helmets to get to school safely. However, 18 months on, only 238 bikes have been given out, and the Government does not even have the statistics on how many children are using those pilot schemes.

Will the member take an intervention?

The member is about to conclude.

I am in my last seconds.

That is a case of something perhaps looking good in a leaflet but not being delivered in reality.

Walking, wheeling and active travel are paramount for our health as a nation and our sense of wellbeing. However, we must do more to encourage more people to get out and about and to get active, particularly in our most deprived communities, and further cuts to local government services and infrastructure will hinder, rather than help with that.

I move amendment S6M-04256.1, to insert at end:

“; recognises that wider cuts to local authority services hamper active travel and the implementation of a gendered approach to safety; considers that improvements to roads and pavements are necessary to improve levels of walking and wheeling, particularly in more deprived areas, and calls again on the Scottish Government to provide access to a bike for every child who cannot afford one by the end of 2022.”

Brian Whittle joins us remotely.

16:57  

I apologise to members for not being in the chamber in person. I am delighted to open this debate for the Scottish Conservatives. I, too, thank the many organisations that took the time to send in briefing documents for the debate.

As members would expect, I am a great supporter of any form of physical activity, and I call walking the ultimate low-entry option for increasing physical activity, or even just for beginning the journey to a healthier lifestyle. By that, I mean that the financial cost of participation is very low, and being physically active is one of the best ways of ensuring good physical and mental health. Although it cannot completely negate the possibility of becoming unwell, physical activity can help to stack the cards in our favour and of course help with recovery from illness. Activity can help to prevent heart disease, strokes, diabetes, some cancers and the scourge of obesity, and it reduces the risk of developing depression. The sportscotland briefing highlighted an interesting statistic from the World Health Organization, which has stated that physical inactivity is now

“the fourth leading risk factor for global mortality”.

Walking is a key activity in this battle. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Scotland was the unhealthiest nation in Europe, with the lowest life expectancy. Health inequalities were significant and increasing, and that has only been exacerbated by the pandemic. Against that backdrop, it is a worry that the health of the nation has taken a significant downturn during the pandemic, as people’s ability to access physical activity has been greatly reduced.

Obviously, walking activities include rambling and backpacking. We are rightly proud of our incredibly beautiful countryside where those activities can occur, and walking tourism is worth an estimated £1.3 billion to the economy.

However, those activities are not available to all, which is why we will support Labour’s amendment. We need to ensure that activities are available to all, irrespective of background or personal circumstances. There needs to be investment in improving access to organised walking football and walking netball, for example, and in providing safe walking access to the natural environment. It is true that the SNP Government’s cuts to local councils will hamper that work—that is without doubt. Such cuts will result in a false economy. Investment in those kinds of venture will undoubtedly remove costs from another page in the ledger. Failure to provide access to activity will deliver the opposite, and I would rather investment be made further upstream to prevent the cost to our health services down the track.

With regard to people who want to take the opportunity to cycle to work, I highlighted in the previous parliamentary session that there are many more safe cycle paths for those who live in more affluent areas than there are for those who live in more deprived areas according to the Scottish index of multiple deprivation. Of course, people can cycle to work only if they happen to own a bike, and it is less likely that a bike will be available to children from more deprived areas according to the SIMD. That is why the roll-out—or, to be more accurate, the lack of roll-out—of the Government’s bike scheme is having little impact.

I have talked about the supporting third sector organisations such as Cycle Station in my area, which refurbishes and recycles bikes and sells them on for a fraction of the cost of a new bike. Last year, it managed to sell more than 600 bikes in the local community.

I would like to see the development of safe cycle routes to school, which we—or at least those who happen to be in my generation—all took for granted in our school days. I am not one for saying, “In my day”, but that is an example of looking back to look forward. How do we get our children walking and cycling to school for the benefit of not only their health but the environment and air quality around schools?

An example of good practice is the park and stride initiative in my area, in which parents drop off their children a distance from the school and the children are supervised by teachers as they walk the remaining distance to school. That also ensures that air quality around the schools is significantly improved.

As the minister highlighted, the daily mile, which was thought up by a Stirling teacher, is a fantastic initiative—even if children choose to walk, rather than run, it. It has really taken off, and we should all get behind it.

Outdoor learning is another key initiative that needs investment. My colleague Liz Smith is developing a member’s bill to ensure that all pupils have the opportunity to access such learning, and I encourage the Scottish Government to back the bill and invest in outdoor learning.

National walking month gives us the opportunity to highlight the great physical and mental benefits of physical activity and the challenges that we face in enabling and encouraging Scots to take part in activity for the sake of their physical and mental health. Although we are right to be proud of Scotland’s natural beauty when walking and cycling in the countryside, we certainly cannot pat ourselves on the back, given the health challenges that remain in Scotland, the huge inequality in access to physical activity and the subsequent health inequalities that stubbornly exist and are growing.

I ask the Scottish Government to accept those challenges and to provide long-term planning and investment that go way beyond any parliamentary session. Planning and investment have consistently been missing from any Government plans. As people say, you can achieve anything as long as you do not mind who gets the credit. The fruits of such investment and planning will certainly not lead to the credit for the outcomes residing in this parliamentary session and with its members, but surely a long-term plan to improve the health of our nation is worth putting political differences aside and working together for better outcomes for Scotland. Outcomes are all that matter; warm words will not make one iota of a difference.

17:03  

Remember the days during the first lockdown when we were limited to 30-minute walks outside our homes, which genuinely felt like the highlight of the day? Everything that we had ever taken for granted—precious time in the fresh air and with nature—was now limited but ultimately cherished.

As somebody who represents a rural constituency, I have nature and green space all around me, but I am acutely aware that people in urban areas were not quite so fortunate. That is one reason why investment in green spaces should be a priority for those who are in charge of planning in urban areas.

It is well understood that access to green space and nature is a fundamental contributor to our wellbeing, as the minister said in her opening speech. Any community that does not have that access is faced with a fundamental health inequality.

I will use my remaining time to mention three groups in my constituency. Walking and wheeling is essential to the mental and physical wellbeing of those who work with them. The first is PawPalz in Ellon, which was started by Toby McKillop for men who had difficulties with their mental health or who were in recovery from drug and alcohol problem usage. As the name suggests, it was also for their dogs. During the first lockdown, Toby got in touch with me because he was concerned that he would have to stop the group due to restrictions, and he was worried about the impact that that would have on the many men for whom the group is an essential part of their recovery and mental wellbeing.

I worked with the police at Ellon police station who were excellent in reassuring Toby and the PawPalz and gave advice to the group on how they could continue to operate safely. The group operated throughout those difficult periods. It continued to meet and has expanded its network of similar groups for women in the area.

I also want to mention the work of Balmedie Beach Wheelchairs, which is run by volunteers from the Belhelvie Community Trust who give free access to people who need specialist wheelchairs to access Balmedie beach, which is beautiful but often difficult for people who have mobility issues to access. They have a range of wheelchairs available so that people can still enjoy one of Scotland’s most beautiful beaches.

I also want to mention the walking group of the CLAN Cancer Support centre in Inverurie. The group is open to anyone whose life has been affected by cancer, whether they are undergoing treatment, recovering from the disease or are a friend or family member of someone who is living with cancer or who has sadly lost their life. The friendship and support that the walking group offers is an indication of the therapeutic benefit of getting outside and also of spending time with people who have a shared experience.

The value of walking comes up a lot in the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, not only from a physical exercise point of view but from social prescribing perspective. Referrals to walking or wheeling groups as a type of complementary treatment is becoming more accepted and recognised as a way of improving physical fitness and mental wellbeing, and of combating social isolation.

The roll-out of community link workers into general practices across Scotland in terms of accessing opportunities for walking, wheeling and sometimes even accompanying individuals to that awkward first date can literally be a life saver.

During the last parliamentary session, I said how much I cherish my walk into the Parliament every day. Having had no option but to drive with all the other people into Aberdeen city for 25 years has made me extremely grateful for that opportunity, and I am convinced that my mental health is all the better for me taking my twice-daily walk across Holyrood park while admiring the community’s many dogs.

If we all continue to take the half-hour walk that we cherished in 2020, what would the impact be on our wellbeing as a nation? It would be significant, I am sure.

17:07  

I am pleased to speak in this debate in recognition of national walking month. We have had a number of briefs for today’s debate that show evidence of all the massive advantages and health benefits of regular exercise, and walking is one of the easiest and most relaxing forms of exercise.

As Ramblers Scotland say, walking also helps to prevent many illnesses and diseases. It also points out its economic function through tourism.

Key to this debate is how we as politicians encourage people to walk more and what actions we can take to support them to do so. Government has a role to play, but first I want to highlight some of the good practice out there where people are supporting others and coming together to make things happen.

The Scottish women’s walking group on Facebook is an excellent example of a group providing support, friendship and motivation and of helping others to overcome isolation. It also provides general guidance, as well as a platform for organising group walks. There are many groups like that one the length and breadth of the country, run by volunteers, and I believe that the impact they have is immense. Therefore, we need to talk to and listen to those groups and their members, as they have more first-hand experience and expertise than many in the chamber.

There are many things that we as policy makers can do to support those groups. I believe that local authorities are key to providing new infrastructure and maintaining existing infrastructure. Poorly maintained paths, walkways and the state of pavements are all important, as is getting people out of their cars, which requires better public transport alongside access to safe and well-maintained routes.

I am afraid that the persistent cuts to council budgets have had a devastating impact on all that. Although it is fine to speak in the motion about doubling funding, it will not make up for the impact of the cuts to local councils.

I was surprised to read from the Paths for All briefing that the Scottish household survey revealed that, among younger people, walking as a physical activity dropped dramatically in the 20 per cent most deprived areas to just 66 per cent compared to 89 per cent in the 20 per cent least deprived areas. In those deprived areas, 29 per cent of adults did not participate in any kind of physical activity. Those are the kinds of challenges facing Government at every level. If we are to improve the amount of walking in Scotland and, indeed, the level of health, social prescribing to get the right support to local community groups will be key. We can be better at joined-up thinking and working.

I challenge ministers to say how we are going to do that. How do we ensure that Government is joined up? For example, social prescribing has been talked about, but how are we going to move towards working with general practitioners and NHS boards and talk about what social prescribing means? How can the Government support health boards, GPs and health practices to deliver? Those are the kinds of steps that we have to take.

I want to finish where I started. I have talked to constituents who tell me that some of those social media groups are their lifelines. They provide support, bring people together and get people working together. Let us also talk to them and work with them for a healthier Scotland.

17:11  

For our own health and wellbeing, not to mention for the good of the planet, we all need to give walking and wheeling greater priority in our lives. How each of us buys into the aspirations of national walking month in the Government motion will differ from person to person.

As a former transport minister, I have been particularly keen to rise to the 20 per cent cut in car kilometres challenge. I found that having days when the car sits parked up is easy, as is reducing the number of avoidable vehicle journeys. Cutting the car kilometres in favour of walking, particularly as an MSP for a rural constituency, is, to be honest, more difficult. For me, it is fair to say that it is still a work in progress.

As far as walking more per se is concerned, being gifted a step-counting watch by my daughter a year past January has proved to be significant motivation. Some might say that I have become obsessed; I will leave it to others to judge. However, if it assists my colleagues in coming to a conclusion, I will share the following: by election day last year, my average daily step count was sitting at 16,500, albeit that it dropped off a bit after the end of the campaign to an average for the year of 13,150, and for 2022, it stands at 14,458—not that I am counting, you understand.

Walking to and from Parliament when possible contributes to me cutting down on my use of the lifts in this place, and it all helps, as does election campaigning. Although I support others doing it, I cannot claim to be an avid walker of distance for recreational or exercise purposes, unless we can count pounding the golf course.

Mark Twain once famously described golf as “a good walk spoiled”, and I tend to view lengthy walks as a dull substitute for hitting a wee white ball around a golf course. I am one of those people who will spend three and a half hours walking the golf course in a heartbeat but who would not dream of committing a third of that time to walking just for the sake of it.

I will not be alone in finding my own way of buying into the health and wellbeing ask that is to be made of us all here. I urge that we recognise and respect the fact that different people will get walking in different ways.

It is absolutely right that we promote walking for the health and climate reasons that we all know about. However, we should also acknowledge that people will come at this from entirely individual perspectives. Golfers, particularly older male golfers—older than me, for the record—are a case in point. Many in their late 60s or 70s would not dream of going for a walk, as such. In fact, they would not think that they were capable of walking distances. However, once, twice, maybe three times a week, they will head for the golf course where, depending on how much time they spend searching the rough for balls, they might clock up 11,500 steps, or 5 miles, without noticing it. As a result, they stay fit and active and receive the multitude of benefits that that brings.

Having made clear what I freely admit is a vested interest, I want to conclude by focusing briefly on a fundamental flaw in the Labour amendment. It would be impossible to give a bike to every child who requires one by the end of 2022, not because the will is not there or because the pilot projects will not report before August, but because there has been—and, I believe, still is, to an extent—a global shortage of bikes and bike parts. Therefore, the amendment’s concluding demand cannot be met. That being the case, the amendment should be rejected.

I ask members to support the Government’s motion but to oppose the amendment.

17:15  

The benefits that walking and wheeling in the outdoors can have for mental and physical health are widely recognised. That was undoubtedly impressed on all of us during the pandemic, when we were not able to exercise and explore the outdoors as we usually would.

In that regard, it is worth noting that we are very fortunate to have the amount of green space that we have in Scotland and that, because of the passing of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, we have the right of access to most land and inland water. It is vital that those rights are protected and upheld so that everyone can continue to benefit from Scotland’s rich natural environment.

I was proud that, as part of the Bute house agreement between the Greens and the Scottish Government, it was announced that there would be at least one new national park in Scotland, as one of the many ways in which we recognise the important part that experiencing, and exercising in, nature plays in people’s wellbeing.

People who spend quality time walking and wheeling in nature are happier and more likely to care about the local environment and climate change. Walking can also widen access to sport. Many sporting bodies have created walking versions of their sports, such as walking football, to encourage more people to take part, regardless of their age and fitness level. That can help to tackle social isolation, as well as helping people to get or stay active.

Recent data published in the Scottish household survey has shown that walking has grown in popularity—that is not shown only by Graeme Dey’s obsession with his Fitbit. It is encouraging that the survey found that 89 per cent of respondents aged 16 to 24 were likely to take part in walking as a recreational activity. Of those who were surveyed who had a disability, 61 per cent regarded walking or wheeling as their most common activity.

However, the survey also revealed stark differences with regard to areas of deprivation. It found that physical activity dropped by 20 per cent to 66 per cent in the most deprived areas, compared with 89 per cent in the least deprived areas. That must give us pause to reflect and ensure that public spaces and the natural environment are welcoming to all.

As I have said, the mental and physical health benefits of walking and wheeling outside are well known. Reflecting the point that Gillian Martin made, meeting many of the dogs around Callendar park in Falkirk undoubtedly boosts my mental health, but if people do not have a space or route nearby where they can walk or wheel while feeling safe and free from heavy traffic, pollution and blocked pavements, they will simply not do it. We have much work to do before Scotland’s streets are truly accessible.

The World Health Organization states that physical inactivity is the fourth leading risk factor in global mortality. Walking and wheeling might not be the silver bullet to fix poor health outcomes, but they can make an important contribution to maintaining and even improving health across the nation, and the removal of barriers must be prioritised.

During the pandemic, the importance of walking and other active travel infrastructure became clear to many of us. The continuation of measures such as the spaces for people scheme represents recognition that active travel, including wheeling and walking, must be an accessible option as part of our everyday lives. Such schemes simultaneously promote active travel and reduce our impact on the environment through having fewer polluting cars on the road, and can minimise congestion across Scotland’s towns and cities when they are applied well.

Supporting the development of 20-minute neighbourhoods will also reduce the need to travel and will ensure that people can walk, wheel or cycle to most places that they need to go to.

Going forward, we must prioritise measures such as reallocating road space to people and supporting the creation of low-traffic neighbourhoods, so that walking, wheeling and cycling are accessible, practical and significantly safer. Programmes such as the safe to school initiatives, which aim to ensure that every child who lives within 2 miles from their school is able to walk, wheel or cycle there safely, could be a catalyst for ingraining more walking and wheeling in the everyday lives of Scotland’s children.

In national walking month, it is important that we acknowledge and celebrate the many benefits that walking and wheeling can have for our mental, social and physical health, because there are many such benefits, but we must also renew our efforts to ensure that those benefits are felt by everyone across Scotland.

Karen Adam is the final speaker in the open debate.

17:20  

As previous speakers have stated, the pandemic restrictions certainly highlighted the desire for human beings to connect, not just with each other but with our nature and surroundings. A path that we just used to take to get from A to B became much more than a route; it became a space for contemplation. For once, we did not just put one foot in front of the other; we looked up and around. We breathed in the air and noticed seasonal changes in a more pronounced way than before. We saw signs of wildlife and appreciated what we had perhaps taken for granted, all because we were forced to slow down and confine ourselves, and to see what we had around us—a connection to place.

Many people in the professional field of mental health speak about the disconnect that occurs during poor mental health moments. The connection not just to people but to place can have enormous benefits in reconnecting and grounding us. Many of us might be familiar with the technique to calm down during anxiety attacks: the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 method. That involves five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell and one thing you can taste. That is a fantastic way for anyone to connect while out walking.

There is one thing that we can certainly taste when walking by the coastline: the salty sea air. For those of us who live around the coast, such as in my constituency of Banffshire and Buchan Coast, our outdoor space became more important than ever over the past two years. This enhanced relationship is set to continue, motivated by those triggers, with a real connection.

I will share a practical illustration of how walking coastal trails—the paths that line our beautiful coastlines—can be a hook for motivating and empowering local communities. In my constituency, one such project that has been developed is the coast Aberdeenshire initiative, which builds on the concept of coastal paths. It is indeed about walking, but it is so much more than that. Running from Logie Head and Cullen to Peterhead, and stretching about 1 mile inland along the north-east coast, coast Aberdeenshire provides support through a dedicated council team to empower local communities, involving joined-up working with council services and specialisms. Council staff have a dedicated officer group, which facilitates connections, with support for organisations and advice and help with funding applications where appropriate.

All of that encourages community groups to identify a route or a related project, supporting local commitments, and to take ownership in the long term, developing, repairing, maintaining and promoting. Like any aspect of walking, that is ultimately about reconnecting, exploring and understanding. It is also about a local community looking after its history and coastal environment, thus emboldening a sense of community and connectivity. Walking can play a key role in the future survival of our towns and villages, our businesses and our farms and estates, and it can take in wild land and shoreline.

The potential for tourism on our coastline is vast, with visitors coming from near and far. Not only do we get to show off our stunning landscape and shoreline, we have the economic benefits that tourism brings.

As well as the very local connection to place, there was a huge increase, with international travel restrictions, in what many people call a staycation. During my childhood, my granddad called it the “costa del backie”. That was his running joke every summer. With ageing wisdom, he saw what he already had around him. I want to take that wisdom and apply it in a broader sense to my constituency. Oor backies can extend miles beyond our fences.

To finish, I will read a quote made famous by Jack Kerouac. He stated:

“There was nowhere to go but everywhere”.

We now move to the closing speeches.

17:24  

I am pleased to close the debate on behalf of the Scottish Labour Party.

I think that we have found consensus in the debate. I believe that, across the Parliament, we are committed to improving and enhancing the uptake of walking across Scotland. We have heard many strong examples, particularly from the lockdown period, of people rediscovering the joy of walking, as I spoke about in my opening speech.

However, we have to be honest about the barriers that exist and the work that is still required to make sure that walking activities are accessible to all, and we offer our amendment in that vein. I note Brian Whittle’s contribution and Edward Mountain’s intervention on the cuts that local authorities have experienced to budgets for place and space. The roles of working co-ordinators, outdoor access officers and countryside rangers are often the first things to go when there are decisions to be made.

I return to the importance of safety measures for vulnerable people, particularly in urban communities, where parks and canal routes are often dangerous, particularly for women. We have called for additional safety measures to improve women’s safety. In my opening remarks, I spoke about the importance of piloting physical safety space audits, but it goes further than that. We need to provide planners with guidance on how to make communities safer, including on safe walking routes in urban communities and in new estates across Scotland.

Gillian Martin and Gillian Mackay, who are my colleagues on the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, made important points about the importance of walking for good mental health. It is good to hear about what is being offered in different parts of the country, and I was particularly taken with the examples that Gillian Martin shared about dogs. I know that Gillian Martin is a dog lover, as am I.

Supporting our third sector in a sustainable way is key in all this, because many third sector organisations are struggling to maintain their services, which are often provided free of charge to the public. My colleague Alex Rowley made some excellent points on that. If we are going to get walking strategies right and encourage a broader uptake of walking, we have to listen to the groups who are supporting walking, day in and day out, across our country. That is about sustainable funding that can help them to expand and grow the services that they offer.

Labour members want to see active travel budgets more widely being put towards assessing and developing safer routes in combination with using the planning system to ensure less car use and make residential areas low-traffic neighbourhoods by reducing speeds and considering volumes of traffic, while maintaining local access for those who need it.

I enjoyed the majority of former minister Graeme Dey’s contribution, although I confess that I am not a golf fan. I particularly enjoyed what he said about the campaign trail and the steps that he is achieving. Perhaps in future elections, Presiding Officer, we should have a competition between members to see who can do the most steps. Given his comments on the shortage of bikes, it would be helpful to know why the free bike pledge has appeared in the manifestos of the SNP and the Green Party. I believe that the pledge did not feature in the coalition agreement, so it would be good to understand: if not now for free bikes and provision of access to bikes, when?

I am rapidly running out of time, so I will conclude. Active travel is vital to improving health inequalities, but proper funding for councils must mean proper funding for the infrastructure that makes walking a reality.

17:28  

I am delighted to close the debate on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives. It has been a good and consensual debate; we are looking for the same kind of outcomes. The benefits of physical activity have been well explained by members across the chamber, but, as I said in my opening remarks, the debate takes place against the backdrop of Scotland being the unhealthiest nation in Europe and increasing health inequalities. All those things have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

We have talked about how physical activity allows interaction, which is to the benefit of our mental health. We encourage participation in activity and sport not necessarily to produce sportsmen and sportswomen, but to educate through activity and sports. However, as Paul O’Kane alluded in his summation, there are barriers, and they must be accepted and systematically tackled by the Scottish Government.

As I said in my opening remarks, outcomes are all that matter. Waxing lyrical about what the Scottish Government is doing on those issues matters little if the outcomes are not achieved. We need to be creative, and we should not necessarily be prescriptive, because one size does not fit all. The outcomes that we are looking for are continuing improvement in the health of the nation and a reduction in health inequalities. A consistent redistribution of healthcare budgets could improve health outcomes and support our healthcare workers—and a healthier nation means greater productivity for the country.

Alex Rowley’s point about social prescribing was well made. The initiative is crucial and has been discussed for as long as I have been a member of this Parliament, but I do not think that we are any nearer to developing a national strategy. That would require investment in information technology to create a connected system for our GPs to use.

Graeme Dey probably did not realise that I was listening intently to him when he talked about inequalities. He talked about how using wearable tech and playing a game of golf can motivate people to be active—I do both. As for the idea that golf is a good walk wasted, I think that there are two types of person: the people who enjoy a game of golf and the people who are wrong. I would be delighted if Mr Dey fancied a game, because playing golf is a great way of getting out and being active. Of course, doing that takes money—that is where the inequalities kick in.

Mr Dey also mentioned bike parks. I was looking at the issue the other day and I think that he is right: bike and skate parks are a great way to encourage young people to be physically active, but they require investment.

Physical activity is an outlet for someone who is stressed. I am lucky to have had that tool all my life, and we must ensure that it is available to everyone. That will take investment and political will.

It is time that members across the chamber made investment in physical activity a priority. I am not making a political point when I say, as I did in my opening speech, that we are an increasingly unhealthy country with life expectancy that is way behind where it should be. That is not a political point; we have to accept that that is the case. Only then can we take the steps that are required.

Investment in physical activity is investment in our future. Not investing, or trying to save money in the area, is a false economy. We need to move our investment further upstream, to prevent health issues and health inequalities. Surely it is not beyond the wit of members of this Parliament to come together and consider solutions that would benefit our country.

17:32  

I thank all the members who have taken part in the debate. I am told that this might be the first time that Parliament has debated walking, specifically. If that is true, it might be because, for most of us, for most of our lives, walking is so natural and casual that it does not need to be discussed. However, the views that members across the chamber have expressed show that the issue needs to be discussed and that there is great value in the debate.

I do not know whether it is entirely a coincidence that a debate on national walking month comes at the end of what all members know to be national canvassing month. Graeme Dey made that connection and—as it is for him—it is canvassing that is keeping up my step count at the moment. Members talked beautifully about the places and landscapes that they are walking through on the election campaign trail. Most of the views that I have seen have been of tiles and windows in Glasgow tenements. Beautiful though they are, I hope to get a bit of a change over the summer and to see some more of the country.

I think that all politicians and the thousands of political activists whom we work with, who have been out campaigning and canvassing around Scotland, are encountering more and more the barriers to walking that exist for people in their communities. Whether the barriers are physical, cultural or economic, or relate to the important points that Paul O’Kane made about women’s safety, in particular, we need to address them, and we need to recognise that we have a political responsibility to do so.

However, we also have an incredible opportunity. Several members, including Paul O’Kane, Gillian Martin and Karen Adam, talked about the experience during lockdown—the really different context in which people were “permitted” daily exercise and when people went out for a walk for that very unusual reason. That was about encountering their communities in a different way and experiencing them in a new way. That gives us all a responsibility to ensure that communities become more accessible, more inclusive and safer places for people to walk.

There has been, I think, more consensus in the debate than there has been disagreement, so I hope that members from across the chamber will work constructively with the Government on what we are taking forward.

We are working with Paths for All to lead the refresh of the walking strategy. In keeping with what several members have said, there is real scope to look at that strategy not in isolation but in terms of how it connects to the Government’s other strategic objectives, whether around health—physical health, mental health, and issues around loneliness and isolation—around the climate and the need to cut car kilometres by 20 per cent, or around reinvigoration of our local economies as they recover from the pandemic. That cross-cutting approach is very much in keeping with what Alex Rowley and others said about taking a joined-up approach.

I hope that Mr O’Kane will acknowledge our not supporting his amendment; we will continue to have disagreements about wider local authority funding. We believe that we have protected local authority funding significantly. Opposition parties will say that we have not done enough on that, but there is simply no question but that we have dramatically increased direct funding to local authorities for active travel, and not just in relation to what the Scottish Government spends. This year, the cycling, walking and safer routes funding has increased to £35 million. That is a £10 million increase in one year alone.

There is also the work that we are doing with Sustrans on the places for everyone programme. There are other funding streams and there is the work that Maree Todd mentioned through increased funding in sport and active living budgets. There is direct funding to local authorities that is allowing them to take the work forward.

In relation to the free bike pilots, I am genuinely sorry to hear that the very clear repeated public commitments from the Scottish Government have somehow not been acknowledged. The pilot schemes that we committed to were up and running within the first 100 days, as promised. They will be evaluated later this year, as promised—and they need to be. We need pilot schemes so that we can evaluate a wide range of issues.

Graeme Dey was right about issues in the supply chain. They are not unique to Scotland, but they are certainly issues that we need to understand and overcome.

There are a wide range of other issues. We are looking to ensure that young people who—for whatever socioeconomic reasons and whatever their background—need access to free bikes have that access and our support in that. They will be the same young people for whom issues around storage are an additional barrier. They also need access either to repairing skills or to a repair service to make sure that their bikes can be repaired when they go wrong.

We also need to make sure that we increase the range of available adaptive bikes so that it is an inclusive programme for young people with a wide range of disabilities. We also, as others have said, need to increase skills in, and the capacity for, recycling bikes to ensure that we increase supply.

We need to work with pilot schemes, so I hope that Labour and others will work with us, instead of making unrealistic demands with impossible timescales. Let us work constructively with the many organisations that are enthusiastically developing the pilots and will report to us later this year.

Whether walking is for recreation, for tourism, for health, to see more of our beautiful country or just to get about on our daily trips; whether it is part of a journey that involves other modes of travel; and whether it is a whole journey in its own right, there is huge potential to make sure that more people feel able to walk. The Scottish Government has made an unprecedented commitment to active travel, both in funding and in policy. However, as Gillian Mackay argued, what we do has to be inclusive. Walking, wheeling and cycling address all the diverse needs of our people and realise a positive vision of safe, healthy and thriving local communities in every part of Scotland.

That concludes the debate on walking: improving health and strengthening communities.