 Felly, ag i'w fawr, dyma'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn dyma Maenon i chi rywbeth yn ymellwch ffordd i'w ddech chi maen nhw i'llu i Gesheithanau Cymru oheróau beth yr wych cyd-dreddar a'i bod i'r ddweud cyfleoedd gallu yr oedd yn cael ei wneud i gweithio'r cyfrifolau i gydag'u ddon nhw i ddiwg i dweud i gael ei ddweud ac eich gweithio'r cyfrifolau i ddweud i'w ddweud I have the apologies from Richard Simpson and Richard Lyle. I welcome Dennis Robertson as substitute for Richard Lyle, always a pleasure, Dennis, to have you along. Our only item on the agenda today is our initial scrutiny of the Commonwealth Games, ond wrth gwrs, rwy'n credu yn Glasgow, oedd y byddai'r ysgrifennu. Ymgyrch yn ddifud i gael y 24 oes yn y Cymru, David Grievenburg, mae'r ysgeld sydd o'r ddaf yn gwneud y ffordd mewn ymddangosol, ond mae'n ddigon i ddechrau i ddechrau ar y ddechrau. Mr Grievenburg has since moved on to a new post with the Commonwealth Games Federation, and we wish him well on that. We may also hear from him maybe in that role at some future point, who knows, when we have a further discussion about the evidence about the legacy partners, including the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council. All of that said, we are delighted to have with us today Gordon Arthur, chief communications officer of Glasgow 2014 and Kenny Stewart, Government Relations Manager of Glasgow 2014. I believe that you have some opening remarks, and then we will proceed to questions. Is that okay? Thank you very much. Convenient members of the Health and Sport Committee, I would like to thank you for inviting us today to speak to you about the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. It feels strange to talk about the Games in the past sense, but having witnessed 11 extraordinary days of sport and culture, we are now in a position to look back and consider what we have all achieved together. The Games has changed us. It has changed Glasgow. It has changed Scotland. It has given the rest of the world a new understanding of the city, of the country and of our people. We all have memories of the Games that will stay with us for many years to come. Maybe Ysain Bolt is dancing to the proclaims at Hamden. It might be the cheers of Yu Ganda at the Rugby Sevens at Ibrox. It might be the endurance shown by the road race cyclists on the final day of the Games in that appalling rain when something like 240 cyclists started and half a dozen finished the race. Whatever memory you take away with you, we have seen widespread agreement that Scotland's biggest ever festival of sport and culture has been a huge success. The Games made history. In sporting terms, we had nine world records and 142 Commonwealth records set during the Games. We had the biggest integrated parasport program in Commonwealth Games history. We had a groundbreaking partnership with UNICEF and the Commonwealth Games Federation, which has raised so far £5 million to put children first across the Commonwealth. Our work on accessibility has set a new bar in sharing the excitement of sport. A £3 million investment to create permanent improved accessibility facilities in Hamden was just one example of the many lasting accessibility improvements that have come about as a result of the Games. We published a procurement sustainability policy, a position on human rights, and we are the first Commonwealth Games to achieve ISO 201-1 status for our commitment to the environment and sustainability. In so many ways, we have sought to set new standards for the Commonwealth Games. One of the things that we believe that set Glasgow apart from other host cities is not just what we have delivered but how we have delivered it. We have worked incredibly closely with our Games partners. The 1,500 strong team of people at the organizing committee has kept people at the heart of our story. Throughout the journey of the Games, we have been inspired by the Commonwealth Games Federation's values of humanity, equality and destiny. We have enjoyed incredible support from the people of Scotland, whether they volunteered as Clyde Siders, took part in a legacy project or bought tickets and cheered on the athletes. We strive to maximise the legacy ambitions of our partners and we have worked hard to make Commonwealth Games athletes and the young people of Glasgow and Scotland an integral part of a world-class community relevant Games that has made the people of Scotland proud. The Games has left an economic, social and sporting legacy. There is a wealth of evidence about the opportunities that have been brought about by the Games, whether it be in jobs, in training, in new and improved venues, community and cultural initiatives or just the increase in confidence and profile that comes with hosting such a successful event. Our Games partners, the City Council, the Scottish Government and Commonwealth Games Scotland will continue to assess the impact of the Games long after we at the organising committee have packed up and gone home. Glasgow and Scotland raised the bar. We created history, we did it in partnership and we did it thanks to the incredible support of the people of Scotland and the Commonwealth. Everyone in Scotland should be very proud of what has been achieved and we are all ready to build on it in the months and years to come. Thank you once more for inviting us this morning and I look forward to taking your questions. Legacy, there was enough lot in the run-up to the Games and indeed during the Games about the legacy of the Games. What do you see being the main legacy of the Games? I think there have been a huge range of different legacy projects that have set a completely new standard I think for legacy planning ahead of the Games, which is to the great credit of everybody involved in bidding for these Games. I think that the economic legacy has been very significant, particularly in Glasgow where over £200 million worth of the tier 1 contracts for the Games were awarded to Glasgow-based contracts but also across Scotland. The way we procured a lot of these contracts ensured that apprenticeships were created and that local people got the benefit of the trickle-down in the supplier relationships from a lot of these. I think that the economic legacy has been very significant from the Games. The new venues were all open a year before the Games, which has never been seen before. People have had the opportunity to use the venues and it is very clear that people are using the new venues, not just from the very local, immediate area around about, but for example the velodrome that was created for the Games is the busiest velodrome in the world at the moment. It's got more people coming through the door than any other velodrome and people are having to wait up to three months to get on the induction programme to use it and people are travelling a long distance to do that. We have created venues and an event which have inspired people to get more involved in sport and that over time should have significant social and health legacies as well, which I know the government and council are very keen to be monitoring. I think also it's been a huge confidence boost for the nation and for the city of Glasgow, which now ranks well into the top 10 cities for hosting major events around the world. In the lead-up to the Games it has already secured things like the world gymnastics championships for next year, the IPC Paraport swimming world championships next year. The city is already bringing significant new major events in economic terms, all of which will create a very significant impact on the city going forward as it makes its long-term transition from its industrial heritage to its future as a major event's destination. I think that those are the things that I would summarise as being the things that are very visible already from the Games and hopefully will continue to be of benefit as we measure and track those things through the partners in the years to come. I think that I would add the work that we've done to try and put young people at the centre of the Games. We've had a tremendously successful education programme, which we developed with partners including the Scottish Government Education Scotland. We believe that that's reached around about a million learners across the Commonwealth—250,000 of those here in Scotland. Additionally, we've seen some really great initiatives that have been done through smart and sensible procurement, for example our host broadcaster training initiative with the host broadcaster, which saw over 600 young people on relevant courses, further and higher education courses, institutions here in Scotland being trained by the host broadcaster. Over 200 of those young people went on to roles covering the Games, which has created an entire new generation of young media and broadcast professionals in Scotland. I know that when we're looking forward to the Games there were thoughts about how you would engage the local community—maybe people who have been out of work in volunteering and the like. I think that the Clyde Siders programme was really successful. I think that a lot of people recognised, I suppose, the warmth and local community and involvement that was a part of that. What steps have been taken to continue those people's involvement to see if they can become involved in future events or their personal development, rather than just leaving it at the end of the Games and saying that's over? How do you keep those people engaged and help them to move on and build on the success that they've had? The Glasgow 2014 Games has been the first Games where there's been, in advance of the Games, an agreement as to how to try and keep these people involved. In the past, even with London 2012, there's been real challenges with data protection in the period post Games. We were able, through the partnership, to agree a couple of years out from the Games that we would ensure that all the data that was collected with people's permission in the recruitment period for the Clyde Sider programme would be passed on to volunteer development Scotland so that we would have a pool of people who had been involved in the Games and who had shown an interest in being involved, that they would then have opportunities to be involved in their local communities and in national events going forward. That's a very important step forward that we've got. We know who these people are. We've got one organisation in Scotland who are completely focused on volunteering, and they have that data to ensure that people can get the awareness levels up of other events going on in their area. That's one important part of how we've sought to get people in local communities involved through the Games, but it's by no means the only one. I think that I would go right back to our approach to the Delhi flag handover ceremony in 2010, where, in most organised committees, when they go to the closing ceremony of the previous Games, they take a very small group of people and, in London's case, they took a big red London bus out to Beijing for the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games. They brought a very digital approach to it and very few people, occasionally high profile people. What we decided to do in 2009 was recruit people from every corner of Scotland, from every community across the country, and get them involved in a masscast approach to that flag handover ceremony. They gave up weeks of their time preparing through boot camps and induction programmes. We flew them out to Delhi. They performed in the stadium in front of a huge global audience and then we brought them back. Those people stayed involved. They were involved in the Clyde Sider recruitment programme and we had a good number of Clyde Siders who'd been performers in Delhi as well as ceremonies cast members as well. Through that programme, through our LEED 2014 development programme, we've had a lot of programmes run by the Organising Committee, let alone all the legacy programmes run by the Government, in particular, to get people and communities really involved in the games and to try and do that in a way that would ensure that that involvement stayed active after the games, rather than just being a one-off two-week thing that was then quickly forgotten. How much, what was the final cost of the Commonwealth Games? We haven't published the final figure yet. The accountants are still closing down contracts, so we're in that dissolution phase at the moment. We're down to a few dozen staff and we've still got a number of large contracts which are being wound down and there are obviously variations within those. I think that you can expect before the end of this year that the final tally will be published. We are confident that we will have delivered the games under budget and it's a question of how much of the full budget for the games, including security, which was actually the responsibility of the Scottish Government, was £575.6 million. £90 million of that was the security budget, which was the responsibility of the Scottish Government. Is it the Scottish Government's view that it will be coming in on budget and everything? The reason I'm asking, because there was some speculation that the initial money had to be put in, and I think that the £370 million being spent was another £80 million that was added to that, so we're into 450 or upwards. It's worth mentioning when we talk about legacy. This is a significant investment from Scottish people and what we really want to hear about in the committee here today is how will we ensure that that significant investment actually delivers volunteering capacity for more than the fortnight? How will it be measured? How are we going to see that through? How are we going to see, for this committee's point of view, how are we going to ensure that those volunteers are going to be in those communities that find it harder to participate where there are fewer volunteers? Can you tell us something about how that will be handled, measured and delivered over the next couple of years? Are there any signs that there is increased volunteering in those areas? I think that our role has been through this process to ensure that through our recruitment of volunteers that we've recruited them in a way and got them involved in a way, which ensures that their games experience, the inspiration that has been brought to them by the games, has ignited that desire to get involved and stay involved in their communities. The process really from here on that you're asking about is one that will be run by the games partners with a lot of support of a lot of community organisations like Volunteer Development Scotland, and I think when you mentioned earlier convener that you will be having a session with the partners talking about these issues, it will be their plans really that you're asking about, which will ensure the success or otherwise of that ongoing involvement in community volunteering and other things in the years ahead. I know that they have ambitions and aspirations that it is for the long term and they're planning on measuring a lot of different outcomes from the games over the long term. I don't know at this stage. At this stage it's very hard to say, it's really a very short period of time since the games to be measuring a lot of these things and an awful lot of games legacy will be measured over five, ten, fifteen years, not over a few months in the immediate aftermath of the games. It's just worth adding there. Gordon talked about how we set in advance of the games we put in place a data sharing agreement with Volunteer, Volunteer Scotland. That referred to the entire applicant pool of 50,811. We saw a tremendous update in rate, I think, of 87 per cent of people opting in for the day to be passed on, so that data is now with VS. They're already starting to take advantage of that with the development of what they're calling my volunteer account, which allows people access to personalised services and things that start to see that hopefully have an effect over the next wee while. It's also worth adding that working with the likes of VS and with Skills Development Scotland and others, we did create a microsite for all applicants to volunteer at the games, which has signposted them on to various organisations in terms of future volunteering, future employment and skills training, other aspects of personal development. So there is that database that people who volunteer has been shared with these other organisations? Yes, so all the contact information, including the demographic information. So what is the target of that 85,000 that you would expect to go on to volunteer? As an organisation we don't have a target in that regard. I suspect that VS probably do, but I don't know what that target is. Participation levels, if we get any indication of them, as there have been a surge in land, we've been able to meet that demand here in the games and scents? In terms of participation at sports clubs and so forth? Sports clubs and other information that's coming back on the... I don't think there's a new round of statistics on that as yet. I mean anecdotally we've certainly heard about very busy clubs, but at this stage just a couple of months after the games, I think it remains. I think it will go to it at this stage. Okay, okay. We do have, convener, the programme of introduction of new community sports hubs that's been rolled out over the last few years has certainly hugely increased the capacity and the facilities available to people who we hope have been inspired by the games to find a way of getting into sport and ledger and finding ways to be able to to do that in the local communities. We know that the vast majority of those community sports hubs have now been delivered and that those facilities are in place and being well used. But we don't know as yet. We don't have data yet on that, but again... Is this a particular interest for the community given our focus on community sport, access, participation and other support in the sport? Gil Paterson, in the net, you want to do. I've answered some of the points that I wanted to raise. It was in the back of Ronan's question. It's quite clear from the work that was carried out in East End of Glasgow that the actual built legacy is there. You can see it and you can touch it. I think it's a wonderful site to see compared to what was there before. I doubt very much if we could have this transformation to be quite frank and taken place without the games being situated there. I think that it's wonderful and certainly the social aspect of that will last for a long time, too. I don't grudge from it. I don't come from that area and I'm not a Celtic supporter and I know how it's also transformed Celtic Park in a very, very positive sense in my view. How it's located and everything that is transformed is wonderful, but I don't grudge from that at all. I wondered what the rest of Scotland would benefit from in legacy terms. I know that the built legacy can't have it everywhere, but certainly the sporting legacy, the involvement, is there any indication what's happened in other places in Scotland that it's not been close to it but looking on in the scene and maybe activity taking place because of it? Is there any evidence to see where we're at with that? If I could pick up the comments on the built legacy first, because I think it is really important. The immediate and obvious things that people see in the east end of Glasgow, the new Emirates arena and the Athletes village and the Clyde gateway road that goes round there are all very immediate around the games venues, but when I first started working on the Organising Committee almost exactly six years ago actually, in my first week I was taken on a tour around that part of the city by councillor Archie Graham and the head of Clyde gateway. The transformation beyond that which has been inspired and driven by the games involvement is absolutely huge and is only barely starting. If you look at the housing developments and other things that have been proposed for the coming years, that area of the city is going to continue to see a huge amount of development and it's not just in areas like housing that the extension of the M74, which everyone in this room will know, was agonised over for many, many years, was finally built and it was crucially important for a successful delivery of the games, but that has also delivered huge economic benefits and big areas of that part of the city which have been derelict for decades, have now got industrial sheds and office buildings and other employers coming into the area, creating work and creating hope for people living in that part of the city. It is absolutely enormously transformational and those businesses themselves will be doing business right across Scotland. They won't just be doing business but they will be employing people in the immediate vicinity of the area, I'm sure. I think that all of that has been huge and we have been able to see the benefit from a business perspective of the games on communities right across Scotland because we've been able to see whether tier 1 contracts have gone and companies right across the country have benefited from tier 1 contracts with the games. We've also really encouraged the people who've won tier 1 contracts to develop their local supply chains and there's some really strong evidence from companies like McAlpine's who built the Emirates arena, who have a huge supply chain right across the UK, didn't have a particularly strong supply chain in Scotland and came across new suppliers for tier 2 and tier 3 contracts through that process. When you listen to the Scottish director of McAlpine's talking about some of the fantastic companies that they've worked with in their work on the games, who they will undoubtedly work with in the future, there's very clear and lasting business benefits from a lot of this work. Coming back to the second part of your question, in terms of participation from the point of view of young people in particular and in sport, it is early to be clear about that. There has without question been anecdotal evidence that things have picked up significantly over the last couple of years, not just over the last couple of months since the games, but with the lead up to the games, people being aware of the games and being excited about the games and these fantastic new facilities all being open prior to a year prior to the games that they have been in very, very heavy use. I know, for example, that the swimming pool at Tall Cross, the additional 50m swimming pool that was built at Tall Cross as a warm-up pool for the games, has been set aside for elite athlete training and for schools and it is absolutely solidly booked. It's not solidly booked at the expense of the 10-lane pool. That's full every day as well. You can see the benefits of a lot of those facilities coming through, but the data, which I understand you're very keen to see, is being curated by the Government and the Council and will be published in the months ahead, but we don't have that data at this stage. Could I just follow up? I missed the point. I think that both the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council being two different political entities, if you like, work really, really well together, and I think that that's another legacy. It's well worth recording that if everybody gets together, you can make a big difference, and I think that it should. The Commonwealth Games Federation made that very clear through the period leading up to the five-year period leading up to the games that the partnership work that they saw in Scotland saw as being stronger than anywhere else they'd worked, and it's definitely stronger than that, which is currently being experienced in the Gold Coast. They have got political parties in opposition to each other at different levels of government who are not able to sit round the same table and work together. I know that the Organising Committee in the Gold Coast is finding that a challenge at this stage of the games, so that there's no question that the partnership working that's been achieved for these games has been huge. Interestingly, if I may add convener, Councillor Archie Graham was on the Organising Committee board for the games, and he was reporting at our final board meeting last week that he had got the Glasgow Council family together, all the arms-length organisations that they have, City Property, City Building, and all the others, about 18 of them. They all reported back to him that they thought the biggest benefit of the games in the city, for the city, in their world was the fact that all the Allios were now working together in a way that they had never done before, because they were forced to come together and work together to deliver things, which the city was massively dependent on at games time. If they hadn't been able to do that, the city would not have been able to enjoy the successful games that it has. That last point would be very welcome right across the country, if we could get the same sort of layers across. I agree that the facilities—I haven't seen all the facilities in Glasgow, but the ones that I have seen are fantastic, I must say. It is through the accessibility of people from perhaps less well-off communities to these areas. I know when our Aberdeen sports village, which is also a tremendous facility, opened up very heavily used, as you are saying, the Glasgow ones are, and it still is. However, we did have comments from people in the more outlying areas or people from poorer parts of the city that they found it difficult to access the facilities on grounds of expense, distance and that sort of thing. I think that you may have partly answered my concerns through your sports hubs response, but I wondered how you see people who are not readily able to access the new facilities of what you see the legacy would be for them going forward. I think that the challenge that you refer to in terms of affordability for a lot of different sports facilities and sports clubs and things is quite real, but it is also quite varied. Across different sports, the barriers to entry are very different. Some you can literally buy a pair of trainers and turn up and pretty much get involved in others, where there is more specialist equipment, then the costs can be more significant. In the case of the velodrome, people have tried to get around that by having specialist bicycles far higher. They do not expect everyone who comes along to be able to afford one of these specialist bicycles. In terms of the organising committee, I think that the thing that we did that was most important in this space was an awful lot of work in advance, which resulted in us having an incredibly affordable ticketing programme for the games. The big thing that we could do as an organising committee was really get people inspired to get involved. When they went to get involved, hopefully the facilities were being placed, the coaches were being placed, the equipment were being placed, but our big task in many ways was getting people inspired in the first place. We did a huge amount of work, again as a partnership, agreeing the principles of our ticketing programme 18 months before it went live. Again, the Government and the Council were absolute and very clear advocates that we had to have the most accessible ticketing programme ever for games. We were the first games, for example, to have specialist price tickets for children, and the entry price across all of our sports. Every session of sport was set very low. For all sports, it was £7.50 for a concession ticket, and you could get into any sport with concession tickets. We worked hard at that, but we also worked really hard at accessibility through things such as not having a dedicated credit card provider for the games. Typically, if you look at sport around the world now, financial services sponsors of the games always involve major credit card providers. With that comes the exclusivity of you can only buy tickets through that credit card. A lot of people who tried to buy tickets for the Olympic Games who did not have a visa card found that barrier really difficult, but not only did we not do that, which was a very conscious decision that we were not going to do that. We took that five years out from the games. We also made big efforts to print our ticketing programme and make that accessible through a lot of retail outlets. We accepted applications on a printed application form. We accepted a variety of different payment methods beyond card payments online, so people could send in postal orders or checks. Relatively small numbers of people did so, but the important thing was that we made as many of these opportunities available to as many people as possible and spoke to as broader communities we could possibly speak to to try and get people really wanting to be to be part of the games. Again, I think that it will come back to the future sessions of this committee, where the games partners are able to give evidence to be able to demonstrate through, for example, Sport Scotland's statistics that they record how the ripple effect has gone out from the work done by the organising committee with the partner support over communities and over time. Have you any knowledge or evidence that there is more of a demand for increasing facilities available at the sports hubs across the country? I know that there are a lot of them now, and presumably they have varying degrees of facilities and accessibility as well. Have you any knowledge of any pressure to develop those following directly on from the Commonwealth Games? I think only anecdotal again. I think that the sports hubs are all being used extremely well, but I think that at this stage it is. It is still anecdotal. I don't know if you've got anything to add to that, but I completely understand why you are keen to understand the data that flows out of this process. I'm afraid that it's just not the organising committee's role to do that, because, as I say, in a matter of weeks, the vast majority of us will—well, the vast majority have already gone home. I'm precious to the lens that the organisation committee and indeed a decision that was taken pretty early on not to use the single sort of credit card branding. I mean, I don't think we were something that people were fully aware of. I certainly wasn't anyway about those efforts for a small return, but I was inclusive in that respect. Is that something that you would do again? Is there anything else that we can do as well as that to encourage wider participation? I think that you went to great lengths there to do that, but for a very small return, could we have been doing—is there any other ideas that would reach that group, or is it just a question of they might not have had the money or the money that was being spent elsewhere, but I admire your efforts anyway to reach out. I think—I mean, the reason we did that is that we did a lot of research as an organising committee with the public to find out what was important to them. I personally went along to a good number of the focus groups that we ran, which we ran right across Scotland, and people aren't shy at telling you the things that matter to them and where the barriers are and how you can make their lives easier. That was one of the big things that came out of that process. If you asked me if I would do it again, the answer to that would be unquestionably yes, because I think that it's just a really important statement of intent, and it does affect an awful lot of people. Even if they're the minority, there's still an awful lot of people who've benefited from that kind of decision. If you had my commercial colleagues sitting alongside me, they may have a different view. The minute you exclude a sector for your commercial team to go to seek revenues, then you are taking a decision that, in this case, quite a wealthy sector of the market, which does support sport globally very heavily, you are saying to that sector of the market you may not go and seek a deal. It has real benefits at a community level and accessibility level, inclusivity level, but these things always come with a cost somewhere else. The one thing I would say is that, in moving towards the delivery of any major events, you can never do enough research. Find out from people what it is they want out of events, and if you give them the opportunity, they will always tell you. You build up a very clear picture of the things that matter. I remember in the ticketing ones, one of the great cynosisms in the people we talked to about facilities for getting to the games was, well, your price of tickets is really low, but then you'll do park and ride, and you'll charge us a fortune for the park and ride. You learn all the way through these research processes, and again we were able to launch our park and ride with very, very accessible pricing. We had a huge effort across the games, which, from a health perspective, was really important, as well as from an organisational perspective, to encourage people to leave the car at home and to not try and drive to the games. The statistics that we collated from spectators on that were huge. 46 per cent of people walked to venues at some point, 38 per cent of people used the bus, 13 per cent the subway, and a very, very small proportion of people who came to the games brought their car. If you do the research early, you understand how people are thinking and feeling, then you can make sure that you're organisationally set up to deliver in a way that will meet their needs, which will enable you to achieve other goals, such as the significant reduction of vehicles in the city at games time, which we needed to enable all the other vehicles that we were bringing in—the buses and other things—to transport the games family around to enable them the space to be able to do that. I suppose that, as a Glasgow MSP, I should start off by thanking the organisation committee for an amazing job, which is very well done. I should also say gently that you were in listening mode, and I think that people moved on very quickly in relation to using the red road flats as part of the opening ceremony. The thing about that was that once the city moved on, we just moved on and it was a wonderful opening ceremony. My constituency office sits in Suckey Hall Street. I saw for the fortnight there how the city changed, and it was an amazing thing to say. That change is still really relevant. Some of the main therapies in Glasgow have still not seen a diminishing of the interest from tourists and visitors. It's been a wonderful experience and I can't commend all the partners enough. Two or three, hopefully focused questions, convener, driven from some personal experience. I got to go to one event. I never thought I would go and see a heavy weight lifting female contest at the SECC, but I did. It was remarkable. I got a ticket the day before by turning up a ticket booth at George Square and bumped into a neighbour of mine doing exactly the same thing. Accessibility and affordability of tickets would be the—I'm not just telling the story for the sake of it, I can assure you—accessibility and affordability of tickets. Is there scope for a national ticketing strategy for large-scale sporting and similar events to make sure that the lessons learned for how you organise and make affordable and accessible, all short notice tickets? Is there lessons to be learned to be rolled out nationally? I accept that it would have to be through local authority partners and other stakeholders, but do you think that there is progress to be made in the future in terms of getting ticketing strategies right for other major events? I'm not sure that it needs to go as far as the national ticketing strategy, but I think through the transfer of knowledge from the games that there will be a huge amount for people to learn from in a number of different areas. Ticketing is one—the food charter that we put in place with a lot of hard work over two or three years to make sure that the sourcing of foods and the quality of foods at the games set a new benchmark for events in Scotland. I think that there's a lot of different things of this sort that people can turn to and will be able to turn to and say, well, how did they do it and will that work for us? The thing that I would caution is that events are very different and multi-sport events in particular are very, very different to single-sport events in scale and just about every way, because the layers that you add on bring with them so many more complications than you do if you have even a really big single-sport event, for example, the Ryder Cup coming last week. I think that the thing that's most important is that through the national agencies and through the games partners that the knowledge that's been developed during the period of planning for the games over an extended period of time is available to others and that they can look at it and work out which of it is relevant to them and which isn't because, you know, demographically, we were very, very, very keen to ensure that we spoke to the entire nation. There are other events which are, by their nature, more exclusive and you would just approach them in a different way because you're talking to a different and very specific audience. So, I think that you can't have a too generalist approach, but I do think that there's real learnings for people in a whole range of different events that will be valuable over the next few years and then, of course, communications will move on and the way we go communicate with each other makes a massive difference when it comes to things like ticketing. It should be a key underlying principle for all major sporting events in Scotland. I accept those business models. I think that Mr Arthur has already pointed out that there are tensions between maximising income in business models and accessibility for all, but I'm just suggesting that perhaps it's part of any organisation's corporate and social responsibilities, be it a football game, be it the Commonwealth Games, be it a single sport or a multi sport event, that some form of affordability checks with all sections of society, be it the Rider Cup, I should have to say, as well, that there's maybe some underlying principles which could be disseminated across Scotland. Not statutory, but there's maybe some underlying principles that 24 team use that others would be quite good if they looked at that, do you think? I think that having a national events agency, we are in a position where those kind of things can be communicated and shared really very effectively. We are in a good position from that point of view. I think that Scotland does put out a very effective team Scotland approach when it's bidding for events, for example. The different agencies involved in that, in events Scotland at the heart of it, put them in a very strong position to be able to do that. That was positive. I don't want to labour my point on that, because I think that I've made the point. I can assure you that it's a story with a purpose, Ross Murdoch, when he won his medal, he had my two Wienises delirious with delight, because they both do swim at the same pool on the Vale of Leven that Ross's family are still involved with. It made it local, not just national, not just team Scotland, but it made it local to them. The point that I'd like to elicit from that is that it seemed to be the story right across Scotland, particularly because of the size of the Scottish team. Going forward, it's pretty important that, as long as people are meeting qualifying standards, I can meet personal best benchmarks. For some people, that will be getting to the final heat or getting to the final itself as a huge achievement for some, but in terms of the motivation, participation, sporting heroes and everything else, the size of the Scottish team was vital. Going forward, that sets a new benchmark for future Scottish teams, even when they compete in the Commonwealth Games, much further afield. I think that the point that you make is a really valid one. The more widespread that inspiration is rooted through the athletes, winning medals and through their performances into communities, the bigger impact it will have. Operationally, the way the Commonwealth Games organises its funding of teams to come to the Games is that they work on a team-sized calculator, and that team-sized calculator looks at the size of the team that's performed for each country of the last three games. Scotland will have a big team from domestic games, where it's had very little in the way of travel and transportation costs and accommodation costs and things. A fairly big team in the previous two games for Delhi and Melbourne, but when it comes to funding Team Scotland for the Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast, it will be done on an average of those three, and the Commonwealth Games Federation through the Organising Committee will fund a team up to the average of the three Scotland teams from Melbourne, Delhi and Glasgow. I sail with that because it's not simply about meeting the qualifying criteria. There will be financial pressures on the team, even if they achieve high levels of performance in trying to qualify for the team. There will be financial pressures, which will make it harder for Team Scotland to take such a big team to the Gold Coast than they had for our home games. In terms of your basic point about the inspiration being routed back into communities, the broader that is, then clearly the greater impact it's likely to have over time. I hope that Corporate Scotland is listening to those financial pressures that will be taking place going forward, as is, I hope, early media, because there's no point in having a wonderful, successful Scottish team elsewhere in the world if it doesn't get a very similar exposure to the types of media exposure, the wonderful media exposure that we had when it was our home games. Final question, convener, if that's okay. No story this time, I'd be glad to hear to Minister Stewart and Mr Arthur. Quite often, shining new facilities in our fantastic facilities in Glasgow lead to people who are already physically active, being more physically active in nicer facilities. Other members have made the point about how—Gilparts has made the point about Glasgow and the rest of Scotland—actually, if you stay in North Glasgow in a deprived community, some of the wonderful facilities in East End might as well be in Aberdeen and have been to Aberdeen Sports Village, it's fantastic. It's more about in terms—I know that other partners will have to do that tracking exercise—would you agree with me that tracking exercise of one of the legacy successes for the games shouldn't be about people being more physically active, although that's important, but those who are not normally physically active taking it up and that when we do that, we should make sure that we are closing the inequalities that quite frankly exist in society in terms of those who are least likely to be physically active. So it's just—I know that you're not doing the tracking exercise. The cabinet secretary was very clear that there are some baselines that exist there and that we're tracking forward on that, but would that be a key component for yourself in relation to legacy? I think that it needs to be from the point of view of the aspirations that the bid team set out with 10 years ago. I think that it was reasonably clearly set out at that stage that the aspiration was to bring more people into physical activity who hadn't been in the past in order to try to improve health and other factors in society. That needs to be a crucial part of that process. Anyone else? Dennis Nain-Collum? One of the things that I think that we need to try and ensure is that we continue to include—because you've managed to do something that maybe other sports haven't done in the past because you're talking about the accessibility, but it was the inclusiveness that stood out for me because it was incredible because the inclusion of the parasports is part of the programme. It wasn't an add-on as happens in some other sports and some other venues. It was just part of the natural programme. Those people with disabilities were seen as athletes, and quite rightly so, in their own right. How do we ensure—because the benchmarks have been set very high here—how do we ensure that the people with disabilities and the next generation of people who are taking part in the parasports are supported and have the access to the facilities on a national basis? Again, you're mentioning the velodrome. That one stood out for me because Neil Thack is related to me. I'm very proud of Neil and his achievements. How do we ensure that people entering the up-and-coming ones have access to the facilities? I've had lots of emails from people who attended the various sports facilities and people with mobility problems using a wheelchair and people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Every single email has been congratulatory in terms of your efforts and the way that you have provided the facilities. It's well done from those people from the various communities who support and who are having disabilities and impairments. There are a few things. The Commonwealth Games stands out as being the most inclusive of the major international sporting events because of the integrated programme of parasports. The Olympic movement has grown up with a different approach where you have a different governing body running the parasports from running the rest of the Olympic programme. It has created an opportunity for us and we have done a huge amount of work with the various organisations in Scotland who are responsible for disability sport to engage them in our processes. We were planning over the course of the past five or six years. Again, it is incredibly important that the step change that has been achieved over the past few years in terms of awareness and accessibility is built on from here and is not allowed to drift back to the level at start of that. In terms of the monitoring of that and the continued development of that area in the years to come, when you take evidence from Sport Scotland and other parts of the Games partnership in future sessions, I think that those are questions that will need to be addressed to the people who will be responsible for looking after all sections of the sporting population going forward. How do we ensure that inclusion through the education programme, for instance, Mr Stewart? How do we ensure that people with disabilities or impairments have that accessibility to the facilities? I am just wondering whether there is a special time set aside in the velodrome for people who do cycling, for instance, the tandem cycling and other such things. I would hate to see it drifting back as to where it was, and it is an add-on. I think that the Olympic Committee needs to look at how they move forward, but how do we ensure that it remains inclusive and not just an add-on? I think that, for me, a lot of it comes down to pretty simple things. It is good planning, it is sensible procurement. For us, obviously, we took the decision that we were going to be as accessible and inclusive as possible, and that is obviously cut right across mobility, access, disability and, obviously, our Parisport programme as well. We had a dedicated accessibility team to whom great credit is due, working on this for a number of years. I think that it is also worth pointing out the incredible work that the Glasgow City Council and its various contractors have done to develop the facilities that we have and the way that they have. I think that what we need to see is the way that we approach the accessibility internally. We had a dedicated team who managed that centrally, but they took the mainstreaming approach across the whole business. They made sure that all the different functional areas understood what accessibility meant to their programme of work, and they thought about that in the same way that they would think about health and safety, risk management or equality or whatever else. When you are building from that solid foundation and from those simple first principles, it makes making decisions a lot easier in this regard. Equally, perhaps we will see stronger commitments to improve levels of accessibility in public procurement. I would like to think particularly in relation to sports facilities. I think that what Glasgow City Council has done in relation to the venues that have been built for the games has been fantastic. I think that hopefully we will see that approach replicated across the country in the future. Thanks, Dennis. Colin Cure. Thanks, convener. Actually, the question is more supplementary now after Dennis. I think that it was a huge success in terms of the integration of the sports. It was fantastic. One of the things that, in terms of the planning, obviously it was logistically, would have been a very difficult thing being multi-sport. In the past, from what I remember about the Olympics, the 10 days of tracking field, for instance, and then you had basically the tail end, you had another 10 days of tracking field but with disabled athletes. Obviously, in which case there is 20 days worth of sport. If you are time constrained in terms of how long the Commonwealth or Olympic Games are, how do you compress a full programme of tracking field for able-bodied and disabled athletes? Are events, could they be missed out? I don't know enough about disabled athletics, whereas despite my current shape and weight, 35 years ago, it used to be my sport with tracking field. I'm just trying to follow up on how, in a practical way, you get 20 days worth of tracking field athletics crammed into 10 days, if you like. I think that it's interesting from the Olympic and Paralympic movement's perspective, because if you wind back the clock 20 years, Parasport was way down the agenda and was virtually invisible to the public. The success of establishing the international Paralympic committee and the work that they've done over the last 20 years has created this phenomenal success, which is the Paralympic Games. The challenge for the Olympic movement going forward would be, even if the Paralympic movement, if they wanted to integrate it, it's now so big that it might almost be impossible to do it. I'm glad that's not my headache to be working out how that could happen. From the point of view of the Commonwealth Games, the integrated programme is set out by the Federation. The length of the Games is set out by the Federation, so you have to complete the Games within 11 days. As an organising committee, you can't choose to just say, well, we'll do it over 15, and the number of Parasport events is also laid down by the Federation. In doing that, they will look at a whole range of different initiatives, but one of them will be, they do have some basic rules around international spread and the depth of the talent. Whether you're looking at Parasport or Able, Bollyd Sport, those kind of rules apply. Their sport committees, as they look at this going forward, will undoubtedly want to continue to increase the Parasport element of the Games, how that's done, in the context of their definition that the Games shall only be 11 days, and the standards they set for qualifying criteria and other things, and their requirement to have a good competition, meaning that you need to have representatives of at least three or four of the six regions, and at least so many countries, will themselves determine to an extent how fast the Parasport part of the overall Games becomes. It has moved on. We were very keen to move it on, and we pushed the CGF on a number of these areas and also for the inclusion of more women's events and shooting in women's boxing, for example. The mixed triathlon, we were keen to see a broadening of the sport programme, but then, of course, on top of that as well, the way that Commonwealth Games works, is that you have 10 core sports and a bidding city that can then choose up to seven sports from a list of, I think, 16, and every organising committee tends to pick a slightly different mix. Judo hasn't been on the programme since Manchester, and it was on the programme, and thankfully it was on the programme, because Team Scotland did brilliantly at the Judo, as it did in Manchester. Tennis was on the programme in Delhi, and lots of people since then have said to us, why don't you have tennis on your programme? You must have known Andy Murray was going to be world number one, but when the bid team were working on tennis, Andy Murray was still hundreds and somethings in the world rankings, and people wouldn't have known that. A bid team, when they're looking at bidding for games, will put together a sports programme based on a number of different factors, but the actual sports programme at each games will also determine how much the Paris sport programme grows over time. It's a complicated process, but it is all run through the governance of the CGF and their sports committee. If I may, I'm aware of the other sporting international commitments that have to be factored into where these various games play. It's almost being a victim of their own success, the inspiration that's come from seeing disabled athletes competing at the same time with the same respect from the crowd as able-bodied athletes. It really was inspiring, but it's such a massive movement now with disabled sports, and it's how do we actually introduce it without cutting away so many strands that it becomes not quite as inspiring or inclusive? At a practical level, the national governing bodies for sport in this country, Scotland and others, may have scope to consider when they're doing national championships and other events that are run within Scotland, whether a Paris sport programme is included in those championships. I couldn't tell you right now how that is organised, but that is something potentially that could be looked at going forward to see if there's an opportunity at a year-by-year annual championship level to create that same level of integration. Now, in our last five minutes, I was required to conclude the committee as the chamber opens for business at 11.40. Are there any other questions? No? The only one that we haven't maybe mentioned in terms of our defing and the post-games assessment, and it's been a really interesting session to hear about how much work went in, and I think that we all shared that warm glow and still about the events and the impact in the whole of the country. Of course, post-games assessment also looks at the highlight challenges about what might have worked better. We have three minutes to tell us what would work better, and what advice do you give to the people who will take on your responsibility to run the next Commonwealth Games? David Grimburg and a number of other colleagues are on their way, as we speak, to the Gold Coast for the official handover transfer of knowledge programme. We have written over 80 transfer of knowledge reports that are accessible to the game's partners and are stored through the CGF's transfer of knowledge programme, which will go into the detail at every level across the whole organisation of the games, of the things that we learned through that process. The transfer of knowledge to the Gold Coast has really been going on for the last two or three years anyway through the co-ordination commissions and other events that have taken place. There is a very thorough process in place to make sure that everything that we have learned gets passed on from a Commonwealth Games perspective to the Gold Coast. The important thing will be how we cement the relevance of the different bits of that into the way that we plan and deliver major events in Scotland for the benefit of future world championships and other events that we host here. The national events agency and others are heavily involved in that process, and I am confident that a lot of that knowledge will be successfully passed across. I think that that is a good note to end a session on legacy and no more important legacy than to transfer knowledge and experience that others can learn from. That is a good note. I thank you both for the time that you have spent with us this morning at the committee and the interesting evidence that has been provided, which will help us as we explore the various aspects of legacy from a committee viewpoint. Thank you very much for your attendance and evidence this morning. We now close the committee meeting and proceed to the chamber.