Schools (Consultation) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 3
The next item of business is stage 3 of the Schools (Consultation) (Scotland) Bill. In dealing with the amendments, members should have with them the bill as amended at stage 2, which is SP Bill 23A, the marshalled list, which is SP Bill 23A-ML, and the groupings, which I as Presiding Officer have agreed. The division bell will sound and proceedings will be suspended for five minutes for the first division this afternoon. All divisions thereafter will be 30 seconds.
Section 5—Correction of the paper
Group 1 is on the provision of additional information during the consultation period. Amendment 1, in the name of Fiona Hyslop, is grouped with amendments 2 to 9, 13, 13A and 10 to 12.
I will start by addressing amendments 1 to 12, which are in my name. At stage 2, I indicated to the Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee that I was grateful that Margaret Smith had, through lodging an amendment, highlighted an aspect of the bill that could be improved. Although section 5 will introduce an important new element—namely, a mechanism to challenge the accuracy of a proposal paper—it does not fully address a situation in which relevant information has been omitted from a paper.
I am therefore pleased to speak to my amendments, which will insert relevant provisions in sections 5 and 10. They will ensure that the robust mechanism that will enable people to challenge the accuracy of information in the proposal paper will also apply to assertions that relevant information has been omitted from the paper. To address such claims, councils will have to apply the same process as for claims of inaccuracy. I hope that all members will support my amendments, which will serve to strengthen further the consultation process, and to create a means by which omissions from a council's proposal paper can be addressed.
I turn to Margaret Smith's amendments. Although I said at stage 2 that I understood the concerns that lay behind similar amendments that were lodged then by Margaret Smith, I hope that I can reassure Ms Smith and others today that my amendments will address those concerns by securing the right of parents and others to challenge the omission of relevant information from a proposal paper. That, combined with the mechanism that is already in the bill for addressing inaccuracies, should greatly improve the quality of the information that is provided at the start of any consultation. I highlight that the Scottish Schools (Parental Involvement) Act 2006 already places legal duties on councils to provide information to parents and parent councils, when it is reasonably requested.
I have discussed with Margaret Smith other statutory consultees who do not have the same legislative rights. Those consultees include community councils, staff, pupils and unions, who will for the first time have a formal role in this new and more robust consultation process. I appreciate Margaret Smith's efforts to ensure that they will be well informed so that they can participate fully in the consultation. As she and I have discussed, statutory guidance will accompany the act; I propose that it will advise councils to answer all questions timeously where possible, but to do so specifically where the questions are raised by statutory consultees in recognition of their formal role. The guidance will also encourage councils to share more widely answers to questions that have universal interest—for example, through a frequently-asked-questions section of the council website.
I remind members that a consultation report must address all representations, both oral and written, and that its publication will be followed by a three-week period in which further representations can be made to the council before it reaches its final decision.
Finally, any closure proposals can be called in by ministers where there have been serious flaws in the process. Members will be aware that councils are concerned that amendment 13 would place on them an unnecessary and potentially disproportionate burden that could be used to bring a consultation to a near halt. I am therefore concerned that amendment 13 risks jeopardising the remarkable consensus that we have created around the bill. That consensus has been built on the principles of balance and proportionality, which we have strived towards at every stage. Amendment 13 appears to put those principles at risk.
I have real concerns that amendment 13A would require all answers to questions to be published, regardless of how personal or sensitive their subject matter, and even against the wishes of the correspondent. I am sure that that is not what is intended, but it is what the amendment would oblige councils to do. I also note that the amendment would not require councils to take the published answers into account in any way. They would not be part of the consultation report, nor would there be a requirement for them to be provided to ministers in the case of a closure decision.
Amendment 13A risks requiring councils to contravene data protection legislation by placing answers about personal or otherwise sensitive issues in the public domain, without any added benefit to the consultation process. For those reasons, I ask Margaret Smith not to move amendments 13 and 13A.
I move amendment 1 and urge members to support it.
As part of any school closure proposal, it is essential that education authorities ensure that parents, parent councils and others have access to information and get answers to their questions timeously and without recourse to freedom of information legislation.
The Scottish rural schools network gave us a great deal of evidence on the matter at the Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee, and cited the example of Eassie primary school, where it took 18 months for some information to come forth. MSPs across the chamber raised issues about access to information during the stage 1 debate.
It is clear that the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and others are concerned that my amendments would leave them open to what we might call malicious requests for information. However, I made it clear at stage 2 that I was talking about reasonable requests: it would not be reasonable for a local authority to have to respond, for example, to a letter containing 45 questions if it arrived the day before a consultation period was due to conclude. Such issues might be covered in guidance.
The initial consultation period following the publication of a proposal paper for a school closure seems to be crucial. At stage 2, and in subsequent discussions with the Government, I highlighted a couple of important issues: circumstances in which major relevant issues are omitted and circumstances in which parents and communities are not given the information that they need in time to respond properly to a closure proposal that affects their local school.
We have previously welcomed the provisions of section 5, which deals with inaccuracies in a proposal paper and how they might be challenged, acknowledged and dealt with in the process. I very much welcome the Government's amendments, which will extend the provisions to include omissions from the proposal paper, which will enhance the bill.
It is essential and reasonable that councils answer questions that they receive from parents, parent councils, community councils and others in good time, so that those answers can be taken into account in the responses that individuals and organisations submit to the consultation.
The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning has rightly said that local authorities are obliged by sections 11(1) and 12(1) of the Scottish Schools (Parental Involvement) Act 2006 to give information to parents and parent councils when it is reasonably requested of them. However, the evidence that we took at the Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee made it clear that, despite that act's being in force, that is not happening in all cases. We know that some authorities are not answering requests from parents and parent councils, even though they are meant to do so under the law.
It is also clear that, as well as parents and parent councils, others might reasonably request information, such as the statutory consultees under the bill—staff, pupils, community councils, other relevant councils, other users of the school and trade unions—who are not covered by the 2006 act. It is perfectly reasonable that they should receive answers to their questions in good time so that they can feed them into their responses to a consultation. I very much welcome the cabinet secretary's recognition of that, and the positive dialogue on those issues that I have had with her and her civil servants since stage 2. The assurances that she has given us today will reassure staff and unions, who are seeking the best solutions when it comes to closures and other serious proposals for schools.
I acknowledge some of the concerns about amendment 13A, through which I was attempting to find a way in which written responses on general topics might be spread more widely, which might enhance a community's understanding, in the same way that people who attend public meetings hear the answers to everybody else's questions.
I welcome the cabinet secretary's amendments and her assurance that the giving of information to statutory consultees, parents and parent councils will be covered in statutory guidance under the act, which will enhance the act and consultations that take place throughout Scotland on school closures and other important issues that affect our schools.
On amendments 13 and 13A, I have listened carefully to the comments that Margaret Smith has made at stage 2 and today. I thank her for raising the important question of how we maximise the transparency of the information process, which is a crucial component of the bill.
Too often, bad decisions have been made regarding the future of schools on account of information's having not been made available to all parties or because the information was inaccurate—a point that was made forcefully in the evidence that was presented to the committee, particularly by the Scottish rural schools network. All members of the committee and the cabinet secretary were persuaded of the need to do something about that situation: rightly so, or the bill would have been found wanting. I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for listening to the concerns and for lodging several amendments at stage 3 to address them.
However, Margaret Smith has made the case at stage 3 that her real concern is with respect to the amount of time that is available to parents to assimilate information at the start of the decision-making process, rather than later. She feels that local authorities are sometimes in an overly powerful position at the beginning of a process, given that they effectively have a head start over the other stakeholders, especially parents, and therefore could be in a position to manipulate the process to their advantage. That was an important point to consider, and I have taken a great deal of time to do so. Having examined the existing legislation, and given the guarantees that the cabinet secretary has provided, I am satisfied that Margaret Smith's concerns can be addressed without recourse to additional amendments. That is why we will not support amendments 13 and 13A, although I record my thanks to Margaret Smith for starting this important debate.
On behalf of my Labour colleagues, I echo the sympathy for the intent behind Margaret Smith's amendments. It is not remotely unreasonable to expect local authorities to answer all the questions from worried parents and others whom a closure proposal affects. The question is whether a legal duty or obligation on local authorities to answer such questions is needed.
The bill will give parents more rights and a clearer expectation of the process that will be involved in a potential school closure. However, in the end, any such process depends on good will and openness from both sides. We should not necessarily predicate our amendments on the behaviour in the worst examples of school closure programmes of local authorities. I will draw a comparison with parliamentary questions: ministers always reply to them but, no matter how reasonable the question, whether the ministerial response will address it varies. Likewise, some back benchers take advantage of the system to tie up public servants for hours—if not days—in answering dozens, if not hundreds, of questions. Given that emotions run high in relation to school closure programmes, it is easy to imagine a similar use or abuse of legal rights.
I am pleased that the cabinet secretary lodged her amendments in response to concerns that Margaret Smith raised and which Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee members echoed. I welcome the further reassurances to Margaret Smith from the cabinet secretary today. We should support the Government's amendments. I urge Margaret Smith not to move her amendments.
The debate has been useful. I emphasise that we are debating the issue because Margaret Smith raised at stage 2 concerns to which the committee was sympathetic. All the Government amendments are intended to address her concerns about omissions from proposal papers.
The thrust of the bill is to achieve openness and transparency. It emphasises the incentive for councils to put as much information as possible up front and to share that with all consultees at the beginning, in order to prevent questions from being asked later in the process because of omissions and inaccuracies. That is Margaret Smith's concern. The whole bill should help to address that, but the debate has highlighted the added importance of councils' providing as much information as possible up front, to prevent people from having to ask additional questions late in the process. However, if additional questions must be asked, we have said that the Scottish Schools (Parental Involvement) Act 2006 makes provision in relation to parents and parent councils and that guidance will cover all statutory consultees. That should help the process and improve the bill's operation overall.
Amendment 1 agreed to.
Amendments 2 to 9 moved—[Fiona Hyslop]—and agreed to.
After section 6
Amendment 13 not moved.
Amendment 13A, in the name of Margaret Smith—[Interruption.] I apologise. Amendment 13A has fallen. It is a long time since we have had stage 3 proceedings.
Section 10—Content of the report
Amendments 10 to 12 moved—[Fiona Hyslop]—and agreed to.
I clarify that I realise that stage 3 proceedings took place yesterday, but I was not in the chair.
That concludes consideration of amendments.