Young people are being harmed by safety regulations which wrap them in cotton wool, Scotland's children's commissioner said yesterday.

Kathleen Marshall said that excessive safety rules were impeding children's development, by limiting their access to sport and friends.

Meanwhile, a campaign has been launched to stop Scottish swimming pools from turning away unsupervised children. However, the authorities in question argue that taking precautions was common sense.

Ms Marshall responded that operators did not have to fear litigation as long as they took "sensible" steps.

Her remarks came ahead of a report to be issued by her office, based on research by the Scottish Institute for Residential Childcare.

The commissioner said on television that some safety restrictions, such as the use of cycling helmets, were very sensible, but others were unnecessary mollycoddling.

She said: "What we've discovered in this research is that people in residential establishments are very often being very risk adverse and are basing their practice on rules that they think are written down somewhere, but it's a kind of distortion of old rules."

The commissioner said a young person had to sign a risk assessment each time they wanted to use a bicycle and in another case, had to be accompanied by a member of staff with a bicycle repair kit and a first-aid kit.

"They were looking back to guidance that was given out in the 1990s for organised trips, not for just going out from what's basically your house."

Ms Marshall said a common way forward now needed to be agreed. "These excessive restrictions on the lives of children and young people actually breach their rights," she said.

"They breach their rights to healthy development, to associate with friends, to engage in sports and activities. What we're doing is actually impeding their development. We're actually harming them in many ways."

Meanwhile, the research group Generation Youth Issues (GYI) has launched a campaign against "irrational" safe swimming policies which it claimed were in force at baths across Scotland.

In North Lanarkshire, children under four at swimming pools must be accompanied one-to-one by an adult, and those up to eight, two-to-one.

The campaign is titled: "Cotton Wool Kids Can't Swim - the death of common sense?"

A statement on the GYI website reads: "Councils and pools are increasingly taking a hyper-cautious cotton wool' approach to adults taking their children swimming and are refusing entry to parents who turn up with their children because of health and safety'.

"The question of child safety in swimming pools and of how many children an adult takes swimming should be something that is negotiated by experienced professionals and parents themselves.

"Only by preventing the over-bureaucratised approach to child safety can we encourage a more sensible and public-spirited approach and get more children swimming."

The regulations were defended by Blane Dodds, chief executive of North Lanarkshire Leisure.

He said: "This policy is designed to ensure that young children are properly supervised during their visit to a swimming pool, and is in line with the standards set out by the Institute of Sport and Leisure Management."

The institute's chief executive, Ralph Riley, told BBC Scotland that operators had to take reasonable precautions.

He said: "I don't think that's a draconian measure, I think that's just common sense."