6. To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government's response is to reports that sports funding is set for a 20 per cent reduction over the next three years, which has been described by sportscotland as “heartbreaking”. (S5F-00955)

The sport and active living budget has not been set beyond 2017-18, but I am happy to confirm that we have no plans to reduce it by 20 per cent by 2019-20. We are providing sportscotland with as much flexibility as possible within what I think we all accept is a tight settlement, and we want to do that not least in the light of projected reductions in lottery funding over the coming years. The Minister for Public Health and Sport has written to the United Kingdom Government seeking to address that issue, and I hope that Mr Whittle will give her his support in that.

Beyond the core sport budget, we are also working to increase support for active living. For example, since 2010, we have increased the budget for active travel, which seeks to encourage more walking and cycling, by 116 per cent, from £18.1 million to £39.2 million in 2016-17, and we will ensure that we continue to deliver the policies and funding that support people to live as healthily and as actively as possible.

The decimation of the sports budget along with the major cut in council funding means that more people who are in challenging circumstances will find sport and activity out of their reach. People are not just entries on Derek Mackay’s balance sheet, and attempting to save money in this way delivers outcomes that require interventions that are far costlier than the amount of savings that the Government is attempting to make. The of policy will not tackle, but will drive, health inequality, so I respectfully ask the First Minister, please, to take another look at the issue, because the potential damage to sport, activity, the third sector and, therefore, communities will take years to repair.

The First Minister:

We will continue to work with sportscotland, the governing bodies and everyone with an interest in sport and active living to ensure that we are making the right investments. We have invested heavily in sport in recent years, and we will continue to invest heavily in it, not just at the elite end but at community and grass-roots levels, too. That is why the legacy of the Commonwealth games, with the community hubs that have been established in many parts of Scotland, has been so vital.

As I said in my initial answer, we will also invest in the wider landscape to ensure that we are promoting active travel, encouraging people to walk more and so on. One of the most fantastic things that we are doing in our schools just now is supporting them in having the daily mile. We will continue to ensure that we work closely with all of those with an interest in order to support the aspirations.

Being equally respectful in turn, I say to Brian Whittle that we are seeing real-terms cuts to our budgets because of decisions that are being taken at Westminster. I note that when we in this Parliament took a different decision on the higher rate of tax in order to try to protect public services, the Conservatives opposed that and instead wanted us to give a hefty tax cut to the top 10 per cent of income earners. It is not good enough for Tories to come to the chamber week after week to request more spending on this, that and the other thing, when they are also asking us to deliver tax cuts for the wealthiest people in our society. It is about time they decided what their position actually is. When they do so, they will have a bit more credibility when they raise such issues in the chamber.