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Thanks. That is great.

You have both highlighted what sound like quite impressive process improvement activities. From a cultural perspective across the health boards, how do you disseminate best practice? How do you benchmark against each other so that you are able to say, “Right. That is an excellent workstream. How do we carry that into the national picture so that we can make an impact?” Do you have a protocol or process for doing that?

That is a fair point. I come from a low-income background, and one of the things that I did as a kid was swimming lessons because they were free, so my mum was able to take me to the local swimming baths.

Earlier, we mentioned the cost pressures that people face. Free swimming is an increasingly scarce opportunity for young people, but statistics from Scottish Swimming show that 60 per cent of swimmers are female and that it is the top participation sport for people with a disability, so it is an obvious community-based facility that is accessible at a relatively low cost—for equipment required, and so on. However, councils have reported an increase of 90 per cent in electricity costs and a 200 per cent increase in gas costs.

In England, they have introduced a swimming pool support fund to the tune of £60 million, of which £40 million is for capital investment and £20 million is in revenue grants. Are there plans to introduce similar relief in Scotland to try to maintain access to swimming pools? Perhaps it could be conditional on providing things such as free access to young people.

I accept that there are opportunities to do things differently here, and that it might not be necessary to automatically read it across, but would you say that there is a reasonable and pretty decent business case to ensure that there is targeted discrete support for—in this instance—swimming pools? It is an obvious opportunity. Whether it is designed in the same way as in England is secondary to identifying the threat to such facilities and addressing it specifically.

Is there team-to-team collaboration across health boards, but at a lower level than the boards, in which teams can teach others about operational approaches that they have done well?

I will touch on one other area: the rejection of CAMHS referrals. I note a significant increase in the pattern across Scotland in the past five or six years. In 2017-18, 11 people were re-referred in Fife; last year, it was 46. Over the same periods, in Grampian, the figure was 161 and it is now 260, and, in Lothian, the figure was 287 and is now 416. Why might GPs need to try more than once before they are successful in getting CAMHS referrals? Is that due to capacity? Are the thresholds higher than those that have been assessed by GPs as appropriate? I would be interested to get your insights on what might be going on in relation to that trend.

Are you confident that the level of re-referrals—I accept that it might be a narrow metric—will start to fall, given the measures that you have put in place, which mean that GPs are now aware of a more appropriate referral pathway? Is that what you are saying?

A theme that has come up in many previous evidence sessions is income inequality and the fact that it prevents access to sports, especially, as was mentioned earlier, when the sport is particularly expensive to access in terms of transport, facilities, costs and equipment. What active steps is the Government taking to provide support in that regard, whether it is in the form of grants or loans for equipment or, potentially, even looking at things such as kit libraries? Is the Government looking to promote any particular measures to address income inequality as a measure of access?

Yes. In the case of Charing Cross, the Grand hotel and a number of tenements and retail arcades were demolished to create the cutting for the M8. In that instance, an area was decked over, but it was quite small. The rotating doors that you go through in Cafe Gandolfi in the Merchant City are actually the original doors from the Grand hotel in Charing Cross, which were salvaged.

The key point is that there is an opportunity to further improve the environment without damaging the fundamental utility of the road. That is the question now, half a century on from its first commissioning. We have international examples such as Boston’s big dig project. There are other examples around the world such as in Paris and numerous other cities worldwide. There is a big opportunity to enhance the city centre.

I would also argue that there is potential to realise a positive capital net receipt for the public, because it is Government-owned land. The land was all compulsorily purchased by the Scottish Office at the time to construct the road. Therefore, by utilising the airspace over it, where possible, there is potential for development that could return a positive net receipt to the public funds. That would not only enhance the city centre amenity but be financially sustainable. It is not a quixotic idea about an urban planning utopia; it is about a serious and credible intervention based on international best practice.

That is a fair comment. It was merely a motion that was passed by councillors, so the detailed timeline or sequence of activities subsequent to that by officers has not yet been fully articulated. Furthermore, as the convener said, although Transport Scotland is interested in working in principle, there is no resource to exercise that activity. I therefore have concerns about how that will be expedited, which is where the committee has a role.

Perhaps it is slightly premature to invite everyone together to present a pathway to carry out the changes. Perhaps the committee ought to consider writing to Transport Scotland and Glasgow City Council to ask for an indication of when they will have produced a firm plan, so that we might have an opportunity to talk about it or scrutinise it to an extent, and so that Parliament has a role in overseeing the stakeholders working together. I detect a bit of animosity between Transport Scotland and Glasgow City Council with respect to the policy and how it evolves. Transport Scotland is very much programmed to the road being a trunk road—it just wants to operate a trunk road. It is not really interested in its aesthetic value, whereas there are wider considerations with respect to Glasgow City Council and our parliamentary representatives.