Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
COUNCILLOR GRAHAM
GARVIE, MR
JOHN ZIMNY
AND MS
LINDSAY MACGREGOR
15 NOVEMBER 2005
Q100 Chairman: The huge participation
rate difference in well off areas against under privileged areas,
do you have any strategy where you can say in five years' time
or 10 years' time that the participation rate of the deprived
areas and well off areas will be the same?
Q101 Mr Garvie: I cannot speak for
every single council in Scotland but I know that the Scottish
Executive place a very high priority on social inclusion, the
agenda which I think nearly every council has signed up to. We
are very concerned indeed that there are families in communities
in Scotland who have no idea of what many of us take for granted
involved in sports. So that is an agenda which is being addressed
nationally by the Scottish Executive in partnership with the local
authorities through community planning and the National Health
Service, all these partners working together. But it will take
a generation, I think, to work through this culture that we have
inherited.
Q102 Chairman: I can understand that
the Scottish Executive has a role to play but what I am asking
is if COSLA has any strategy to deal with this issue. 31 councils
out of 32 are members of COSLA. Do you have any joint strategy
to deal with this issue?
Ms Macgregor: At strategic level
we certainly do and there is a great opportunity at the moment
as we are about to refresh our shared Sport 21 Strategy—Scottish
Executive with local authorities, sportscotland and other
organisations, community and voluntary, with an interest in sport.
That strategy will be reviewed next year, and certainly the Commonwealth,
Olympic and Paralympic Games are an opportunity for us to build
on what would have been happening anyway, in terms of what we
hope will be sustainable beyond 2012. So that strategy, which
we have in place currently, will be revised next year and local
authorities have their role as the delivery agents at the front
end of that strategy. Local authorities are flexible, locally
responsive and have different ways of taking forward that strategy
according to local need. But certainly they are members of and
very often coordinate local sports partnerships and have their
own local sports plans and so on, and it is an issue which is
at the forefront of all local authorities to increase participation.
We have contact with all children through schools, through communities,
through so many different services, but we are also well placed
as a route for our partner agencies to get in touch with communities
and non-participants as well. So it is a very important route
for us, but I think it is important to recognise that partnership
working is how we are operating at the moment. We do not have
a COSLA strategy, as it were, we are working with our partners
in the Scottish Executive, sportscotland and others, and
at local level we are locally responsible for a range of different
plans and partnerships that have emerged to meet local need.
Q103 Mr MacNeil: Picking up on what
Charles was talking about, would COSLA be quite relaxed about
a Scottish team at the Olympics? I am thinking in particular of
when the USSR became 15 nations they increased their medals haul
and increased the amount of participants at the Games. From a
local authority basis, if you want to increase the amount of people
participating in sports, as we have been talking about, would
you be quite relaxed about a Scottish Olympic team?
Mr Garvie: It is a national participation;
it is a Great British team and I am not sure how Scotland would
qualify on that basis to take part.
Q104 Mr MacNeil: But over and above
that?
Mr Garvie: Over and above what?
Q105 Mr MacNeil: Over and above that
situation, what would COSLA think of an independent team, COSLA's
view?
Mr Garvie: I am sorry, Chair,
I do not understand the question. I mean, we are a British country,
we are part of an international community in all sorts of things
and the Olympic Games are part of that and those are the rules.
How can we have a Scottish team as well as a British team?
Mr Walker: I do not think my colleague
is suggesting that, I think my colleague is suggesting further
down the road, for example, if Scotland got independence, which
may happen, how would you feel about—
Q106 Mr MacNeil: I do not mean further
down the road, I mean now. We have the Convention of Scottish
Local Authorities here today, not the Convention for British Local
Authorities, therefore you are a Scottish body and I would like
your view, being a Scottish body, of a Scottish team at the Olympics?
Mr Garvie: My view is that there
should not be a Scottish team at the Olympics because we are a
British team entering the Olympics and individual Scots will go
under that banner, as British; we are Scottish and British, and
European and probably all members of the human race. I do not
see any difficulty. What would stop an able Scot competing in
the Olympic Games under the British flag? It is great; it is terrific
to be British and Scottish.
Q107 Mr MacNeil: You are not suggesting
a global team?
Mr Garvie: Who knows what will
happen in the next Millennium.
Q108 Mr MacNeil: And your officials?
Mr Garvie: Officials do not have
political opinions.
Mr Zimny: We do not have political
opinions, but if we are talking about going down that route I
would have to look very carefully at the sporting infrastructure
that we have in Scotland that the Scottish athletes and Scottish
participants currently enjoy, and could we cater for the Olympic
sports squad? They do not all train in England, be clear about
that, they will come from other home countries, training elsewhere,
or indeed abroad. So if we are to be serious about a Scottish
team at some point in the future we would have to be careful about
the infrastructure and what can be afforded and what benefits
can we give athletes who stay and train in Scotland because it
is not just the athlete, it is also the coaching—you have
to have Olympic quality coaches—and all the infrastructure
and support that goes behind that. That is supplied at the moment
through the British Olympic Team set up who have had many years
of practice. The athletes know as an Olympic athlete that that
support is there and is freely given. We do not have that support
in Scotland at the moment for the amount of athletes that may
come through to represent Scotland, so we have to set an infrastructure
and a cost that goes with that.
Q109 Mr MacNeil: I wonder if Olympic
athletes train in their own nations or are they amongst nations
when they are doing their training and preparations for the games?
Mr Garvie: I believe so.
Q110 Ms Clark: Picking up on the
issue of the legacy that the Olympics may have, you say in your
memorandum that local government must ensure that the 2012 Olympic
and Paralympic Games add maximum value to regeneration, health
improvement, community safety, lifelong learning, social justice
and other cross-cutting strategies and programmes. Could you maybe
expand on how you think local government can contribute to that
to make sure that we maximise the legacy and the benefits that
the Olympics and the Paralympics bring to Scotland?
Mr Garvie: We put all the right
words in our submission. In the real world we are 400 miles away
from where the Games are going to take place, and I think that
we should, as a society in Scotland, with our English colleagues
running the Games, look at what we can achieve in reality on the
ground, and I think that would be the exercise I would like to
undertake. I think there are huge potentials for involving people
in many ways. I am particularly interested personally in the training
camps coming to Scotland—the spin-off from that is terrific.
I live in Peebles and many teams for other sports come to stay
in Peebles Hydro Hotel and the youngsters are absolutely thrilled
to bits; for a week they have international stars on their doorstep.
That kind of involvement and spin-off I think is extremely important.
It is not structured at all; it is just an encouragement to be
involved in the area to which that team comes. So training camps
interest me greatly in concentrating on a strategy for Britain
to try to spread out the training camps from various countries
throughout the UK; and some, I understand, come for months and
months before the Games. That could have a really interesting
spin-off to the area. That is my main answer to your question.
Q111 Ms Clark: One of the things
we were told last week when we saw the Olympics Committee was
that nobody should be thinking about developing a facility that
they would not want and that there was not a need for anyway,
but obviously one of the hopes we would have would be that the
Olympics coming means that there are extra resources available
to develop facilities that the community needs anyway and have
a long-term future. Will you be giving any thought to how local
authorities in Scotland can make sure that they maximise the potential
benefits to ensure that we develop the sporting facilities that
we already have?
Ms Macgregor: I think there are
two levels there. At the moment there is already a strategy in
place across Scotland for the provision of national infrastructure,
which will have the potential for international global competitions
and clearly those venues will also have great usage by local people—I
am thinking of the proposed Glasgow Arena, for example, and the
refurbished Commonwealth Pool in Edinburgh. Those kinds of facilities
will be there both for international competition and for local
people. But one of the major issues within Scotland, no doubt
within England as well, is the aging infrastructure of community
sports facilities and I think we have to make sure that we are
maximising the potential for communities across Scotland; that
if we get the crest of the wave right and people are wishing to
participate in physical activity as well as sport that we have
those facilities in place with a long-term strategy for their
maintenance. Clearly sustainability is at the heart of our strategy
in terms of the Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games; we do not
want to build white elephants which will be of no use to anybody
beyond the Olympics. But it is not just about focusing on those
national buildings, important though they are, it is also about
making sure that there is a clear strategy for maintaining those
good facilities that we do have across Scotland, and that is the
challenging one, certainly, in terms of the resources and capital
that it will take.
Mr Garvie: Can I make a comment
about the facilities generally, which I have observed, Chairman?
I know we have to have facilities for the Olympic Games and international
occasions, certainly, but as a society I think we make too much
play on facilities and not on the people. I spent some time, for
example, in New Zealand. They have one national stadium for rugby
and every other one is built up with scaffolding when they require
it. They have the best rugby team by far; their second team could
beat anyone else. It is interesting, is it not? We build big stadia
and our teams are not so good. So my general view about this facilities
thing is, yes, we need them, but I think we have concentrated
on stadia—Hampden, Ibrox, Celtic Park, Murrayfield, all
the others we have in Scotland—to the disadvantage of people
investment, and that is where we are now, and I would like to
see a much bigger concentration on the participation in any way
we can think of of all age groups in Scotland in the Olympic Games
and hopefully the Commonwealth Games if they come to Glasgow.
I was very privileged, Chairman, recently to be presenting medals
at the Special Olympics in Glasgow. My goodness me, the spirit
of the Olympics for me was there. It makes you wonder about the
Games that are now before us. I was really touched by the fact
that ordinary people, mentally handicapped people were taking
part on the podium and it was making a huge difference to their
lives. That is what interests me for the people of Scotland. However
important facilities are, of course. I think perhaps we have taken
our concentration off the ball a bit in regard to the needs of
our people.
Ms Macgregor: I think it is possibly
the same answer in terms of your previous question on regeneration,
how the Olympics can instrumentally help those kind of social
policy areas, and I think probably it is again that local authorities
and their partner agencies, through community planning, are developing
and have developed strategies for improvements in all those areas,
and it is really about how can the Olympics add value to those?
I think that thought will start on that fairly early on, but there
have to be some levels of community ownership, whether that is
around bringing the community together culturally around the Olympic
Games, about supporting local athletes, about adopting their local
training teams. I know that local authorities are also keen to
work in partnership with each other where they can provide facilities
for teams across local authority boundaries and have that kind
of ownership within their communities jointly, and I think that
increasingly Scottish local authorities are very well placed to
deliver that kind of agenda as well. But it is very much about
the regeneration strategies being there and how can the Olympic
Games, Commonwealth Games and Paralympics add value to that and
get in with communities? It is very important.
Q112 Mr MacNeil: You mentioned New
Zealand and I wonder if there are any climatic effects in what
is happening in New Zealand, but we will leave that to one side.
You can answer it, of course, though. Do you see any change in
Lottery funding coming into Scotland in the next seven years as
a result of the Olympics and the resources that we might need?
Mr Garvie: I hope so because I
am all for Lottery funding money wherever we can access it. I
do not wish to encourage people to gamble but it is been quite
a helpful spin-off where I am, where local authorities are also
strapped for cash, to have this extra dimension. So if there is
more money from that source I am in favour of it. Whether it will
come or not I do not know. Who knows? But certainly it has been
a dimension to providing facilities for a whole range of activities
without which I do not know what we would have done.
Q113 Mr MacNeil: In paragraph 3.4
of your memorandum you detail sports facilities which are being
built or upgraded independent of the Olympic and Commonwealth
Games' bids. Mr Garvie, keeping it local, you maybe highlighted
some things that are happening in the Borders and perhaps you
are able to compare Scotland to Norway, say, with a similar climate
in this sort of area, and what resources and facilities would
you look for Scotland to have throughout the country in years
to come?
Mr Garvie: I think facilities
have to be reviewed. I was around when the Commonwealth Games
were being prepared for Edinburgh for 1970. Fantastic new facilities,
Meadowbank Stadium and the Royal Commonwealth Pool, but they are
all extremely tired now and 30 years on they need to be renewed,
and I think Edinburgh is addressing that on the other side of
the city, and you heard from my colleague that Edinburgh is going
to invest a large sum of money in the refurbishment of the pool.
So it is a continuing cycle and as professional demands go up
there are more demands for facilities to meet those higher standards.
So you can compare it area to area or country to country but it
just depends on what the needs are at the particular time, and
we have to focus now on the Commonwealth Games coming up and that
is an area we will have to examine in Scotland as to what can
be provided through taxation to provide these new facilitates.
But it is an ongoing thing; it is like your house, you have to
keep repairing it and renewing things and getting it in shape
for the new generation.
Q114 Mr MacNeil: How do you think
Scotland compares to Norway in this respect?
Mr Garvie: I do not know; I do
not know the Norway situation.
Ms Macgregor: I think economic
and cultural differences as well makes comparison different, but
certainly climatically it has its emphasis on skiing and snow
and there is a cultural difference.
Q115 Mr Walker: It is a great shame
that Scotland's mountains are not 2,000 feet taller, is it not,
because you would be one of the best ski resorts in the western
world!
Mr Zimny: Can I come back on the
Lottery and legacy? With the Olympics coming on board I would
hope that the money allocated to Scotland through the Lottery
does not diminish in any way. Angus council is a small rural authority
and I know that from running leisure and the cultural business
in my own county. I have a very supportive council and I sit at
the top table arguing my case, along with education and social
work, but there are statutory undertakings that the council must
do; sport and cultural matters in the main are not. They can provide
"adequate services"—that is the terminology in
legislation. The Lottery to date certainly in the main has been
funding for facility development and that is very difficult for
a small rural authority—difficult no doubt for the Glasgows
and Edinburghs as well, but for the small rural authorities it
is very difficult. I think to see any change would be to the detriment
of the rural authorities for provision of facilities in the future
because of the Olympics' need to draw the money in for the Olympics
aspect. So do not change the Lottery rules and, if you can, make
it easier for small authorities to bid in, and to be successful.
With regard to the legacy, this is very dear to my heart because
I keep reading words—and I was reading them coming down
in the plane and in the past few days—which the Olympics
Committee are saying, and what we are all saying is that we want
a benefit, an increase in sport participation from this. I am
keen that we do set ourselves realistic goals and targets that
we can measure after 2012, after 2014, to say, "Did we actually
meet these targets, did we achieve what we set out in 2005 and
2006 for the young people and all age groups to achieve?"
So to say to the legacy in 2015, "Yes, we did achieve that
and we are now sustainable as a sporting nation in Scotland."
We have a marvellous opportunity, Sport 21, which we made mention
of earlier, and the Minister in Scotland is due to make a statement
before Christmas on her view and outcome of the recent cultural
commission work that reported in the summer, 130 odd recommendations,
so we are waiting to see the outcome of that exercise. We also
want to look at the tourism strategy for Scotland with EventScotland
and Visit Scotland. Local authorities are involved in all of these
areas and while there are three separate pieces of work I think
it is essential, not just for the Olympics and Commonwealth Games
but overall, to have an overarching strategy for Scotland as to
where we want to be as part of the wider body of the UK in Europe.
I have a major involvement in tourism in my own area; I run the
tourist facilities, I run the leisure facilities, I run the arts
and cultural side, so I know what is involved in that. But across
Scotland at the highest level and, indeed, in this Committee in
Westminster, we have to, I believe, sign up to the vision of Scotland
of where we want to be, and work very clearly with our tourism
colleagues, to work with our cultural colleagues and our sporting
colleagues to the benefit of everyone, and if they build it on
the back of the Olympics and later the Commonwealth Games we can
set realistic targets and expectations that can be met. One of
the major benefits I believe that we have working in Scotland
is that there are only five million of us; we know everyone around
the table generally, we know who to speak to to try to move things
forward and I think that is a major benefit of the devolved government
in Scotland to be able to achieve and work in that close partnership.
But we need to support the Scottish Executive and this Committee
to say to the officers, "Yes, we agree with it," or,
"We do not agree with it but let us put it in place and let
us take this opportunity because it will not come round again."—the
Olympics will not come around, certainly in my lifetime, to the
UK again. So if we miss that I think we do ourselves a grave disservice.
It will be a lot of hard work but the Scots are renowned for their
hard work.
Q116 Gordon Banks: Can I ask a supplementary
on what we were talking about there? Do you think that COSLA will
set about trying to spread the benefit to Scotland? Part of my
constituency is Clackmannanshire, which has always been the poor
relation to Stirling; Stirling has always been the major attraction
and benefited, some might say, at the expense of Clackmannanshire.
I think of Perth and Kinross council area where the people living
in Kinross have a feeling that most attractions, et cetera, go
to Perth. Do you think it is part of COSLA's role to spread the
benefit or do you see it as being centralised in certain blocks
like Edinburgh, Glasgow and Perth? Or do you see benefit coming
to all the council areas in Scotland?
Ms Macgregor: Those large authorities
you have mentioned have already indicated their willingness to
bring in their neighbouring authorities, smaller authorities to
work in partnership with them, and they recognise that even within
the Glasgow bounds they would have to go outwith to deliver, whether
it is mountain biking or sailing, whatever, and Perth and Kinross
similarly have already recognised that it would be beneficial
for them to work together in some areas of the Olympics with Stirling,
Angus, Dundee and Fife, and so on. So those are regional partnerships
that are happening in response to the Olympics as they already
happen in different parameters across tourism and other events.
That is not something that will be new to local authorities and
COSLA can certainly be supportive of it and will continue to be
supportive of that. In parallel with VOCAL we also have the chief
officers from economic development who come together similarly
and have sub-groups around tourism and related issues. So they
have regular opportunities to come together and share policies
and ideas on maximising the benefits, not just for their own authority
but also across Scotland. So I am sure that we will continue in
that vein.
Mr Garvie: It is quite interesting,
Chairman. I chair the COSLA Art and Leisure Group, which includes
sport, which represents 31 of Scotland's 32 councils and I am
not quite sure whether it is a good thing or bad thing, but we
have never had a division in two and a half to three years, and
I find that quite interesting that we have a consensus on just
about everything regarding our work. I find that fascinating because
I go back to my own council and we have divisions on everything.
So I think there is a cooperative agenda in COSLA to do what you
are asking.
Q117 Gordon Banks: In your memorandum
you identify three underpinning principles for delivering the
Games and four priority outcomes. How are local authorities working
to support these principles and to achieve these outcomes?
Ms Macgregor: Certainly sustainability
is in there for all local authorities across Scotland and I think
the theme of the Olympics is certainly going to be reinforcing
that for all of us, that we must really make this an opportunity
to put our money where our mouth is on sustainability, not just
on environmental issues but clearly on community issues as well
and on the factor of venues being sustainable into the future
across the board. Local authorities already have that very strongly
within their community planning agenda and within their single
authority agendas also. So these issues have all come forward
from local authorities and the commonalities across them have
been incorporated. Similarly, in terms of added value, with the
modernising and efficiency drives for local government, added
value is now a must-have for all of us, and clearly the Olympics
and Paralympics like nothing else at the moment provide opportunities
for us to add value to the range of strategies that we have, several
of which are up for revision next year. This gives us a good opportunity
to add value through these sporting avenues. Quality, I think,
as part of that efficiency agenda that, yes, there are areas where
we must make savings but not at the expense of quality, and certainly
with something as high profile and global as the Olympics then
quality must be there, and we are quite clear within our strategies
for national buildings and so on that quality will always be an
intrinsic element in that. So these are the three elements which
all local authorities have responded on as elements that they
would like to see in there. Similarly the four bullet points on
the outcomes are shared by local authorities and shared by our
partner agencies. They underpin our Sport 21 strategy as it stands
at the moment, so we are all signed up to that—it is the
direction in which we are all going. Similarly for the economic
development benefits that we are looking for, you would find those
also in our national tourism strategy that is in development just
now. Only last week local authorities, including leaders and chief
executives, came together with Visit Scotland and EventScotland
for a major conference, and I think there are two or three similar
conferences planned over the next few months. Tourism is high
up the shared agenda and the issues that you were raising around
should we target specific countries or should we have a kind of
universal tourism strategy, I suspect that there will be a twin-track
and that is an important question. But I think that there are
already those mechanisms in place, which is very fortunate, to
take forward all of those bullet points within sport, within tourism,
within economic development. The trick is going to be to join
them all up because at the moment until the Olympics come along
we are working to our different strategies and we perhaps need
to look again at the kind of mechanisms that we have in place
in response to the opportunity to join them all up. So that is
perhaps something we need to think more closely about with our
partner organisations.
Q118 Mr MacNeil: We have talked quite
rightly at length about London having its own Olympic Games in
2012. Do you ever foresee a time when a Scottish city might bid
for the Olympic Games?
Mr Garvie: I was involved in discussions
in my previous guise as a local authority chief executive a long
time ago—it was before that actually, in Edinburgh—of
a joint committee that went into this whole issue and Glasgow
and Edinburgh came together and spent quite a lot of time and
resource into examining that, and the conclusion was no, we could
not do it as a country, and certainly now I think that the situation
has worsened since then because of the demands of a modern Olympic
Games and all sorts of developments that have taken place since
the early 1980s, late 1970s.
Q119 Mr MacNeil: What were the main
reasons?
Mr Garvie: We could not do it;
we just do not have the resources to do it. The infrastructure
requirements were so huge that it would have put in place an infrastructure
that would not have been required after the Games, I remember
that issue coming up—this is 20-odd years ago now—which
London could easily provide, or Paris or wherever else.
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