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Indeed. The road there has been reduced to four lanes for some time now, and has had a speed restriction placed on it. Nonetheless, that demonstrates that the road, structurally, is reaching the end of its natural lifespan and requires significant further investment. We are reaching a crux point where the Government really ought to be more thoroughly engaged, and the Parliament has a role in overseeing that. Through the petition, the committee has an important position in exercising that role.

I urge the committee to consider inviting key stakeholders from Transport Scotland, the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council to present their views on existing studies, such as the MVRDV district regeneration frameworks, which were commissioned at significant expense five years ago; the levelling-up fund bid; and how we progress the projects that are shovel ready, to borrow a phrase from John Swinney.

It is a pleasure to be back at the committee. I miss coming along, so it is great to be able to come back.

As you are aware, the committee last looked at the petition in November and, since then, there have been some positive developments, most notably that, at a recent full council meeting, Glasgow City Council agreed a motion to look at the future of the M8 and investigate options for mitigating its impact.

Some colleagues might think that the statement about removing the M8 in its entirety is quite provocative, but it is merely a provocation to a wider discussion. We are talking about a large piece of land in the centre of Glasgow that incorporates the equivalent of the entirety of Inverness city centre, and it can still be used as a road for its primary function. However, the purpose of the petition is to investigate how we reduce the rather obnoxious design of the road to address its spatial and environmental impacts on the city centre.

A substantial amount of work has already been done on that. Most notably, a levelling-up fund bid was submitted to cap the section of motorway in front of the Mitchell library, between Bath Street and Sauchiehall Street. Unfortunately, that bid was unsuccessful, but it may well be revisited in a future round of the fund.

Furthermore, work on district regeneration frameworks was commissioned in 2016. That has produced a series of district regeneration frameworks for the entirety of the city centre. It highlighted interventions, particularly on the west flank of the M8 inner ring road, that could be enabled to reduce the impacts of the road, such as removing certain slip roads; capping and decking over sections of the motorway where it is in cutting; and restoring areas such as Anderston Cross, which is completely engulfed by a kind of spaghetti junction.

There is a large cloverleaf junction at Townhead, which was overengineered—it was designed for the east flank of the outer ring road, which was never actually built. The junction was built by Strathclyde Regional Council in the early 1990s to serve a motorway that was never built. Therefore, it is around one third greater in size than it should be. It incorporates a huge amount of land, which disconnects Royston, Springburn and Sighthill from the city centre.

There are options that, while maintaining the fundamental purpose of the road, could significantly reduce the impact in the short, medium and longer term. Although it is good that there is an indicative proposal from the Scottish Government to work with Glasgow City Council, we need a bit more. Significant public money has already been spent on studies, feasibility and specific interventions. Hundreds of millions of pounds are being spent on repairing the Woodside viaducts—probably the biggest infrastructure spend in the city—which is a reactionary spend that has been subject to no public consultation. It is a reaction to the road physically crumbling apart.

Thanks. Maureen McGonigle, I think that you were nodding. Do you want to offer your view, or are you just agreeing?

Are there any further comments?

That is a helpful point about balance.

I also want to touch on an issue that has been raised with previous panels about barriers to women accessing sport at elite level and the pathways for that access. Do you have any examples of women facing those barriers? The examples that have been cited are mainly about the ability to maintain an income that enables the person to participate and to sustain their participation at an elite level. Are there any good models or exemplars from one sport that could be carried over into other sports? Do you have any insights into how we can capture best practice in that regard?

Will you be able to share your findings from your work in this area once the causal factors become more obvious?

That would be great.

David Ferguson, you touched on the issue of the data picture in Scotland. Do you, and the other witnesses, believe that that picture is sufficient to measure female participation in sport? Is the data in a form that is collected centrally and collated and analysed? Is there any opportunity to further improve that? Are we making informed decisions? How does the data look to you, and how could it be improved?

Do we need to do more to feed that back, particularly to local authorities? It seems to me that a lot of decisions are end-of-year financial decisions because, in order to balance a budget, there is a menu of pretty painful decisions that have to be made. Those decisions are not necessarily well informed about whether cutting something to save £X is pushing the problem somewhere else in the system, which might cause exclusion from sport and, therefore, mental health and physical health impacts. Is that something that we need to improve in Scotland?

I want to touch on the fact that the sickness absence rate at the hospital exceeds the 5 per cent target—it is 7.68 per cent. To what do you attribute that? What additional support has been provided to improve the mental health of staff?