Meeting of the Parliament 15 January 2026
As Patrick Harvie said, the bill is largely technical, and it is difficult to get too worked up about the technicalities.
Stephen Kerr mentioned the constructive approach that has been taken to the bill. I only wish that our politics and our Parliament could take that approach more often. The great Scottish journalist Brian Taylor would say to me, “It’s politics—what do you expect?” Although I massively respect Brian Taylor, I disagree with him on that, and so do the majority of the Scottish people. When we are out and about in our constituencies, people often say, “Why can’t you just work together in the best interests of the people who you represent?”
Moving forward, I hope that all politicians, in seeing the rise of the right, ask themselves, “Why is that happening?” If it is happening partly because, as people say, the rest of us are all the same and we continually squabble, argue and blame one other while things do not get better, perhaps we should allow the approach that has been taken to the bill to rub off on us in the future.
Stephen Kerr talked about some of the great names of the past in Scottish football. I absolutely believe that we must know and learn from our history, but I also like to look forward and try to ensure that, while learning from our history, we can move forward.
How do we support football in Scotland to move forward? There will be excitement this year because we have qualified for the world cup, but we will then move on to the Euros, and I hope that one of the legacies of the Euros will be that we look at how we embed and support football at community level.
Neil Bibby talked about the increase in funding for sport coming from the UK Government and the Scottish Government. We must consider how we empower communities more. When I grew up, people played football on the streets. There were not loads of cars on the streets like there are now. Society has changed since the days when I grew up. In communities across Scotland, I see strong community football growing. That depends a lot on volunteers, including parents and grandparents who give up their time to run local football clubs. It also depends on having sports coaches who are able to support it.
I do not want us to believe that the Parliament can fix everything or that it is just about money. We need to work with local government and look at coming up with a Scotland-wide strategy that empowers communities and acknowledges that our greatest resource is in those communities.
There are smaller football teams that are struggling that have professional players and coaches who could do more with our schools. I think back to 50-odd years ago when, at primary school, the local teachers would take us up the park and we would get to kick a ball about and play a bit of football. That all stopped in the 1980s and 1990s when we had industrial action and teachers’ workloads continued to rise. However, there is a resource in communities up and down Scotland and, if it could be pulled together through politicians being willing to work together with local government, the legacy could be that we had a football team that was in every major competition and that young people had the opportunity to access football and become the greats of the future.