Commonwealth Games

Speech delivered on Wed 30th Apr 2008

The debate has been high quality and many relevant speeches have been made. I hope that we will continue in the spirit of the Commonwealth games as we progress with the bill, which is the technical enabling mechanism for the games.

The bill deals with several important issues. It sets the framework and provides the necessary powers to ensure that the games run smoothly and to make the Glasgow games the best ever and the most memorable for all who take part in or engage with them.

My speech will echo what one or two members have said. I emphasise the importance of those who engage with the games and who are not athletes or sportspeople or who are not particularly skilled or talented at running, swimming or other sports-people like me, like most of us, like most people in Glasgow and like most people in Scotland.

Many ordinary people-not least young people-will engage with the Commonwealth games. Michael Matheson made a point, as did Rhoda Grant and other members, about the need to ensure that a broad range of volunteers participates in the games. However, getting people to participate does not apply only to volunteers. Shop workers, transport workers and hotel workers will provide services to celebrity visitors from across the globe. Partisan supporters will cheer on not only Scottish competitors, but athletes and sportspeople from the many countries across the globe from which Scotland's foreign-born residents hail in our increasingly multinational country. People will meet the cream of the world's sporting talent or see them on television in familiar local settings, which is important.

We all like to see our competitors performing well and winning medals, but the opportunity-which no Scottish Government could afford to buy-to make a step change in popular attitudes and participation in athletic pursuits is much more important. Michael Matheson was right to warn that such a change has not always followed previous games, which shows the challenge that is involved. We have a long way to go. Indeed, there was a record of failure in building on the opportunities provided by the Commonwealth games that were held in Scotland in 1970 and 1986.

This week's Audit Scotland report, which Frank McAveety mentioned, is a wake-up call. It identifies the lack of council sports strategies and the high level of investment-£110 million a year for 25 years, if we accept what it says-that is needed to bring sports facilities across the nation up to scratch. It also says that, despite the significant efforts of many people, the level of participation in sport is declining while the challenges of obesity and underactivity are getting greater.

The minister made an important and valuable point about lottery funding, but that must not be an excuse. It must be considered in the context of what we are trying to do.

The Government is, of course, rightly consulting on the games' legacy. I do not know what the bulk of responses to that consultation will say, but I hope that they will identify the need for a framework of timely progress and risk reporting to ensure that key objectives are met and vital projects are delivered. I also hope that they will mark the need to support community businesses and social enterprises. Above all, I hope that the Government will make some specific commitments. First, I hope that it will commit to supporting the expansion of local sports clubs of all kinds-I have touched on that before in debates at which the minister and I have been present. Secondly, I hope that it will commit to helping to build the capacity and expertise of those clubs. Thirdly, I hope that it will commit to linking clubs with the development of modern, purpose-built facilities that have vital links to schools and with the effective recruitment of young people, so that they do not miss out on life-enhancing activities when they leave school.

The Scottish Government could not pay for the wall-to-wall media coverage that the Commonwealth games and the London Olympics will bring. That those events will happen within two years of each other is important; there can be a build-up from one to the other, with other events to come. There will be personal engagement with the events and participants in those games.

It is entirely good that the Commonwealth games will take place in the city that has Britain's worst health, mortality, morbidity, poverty and deprivation statistics. It is not too much to say that the games could play a significant part in changing and banishing those things for ever. There is amazing potential that the Government and its successors up to and beyond 2014 must not lose sight of. If I may coin a phrase, we must not drop the baton.

I welcome the passage of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games Bill and, as we move towards 2014, wish the games success.

To read the debate in full please click on the debate below.

Related Link:

Commonwealth Games.