Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you.

Good morning. I have been listening intently to what the witnesses have been saying. I am looking at prevention. After hearing about the causes of good healthy life expectancy and poor healthy life expectancy, I am going to go down my own route here. The two biggest indicators of healthy life expectancy are—by far—VO2 max and muscle mass. They are way in advance of indicators such as those that measure smoking, drinking and obesity. Logically, that would say to me that we need to be physically active. Physical activity is a key driver in tackling poor healthy life expectancy. If you are physically active, you are less likely to smoke or drink, more likely to be cognisant of what a good diet is and more likely to have good mental health.

Prevention is, in essence, what we are talking about when we talk about improving the health of Scotland. Where are we in that effort? Where are we with using such statistics to drive our policy?

I would just point out that I was instrumental in getting a gym put into this Parliament for the very reason that you mention. It is probably the only thing that I have achieved in my 10 years here.

On your point about people stopping smoking, it is more important to prevent them from starting in the first place. We also need to dump the metric around the number of people who are inactive, because, quite frankly, the situation is a lot worse than that. The minimum requirement to qualify as being active is getting out of bed and going to the fridge, basically.

On physical activity—to focus on that, rather than sport—one of the key battlegrounds in that regard is the educational environment. We have the opportunity to work with pre-school children during their 1,140 hours of free childcare and with school children from primary right through to secondary. That is an environment where we can have a huge impact. As well as doing all of the other key things that we are talking about, is that not where we should focus our efforts in terms of getting people to be physically active and influencing their diets? We can make a huge impact at that level. Should that not be where we are heading?

I have a quick point about MUP. My worry is that it does not happen in a vacuum, and I am concerned that there might be a correlation between MUP and the hugely disproportionate rise in the use of street benzos in Scottish index of multiple deprivation 1 areas in Scotland. We need to look at that.

Here is my question. Far be it from me to stop talking about sport, the Commonwealth games or the Olympics, but the biggest impact that we could have on long-term health in Scotland would come from what we do in the early years and how we introduce active play and a far better diet for children in that age group.

I will finish on this question: where are we with that? We have the opportunity through the 1,140 hours to make a huge impact on that age group, and that would be the biggest impact that we could have in the long term. I am struck by the fact that the kids who were in nursery when I first came into the Parliament are now teenagers in secondary school and by the impact that we could have had over that period. Where are we on the early years?

10:45

Active schools is definitely the delivery platform—or part of the delivery platform—that works at primary and secondary school level. I would say that we do not quite have the connection yet with pre-school, and we need that to happen, especially given that most of the cardiovascular, neuromuscular and bone density mapping happens in the pre-school years.

We are talking about all the great things that are happening, and yet we have a declining healthy life expectancy. We are at the bottom of the table in Europe when it comes to health, and in the 10 years that I have been in the Parliament, we have not made any progress whatsoever in that respect. Therefore, we need a step change, and the example that I would highlight of what can happen is what has happened in Japan. They are physically active, and every school now has a nutritionist—all of that good stuff. I know that we are not Japan, and I am not saying that we should follow that approach, but what it tells us is that, where there is political will, you can make huge changes to the community. That is really where we need to be, is it not? We are just tinkering around the edges and not making progress.

We have a different opinion on that.

:Thanks for that. I am trying to look at something that we have talked about before—the whole journey from preschool to primary school to secondary school and then into sport and beyond. Where are we with creating that pathway? My gut feel from seeing what is happening on the ground—and this is anecdotal from my own sport—is that clubs are struggling to recruit and to put teams out in leagues and so on. Where are we with creating that sort of pathway, and that ease of pathway?

Good morning. I have got my way: we have sport on the agenda until the end of the parliamentary session.

I will start with a general question. What part does sport play in people living a healthy life?

:I will layer something on top of that for Dr David Meir. I think that we would all agree with exactly what Forbes Dunlop said. Given that healthy life expectancy in Scotland has reduced, what does that tell us about the role that sport plays in Scotland at the moment?

:Kim Atkinson is here to represent governing bodies. Given the feedback from governing bodies about the current situation for resource to deliver what they can deliver, it is my feeling—I should declare an interest as a performance coach—that those bodies are increasingly struggling to deliver across platforms that they should be able to deliver on.