Hansard

Many years ago, in the first session of Parliament, I had the good fortune to have the post of Deputy Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport. It is fairly obvious from that title that I had some pretty good gigs. There was the Cannes film festival, the Edinburgh film festival, Scottish Opera and various other things, but I probably enjoyed most of all being involved with the Scotland team in Manchester in 2002.

I had known Manchester a bit because, back in the 1980s, I was involved in a research project with a scientist at the Christie hospital and I had worked there from time to time. At that time, Manchester was a city with great cultural, industrial and political traditions, but it had fallen on hard times to a certain extent. When I went back to Manchester in 2002, I barely recognised the city, as it had changed so much. The changes in its appearance, atmosphere and confidence were very marked.

Two events were credited with that change. Obviously, one was terrible: the Provisional IRA bombing in 1996. The other event that was associated with the regeneration was the Commonwealth games. To many of us who attended with the Scottish team at that time, the parallel with Glasgow was striking, and the seed was planted to bring the games to Glasgow in 2014.

When I was watching the games on television, I was particularly pleased to see Louise Martin presenting some of the prizes, as she was a mainstay of the Scottish team and the Commonwealth games, and she was crucial to bringing them to Glasgow. She has to take a great deal of the credit for the success of the games this year. I also congratulate everybody else: all the politicians and everybody else who worked hard to bring the games here and all the people who made them such a tremendous success.

Some of the legacy of the games is already in place, of course. It gives me some amusement to remember that, when I was in Manchester, I was lobbied by one Chris Hoy on the need for a competition-standard velodrome in Scotland. We now have a state-of-the-art velodrome in Scotland, and it is named after him. From what I knew of Chris Hoy, I am sure that he was far too modest to imagine that it would ever be named after him.

The games were, of course, a tremendously wonderful experience. This time last week, I was on the bus from Eurocentral to Hampden to see Eilidh Child powering to her silver medal, David Weir, who is an extraordinary sportsman, being cheered on to his success in the T54 1,500m by Scots as much as by English people, and Amos beating Rudisha. I was also there on Saturday. I do not know whether I saw Usain Bolt, as he went so fast that he was a blur, but I saw him afterwards. Whether I caught him racing is another thing. That was a marvellous experience.

The overall success of the games in years to come will be judged by what changes for the better they effected in Glasgow and the rest of Scotland. Over the years, as we saw with Manchester, memories of the games will eventually fade, even though they are great memories for all of us who were involved. Games will be held in other nations, and their games will be talked about.

I have no doubt that the games will inspire more young people to take up sport and become involved in sports that they would otherwise not have considered. Talented young athletes will be able to train in top-class facilities in Scotland, although some of that training will still go on in other parts of the United Kingdom. In some parts of Scotland, members of the public will also have access to the tremendous venues. A new generation of elite athletes will have gained inspiration from what they have seen during the past couple of weeks in Glasgow.

I want to return to what I touched on in a question earlier this week. What about most of us who do not possess any great talent for sport? Will we become more active and sustain that activity over future years? I do not think that we should expect elite sport to deliver that. Apart from anything else, the physiques and performances of elite athletes are so different from those of most of us that, although we love watching them, we do not identify with them, because we know that we will never be like that.

Getting more people more active more often has been an aspiration since the review of the sport 21 strategy in 2003, which I took part in, and I am sure that it probably was an aspiration before that. That aspiration has been difficult to achieve over the years. I wonder whether that is in part because achieving it is presumed to be a side effect of success in elite sport. Unfortunately, getting ordinary people more active more often cannot be delivered in a top-down way. Even if we delivered first-class facilities across the country, we could not ensure that people who do not take part in physical activity will take it up.

I think that the vast majority of ordinary people will be encouraged to be more physically active if they see people like them taking part in physical activities that they enjoy. That is where friends, colleagues and family members can help one another to improve their physical fitness. Most people who have a degree of physical capability will be able to find some form of exercise that they enjoy, whether it is swimming, cycling, jogging or walking, and they can set themselves personal goals to go a bit faster or further or to carry on a bit longer.

It is not always easy to maintain physical activity once started. People who have a busy lifestyle need something that fits in. For me, one of the attractions of walking is that I can fit it in with my job, although I have to say that I would not power walk up to anybody’s door and demand to know how they voted. In Scotland, outdoor activity is great at this time of the year, but less so when the sun does not rise until almost 9 and sets again before 4. Therefore, there needs to be long-term motivation once the novelty wears off.

There are three aspects to that. First, there needs to be more publicity about individuals improving their fitness through normal physical activity. We hear a lot about people on diets and we see lots of programmes about people losing weight, but we do not hear a lot about people becoming more physically active. We need to have more concentration on that. The second part is encouragement and support from others and taking part in the community. Finally, there is the personal motivation to improve. It is not only elite athletes who achieve personal bests—any one of us, whatever our age and build and if we have some degree of physical capability, can choose an activity and be the best that we can be.