Chamber and committees

I want to ask Kate Joester and Cecilia Oram about the fact that a lot of women and girls who are not necessarily involved in structured physical activity might cut out the few bits of physical activity that they get by opting not to walk to some places for reasons to do with safety and harassment. I count myself as one of them. I have very few opportunities for physical activity, but when it comes to the winter months, we make a choice about whether we walk home or to a particular place, or whether we do something that feels safer. I will go to Kate first to ask how we can tackle that.

Euan, I am going to push you on that because we had a conversation offline about this; swimming is one of the physical activities and sports that women do in later years as well, so would you agree with me that this would be a particular problem for older women, who might not be doing high-impact stuff but might be swimming right up until their later years?

It is a great question about examples of where there has been co-design. I will go to Patrick first, and then I will come to Kate.

It sounds like Stephanie Callaghan is already making some recommendations for the report that we are going to produce.

I saw that Kate Joester was shaking her head in response to Stephanie’s question.

I will not impinge on my colleagues who want to come in on staffing.

We must move on, Paul. A lot of members want to come in.

Claire Burden has now arrived. She had significant connection issues. Good morning, Claire. I will not bring you in immediately and try to make you catch up with everything that you have not heard. You can put an R in the chat box if you want to come in on anything but, otherwise, I will leave members to bring you in.

Gillian Mackay has a question.

Thank you. That is now on the record.

We are not singling out any particular boards; we are trying to fit in a session with every board over the next couple of years.

I want to ask about financial sustainability. I am particularly interested in how inflation and the increased cost of fuel are affecting your boards. We tend to talk about these things in domestic terms—how they affect families. That is how it comes out in the media, but such costs will have an impact on your boards and people who need their care. I am interested to hear about your boards’ financial sustainability and the impact of inflation and fuel costs on your operations.

We move on to Covid recovery.

I come to a question from Emma Harper—or perhaps not.

I will go to Paul Sweeney, then.