Seòmar agus comataidhean

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.

Okay.

We will probably be pretty aligned on most of what I am about to ask regarding the impact of physical activity on both physical and mental health. It is obvious that there is a decline in the nation’s physical and mental health and, at the same time, we have a decline in physical literacy.

I am also concerned about socioeconomic inequality and access to sport. Participation in sport, especially at a higher level, is becoming much more middle class and is happening more in private education. How do we tackle that? After all, it is part of Sportscotland’s remit to focus on the health of the nation.

It strikes me that we have delivery mechanisms that provide opportunities, such as the 1,140 hours of free childcare. As you know, physical literacy happens pre-school—children’s cardiovascular and neuromuscular systems, as well as their bone density, are pretty much developed by the time that they get to school. We have spoken about gender inequality, but that tends not to be prevalent in younger age groups, which are much more open.

In the past 10 years, there has been a 43 per cent reduction in PE specialists at primary schools, extracurricular activity at secondary schools has been decimated and there is a lack of connection with community sport. What is sportscotland doing to try to get the Government to see the pieces of the jigsaw and what we are trying to achieve? In my view, we have all the pieces of the jigsaw but we are not putting them together.

Like Jackie Baillie, I am really pleased to see the minister’s amendment 50, although I agree that more clarity is required, because it does not go far enough in supporting Anne’s law.

As the minister has said, amendment 50A would set a requirement for care home service providers to provide a written reason to both the resident and the essential care supporter in any case in which a visit is denied. It represents an effort to ensure that records are retained that could be used as evidence for any future inquiries or for evaluation of the implementation of the law, which is pertinent to amendment 50D.

I welcome the minister’s comments about her intention to go further than what is proposed in amendment 50A and her offer to have further discussions on how we could strengthen the amendment. Therefore, I will not move amendment 50A.

Amendment 50B would place a requirement on the Scottish ministers to publish the code of practice in such a manner that it is publicly available and to provide it in an easy-read format. I welcome the minister’s support for that amendment and her intention to strengthen it. It is important that an accessible and easy-read version of the code of practice is available. Given that many care home residents will experience greater mental decline than the average population, it is especially important that the code is accessible to them.

Amendment 50C would place a requirement on ministers to revise the code if a significant number of problems have been reported. That is extremely important—we want to be able to trigger revisions to the code if it is clear that it is not working as intended. Amendment 50C would also trigger revisions in a timely manner.

Amendment 50D would place a requirement on ministers to publish a report on the implementation of Anne’s law, broken down by council area, each year. Given what we are trying to do with amendment 50A, I do not think that that would be a particularly onerous requirement, as we will be gathering evidence as we go along. Amendment 50D would improve parliamentary scrutiny of the implementation of Anne’s law and would help to identify any areas in which additional support is needed to make sure that Anne’s Law is in place for every person who receives care in a care home and their families, which, surely, is what we are all here to try to do. Therefore, I intend to move amendment 50D.

Given the minister’s comments, I will not move amendment 50C at this stage, but it relates to an important area that needs to be explored further.

Amendments 50C and 50D not moved.

Amendment 50, as amended, agreed to.

Amendment 138 not moved.

Section 40, as amended, agreed to.

After Section 40

On the basis of last week’s discussion and debate, I will not move it.

Amendment 134 not moved.

Section 38, as amended, agreed to.

After section 38