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:I refer to a letter that was written in November 2025 on behalf of 39 organisations. The chair of Scottish Gymnastics wrote it. It spoke of how the 2021 programme for government promised to double funding for sport to £100 million and of a 25 per cent real-terms reduction before the money that is currently allocated will be in place. That means that the funding will not be doubled. The letter speaks about how things have become very difficult. It says that 37 per cent of adults and 38 per cent of children do not do the recommended amount of physical activity. It also says that there is a 25 per cent increase in the cost of sending sportspeople across the world to compete. Most worrying is that it says that a significant number of athletes who compete on the world stage now have to self-fund. It is absolutely disgraceful that people who are representing Scotland are self-funding to do that. We should be paying them and thanking them for what they do.

Will you comment on that letter? We have seen real-term cuts to budgets over the past four or five years, so that £40 million still does not bring us up to where we should be.

:Thank you. I have to declare my interest as a practising national health service GP—which is rather surprising, given the topic.

There has been a lot of discussion, especially involving Kim Atkinson, about GPs trying to create time to talk about activity and linking people to local sports clubs. Kim, my first question is: how much time do you think GPs have to do that?

:[Inaudible.]

:I was in general practice on Monday, seeing patients. We do not have a minute to do anything except address what the patient has come in with, which often involves multiple, very complex and difficult issues.

As part of the initial GP contract, there was a scheme that was supposed to create community link workers across all practices. It would have allowed GPs to say, “I think you would benefit from something outside traditional medicine and traditional drugs. Maybe see the community link worker.” That person’s entire job would be to ensure that the patient got out into the community and knew what local services were available, whether in relation to sport or whatever. However, the funding for that has not come through. We have had a massive fight to keep GP community link workers in some of the most deprived areas and deep-end practices, although, surely, that is the type of thing that we should be supporting. It is impossible for a GP to do that work and know all the things that are going on in the community for all the different topics that we see. Surely we should be fighting for community link workers.

Hello. I am sorry, convener—it did not come through on my system that you had called me to speak. Is it my turn to ask questions?

:I fully agree that it is an opportunity, and it was part of the GP contract that should have been delivered.

Let us talk about the promotion of sport for physical activity. I was a member of my local council gym. My annual membership ran out, and I went to renew it. It works out at £32 a month to join that gym. I decided not to renew, and I am spending £16 a month at PureGym. I do not understand how we have got to the point where it is so expensive to be part of your local community gym. You said that if there is nowhere to go, we are snookered. For lots of people, £32 a month for going to do activities—which is very important—is a huge amount of money. I do not understand how the cost can be so high for us to maintain a healthy relationship with sport and physical activity.

:I suppose that the most important thing to say before my final question is that there are other gyms available, not just the one that I happened to mention.

We have spoken about women and girls playing sport, and we have seen in the report that they do not continue to participate, despite everyone starting off together in school. We have spoken about dedicated women who are coaches and volunteers, and the need to promote that, but I wonder whether there is a place for our local community council gyms in promoting, for example, mothers participating in physical activity. One of the strands in our report was that, if a young girl sees her mother participating in physical activity and sport, she is far more likely to do so herself.

Is there a place for our local community assets—gyms, swimming pools and other places—in trying to get mothers, in particular, into sports and physical activity?

:Amendment 87 is consequential to amendment 92. I do not intend to move amendment 92, so I will not move amendment 87.

Amendment 87 not moved.

Amendment 50 moved—[Jeremy Balfour].

:At the risk of badgering the member from the other side of the table, I am a little concerned about whether individuals may choose to take a course simply to be allowed to go into aesthetics rather than to actually do the work for which they trained. Dental nursing is an example of where people might do a course simply to be able to practise, rather than to do dental nursing specifically, at a time when we are desperate for dental nurses. Would the member agree with that?

:I will make general comments on this group of amendments. If we are talking about permitted premises under HIS standards, we are saying that a basic standard needs to be applied to anything that has a medical context. I think that it would surprise many people that, in a medical setting, you cannot use a normal fridge; you have to use a medical-grade fridge to store medicines, toxins and lots of other things, and you need to have documentation on the temperatures of the fridge. You need to ensure that there is a clear chain of documentation that notes when the medication was taken out of the fridge, when it was used and when it was binned. I am pretty sure that fizz and filler parties, which we have spoken about in the committee, would not follow that advice.

We are also talking about cleaning surfaces. When you go to see a GP or a dentist, you simply would not accept sitting on equipment that cannot be cleaned or is not clean. We should guard against anything that would water down HIS standards for injections and what I would suggest are medical interventions.

On the physical presence of a prescriber, we need to make clear exactly what we are talking about. I have two issues with that. For many years, I worked in orthopaedics, and I often operated alone in a theatre. However, the surgical list was never in my name; it was in the consultant’s name. Despite how senior I was, the consultant was in charge of the list. Other consultants and other people who were around could come in if something went wrong. That would be the case for a simple surgical procedure such as a carpal tunnel operation, which you would expect someone to be able to do at a junior level. It is not as straightforward as simply letting someone crack on with it.

I would like to discuss this with the minister at stage 3, but I am very concerned about the idea of giving blank prescriptions. For medical devices or prescription medications, you need to be given a prescription that is cashed before the medication is used. Someone could be writing a blank prescription for botulinum toxin, which is the most deadly toxin there is, and have no idea how it is being used, who it is being used on, the appropriateness of its use or the documentation on informed consent.

I have a real worry. As a GP, I trust allied healthcare professionals, and I trust advanced nurse practitioners, who have been doing their job for 20-odd years. I would not give them a blank prescription for antibiotics. If they thought that their patient needed something, they would discuss that with me or they would independently prescribe for their patient. I would not give them a blank prescription for cancer meds.