Education and Skills Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Official Report 627KB pdf

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Named Persons (Update)

Under item 5, the committee seeks an update on the named persons policy, as a follow-up to the ministerial statement that the cabinet secretary made last week. We will move on to questions from members shortly, but I understand that the cabinet secretary wishes to make a brief opening statement.

I leave my comments as they were made to Parliament on Thursday. I am happy to answer members’ questions.

It is often mentioned that Highland Council runs a similar scheme to the named person scheme and has had a single-point-of-contact approach in place for a number of years. The reports about the Highland scheme are that it has resulted in positive outcomes, such as fewer children being in care, and in better working practices. Given that, why has it been difficult to get across to the public what I am sure you consider to be the potentially positive returns from the named person scheme? Following the latest legal judgment, what advice has been given to local authorities such as Highland Council that have already started to nominate named persons and put in place arrangements for them to be a single point of contact?

There are two points in that question. The first relates to the public understanding and acceptance of the named person concept. There has been an active political debate around the named person, and that is obviously a contested concept. I disagree fundamentally with many things that have been said in that debate that have been marshalled in opposition to the concept of the named person policy.

In the statement that I made to Parliament last Thursday, I set out what I consider to be the proper context within which the named person policy has been developed. That context is the policy approach that has been shared between a number of different Administrations and supported by many parliamentary committees—indeed, it was reflected in the thinking and priorities of the Christie commission—that is, that we should have a significant emphasis on preventative interventions to avoid difficulties emerging and becoming serious challenges for individuals in our society. That comes through in the thinking around policy on young people and getting it right for every child.

The challenge for me is to get across the message that the named person, as a point of contact to provide assistance and support to individuals who might face difficulty, is a policy approach enshrined in the ethos of getting it right for every child. We have to stress the advantages of that to individuals in Scotland. That will dominate the communication and dialogue that I take forward.

The evidence is strong on the effectiveness of the named person approach. I recounted in my statement to Parliament last week the reduction in referrals to the children’s panel and the reduction in the acceleration or intensification of cases as a consequence of intervention. I think that that evidence justifies the policy approach that has been taken.

Finally, on the existing legal framework, the provisions of parts 4 and 5 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 have not come into force, so it is important that any schemes that are taken forward must be compatible with the existing legal framework within which such schemes must operate. As I said in Parliament last Thursday, there is a requirement for such provisions to be embedded in the existing legislation around the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Data Protection Act 1998, and any public authority must design a scheme that is compatible with that approach. That forms the guidance to public authorities that the Government has issued on those questions.

I want to pick up on the Highland experience. Is there evidence that, in the Highlands, there is the same kind of opposition that some people are expressing over the national roll-out of named person?

There have clearly been comments on and contributions to the debate right across the country, and I do not think that the Highland area will have been in any way exempted from that. However, what has been clear from the Highland experience, if we look at the data, is that the number of referrals to the children’s reporter in Highland dropped from 2,335 in 2007 to 744—a drop of 68 per cent, which is a quite remarkable reduction in the number of referrals. I attribute that to the better alignment and connection of public services that is driven by the named person policy context. Highland has been a pioneer in that respect. There is a substantial advantage that is demonstrated by that data, which shows the performance of the initiative.

You said in the chamber—and you repeated today—that current practice must be in line with data protection legislation and the Human Rights Act 1998. Are you wholly confident that any local authority that has implemented the named person policy, including the data sharing aspect, has not acted unlawfully?

Yes, because all local authorities must act within the law.

Okay.

You have said that the Supreme Court’s view is that the policy’s overarching aim is perfectly “legitimate and benign”. You also said that no change to current policy is required, but surely that cannot be correct, when one aspect of the policy has been ruled unlawful.

The point that you are missing is that we are putting new provisions into statute. The point—which I tried to get across in my statement to Parliament last Thursday—is that the Government is advancing a new legal framework in which the policy will be delivered, which requires to meet all the tests that the Supreme Court applied to the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014. It is the legal framework that must be compatible with data protection and human rights legislation; existing arrangements must routinely be compatible with that legislation if they are to operate satisfactorily.

This morning we revoked provisions relating to the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014. Surely that is because part of the 2014 act has been ruled unlawful. Does that not signify that there must be some policy change?

No. That is not my reading of the Supreme Court judgment. The Supreme Court judgment—and I explained to the Parliament why I think that the Supreme Court had this in mind—is that there is a requirement to set out the information-sharing provisions in accordance with law. I accept that the provisions that we put in place in the 2014 act do not meet that test, because some of the definitions that are material to this debate are not specified in law. They are specified in guidance, but they do not have the authority of law, so I must ensure that they have that authority of law.

The Supreme Court also said that it is important that we make all the connections in the legal framework and set them out in accordance with law. That is what we must do. In essence, we must not leave those connections to be made by members of the public.

The point on which the Supreme Court anchored its judgment—the point of greatest significance, in my view—is its argument that the provisions need to be set out in accordance with law. That is the challenge to which the Government must respond, and as I explained in the Parliament last Thursday, that theme of analysis—if I can call it that—from the Supreme Court has emerged clearly from the judgments that postdate the passing of the 2014 act by the Scottish Parliament.

Thank you. Let me pick up on two points. First, the Supreme Court did not just rule on the data sharing aspect; it made comments about proportionality. It said that the approach

“is likely often to be disproportionate.”

There is therefore concern that the named person policy might be intrusive and disproportionate, because of the lack of clarity in the law. How can that be addressed?

I think that that is largely the issue to which I referred, that is, the necessity of the matter being specified in law. I take the view that the guidance that is in place addresses the issue of proportionality and reassures people about when it will be appropriate for certain things to be done—that was my position before the Supreme Court judgment. The Supreme Court said that that must be specified in accordance with law.

That is part of the work that must be done so that members of the public can be clear—it is not as much about our being clear as it is about the public being clear—about how the question of proportionality will be handled. As I said, it will be handled in accordance with law, as a consequence of the provisions that we bring forward.

09:15  

Does that mean that there is an acceptance that the concept of wellbeing is a problem? It is a nice concept, which everybody moves towards, but it is not defined properly and it is certainly not defined in law. Do you accept that because we made that move to talk about “wellbeing” instead of using the definition of “welfare”, which is more common in Scots law, the threshold for intervention was seen to be very much lower and therefore the professionals who were dealing with named person policy were unsure of the territory on which they found themselves and did not know whether they should intervene? I have to say that I would struggle to define wellbeing, even given the safe, healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected, responsible and included—SHANARRI—indicators and all the information and guidance that goes with them.

The logical conclusion, cabinet secretary, is that you will have to define wellbeing in law. Is that your intention? How would you go about doing that?

There is a lot in that question, so I will take time and care to explore different parts of it.

The committee will forgive me if I go over ground that I have already rehearsed with Parliament in my statement, but it is important that I do so for completeness. I completely disagree with Liz Smith about it being wrong to include wellbeing in people’s judgments, as opposed to them being all about welfare. The Supreme Court judgment is crystal clear, the framework around welfare and child protection in law in Scotland is crystal clear, and the judgment helpfully codifies all that for us. The welfare provisions within law are clearly expressed to the satisfaction of the Supreme Court and that should give members of the public who are anxious about child protection issues a lot of confidence about our legal framework.

If defining “wellbeing” was our intention, there would be no need to proceed with a named person policy. In my view, the policy is about a lower threshold. It is about making a preventative intervention by identifying the support that is required to assist young people if they are facing difficulties in our society, so that we can make sure that that support is made available earlier and interventions are delivered to prevent difficulties from having more serious implications for young people.

A welfare concern is a significant and serious intervention. We know what it means and what it looks like; it is tabulated. Wellbeing is about making sure that we intervene as early as possible to stop problems becoming more serious. That is why, in answer to the convener earlier, I anchored my view of the role of the named person policy in the GIRFEC agenda. For me, there is a lower threshold of activity that the named person must be focused on, because it is about identifying issues that might become more serious if they are not addressed.

That brings me to the question of definition. I have tried to address your question about the threshold. Wellbeing is defined in guidance, but I accept that that is not law, so it has to be set out in a fashion that will be robust and will pass the test that the Supreme Court has applied, which is that the provisions must be set out in accordance with law. That will therefore give a clearer legal framework within which the named person policy can be deployed in a way that is consistent with the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 and in accordance with the Supreme Court judgment.

The arguments around the role of the named person are about ensuring that the person can be available to support families and make the connections that are needed to provide the required support and interventions. That will be about an awful lot more than welfare; it will be about supporting the wellbeing of young people in our society.

Thank you for the detailed explanation. The issue on which I think that we have a strong difference of opinion relates to what we hear from the practitioners who are very concerned about the implementation of the named person policy. As you have accepted, there is a much lower threshold, and wellbeing is the determining factor. Because this is a universal policy, which covers every child, and because the threshold is so low and the paperwork and the assessment, which is based on the SHANARRI indicators and all the accompanying guidance, are so substantial, the expectation is that casework will increase. How will you address that, especially as you have given a commitment in Parliament to reduce teachers’ workloads?

Where there is a requirement for support, it is essential that that is clearly tabulated and understood, to enable that support to be delivered to a young person, but I do not see the necessity for a cottage industry of bureaucracy to be created around that. I understand the unease of practitioners and others—you have fuelled some of this debate, as part of the wider political debate—but no part of the policy proposition makes it necessary to create vast bureaucracies to summarise an assessment of every single child in the country. That is not the point of this policy.

What this policy is about is empowering trusted public servants—be they health visitors or teachers, whom we trust to exercise, every day of the week, the responsibilities of their role to nurture and develop our children—to require support to be available to assist young people if they need it. Not everybody requires support, but some do, and I want to ensure that young people get support as early as they can. That way we can avoid the accumulation of difficulties that undoubtedly happens for some young people. That is why I take a different view. I tried to address that point in my answer to Daniel Johnson in Parliament last week.

I do not want us to think about the named person provision as a compartmentalised extra responsibility. The teachers and health visitors that I have talked to look at their case load and at the young people that they interact with all the time, to assess the young people’s needs and requirements. The named person provision simply empowers those individuals to deliver, as early as possible, what those young people require.

The direction of questioning that we have heard so far has neatly encapsulated the situation. We heard a detailed set of questions from Liz Smith about the legal aspects and we started with the convener’s line of questioning, which was about perception. While we have a pause due to the Supreme Court’s judgment, the situation that we are faced with and that we need to address is just as much about public perception and trust as it is about the legal matters.

I welcome the comments that you made in your statement about an intense period of engagement, and that the Scottish Information Commissioner and Children and Young People’s Commissioner will lead that review. Will the scope of that work be confined to the legal points that are raised by the Supreme Court, or will it seek to address the wider points about public confidence and trust in the system?

I accept unreservedly the point about public trust and confidence in the system, and the importance of tackling that. I do not think that that is the responsibility of the children’s or information commissioners, or of any one apart from me; I accept that responsibility.

It is important that ministers are able properly and fully to build public confidence in what I think is the correct policy. For that reason, I set out to Parliament last week why I think that the policy is justifiable and appropriate, and I anchored it within the GIRFEC agenda. As I have said, I am taking on that responsibility, and it is for me and other ministers to ensure that it is fulfilled.

In relation to the substance of Mr Johnson's question about scope, I will, as an absolute minimum, address properly and fully the issues that are raised by the Supreme Court judgment, because I think that it is important to keep the matter in perspective. The Supreme Court has said what it has said about information and data sharing, but it has not said anything else about the scheme. That is the requirement that it has put in place, and I have to address that issue.

As part of the work that I will take forward to build public confidence, I will be mindful of what will be helpful in that respect. If changes to the scheme or other provisions are promoted, I will, as I have indicated to Parliament, give them consideration.

What, then, will be the scope of the work of the Scottish Information Commissioner and the children’s commissioner? Will it be published? What framework and timeline are they working to?

As I have said to Parliament, I will undertake the dialogue, along with the Minister for Childcare and Early Years, over the course of the next three months. That will form and frame the decisions that the Government will then take about the scheme’s implementation. I will draw on the input of the children’s and information commissioners, but I should point out that I am not commissioning them to do anything; I am not entitled to do so. Instead, I will invite their input and draw on that and their expertise. Obviously, they have a lot to contribute to the discussion from their respective specific policy interests, so I will listen carefully to their thoughts, as I will to the contributions of many others.

The two points clearly come together not only in the area of data sharing. In paragraph 107 of its judgment, the Supreme Court refers to the nature of information sharing and suggests that there should be legally binding guidance or subordinate legislation on when people should be told that information is being shared and when consent should be sought. That, I think, brings people’s concerns to a head. As a parent myself, I support the policy principles, but I had a nagging concern about things being shared with authorities and my not knowing about it. What do you see as being the direction that we should be going in and the solution that we should be putting in place? How will that be communicated?

Furthermore, to what extent will the system be voluntary? I feel that clarity is lacking on the extent to which participation in the scheme and communication with the named person will be voluntary, and how binding the named person’s actions will be on parents.

In response to Mr Johnson’s question, I first point out that his reference to paragraph 107 essentially brings out some of the issues with regard to consent, which I consider to be a material issue that must be addressed if we are to address satisfactorily the Supreme Court judgment. Going back to his question about scope, I say that I consider that to be in the scope of the work to be undertaken.

Mr Johnson then asked me to set out what I consider to be the answers to this question. The committee will have to forgive me; I think that it would be slightly premature of me to provide all the answers just before I embark on an intensive three-month dialogue to establish exactly how that might be undertaken. I am not being flippant—I have to give due thought and consideration in order to ensure that the issues are properly addressed. After all, I want to address them satisfactorily for the Supreme Court. It is a responsibility that I take immensely seriously.

09:30  

The final point that I would make is a general observation about the named person policy. The Supreme Court says that under the provisions that we had put in place it would have been possible for members of the public not to participate in the named person policy, but it also made the point that that is perhaps not as clear as it could be. That is one of the difficulties that we have had around communication of the policy and acceptance of it; it has caused unease among some members of the public, as part of the wider political debate. I consider those issues to be very much in the scope of the work that I will take forward.

I will pick up on some of your final comments to Liz Smith about not wanting to create a “cottage industry” of support. I take on board your points and I agree with you that teachers, health visitors and everyone who works with children need to focus on their holistic wellbeing and to support them in those terms. However, in the discussions that I have been having with teachers and health visitors, there has been concern about not just what might happen but the substantial amount of work that has already been created where the policy has been implemented. I have been talking to teachers in schools where teaching assistants are, in essence, working full time on dealing with the information that is coming in. Likewise, when I talk to health visitors, I hear that the automatic triggering of information from nursery schools when certain situations happen means that a substantial amount of information will be coming their way. Health visitors, as I understand it, have no administrative support.

Although I understand the holistic nature of the policy and the intent behind it—in many ways I agree with it—the reality is that it creates bureaucracy and work, and we need to resource that. We do not wish to create a cottage industry of support, but that does not mean that substantial work is not already being created.

I will reiterate what I said in my response to Liz Smith: I have no desire to create a cottage industry. That will be very much on my mind when we look at how we implement and deliver the policy at operational level.

I will try to work my way through some of the relevant issues. It is part of the role and responsibility of our health visitors and teachers to look out for the wellbeing of the young people for whom they have a duty of care. That is what they do every day—it is what I see in schools and it is what I see health visitors doing around the country. We are not asking health visitors and teachers to do anything that they are not already doing, in terms of looking out for young people’s wellbeing. That is maybe not the most precise parliamentary term, but members will understand the point that I am making.

We want to ensure that when the named person has a concern they are able ensure that the child receives the support that he or she needs, and that there is a point of contact where people can go to obtain that support. That is not always clear in the system. I made the point in Parliament last week that members of the public come to me to ask me to get public services connected for them, not to say how wonderfully connected public services are.

I accept that if our mandate in the system was, let us say, that a weekly report must be filled out on the wellbeing of every child in a school, that would be a cottage industry of bureaucracy. I will not ask for that. I want this to be a proper opportunity to ensure that professionals in whom we already place our trust to support and nurture our children are able to access the resources and support that they need to address the needs of young people.

Early on in the discussion, the cabinet secretary mentioned the rather extreme positions that are sometimes taken in relation to the named person policy. A few minutes ago, you partly answered the question that I was going to ask. Surely many of the elements of the named person policy are already in place, as you correctly said. There are teachers, health visitors and so on who support children and report anything that they see that is not up to what they expect. Surely the named person scheme is simply a joining up of processes and a putting in place of good practice.

It is that, but it is also empowering individuals who are key contact points for young people with the ability to connect public services in order to deliver interventions that support those young people and address difficulties. It is essentially a resource that is available to individuals and families to support them in their times of difficulty and to ensure that their needs are adequately and fully addressed.

Is there then a need for an escalation process in each council to accommodate the issues as they come up?

Undoubtedly, measures will need to be taken in individual circumstances to meet the needs of young people. Clearly, if a named person finds it difficult to make connections with the required services, there might be a need to seek further support within organisations. Crucially, the named person policy will empower individuals on the front line of our public services to fulfil that role.

I presume that the escalation process is not new—it should be what is in place already. Teachers and others who are involved with children should be using it already, so that is not an additional requirement.

The processes already exist in public authorities and would be followed as part of the process that we are discussing.

After the engagement exercise, what will be in law that is not currently in law?

It is difficult for me to give a comprehensive answer to that question. Essentially, I have to ensure that the provisions that the Supreme Court believes need to be codified in law are the ones that are codified in law, as a minimum. I consider those to be the information sharing provisions, the definition of wellbeing and the definition of circumstances and arrangements around the necessity or otherwise to obtain consent for any particular intervention. Those are the three elements that I foresee being in law, but I have to be mindful of the test that the Supreme Court has set. The thinking behind its judgment is that those issues need to be codified in accordance with the law, and I have to be mindful of the need to address that satisfactorily.

So, at least, those three areas, which are currently dealt with in guidance, will become law at some stage next year.

That will be subject to the agreement of Parliament.

Indeed. There might be some other areas that come up in the engagement exercise that you are undertaking. You have not closed your mind, as I think you said to colleagues earlier.

I have some specific questions about the Supreme Court judgment. Paragraph 84 says:

“there is no statutory requirement, qualified or otherwise, to inform the parents of a child about the sharing of information.”

I presume that that is exactly the point that you have just made and that that will be taken care of.

Yes.

My other point, which I asked you about last week, is on paragraph 95. Like Daniel Johnson, I am a parent, and that is the paragraph that gives me the most concern. It states:

“parents will be given the impression that they must accept the advice or services which they are offered and ... that their failure to co-operate ... will be taken to be evidence of a risk of harm.”

I confess that that paragraph worries me as a parliamentarian but much more as a parent. Will that be addressed?

Clause 95 of the judgment relates to what has been a material question in the debate until now, which is whether it is possible for families to decide not to engage with the named person or not to pursue services. I have expressed the view that existing provisions that the Government and Parliament have put in place enable that. Obviously, the Supreme Court questioned in its analysis whether that is as clear as it could be. I come at the discussion from the point of view that families must be able to say that they do not want to participate. That is an important point about consent. If that is not clear—I take from clause 95 that the Supreme Court does not believe it to be clear—that has to be addressed.

Finally, when those three aspects and others that you may choose to bring before Parliament at a later stage become law, I am sure that you will recognise that for a pupil-support teacher in any of our secondary schools, its being in law will be a different thing altogether from the voluntary structure that used to be the case in the Highland Council area, which you rightly said was effective. I have had discussions about that as well and understand it, but I also know about it because I have a son at a school in the Highlands.

A pupil-support teacher’s situation will be manifestly different because they will be sitting with a statute on their desk that they must implement. We are now going to have to go through a lot of codification because of the Supreme Court judgment. I take your point about the cottage industry of bureaucracy, but it is different when the cottage industry is driven by law, instead of people being able to say that they will not do it because they have arrangements that work perfectly well under a voluntary structure. Is that the bind that we are now all in?

I do not think that that is the case at all. The opportunity that is available to us through our response to the Supreme Court judgment is that we can address the issue of clarity so that we have in place a framework that is easier to understand and more comprehensible for everybody—teacher or health visitor—who has to operate the system. Parents will have clarity about their rights and the wider framework within which the process operates.

I take that point, but it therefore logically follows that—with regard to Liz Smith’s earlier questions—the definition of wellbeing and all related factors are going to have to be crystal clear. Are we—I know that you will say that this could or could not happen—therefore going to have another court question about clarity? That is the bit that many see as being the most uncertain.

I do not agree with your last point. I think that the definition of wellbeing is clear, but I accept that it is not in law—that is the difference. Colleagues might not think that it is possible to define wellbeing, but I think that it is perfectly possible to define it. We define many things in life, and I believe that the wellbeing of our young people and children is perfectly definable. However, I accept that it is not in law, which is the hard point that the Supreme Court put to us.

In relation to the questions that Liz Smith asked earlier, wellbeing is different from welfare. We know what welfare looks like. The Supreme Court has done an excellent job in setting out what welfare is and what is triggered by it, and it is defined. However, to be consistent about this, the Supreme Court is able to do that because welfare is defined in law, and that is the point that I accept is not addressed by the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, but must be addressed to satisfy the Supreme Court.

09:45  

For the sake of absolute clarity, is the scheme that was introduced in the Highland Council area in 2008 exactly the same as the scheme that would have been introduced on 31 August this year?

No, because the particular legal framework that accompanies the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 was not in force in 2008.

In that case, why has the Scottish Government kept using Highland Council as the example for all local authorities across Scotland to follow?

For a number of very good reasons, not least of which is the fact that the application of the scheme in Highland reduced the number of referrals to the children’s reporter in the area from 2,335 in 2007 to 744 in 2013, which is a drop of 68 per cent, and there has been a sustained reduction of 15 to 20 per cent in the number of looked-after children. I think that those results are because Highland has been taking an early-intervention approach on these questions.

As is often the case in Scotland, good ideas that happen in one part of the country do not always happen in all parts of the country and do not always get implemented on a systemic basis. However, improvements of that magnitude in the support and nurture of children are benefits that I think need to be shared across the whole country.

Following on from Liz Smith’s line of questioning about whether local authorities have been acting lawfully following the judgment of the Supreme Court, I see that a number of local authorities are proceeding with the policy and others have taken the guidance off their websites. There seems to be a bit of confusion on the part of local authorities. Can you give a guarantee again that they are acting lawfully? What steps are you going to take to provide clarity to local authorities?

Even though it has been alleged for a number of years, I do not run every local authority in the country—[Interruption.] Tavish Scott is not allowed to make sedentary interventions at this point. We provide guidance, and we have done so in this instance, but each local authority is a self-governing body that must make its own decisions.

Will you invite professionals such as Maggie Mellon, the Scottish Parent Teacher Council and even people from the no to named person campaign to be part of the forthcoming engagement process? Will you attend any sessions with parents and practitioners to hear their concerns?

Yes, I will attend events personally, as will the Minister for Childcare and Early Years. On Saturday, I will meet the national parent forum of Scotland. I am not quite sure what its members want to discuss with me, but I will be happy to discuss this and any other issue with them as part of my on-going engagement with that body. I will be active in this discussion and I will be listening carefully. I will do that personally and I will absorb the points that are made to me.

On the point about other organisations, I will engage as widely as I can. I am not making a disrespectful point here, but the fact is that the no to named person campaign does not want to have a named person policy, so there is a bit of a fundamental policy disagreement there. I am happy to engage with people who will accept the principled arguments that I set out to Parliament last week about why we have gone down this route, and I am happy to engage with people who will respect the democratic will of Parliament—we should not forget that Parliament has legislated for this.

I hope that you will forgive me if I do not engage in conversations about consultation with people who want to ensure that we do not have a named person policy. We have a fundamental disagreement. Part of the challenge for those who took the legal challenge to the Supreme Court was to bring the policy to an end, and they failed to do that. The Supreme Court did not support them in that. I have the weight of the Supreme Court on my side on that question, as well as the weight of Parliament.

What I do not demur from in any way is the need to adequately, properly and fully address the issues that were raised in the Supreme Court judgment, and I am happy to engage widely on those questions, but I hope that you will understand that I do not see the value in discussing the question in principle, because I have made it clear to Parliament—and I have parliamentary authority to support me—that this policy will be implemented.

Thank you, cabinet secretary. I appreciate your response, although I give a gentle reminder that the no to named person campaign represents the weight of parental opinion as well. For clarification, will there be a consultation paper at the end of the three months?

I will give consideration to what follows the consultation period. There will obviously be proposals that will have to be set out for Parliament and I do not yet know what form they will take, so I will reserve my position on that.

I am interested in your position and in your comment that you will not have a discussion on the question in principle. I recognise that you can promote that principle, but I say to you in all seriousness that there are people who are concerned about the named person and who have their children’s interests at heart. They may not be actively involved with the organisation, but they are genuinely concerned and need to be persuaded. With respect, I am not sure that they will be persuaded by an argument that says, “Well, we’ve decided this and we can’t be shifted on it.” I know people who have fought every day for their children—including children with disabilities—who are genuinely concerned by the policy. I am not sure that closing the door to conversation with those people will help a policy that, in principle, I probably support in large part.

The question that I am interested in—and I worked in this field before—

Could I—

Could I make my point first? That was the kind of work I did when, as some might say, I still worked for a living. I therefore absolutely understand the need to recognise early signs of problems and to intervene early, but I am being told by people who work in schools, in third-sector organisations in our communities and in social work that the supports are not there in the way that they were in the past.

To what extent have you assessed whether the named person will, in reality, be able to access supports? Classroom assistants are not there in the same numbers. Attendance officers, home links teachers, behaviour support, education support and other supports in communities for children’s organisations to work with families are all reducing, because of financial pressures. We could end up having an academic argument about how to ensure that children are identified in order to access supports that might not be there.

First of all, I want to address the early part of your question. I have looked carefully at the issue, and I have to be mindful of what the Supreme Court judgment said. It tested the entire legal framework and judged that there were a certain number of issues that we had to address, and the Government will do so. If the Supreme Court had said that the policy contradicted basic rights, we would be in a very different situation today, but it did not say that.

Having had that tested in the last court in which it could be tested in the United Kingdom, we have the ability to take forward the legislation, and that is what Parliament has decided. Parliament has legislated for it, I support it and I have no reason to believe that there is not a parliamentary majority to support the legislation today. Regardless of that, the legislation has been passed by Parliament and I have a specific challenge to address the issues identified by the Supreme Court. I was not taking an arbitrary stance in my comments to Ross Thomson; I was simply making the point that if there are people in a campaigning organisation who are implacably opposed to named person, I am not sure that I see the value of a conversation between me and them.

However, the people about whom you are talking are the same as those about whom Daniel Johnson was talking: parents who look at the policy and think, “Wait a minute. What does this represent? I am not certain about this.” I have to win the argument with those individuals and persuade them, but I cannot do that by saying that I am not sure whether we will have a named person scheme.

For many of the same reasons as you have, although we had different personal experiences in our working lives before we came to the Parliament, and from the body of my constituency experience as a member of Parliament over the past 19 years, I believe in my heart that such a policy intervention is the right thing to introduce and will help to improve the wellbeing and opportunities of young people in our society. I have to make that case persuasively and I accept that responsibility, as I did in my answer to Daniel Johnson.

The second part of your question is material. If we say to young people and their families in Scotland that if they have difficulties the named person will be a point of contact to enable them to access resources to support them, we have to be able to deliver on that. We have that obligation and that is why, in challenging financial circumstances, we have taken the decision to try to support the provision of wider interventions to close the attainment gap, through the attainment challenge, for example. That dominates a large number of the other responsibilities that I carry as Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills.

Some of those issues will be challenging for us. In the data that were published last week and discussed at First Minister’s question time, we saw the substantial rise in mental health referrals among young people. I accept that the waits for mental health service interventions are too long, but part of that is explained by the fact that we have had a 30 per cent increase in mental health referrals in one year. The Government has to address that trend properly and fully, to ensure that young people can receive the support to which they are entitled.

You asked a fair question and put a fair challenge to me that it is important that we have in place the support that can address any issues that are raised with us as a consequence of the policy approach.

Does that mean that you would consider looking more generally at local government budgets? The issue is not only the increase in mental health referrals, which has been discussed. I contend that early intervention with some of our young people would prevent issues being referred as mental health issues, because they might be about circumstances in the family. The services around a child make a fundamental difference to closing the attainment gap and are also important in the issues that you identify. We need to examine what is happening in our schools and communities. Third-sector organisations have already flagged up to me the resources that are available to them to work in our communities with families that need support. Will you commit to reviewing that? I think that, if you examine the issue honestly and with some rigour, you will find that you need to redirect towards local government resources that have been directed away from it.

I consider all those questions habitually; they are part and parcel of the work that I do. I accept that the fulfilment of the potential of every young person in Scotland is not simply determined by what goes on between 9 o’clock and half past 3 in school; it is about a much wider set of interventions, in which local authorities are significantly involved. I consider those questions on a sustained basis, which is reflected in the Government’s policy agenda.

Cabinet secretary, you have talked a little about the policy roll-out in Highland, as have some of my colleagues. It is very encouraging to hear that that has led to fewer referrals to the reporter and fewer child protection referrals. The point is that it is leading to less state intervention, which addresses one of the criticisms of the policy. If the policy gets parliamentary approval and is rolled out throughout the country, will the results be similar in other authority areas?

10:00  

There is an important point in your question, to which I should have referred in my answer to Johann Lamont. It is the fact that earlier intervention has the potential to reduce the long-term demand on public services. That is what the Highland data suggest. Exercising the named person responsibility and intervening at an earlier stage potentially reduces the case load and the volume of activity that is required in the medium to longer term. A real benefit arises out of that approach, and it is a product of the good example that we have seen in Highland.

Tavish Scott raised concerns about whether parents and families can opt in and out of the named person scheme. If people can opt in and out, what will the process be for individuals who have opted out when the primary sectors identify a level of risk? Will that just lead to the child protection process being initiated?

To address that point, we will have to consider the questions of consent that the Supreme Court properly put in front of us and, as part of that, codify the approach that we take in relation to individuals’ participation in the named person policy. There is a clearly codified approach to child protection, with which you will be conversant from your employment as a social worker before you came into the Parliament. The Supreme Court marshalled that for us in its judgment. If there is an assessment of risk, that is tangibly undertaken within the child protection system and appropriate action can be taken in that context.

I am anxious to make the distinction between child protection interventions, which happen where there is a high level of risk, and the named person policy, which is about early intervention to seek assistance for young people and their families, to try to remedy issues before they become more challenging for the individuals concerned. If we can strike the right balance in that, it will address the point in your earlier question about the opportunity to reduce the long-term demand on public services by intervening before problems become acute.

Thank you for bringing up my previous employment. My experience, which includes a number of years of working in child protection, indicates that the policy will be of great benefit if it is approved by the Parliament. In picking up on Tavish Scott’s point, I probably did not phrase my question correctly; I was raising a concern about what would happen if that part of the legislation was not implemented, rather than making an outright criticism.

I am interested in the work that is being done around engagement with public petitioners and those who have concerns. You have alluded to the concerns that parents have. There might have been some misleading information from tabloid journalism, which is obviously an issue that we will have to deal with.

One of the things that I hear most when we are talking about child protection is that there is a lack of advocacy for children, but no one has asked about that. There are children out there right now who have a named person and who rely on that person, whether they are in the Highlands or in an area where they have someone who is a named person in all but name, such as a guidance teacher. How will you engage with those children and reassure them that the support that they need will be there during the process and their views will be taken into account? That is what has been lacking this morning—a discussion about engaging with the children who are going to be affected by the legislation.

We have a number of different organisations in Scotland that are tremendously well connected with young people. As part of my plan, I want to work with those organisations to try to have some of that dialogue. If the Scottish Government wheels up to have a consultation with young people, it might be more productive if we do that under the auspices of other organisations. I have yet to make specific proposals about that, but I will discuss the matter with some of the very good organisations that foster and encourage dialogue with young people within Scotland, to ensure that we can have the conversation and can understand their perspective fully and properly. That is just as important in the exercise as it is to have the proper and effective engagement with parents and other stakeholders.

I go back to my earlier point about the tabloid journalism on the subject, which has certainly been very damaging. I have to declare a certain amount of interest: my husband is a guidance teacher and he tells me that he is effectively acting as a named person. The tabloids have used terms such as “state snooper”, which can be offensive to people who are doing very hard work. What message do you have for people such as my husband and other guidance teachers, who are acting as named persons and who are being subjected to that kind of language?

I made clear in Parliament last week my views on the debilitating effect of such commentary on the individuals on whom we rely every single day of the week to provide nurture and support to our children and young people in Scotland. I very much value the contribution of those individuals. I appreciate that it has not been a pleasant experience for them to see their work labelled in that fashion, and I commit myself—as I said in response to Daniel Johnson—to trying to change some of those attitudes and perspectives as a consequence of the leadership that I give in communicating what I think is an extremely valuable and important policy for supporting the wellbeing of young people in Scotland.

I have a final question, to which you may not yet have an answer. One of the things that I discovered when speaking to people about the issue was that they were supportive of the policy in principle but had some niggling concerns about the kind of things that Tavish Scott and Fulton MacGregor mentioned, such as whether people can opt in and out of the named person scheme. I agree with Fulton MacGregor that that is not an ideal situation at all, but a child might want to change their named person if they had an issue with them or were not comfortable with them for whatever reason. Could that be looked at?

That is possible within the existing scheme that was legislated for. I answered an question from Mr Scott—it might have been an intervention—on one of the earlier occasions when the issue was discussed in Parliament, to clarify that that is the case. If families wish to have a different named person for some reason, that can be done as part of the existing framework.

Thank you.

I want to ask about the plans for communicating with parents. As a constituency MSP, I have been contacted over the past year or two by several people who have genuine concerns, and by others who couched their comments in wider concerns about the SNP Government on a range of issues. I am aware that there is some hysteria and misinformation out there. How does the Government plan to communicate with parents in a clear, articulate, simple way, so that people can understand what the truth is?

As a long-serving and experienced former cabinet secretary, Mr Lochhead will understand that that obligation rests pretty firmly on my shoulders. I have accepted throughout the whole process that we have a significant challenge to build public confidence in the policy. I intend to do that, because I think that it is the right policy, but we need to explain the arguments for the named person, the resource that it will represent to families and young people in Scotland and the advantages that it conveys for those individuals. We are obviously communicating that in an atmosphere in which many other, much more negative messages are being communicated, and that is a challenge for the Government, but I can assure you that that will be done energetically and emphatically by ministers.

I thank the cabinet secretary and his officials for a very useful session this morning.

10:10 Meeting suspended.  

10:13 On resuming—