Subordinate Legislation
Population (Statistics) Act 1938 Modifications (Scotland) Order 2012 [Draft]
Our fourth agenda item is evidence on a draft order. Under this item, members will have the opportunity to ask technical questions or seek clarification on the order. Then, under agenda item 5, the committee will be invited to consider the motion to recommend approval of the order.
I welcome Humza Yousaf to his new role as Minister for External Affairs and International Development. As this is the first time that he has appeared before the committee, I congratulate him on his appointment. I also welcome Judith Brown, solicitor with the Scottish Government’s legal directorate, and Kirsty MacLachlan, head of demography with the National Records of Scotland. I invite the minister to make a brief opening statement.
The Minister for External Affairs and International Development (Humza Yousaf)
Thank you, convener. I am grateful for the opportunity to say briefly why the order is needed and to answer any questions that members have. I should say that this is my first appearance as a minister before not only this committee, but any committee. Things seem somewhat different from this side of the table.
Under the existing legislation, when a birth or stillbirth is registered, certain details are provided,
“except where the birth is of an illegitimate child”.
That should be changed, because the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006 abolished the status of illegitimacy. Wherever possible, the registration process should collect exactly the same kind of information whether the birth is within or outwith a marriage.
The existing legislation also specifies that if the parents of a child are a married couple, the mother should be asked whether she has been married before her current marriage. Again, the wording of the legislation needs to be brought up to date, in this case to take account of the possibility that the mother is or has been in a civil partnership.
If the order were to be approved, the main change to the registration process would be that the mother’s number of previous live births would be collected in all cases rather than only when the parents were married. That would give us much better statistics about the fertility of Scotland’s population than can currently be produced; indeed, at the moment, such information is collected for only about half of all births. That more comprehensive data could inform research into fertility and enable more accurate population projections, which could be used for planning processes for schools, hospitals and so on.
In the spring, the registrar general consulted various interested parties, including local authorities, which are responsible for registering births and stillbirths; national health service boards; some other relevant organisations and some users of population statistics. No objections were raised to the proposal; indeed, 25 out of 28 respondents stated that they supported it without any reservation whatever. The general consensus, therefore, seems to be that the order is needed.
I hope that those remarks have been helpful and am, of course, more than happy to answer members’ questions. I also hope that the committee recommends that the order be approved.
Thank you, ministers. Do members have any technical questions or points of clarification for the minister or his officials?
The minister suggested that there was broad support for the measure. I can certainly see why that should be, but he also indicated that two or three people expressed reservations. What was the nature of those reservations? Were they technical?
I think that concerns have been expressed in the past about why such data is collected only from mothers and not from fathers but I think—and officials can step in here—that there were reservations about whether the process would be handled tactfully. After all, some of the information that we are dealing with can be quite sensitive.
Kirsty MacLachlan (National Records of Scotland)
Mr Yousaf is quite correct. Of all the suggestions and comments that we received, only two responses expressed real concern about the sensitivity of the data and asked whether instead of getting information on all births we could drop the whole matter altogether. We do not want to do that because we would lose the potential to collect information to inform fertility projections.
We were also asked why such information was asked only of mothers, and not of men. Again, the reason for that is that fertility relates to women of child-bearing age rather than men.
So it is not simply because men do not know.
Thanks for that point of clarification, Mr McArthur.
Although paragraph 15 of the executive note says that the order will have
“very little effect on NRS”
the fact is that a considerable amount of additional information will be collected. The note then says that the reason it will have so little effect is that
“it can very easily change its computer system and forms”. [Laughter.]
I do not want to sound pessimistic about this, but I have heard that a number of times before. Indeed, I note the laughter from members when I mentioned the prospect of changing computer systems “very easily”. What steps has NRS taken to upgrade its computer systems? Minister, can you guarantee that what has been suggested in the executive note can indeed be done “very easily”?
Before I was in my current position, I was a member of the Public Audit Committee, which often took great delight in hearing people make promises about changing systems; indeed, those who had been members of the committee for a number of years would return to that very point.
I will ask officials to write back to the committee with clarification on the matter. Many respondents asked whether the information could be collected from the NHS; however, when various data sets were taken, it became clear that we could not get the information that we needed from that source and that it would be very difficult for us to change the NHS’s systems to do so. We recognise that there can be difficulties but we hope that our chosen route will be a lot easier and less disruptive to information systems.
12:45
I would be interested to see what officials have to say in writing. The problem is that, in about one minute’s time, we will take a vote on the order. Can officials provide any evidence now on the steps that the NRS has taken on the computer systems?
The fields are already in the system. At present, the mother is asked whether she was married before her marriage to the child’s father and should answer yes or no. If she answers no, she will not be asked about the previous number of children within marriage. The only change is that, now, she will be asked that question. The fields are there, in the computer system, to record the information; there is really just a difference in process. The change will be that registrars will have different instructions about what to do when someone comes to register. They will ask for not only previous births within marriage, but previous births full stop.
So it is a minor change in what is being asked and for the computer system.
Yes.
If members have no other questions, we will move to agenda item 5, which is formal consideration of the motion to approve the order.
Motion moved,
That the Education and Culture Committee recommends that the Population (Statistics) Act 1938 Modifications (Scotland) Order 2012 [draft] be approved.—[Humza Yousaf.]
Motion agreed to.
12:46 Meeting suspended.
12:47 On resuming—
Elmwood College, Oatridge College and The Barony College (Transfer and Closure) (Scotland) Order 2012 (SSI 2012/237)
Jewel and Esk College and Stevenson College Edinburgh (Transfer and Closure) (Scotland) Order 2012 (SSI 2012/238)
The next agenda item is consideration of two negative statutory instruments. No motion to annul has been lodged in respect of either instrument and the Subordinate Legislation Committee determined that it did not need to draw the attention of Parliament to either of them. Do members have any comments?
On the order concerning Elmwood College, Oatridge College and the Barony College, there are significant concerns about the merger. A number of representations have been made to me on the matter, and I have taken a deputation of people from the colleges to meet the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning.
The concern is that this is a forced takeover rather than a merger. I understand that the board at Oatridge College voted by a majority of just one to approve the process, and there is a feeling that the concerns of staff and students have been ignored and that, in general, the takeover by the Scottish Agricultural College is based on the commercial nature of the SAC rather than on its academic work.
Morale among staff is extremely low, and the colleges have great concerns about local access.
I put those concerns on record.
I might not have received the volume of correspondence on the matter that Neil Findlay has, but I was copied into concerns that were circulated around committee members earlier in the week.
There seem to be questions about some of the financial assumptions that have been made, and it would be useful to get responses to the concerns from the Scottish Government or the SAC before we sign off on the order. If there is scope to do that, I would be keen for us to pursue that option.
Both of those points relate to the order concerning Elmwood College, Oatridge College and the Barony College. Do members want to make any points on the order concerning Jewel and Esk College and Stevenson College?
Members: No.
I will deal with the orders separately, as there are questions about only one of them.
On Liam McArthur’s question, we have time to ask for a response to the concerns. We do not have to make a recommendation on the order today.
I take note of the concerns that Neil Findlay has raised on behalf of his constituents and agree with some of them. I suggest that we seek a response from the Government to the questions and to the issues that were raised in the e-mail that was sent to members by one of the individuals concerned, to which Liam McArthur referred.
A number of questions must be answered. With the committee’s consent, I will seek those answers before we proceed with SSI 2012/237.
I am somewhat surprised that the policy note for SSI 2012/237 says that consultation was pursued with the education authorities in the colleges’ areas and with the funding council. Given that the proposal affects the agricultural sector in a huge part of Scotland, was it wise to limit the consultation or should it have been extended throughout the agricultural areas from where the students would be expected to come?
We can add that question to the others that we will raise with the Government.
Are members content that I write to the Government to ask questions about SSI 2012/237 and to deal with the order at a future meeting?
Members indicated agreement.
Does the committee agree to make no recommendation to the Parliament on SSI 2012/238?
Members indicated agreement.
As the committee has agreed to deal with the next item of business in private, I now close the meeting to the public.
12:51 Meeting continued in private until 13:19.