Hansard

I thank Brian Whittle for securing the debate. I have been here for two years, and he and I have had more conversations in the stairwells about sport, and the power of sport in people’s lives, than I care to remember. He is a true champion of sport in Scotland, and I hope that he will return to continue to put pressure on the Parliament to deliver for our young people and for everyone across Scotland.

I find sport incredibly important. I remember becoming a councillor in 2017. Not long after that, councillors were at a meeting at the Glasgow School of Art premises at Forres, up in Moray, where we had to do a prioritisation exercise about what we thought was important. I was sitting in a room with a bunch of independent councillors and some of my colleagues, and the subjects that came up were big things such as education, social care and gritting the roads. Sport came up, and I remember everyone trying to put that right at the far end of the scale, but, as a young parent at the time, I tried to argue that that was not where we should put it. I said that if we saw sport for what it is, we would put at the top, because it saves money for the future. If we can get people embedded in sport at a young age, we can save money that might be spent on later health problems. I lost the argument at the time, but still think, to this day, that we should make much more of sport.

Sport is not protected in council budgets and is an easy thing to cut when we are trying to ensure that we have enough social care or are dealing with additional support needs in schools. Sport can often get lost. In 2019-20, I tried to make the argument that Moray Council should be part of a project to bring a running track to the community, because an athletics club was training on what was basically a dirt pitch and I did not think that that was good enough. I think that we should have facilities across Scotland to enable people wherever they are, whether it is in rural or urban areas, to do the best that they can.

When my wife and I were parents with a young family, she had the pleasure of getting involved in the swimming club in Buckie, which meant that she got to spend her weekends with our daughter, indoors, at a nice warm poolside, while I had the pleasure of taking on the football side of things. I know nothing about football—I played rugby as a child and had nothing to do with football. However, I did my level 1.1 introduction to coaching course with the Scottish Football Association. I followed that with the level 1.2 course, and, in May this year, I will do the level 1.3 course. That will involve me spending nine hours learning about football, which I am still not sure that I know anything about.

I have toured around the north and north-east of Scotland with a group of young people, and I have never been prouder of what they have achieved since primary 1. We have 15 or 16 boys who have worked hard to gel as a team. Nothing gave me more pleasure than making them do press-ups when they said naughty words on the pitch.

All that shows the power of sport. My son has done incredibly well as a result of his group succeeding in coming together as a team, and my daughter has flourished as a result of the benefits that swimming brings. I commend everyone who is involved in running those activities. I recently attended the Scottish Amateur Swimming Association north district event in Aberdeen. It was incredible to see the hundreds of people in that building, from parents on the poolside to coaches and judges, as well as the swimmers, all of whom were doing an amazing job.

My message is that sport is incredibly powerful. As well as delivering future health outcomes, sport can bring communities together and reduce the amount of money that we need to spend on services.

Finally, I say a huge thank you to all the volunteers across the country, without whom our sports clubs simply would not work. I am talking about the parents—the mums and dads—the aunties, the uncles and all those who enable our sports clubs to work every day. As Brian Whittle said, the Parliament needs to give much more consideration to sport, and I hope that that will be the case in the next parliamentary session.

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