Game on in the battle to keep Sportscotland

Published on Friday 4 January 2008 08:44

Government plans to axe sport body must be stopped, says Mike Pringle.

LAST year was a great one for Scotland's sportsmen and women. Glasgow secured the Commonwealth Games; our football team twice defeated the mighty France and came agonisingly close to qualification.

Andy Murray continued to climb the world tennis rankings and Kelly Wood led her curling team to silver in the European Championships, while David Murdoch led his team to gold. The list goes on and on.

Given these fantastic results and the exciting events we have to look forward, one could be forgiven for thinking that Scotland's national agency for sport, Sportscotland, was being praised for its achievements. However, this is not the case.

Instead Sportscotland finds itself in limbo, facing an uncertain future, threatened by government plans to abolish it.

Sportscotland, previously the Scottish Sports Council, has more than 30 years' experience of co-ordinating sports investment between government and charity funding contributions. This integrated approach has proven very successful, enabling the agency to invest in a wide range of projects from national sports governing bodies to local initiatives.

This is not an integrated approach that can be achieved by government. The Lottery Fund is one of Sportscotland's biggest contributors and by law the administration of its funding must be run by an independent body.

If Sportscotland is axed, we risk being left with a bureaucratic time-bomb – a group of unnecessary institutions with no overall plan or overarching structure.

In my own constituency of Edinburgh South, local Liberal Democrat councillor Conor Snowden and I are leading a campaign to ensure that plans for a new multi-sport pavilion at Inch Park stay on track.

The development will provide a home to five sports clubs and has the potential to provide thousands of residents with direct access to sport. Community projects like this are vital to Scotland's future.

Much of the funding for this project is already in place, but the development team plan to apply to Sportscotland to make up the shortfall and have already made it through stage one of the process.

The plans have taken a long time to get to this stage having been beset by planning problems under the previous Labour city administration. The last thing this project or indeed others like it need to encounter is yet more unnecessary bureaucracy.

It is time for the SNP to stick up for Scottish sport in our communities.

Recently, Liberal Democrats led a debate calling on the Scottish Government to abandon its plans to abolish Sportscotland and MSPs voted overwhelmingly to retain it.

&#149 Mike Pringle is the Liberal Democrat MSP for Edinburgh South