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We move to item 7 on our agenda. I invite Alison Cleland to join us at the big table. Alison is our adviser for the children's commissioner inquiry and will, I hope, take us through the good and thorough paper that is before us. On behalf of the committee, I thank her for that. It is an excellent piece of work and helps us to focus our minds on where we are and where we need to go. That is exactly what we need to do. I appreciate the fact that Alison is giving advice and information to the committee, and I am sure that we will find that helpful and informative in our deliberations on this matter.
This is the first time that I have been involved in work of this kind, so I ask members to direct me as they see fit. If I am not answering the questions that they want me to answer, they should let me know what issues I should address.
Absolutely.
I also indicated the number of responses, to give members an idea of the feeling that exists concerning this matter. Members were present at the seminar in June and will have a good idea of the priorities of those who attended it. However, I wanted to crystallise the issues that were given top priority. For example, point 11 on page 1 of the paper states:
I do not think so. Please carry on.
It is clear from the written evidence that has been submitted to the committee and from the inquiries in Wales and Northern Ireland that there is real support for making the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which I shall call UNCROC, the focus for a children's commissioner. The same view is expressed in online and written information that is available from New Zealand and Norway, for example. However, the committee needs to ask itself whether it wants a commissioner to investigate the extent to which Scotland has implemented the UN convention. That is a huge piece of work in itself. The commissioner could gather information that would be vital for anybody who wanted to check whether the convention had been implemented in full.
What you have said is absolutely right. Clearly, the Government needs to deliver on the implementation of the convention. However, if the commissioner were investigating that, they would not be able to do all the other things that they have been asked to do and that might eventually make a difference. We need to ask what a commissioner could achieve and what difference they could make by investigating implementation of UNCROC. I would be concerned if we were to go down that route.
That is worthy of further investigation. I would not want us to absolve the Government of responsibility for implementing the UNCROC. It is the Government's responsibility to take that forward and to ensure that it makes progress. The commissioner may have a role in monitoring that. Perhaps we should investigate the issue further with the people who will give evidence to the committee in the coming weeks.
I absolutely agree. If the ethos of a commissioner is bedded in children's rights, that is something that we cannot ignore. Like Cathy Peattie, I do not think that investigation is solely the responsibility of the commissioner, but the commissioner would have a role in ensuring that those obligations were recognised and adhered to in a way that currently does not happen.
I agree that that is wise, Irene. The commissioner's role may well be to facilitate young people questioning whether Government is delivering rather than to question it themselves. The creation of a commissioner is about promoting children's rights and about children seeking their rights. The commissioner has a role of facilitating, rather than simply being involved in—
That role should perhaps be stronger than facilitating.
I am trying to be—
It is worthy of further investigation.
I took the fifth and sixth arguments, about public awareness of the rights and welfare of children and the lack of positive profile, together. I said at the top of page 3 of the summary that the committee might want to accept the arguments, at least in part. Although many of the organisations talked about the negative coverage of children and young people in the media—and presumably committee members can think of examples of that—it might be useful to have more concrete examples, rather than just a feeling, to go on for a report.
I am slightly concerned about the way in which the fifth argument is phrased. That is not a criticism. The committee has to be careful about endorsing a view that the public is similarly unaware of the rights and welfare of children. Many people would say to themselves that although there are some spectacular examples of inability to take care of children's welfare and although it is a commonplace that there is no real understanding of children's rights, it is not a commonplace that there is no appreciation of children's welfare.
People have made that argument in giving evidence to the committee. We have to decide whether we accept that argument. Mike Russell is right that there is an issue about that.
We are not talking about organisations that exist or individuals that are called into being because there is widespread contempt for or neglect of the welfare of individual children. That would be an item on which we would lose sympathy rather than gain sympathy.
As Mike Russell said, there are some spectacular cases of failure. The example from Glasgow of the wee girl with the plaster is the one that springs to mind. That was outrageous, but generally the situation is not as bad as that.
I accept the comment about making sweeping statements. There are a number of organisations, such as Children 1st and Barnardos, which have run advertising campaigns to raise awareness about child abuse. Mike Russell was quite right to say that there is an understanding about welfare that does not appear in the paper. There might be organisations that would argue that there is not an understanding of abuse, of what it means and of how it is experienced. I do not know whether the committee wants to take more information on that.
It opens up an area of philosophical difficulty, in the light of last week's debate on the physical punishment of children. There are issues such as the relationship between children and parents and parenting that we are going to have to think through carefully. Those are not simple issues in terms of inalienable rights; they are confused by the relationships, which we need to consider.
However, if we keep the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as our starting point, everything else flows from that; it contains clear and specifically outlined rights. The use of the word welfare implies that when those rights are breached, as they are every day either wittingly or unwittingly by people and organisations, children's welfare suffers.
That raises a deep philosophical point.
That is probably the crux of our debate.
That is a matter for considerable exploration. I do not disagree with what Irene McGugan said, but we need to explore that issue carefully.
It is also one of those areas that is open to considerable interpretation.
Indeed.
That is where some of the emotive, and not always helpful, language comes from. We need to consider the issue in some detail at a future point.
I do not undermine and I have a strong support for the role of the children's commissioner, but as we examine that closely, we will want to explore those issues carefully. It is also important that the idea of a children's commissioner is supported by people right across the community, including those people who have never thought about it. Those people have to be approached properly.
That is the crux of what we are doing. Until now, many people would see the suggestion of a children's commissioner as a motherhood and apple pie type of suggestion. They would not see the relevance. We have to take those people with us as well as the people who are committed and have bought into the project.
The ninth argument is about legal representation.
Did we deal with arguments 7 and 8?
No, we did not. I am sorry.
I have a slight reservation about wording again. We have to be careful about saying that the children have "no social or political power". Do you think that that is absolutely true? Children have very limited social and political power and we want to empower them more. The sweeping statement that they have none is not entirely true. It is not worth quibbling about but we have to be careful about how we express statements.
You are right, but the evidence that we have heard has been from people who would say that children have no way of expressing themselves. Alison is expressing—
The report says:
That is precisely why I worded the arguments as I did. On page 1, I have given you the arguments without any gloss from me. Those are the arguments as they appeared. If they did not appear or if they did not have support, they are not in the paper. The committee will not come to the same conclusions; it may decide that it does not accept them.
I do not accept that children have no social power, except perhaps at a very low level. That is my only reservation. I stress it because the way in which we talk about this subject will be very important indeed as we go through the inquiry.
If we accept that, we are devaluing the role that children and young people have when they make representations to people such as ourselves. When they come to visit us at surgeries, when they lobby us on various issues and when they speak to organisations, they have some influence, although they do not have as much influence as I would like them to have or as much as they should have.
The difference between the way in which the argument is stated on pages 1 and 2, and the statement on page 3 to which our attention has been drawn, is that the word "real" has been dropped. The earlier statement says:
It may be the case that the only way of giving people political power is to give them the vote, but you cannot give the vote to a two-year-old, a seven-year-old or a nine-year-old. People can have political power in other ways than by having a vote. They can lobby people, and advocate for and discuss things with people.
But is that real power?
In some ways, it is far more important than putting a cross on a ballot paper.
How would you ensure real power? By giving votes to two-year-olds?
No. That is not what I am advocating. I am saying that we need some alternative, which might be a commissioner, to compensate for that lack.
I do not think that any of us disagrees, but it is not a question of semantics. Semantics can be comparatively pointless, as you and I have often said. The reality is that, as the convener has said, this is a motherhood-and-apple-pie issue. If we approach it as wild-eyed radicals who are determined to give children the vote at two—and I am not saying that you are—certain elements in society and the press will not help us. We have a good, sensible proposal for something that needs to happen and is long overdue, so let us be careful how we propose it.
There is some validity in what Mike Russell says. Sensitivity in the use of language is important, because different people have different perspectives. For example, it is interesting to see how church organisations have responded, in person and in writing, on the treatment of children under the age of three. God's love does not seem to come across in the letters that we have received from some folk.
There are adults who argue that they do not have political and economic power in any way, shape or form. If we structure our approach as suggested in the paper and progress on that basis, we will not emerge with a result that everybody will sign up to, because it will have been devalued in the process by people who did not want it to succeed in the first place. If, however, we accept that children have limited social and political power, that there is a need for that to be developed further, and that there is a need for children to be able to express their views more effectively at a political and policy level, that is—
That is closer to what we might coalesce round.
I do not think that we will agree, as there are already many different feelings around the table. Simply to say no is too cut and dried.
We need to be cautious about our language. We want to listen to what people think and to gather evidence. Although we need to be clear about what is written down and what our aims are, I do not think that every i and t in the paper before us today is particularly important. The report that results from our inquiry will be more important. I worry that we may be getting bogged down in the debate on language.
Let us start as we mean to go on.
We must be clear about our remit, and we could have endless arguments about who has power. The convener is right to mention the fact that there are people and communities who also feel that they have no power, even if they can vote. There are many issues around the question of what power means. I am less worried about the language, but we need to be clear about what we want to do.
Have we had much evidence from children and young people themselves, or has the evidence really been only from organisations that seek to represent children and young people?
We have received submissions only from organisations that have worked with young people. However, Who Cares? Scotland was one of the organisations that did not send written evidence, so that is a gap. No youth organisations have sent in written evidence so far.
At the event that we held, it struck me that the views and attitudes of the organisations, or vested interests, were often diametrically opposed to the views and aspirations of the young people. If we accept the arguments that the organisations have made, there may be young people out there who will say, "You're not on. We have done this ourselves by doing this, and we showed that we had teeth and we had power." We must be careful. I do not want us to tell those young people, "Well, you didn't really have power, because this organisation says you don't have any power, so you couldn't possibly have done that."
I totally agree with that, and I can suggest another reason why there is a gap in the evidence from young people themselves and young people's organisations. We have always referred to a children's commissioner, but there may be some doubt about the age range that we are talking about. Perhaps young people in their teens feel that a children's commissioner has little if any relevance to them. We may need to clarify at an early stage exactly what age range we are considering.
Irene McGugan is right. Several organisations that are involved with children are keen to have a children's commissioner. However, some organisations that would describe themselves as youth organisations have reservations about the post. We need some clarity. Are we talking about children or young people? Are we proposing a young persons' commissioner? The situation has been dealt with well in Wales and elsewhere. We need to be sure of our target audience and of whom we need to gather evidence from. If organisations are not gathering that evidence, we need the mechanisms to do it ourselves, or the help of other people to do it.
At the seminar, it was suggested that young people up to the age of 25 might come under the commissioner's remit. However, there were not many supporters of that idea. I agree with Cathy Peattie and Irene McGugan that there is a need for clarity. The title of the post will make a difference.
That is a key question to ask those from whom we will seek evidence. The choice is between a children's commissioner, a children and young persons' commissioner and a young persons' commissioner. Those titles will mean different things to different people. The age range of the young people might be up to 12, 16, 18, 21 or 25. All those proposals may attract support, and we will have to make a decision at some point. I am sure that, when the issue is debated in Parliament, amendments will be suggested to whatever we decide, as others will have different views. Nevertheless, we must try to gather further evidence on the subject.
At the seminar on the children's commissioner, there was no consensus on the age range. The majority of people chose to set the limit at 18, but many chose to set it at 16 and some chose to set it at 26. Several voluntary organisations also thought that the under-12s are ignored more often, and had an interest in suggesting that the commissioner should address that. The jury was out on the question.
We need to address this matter, especially in the light of what is happening with the children's hearing system and children's and young people's rights to representation in that system. We must obtain more evidence on that subject from the Scottish Child Law Centre, the Law Society of Scotland, the panel and the reporters system. We must also question the ministers on their plans for the future representation of young people at court hearings. We need to address that issue under the European convention on human rights.
I apologise. I did not refer to that because I was not sure how far you wanted me to go at this stage. I dealt simply with what is in the paper, although there are obviously many other issues.
We need to explore that issue further in detail.
I have a question on legal representation. I am the convener of the Scottish Child Law Centre—that was known when the committee received my application—but there may be a conflict between what I advise and the centre's views. I just flag that up at this stage.
We accept that you will act impartially in your role as the adviser to the committee and that, if evidence is submitted by the centre, you will put it before us just as you would any other evidence. If we had had any doubt about that, we would not have accepted you as the adviser to the committee.
Thank you.
It would be useful for us to see that information.
I wondered whether you would want to direct me regarding other information about that. The paper on the public sector ombudsman addresses the same issue that the committee might want to consider—whether an ombudsman should cover all issues or whether there should be an ombudsman with different departments. For example, do we want the commissioner to cover all children's issues, or do we want issues such as abuse to be covered separately? That is the kind of pertinent question that we should ask.
It would be useful to get some information on that.
That point is linked to the point that was made about UNCROC. The Scottish Executive education department has two divisions. The children and families division says, in its public statement, that it has a particular interest in young people's views on policies. The information analysis and communication division says that it has a particular interest in gathering statistical information about children. It has been suggested that the commissioner's remit would extend to those two specific areas, and several obvious questions follow from that. What do the two divisions do? How do they get their information? Would they be able to feed in that information to the commissioner? Would the commissioner be able to require the divisions to give information? Would there be liaison?
I may be out of touch, but my experience of working with young people and finding out what they want and what they regard as important leads me to believe that they are fairly reasonable. Their views are sensible and realistic. Young people may want to do this, that and the next thing, but those who have been involved in participation exercises air their views with clarity. My experience is that their aims are realistic. They want to be treated the same as everyone else.
When we enter into discussions with children and young people, it is most important to be honest with them. Far too often, people have unrealistic expectations of what children can and cannot do. Children then become disillusioned and disenfranchised because they have been made to make promises that they cannot keep.
I have summarised the suggestions that have been made. I come now to the second part of the question—whether there is a need for a children's commissioner. Even if we accept all the arguments that have been advanced, what about the views of other organisations? I am aware that there might be agencies that are unknown to those who submitted evidence, but which are known to members of the committee.
Alison Cleland has touched on some extremely interesting points. Like her, we are aware of other countries where such a proposal has been implemented successfully. We can look to those places for guidance. In reality, however, we must break new ground. No other country has the same infrastructure and governmental systems as Scotland. We are looking for a distinctive Scottish application of such a proposal for Scotland's children and we must take account of what is in place at the moment.
If the committee considers that it has enough information to identify a gap in the powers of an existing organisation, would it recommend that additional powers be given elsewhere, or would it deal only with the commissioner? For example, if the committee considered that the children and families division of the Scottish Executive education department could have certain powers, would it make such a recommendation?
Yes—if it becomes clear from our inquiry that we should make that kind of recommendation to ensure that all the bits fit together to give a cohesive infrastructure that supports children and better looks after their needs, we should do so.
That would be inevitable.
If it were consequential to this inquiry, we could do that. It would be difficult for us just to do it off our own bat, but if it were consequential, we could—alongside our recommendations on legislation on the introduction of a commissioner on children—recommend that department X should be given this power and a particular organisation should be given that power. Whether such recommendations would be accepted is a matter for the Parliament, through other committees. If we were making recommendations on the roles and responsibilities of the local authority ombudsman or the health service ombudsman, other committees would have to become involved, but there is nothing to stop us making specific recommendations.
Page 4 of my paper refers to the roles and responsibilities of the commissioner. I should make it clear that all the suggested powers or duties appeared either in the written evidence that the committee received or in public information that was available to the committee. None of the powers or duties in the paper has come off the top of my head or been inferred from anybody's evidence. They were all concrete suggestions. Members may feel that some of them are unnecessary, badly phrased or not specific enough, but I have tried to collate all the suggestions for members to consider.
I have a suggestion for the layout of the paper. The idea that children and young people should be involved in the selection process for the commissioner should come first rather than second. If we are serious about that idea, it should be put right at the top. I was once interviewed for a job by children and young people; it was the most challenging and difficult interview I have ever had—even more challenging than the Labour party selection process. Young interviewers cut right to the quick: if you give an answer that is not quite what they want, they keep going until they get at what you really mean. Adults might let you away with jargon and semantics, but young people do not. If the commissioner is going to do the job, young people and children will have to have confidence in that person.
I would like to ask two questions. Would recruiting the commissioner be something that members would want to ask the young people about at the same time as you were asking them about the role of the commissioner?
Perhaps we should be asking them what qualities they would like in a children's commissioner.
And get them to draw up the job specification, or the person specification?
The person specification.
Yes, we could ask the young people, "If there were a commissioner today, what would you be asking that commissioner?" We need a practical specification. We need to know what a commissioner—if there were one—would be used for.
Yes—who would the commissioner be, what would he or she be like, and what would he or she do? It all ties in with asking children and young people about the work of the commissioner.
My second question is this: as members will know, young people were involved in the selection process for the Welsh commissioner, so would members like to have information about that process?
Yes, definitely. I have spoken to some of the people who were involved in that process in Wales and they were very positive about the experience. It would be interesting to know how they went about it and what practical difficulties they encountered.
The only other thing that I wanted to say about the roles and responsibilities of the commissioner is that, in pulling all the evidence and information together, two kinds of powers emerged. One concerns things that the commissioner's office would do itself—for example commissioning research and speaking to young people. The other concerns things that the commissioner's office would require others to do—for example demanding information and evidence so that the commissioner can work out whether something has gone wrong. I wanted to bring those two different kinds of powers to members' attention. In drafting a report, members may want the commissioner's office to be able to do certain things for itself but be able to call for evidence and require people and departments to co-operate.
We will need to consider that in more detail. When we take oral evidence, we will be able to tease out some of those issues with groups, individuals and agencies that come to the committee. We will be able to get down to the nitty-gritty, to the nuts and bolts, of what this person will do and how he or she will interact with others. Most scepticism arises through concerns about how the person will interact with people who are already working in this area.
Very little information about that interaction has been received. Everybody says, "This is great; this person will have an overview," but only one or two submissions talk about how structures might be set up to ensure good liaison.
That is key: if such structures are not set up at the beginning, they will not happen. There should be concordats on who does what, where and how.
Let us not mention concordats.
Yes—don't mention the war.
Do members have any questions that they would like to ask about the roles and responsibilities of the commissioner, bearing in mind what has been said about public sensitivities?
At this stage, we are thinking of questions to ask, rather than suggesting the answers. Our questions can be as wide-ranging as we want them to be. We can wait and see what answers come back before deciding how to proceed.
On page 5 of the paper there are some tentative suggestions about the oral evidence and other information that may be required. Members have already suggested a range of subjects on which they would like further information. The first paragraph on the page is about oral evidence. It contains ideas that came from the information that was available to members.
It would also be interesting to hear evidence from the Children's Commissioner for Wales because she is fairly new to the post and is probably tackling some of the teething problems that we are interested in.
I mention the children's rights officers because, along with one or two other local groups, they may well have a great deal of information about the kind of points that members mentioned earlier: the issues that young people raise when you talk to them. Children's rights officers have to deal with individual cases and policy issues. One of the unresolved issues, apart from the age range that a commissioner would cover, is whether a commissioner would take individual cases on board. It was not clear whether that was what participants in the seminar that you ran wanted. Children's rights officers have to juggle those two responsibilities all the time, so it might be useful to hear from them.
You make some useful suggestions that will complement those of the committee. Consultation with children and young people is crucial to what we are doing and it is important that we get it right. I am sure that you know of individuals and organisations that can help us in that respect.
To take a step back, there is also a lot of information from other independent researchers on how to talk to young people. You might prefer to read that information before you make a decision on how to proceed.
We also have a policy paper on that issue that we will incorporate.
When we consider the remit of other agencies, the difficulty is that this could be a bottomless pit. However, despite the diversity of organisations, there are certain questions that could be asked of them all. That was the issue that my other paper addressed. If the committee had evidence about small numbers of children and young people who have gone to organisations and the kinds of things they went about, members could draw conclusions about the lack of overlap or gaps in provision.
That would be very helpful. It is a bottomless pit, but if we have a set series of questions that we are asking everyone to answer, it is up to people to respond.
The Scottish Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration answered some of the questions before being asked them. We could ask the same questions of others.
All in all it is a comprehensive report and a good start. Alison Cleland has pulled together all the copious evidence that came in. We were struggling to bring it together, but now we have a focus and a way forward. We know where we are going and how we are going to get there, but we must work together to fix a timetable and ensure that it happens. We must send written questions out to people.
The implication was that you wanted all those who had already sent written evidence to be asked the questions. That had not occurred to me, but it is obvious that they have not been asked all the questions and they might be able to provide further information.
Responses from key people are missing from the evidence that we have received. We need to plug those gaps. The list that Alison Cleland has provided will help to do that. It is an important piece of the jigsaw. Do we agree to proceed on the basis of our discussion this afternoon?
Meeting closed at 16:16.
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