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Moving on, I want to ask the Charity Law Association about its concern that the bill as drafted pays “little regard” to the role of judicial factors in the charity sector. Are there specific changes that you would like to be made in the bill?

I will move on to sections 34 and 38 of the bill. Section 34 of the bill deals with the discharge of the judicial factor, and section 38 deals with the accountant’s investigation powers. The centre for Scots law made a comment on the interrelationship between those sections and whether it was laid out correctly in the bill. The commission came back and explained that section 38 could apply first, before section 34, but I am bit confused by that, because it did not quite explain how it would work the opposite way round—for example, if a factor was discharged and then something came to light. Could Alisdair MacPherson, or anybody else on the panel, shed light on the interrelationship between those sections?

I have one question for Professor Morgan about charities. Are you content—and, indeed, are we as the committee content—that we have, through your submission and what you have said today, your wish list? Have you put to us everything that you would like to see for the charity sector in this bill, or do you want to write to us to detail exactly what you would like to see, based on some of your comments today?

Would that be okay, convener?

That is perfect. Thank you.

Are there any other comments on that? I see that there are not—I agree with you.

Thank you, convener, and apologies that I cannot be with you today—lambing is keeping me at home. The only interest that I probably should declare is that I run a small sheep farm, and I am a sole trader for that. I just bring that to the committee’s attention.

Thank you very much, convener. It is a pleasure to be here at the meeting—my first one—and I thank the clerks for helping me. I just wanted to speak to the petition. I thank Scottish Swimming, obviously, and Liz Smith, who has submitted a letter of support, too.

The issue of financial struggles for sport and health overall and in some councils came up during my time as a councillor, which is at the grass-roots level of politics in Scotland. The problem is that health and leisure facilities are not ring fenced, so their budgets are easy to cut when very important things such as education, adult health and social care have to be protected.

However, I was quite strong on the issue in the council, because we are an island nation with beautiful lochs and rivers throughout our country and swimming is an increasingly popular activity. We already have double the UK average number of deaths by accidental drowning, and that could go up if we shut more pools, particularly as we have many rural areas in the country. With limited bus routes, rural connectivity is not great and, if we start closing swimming pools, access to the remaining ones will get harder and harder.

I know that a lot of this is in the briefing but I want to commend these things. Swimming is invaluable as preventative medicine and, as we talk about health moving forward, we should discuss that more. We need to have a stronger discussion with the Scottish Government about how we can help councils to protect these very important facilities.