Hansard

I welcome this debate and the Government’s play strategy action plan. The Scottish Government says that it wants Scotland to be the best place in the world to grow up in, which is a bold and ambitious statement. However, as the minister correctly said, we should never shy away from being ambitious about our children, because we must ensure that we can build everything that we can for them as they are our future.

After listening to Jayne Baxter’s speech, I think that her family is similar to mine. She said that her grandchildren go and play and learn to fight, which is similar to my family’s get-togethers at times. How many times have our children come in with a grazed knee or having fallen out with someone? However, that is all part of growing up; it is about learning life skills and what the big, bad world is all about. Playing helps young children to move on in their lives.

Some people might say that I have never lost my ability to play, and that might be confirmed by one look at my office in the Parliament or my constituency office, which some constituents have said looks like a 13-year-old boy’s bedroom. I add that it is all football stuff, in case anyone thinks anything else. What George Bernard Shaw said might not be true of me.

The action plan sets out how we can deliver on Scotland’s first play strategy, which was published in June and is the most progressive of its kind in the UK. The first of the three principles behind the strategy is that we should value all children and young people, and the tone of this debate shows that members throughout the chamber do that.

The second principle is that we should enable all children and young people to realise their right to play. The minister mentioned signs saying “No ball games”. I remember seeing those when I was younger, but we did not think that it was a rule; we kept playing until someone came out and chased us. Now, people in society are not quite as tolerant as they were in the past. Politicians, be they local councillors or elected members here in the Parliament, get people complaining about young people playing in some of the open spaces that we have. We seriously need to address the issue, because we have to ensure that children and young people have opportunities to express themselves, and part of that is having the time and space to play.

I have grown quite tall as the years have gone on, but the world seemed an awful lot bigger when I used to play in the Gleniffer braes on the long summer days. We know we are getting old when we start talking about such things in our childhoods, but that is the kind of thing that I want for young people now. I want them, when they are older, to remember their childhood in that way as well, because that is what makes the difference.

The action plan is structured around four domains. The first is the home, and the plan states that homes should be

“places where children ... enjoy plentiful play opportunities”.

Some of the points that were made earlier are quite correct. When I was younger it was the case that, at family get-togethers, we all played together as a family, whether it was the board games at Christmas, when we would all fall out and the fighting would start again, or other games. When we look at the success of the Nintendo Wii, we see that all that it did was to modernise the whole thing. It meant that maw, paw and the weans could play together around the computer and engage together in a game that they were all interested in.

In our family, it was a question of who was the bigger kid, because my father was incorrigible. We used to play with a balloon in the room—with the whole family playing. It was like before association football rules, when everybody just kept running about. My mum always worried about the crystal in the living room. These are the things that we remember as we get older. They develop us and make us closer to our families.

We have to ensure that there are high-quality play opportunities at nursery schools, and that there is outdoor free play as well. We may not have the weather for that, but there have to be opportunities for everyone to access nature and see what is out there in the world. As has already been said, young people now tend to spend more time in their homes using computers and the internet. Let us not Google nature; let us go out there and see what is happening in the real world.

There also has to be sufficient space for play in the community. Much has been said about that so far. It is up to local authorities to ensure that that space is available. When I was a councillor, we decided that we would find a way to find money for play areas. I was the chair of the local area committee in Paisley south, and we set aside moneys to make sure that we could get over the cross-generational boundaries and reclaim our parks. We invested in multi-use play areas. Not all the money came from the council, as we managed to find money from various other sources as well.

We ensured that we spent money, and eventually we renovated some of the tennis courts. If we had not done that, they would have gone. As Liz Smith said, it is important to ensure that people of all ages can play sports, but the political will has to exist locally. There were times when I thought that it was an impossible task, but we just have to say that we can find the money for that investment and push towards getting it. Other members who were councillors will probably speak in the debate, and they will probably tell their stories as well. It is a case of actually going out there to make sure that we give young people space.

Another thing that we spoke about then was teaching kids to play some of the older, traditional games that we all played when we were younger. We now have that in one of our parks, and the kids love it. Play is something that crosses the generations.

We have to be bold and ambitious, but we also have to remember our inner child when we make decisions. We have to make sure that, as well as talking about play in the chamber, we try our best to engage across the parties to deliver as well.

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