Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 22 September 2020
Thank you, Presiding Officer. I will not take up the full 30 minutes that you have just given us as an extension. [Laughter.]
As other members have done, I declare an interest because, as a child growing up, I benefited from going on school trips and from going to outdoor centres in the summer holidays. I learned to do lots of things that I perhaps would not have been able to do if I had stayed in Edinburgh. I want the same for future generations, including for my daughters. They are meant to be going in the spring for their first outdoor week with the school, but I suspect that that will be cancelled. However, we have to secure that for future generations.
The crux of the debate is the legacy that we will be left with after the virus. There is a real danger that we will end up with many fewer outdoor centres than we have at the moment, which will ultimately mean that fewer schoolchildren will be able to visit them, when we get back to some kind of normality. Inevitably, the children who come from more difficult backgrounds would probably be left behind, again. Therefore, we need to ensure that the legacy that we secure is that outdoor centres remain open and functioning in the decades ahead.
One danger that has not yet been picked up by other members is the short-term danger of losing the expertise of many of the staff who work in the centres. I am grateful to have had a number of conversations with centres over the past few days, and that subject was how they started; it was not about buildings or structures, but about what to do with the people who have the expertise in mountaineering, sailing, canoeing, skiing and so on. That expertise can go very quickly.