Hansard

Thank you, Presiding Officer. That was quick.

I will acknowledge some of the comments that we have heard. There was one reference to flags, hats and scarves from George Adam. We heard about that issue in the committee pretty much every week that we debated the bill so it would have been wrong for today’s debate to pass without mention of it.

At one point, George Adam also mentioned Eurovision. I thought for a moment that the debate would come back into my field of reference but, sadly, the moment passed all too quickly.

Mr Adam and a couple of other members also acknowledged some the issues around civil liberties and human rights—in particular, the right to protest. I reinforce that point. Although I accept, as we all do, that some restriction on commercial activity will be a requirement on us from UEFA, in order that we can host the championship, none of us should want to restrict people’s right to protest, including by using, subverting or satirising the logos of the corporate interests that they want to protest against. We will need to ensure that we pay attention to how that is rolled out in practice.

Presiding Officer, I hope that you will give me a little bit of flexibility at this point, because I would like to make some comments about matters that are not formally included in the text of the bill but are still relevant to the event that the bill is about and to the affordability issues that several members talked about.

There is more that we—the Scottish Government, local government, the organisers and others—can do to address affordability. For example, at the previous European championship, which Germany hosted in 2024, with every ticket, fans were offered a free fan pass. That included a 36-hour travel pass for regional public transport in host cities that was valid from 6 am on match day to 6 pm the following day. It covered local buses, trams and regional trains, to encourage sustainable transport use and reduce the costs that supporters faced. It was delivered in partnership with the football associations that allocated tickets.

For Glasgow and the surrounding areas, something like that fan pass would enable fans to get in and out of heavily congested fan zones and Hampden as efficiently as possible. My colleagues in the Glasgow branch of the Scottish Greens are currently campaigning for something like that in relation to large events at Hampden on an on-going basis, but it could certainly be done for the Euros if the political will was there. It is not in the bill and it would not have been appropriate to try to crowbar it into the bill as a legislative requirement, but it is action that we can take ahead of the championship.

Taking such action would also mean that we would need to ensure that we had a public transport system that was capable of serving the greater Glasgow region, particularly when large events such as a championship take place. Having the Government commit money for bus franchising support, which the Greens successfully argued for, also has the potential to ensure that the city and region are ready for large events such as the Euros and for the public transport role that needs to be played to cut down on congestion and emissions. However, we will have to go further and reduce the bureaucratic effort that is involved in putting bus franchising into place. There are arguments for speeding up the process so that those measures can be put in place in time for the Euros if at all possible.

Football—so I am told—has the power to bring communities together. However, to achieve that potential, it must genuinely be available and affordable to everybody. If corporate interests want to run cultural and sports events in order to turn them into mere commodities, we have a responsibility to take back that power and make sure that they are run for everybody.