Official Report 326KB pdf
Item 3 is on disclosure requirements and follows up evidence that we heard from Disclosure Scotland on 27 October. We agreed to ask the Scottish Parliament information centre to look at current research on the impact of disclosure requirements on voluntary organisations and to consider where we might take matters further.
Paragraphs 15 and 16 are the crucial parts of the paper. We hope that they crystallise the aims of the research that the committee suggested should be considered. In paragraph 17, the options include a small-scale piece of work that could be done by SPICe, a longer piece of research that could be commissioned and a larger-scale survey that would involve quantitative and qualitative work. The three options are, respectively, small, medium and large, which would have results coming soon, a bit later or a bit later still. If the committee is happy with the terms of reference and the aims of the research, the question is what kind of research members would like to pursue.
The fact that the Protection of Children (Scotland) Act 2003 is coming into force gives us a time constraint. I do not think that there has been an announcement about that yet, but I think that one is imminent. That means that, if we are to have any influence on events, we will need something sooner rather than later.
I very much support the principle that we should have further research and pursue option 1. There is a danger that we will be overtaken by events unless we have a short and effective piece of work that is produced within a reasonably tight timescale. I remember that, some years ago, one of the Westminster committees did a report on employment in Scotland, which took it a year. By the time the report was produced, it had been totally overtaken by events, as the Government had introduced many measures that pre-empted its conclusions. A short, small-scale piece of work does not rule out further research, but it would allow us to make relevant recommendations.
I wrote to the minister after the previous meeting, from which a number of urgent issues seemed to emerge relating to, for example, guidance to voluntary organisations, parent-teacher organisations and others, and whether there needed to be disclosures. We wanted to get a clearer idea from the minister about whether guidance could be revamped and whether something a bit more helpful could be produced; we did not want the guidance simply to say that it is up to people to make assessments, which is unrealistic for a PTA and similar organisations. We need a clear idea of when and in what circumstances people are supposed to look for disclosure and when they are not.
Our discussion of disclosures came out of our initial inquiry into child protection, one of the themes of which was the need for a public debate and for wider understanding about elements of risk. Perhaps the issue boils down to people being overcautious about what they perceive as a risk. A short-term qualitative investigation would help policy review and could help to inform the guidance. I agree that that matter needs to be dealt with most urgently.
It would certainly be sensible to ask Disclosure Scotland to do that. However, the information that umbrella organisations provided us with would be a bit more anecdotal, unless they kept a very close eye on the situation.
We could ask them to do that; they might be more than willing to carry out such monitoring, because it is obviously in their interest to do so. I know that they have serious concerns.
Voluntary organisations such as YouthLink and its associated bodies have been the driver in highlighting the difficulties. They are very concerned about some of the implications of the act's implementation.
Although I echo some of the points that have been made, I come to a different conclusion. I totally agree with the convener that there is an urgent need for guidance and that we need to keep a sense of proportion through some sort of risk assessment. We mention risk assessment in relation to recruitment in paragraph 16, but that is not the type of risk assessment that was being referred to. We need to ask who needs disclosure checks, in what circumstances they need them and what guidance people can use and refer to. It is clear to me that people will need the comfort of Executive guidance because, if they are left to their own devices, they will always err on the side of caution. We have a duty to help people. We should not hang about, so I am glad that the convener has already written to the minister on the matter. We need to stress to the Executive the need to work on such guidance.
At one point, the figure of 500,000 was mentioned.
The size of the figure could undermine the protection that is offered by disclosure. In evidence that we received two weeks ago, someone said that, by carrying out such a large number of disclosure checks, we undermine any guarantee of safety, because the piece of paper becomes less valuable.
The process becomes nominal—it becomes a box-ticking exercise.
Exactly. My point is that we need hard empirical evidence on the act's impact. That impact will change as the number of disclosure checks increases this year.
To some extent, one option could lead to the other. The short-term inquiry could tell us whether we need to go much further. We can specifically ask whether the Executive is doing anything in that regard. That kind of assessment would normally be its ball-game.
I was more attracted to option 3 than to the others, even though I was not able to read the complete set of papers. Which option we decide on depends on what we want to achieve by doing the research. Are we attempting to influence the implementation of the legislation? If so, what chance is there that anything that we do at this late stage will do that? I got the impression that the legislation was to be implemented early next year.
That is right, but I think that there is a suggestion that the implementation will be phased. There is no way that 500,000 disclosures could be dealt with in the next three months.
How much could anything that we do influence the process, given that the process is about to start? Alternatively, are we conducting a piece of post-legislative scrutiny, in which case we would want to have more quantitative evidence and possibly consider whether there is a need to amend the law if it is not working well in practice. That is a different exercise.
I think that we will have an influence on how the process is carried out. That might be more the case in connection with my letter on behalf of the committee than in connection with later work. You are right to say that the decision about what will be done will be made by early spring. At the same time, if the act is implemented in stages, we will have an opportunity to have an input with regard to how the process rolls out and what happens later on. The situation does not mean that we should not do some small-scale early work on the subject. You are right, however, to say that, beyond that point, we would be involved in post-legislative scrutiny.
If we find that there is an impact, which we already think that there will be, all we will be doing is reinforcing what we already know and, perhaps, giving it some scale. Ken Macintosh is right to say that we have had a reasonable steer so far. We are not assuming that the legislation needs changed—it might do, but that is a longer-term issue. The issue that concerns us is the interpretation of the current legislation.
We can influence the guidance.
Those points of view can be combined with the point of view that I expressed. In each spending round—and I understand that decisions still have to be made for this spending round—the Executive considers what research projects will be undertaken. If we sent a letter suggesting that option 3 should be funded, I see no reason why the Executive should not do so. At the same time, it would be a pity if we were to lose out on the opportunity to gather input from option 1. If the worst came to the worst and the Executive told us that it wanted to fund other research programmes, that would not prevent SPICe from pursuing option 3 after option 1. Obviously, that would be a less desirable outcome, but it would meet Ken Macintosh's concerns and mine.
That is a good suggestion. Do we agree to follow it?
I will circulate the letter that I will write and we will follow up with the Executive the possibility of longer-term research. We will proceed with option 1 in order to get some early input.
As I said, the matter that we are discussing arose as a result of the child protection inquiry. The Executive responded to the report of that inquiry. I met the health, social work and education authorities in Edinburgh yesterday in connection with the O'Brien report and would like to know whether we have bid for a debate on the subject. The issue affects a lot of people in Scotland.
We have not done so, but it is conceivable that we could. There seems to be a shortage of options for committee debates at the moment and I think that we might be able to get a spot if we wanted to.
Did we not have a debate on child protection the week after the O'Brien report was published?
There was a ministerial statement; I cannot remember whether there was a debate. However, that was specifically on the issues arising out of that case, I think.
On child protection.
Yes, we had a debate on child protection.
Was that not some time ago?
Well, yes. When was it?
I think that it was before we did our inquiry.
It probably was.
It was prior to our doing our inquiry.
That is right. I had a sense that, when we finished our inquiry, we had not added huge value in some areas to what was known already. Then, out of the woodwork, there began to crawl more of the Disclosure Scotland issues that led us to pursue our inquiry further. We now have the original report plus the Disclosure Scotland evidence and the information that we have gathered about the background issues. There is a wider dimension on which we could have a debate if we were so minded.
You are saying that we did not add a great amount, but the officials in Edinburgh to whom I spoke yesterday are saying that some of the continuing issues are the ones that we talked about in our conclusions. Issues on information sharing and systems are very real and current and I think that it would be helpful to the sector to have a debate. We have the legislation and we are not likely to have a report on anything else that we would want parliamentary time to debate. I just flag that up, as it may help to inform the contribution that we make on the disclosure issue.
Okay. Personally, I would be in favour of that. There is plenty of information to debate if we want to do that. We could raise that with the powers that be and see whether there is a slot for us.
We could also ask specifically about the research exercise.
Yes. We will pursue that as well, but that takes us in a different direction.