Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, everybody.

How can community sports facilities be improved to allow female participation? For example, on booking times, a lot of community facilities have long-term bookings from males, and as female participation in sports such as football has increased, women have found it very difficult to get into community facilities. How can we improve that?

I am thinking especially of local authority community centres. In many cases, they are shut at weekends and those groups find it difficult to get into facilities like that to participate.

I was wondering whether the patient safety commissioner role would evolve into having such powers.

Could social media be used better by Government organisations to promote positive role models and support for young women? I am thinking about TikTok, which is where a lot of young people get their role models. We only need to think about an influencer and what they managed to do with a certain juice product. I was interested to see on the BBC last night the agency that is the top influencer on women in Scotland. It has a huge following but none of it is to do with sport; it is all to do with clothes and image. Is there a place for social media that could really impact on young people?

There are positive aspects to social media, but there are negative ones, too, as many of us know. To what extent do you feel that the impact of social media fitness content on young women’s body image has changed since the “Young Women Lead” report was published, and in what ways?

Good morning, minister and witnesses.

In evidence to the committee, witnesses expressed that the patient safety commissioner should have additional and regulatory powers. The minister just said that she does not think that it should. Will people take heed of the commissioner’s recommendations if it does not have those powers?

Might the committee be minded to keep the petition open and to write to the Scottish Government to seek details of the engagement and consultation that it plans to undertake when developing the new BSL national plan?

Christine Grahame will be extremely disappointed with me because I do not think that we can take the petition any further on the evidence that we have received.

I ask the committee to close the petition under rule 15.7 of the standing orders on the basis that the petitioner is satisfied that the Scottish Government’s current approach will adequately address the issue of mandatory microchipping of Scotland’s cats; the Scottish Government does not consider that the scanning of microchips should be made compulsory for cats at this time due to concerns about the potential impact on the welfare of cats and veterinary surgeons; and microchipping domestic cats features in the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission’s work plan as a medium-term issue.

To be fully engaged with citizen participation, it would be good for the committee to see how we could engage with the youth of today and how we could do it more. As I see it, doing it every two years is a paper exercise, and I would like it if the Scottish Youth Parliament could meet with us far more regularly.

Could we keep the petition open to gather more information? There are several stakeholders that I would like the committee to write to, including the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, the Faculty of Advocates, the Law Society of Scotland, Rape Crisis Scotland and Victim Support Scotland, seeking their views on what is raised in the petition.