Hansard

How exciting it is, on the first day back, to be able to bring this debate to the chamber. I begin by introducing petition PE2018, which was lodged by Helen Plank, on behalf of Scottish Swimming, and by saying that the committee was absolutely unanimous and united in the focus that we brought to bear on the petition and in bringing it before Parliament today.

I thank the clerks for all the hard work that they have done, and particularly for their assistance with my speaking notes. I apologise now for the fact that the speech sounds a little bit like the play what Ernie Wise wrote, in that it contains just about every possible hidden reference to water and to swimming. If anyone has a gong that they want to bang, they can count up and see whether they can earn some cash during the course of my contribution—I challenge them to come up with the appropriate figure.

Let me dive right in and speak to the motion in my name.

“There is a real ethos of swimming in Scotland, and we are starting to take over the British Swimming team.”

Those are the words of swimmer Duncan Scott OBE, who was Scotland’s most decorated athlete at the Paris Olympics in 2024 and is a remarkably impressive ambassador for his sport. Had he decided to give up swimming, he could crawl into a career in politics, I think, and make the argument for swimming still more effective. However, the following are also his words:

“when I look back on my career as an athlete and at some of the pools that have been part of that journey, I know that Alloa Leisure Bowl and Bo’ness swimming pool have both now closed ... I wonder where the next athletes are going to come from.”—[Official Report, Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, 23 April 2025; c 6, 5.]

Duncan spoke to the committee during our round-table discussions on 25 April 2025, which focused on the petition that was lodged by Helen Plank. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to help to keep our swimming pools and leisure centres open by providing financial investment for pools. I know that we are always calling for financial investment in this, that and the next thing. However, the more evidence the committee heard in respect of this being an island nation and, as I will touch on later, Scotland having the highest rate of deaths from drowning of any component of the United Kingdom, the more we felt that the importance of swimming cannot be overstated.

I acknowledge everyone else who provided evidence in the round tables—John Lunn, chief executive of Scottish Swimming; Derek McGown, a coach at the East Kilbride amateur swimming club; Abi Thomson, a young volunteer programme champion at Scottish Swimming; Dianne Breen, coached programmes manager at Sport Aberdeen; Kirsty Doig, director of the Darcey Sunshine Project; Jillian Gibson, policy manager for sport and physical activity at the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities; and Ben Lamb, chief executive of West Lothian Leisure, which is also known as Xcite. I thank them all.

I also commend the petitioner for the passion and determination with which she has pursued the aims of her petition for the past three years, with the support of members of this Parliament such as Liz Smith and others, and for the precise and matter-of-fact evidence that she provided to the committee on behalf of Scottish Swimming. Alongside all the evidence that we heard during the round tables, that persuaded the committee of the need to make—here it comes—a bigger splash and bring the matter to the attention of the whole Parliament. It was at that point in preparing my speech that I got echoes of the Morecambe and Wise “play what I wrote”.

The issue at the core of the petition is that increased operating costs, squeezed budgets and ageing venues are putting pools across Scotland at risk of closure. In a period of less than a year after the petition was lodged, five swimming pools were closed with no prospect of them reopening. The committee heard about a swimming pool whose operating costs rose by 107 per cent in three years, but costs are rising—at varying degrees—across the board. The high operating costs of swimming pools prompt pool operators to pass the costs on to consumers, which makes swimming less affordable.

In many cases, nearly 90 per cent of the income that is generated and used to run swimming pools and sports facilities comes from the customers, with the other 10 per cent or so coming from the local authority. We heard that, historically, the level of local authority funding was a lot higher but it has inevitably been forced down due to pressures on funding over the years.

In the Government’s responses to petitions, it often indicates that such-and-such action that has been requested is a matter for the relevant authorities. However, those authorities do not operate in a funding vacuum, nor do they operate in a policy vacuum. In writing to the committee, COSLA highlighted that there have been real-terms cuts to core revenue and capital funding for councils, as well as increasingly ring-fenced Scottish Government funding. Because of that, cuts have fallen disproportionately on non-statutory services including swimming pools and wider culture and leisure services. We all know that from our local constituency experience. COSLA suggests that

“Councils require fair and flexible funding in order to protect these vital community services and facilities.”