Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-08326, in the name of Aileen Campbell, on the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill.
15:07
I am grateful for the opportunity to open the debate on the general principles of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill.
I welcome Forrester high school and St Augustine’s high school, who have a beautiful photographic display in the Parliament to mark yesterday’s universal children’s day. It is apt to note that, given the topic of the debate.
I thank everyone who has contributed to developing the bill so far, not least the members of the Education and Culture Committee for their work and their comprehensive stage 1 report. I also thank the Local Government and Regeneration Committee and the Finance Committee for their consideration of aspects of the bill.
I thank everyone who commented on the bill, especially the 2,400 children and young people and the 1,500 parents who provided their views. A range of opinions have been expressed. Many have been constructive and probing. That can only ensure that such a landmark bill will be examined, be improved and, ultimately, have the profound positive impact on children and young people that we all want it to have.
Today is an opportunity to take an overview of what the Parliament wishes the bill to achieve. I will start by discussing the principles that lie at the heart of not only the bill but our approach to improving the lives of children and young people.
The bill rests on five simple principles. First, it declares our collective commitment to making Scotland the best place in the world in which to grow up. It will establish in statute our shared responsibility for ensuring that our children have the best start in life and access to what they need to succeed as they grow and develop. Through its focus on what has been tried and on what we know works in our getting it right for every child approach, the bill builds on our renowned Scottish tradition of putting children at the centre of services and ensuring that their rights are upheld.
Next year is the 50th anniversary of the Kilbrandon report, which set the foundation for our children’s hearings system. I can think of no more fitting way of commemorating that than by passing a bill that so thoroughly embodies the principles of Kilbrandon.
The second principle is that shared responsibility should be achieved by working with parents and carers to provide the caring and supportive environments that our children should have. The bill aims to make public services more responsive to needs and sensitive to working with families. Our children deserve nothing less.
That will require a change in culture, systems and practice. The framework for that change is GIRFEC, which has been repeatedly endorsed by the Parliament, most recently in September. GIRFEC has been tested; it works. As the committee found in its evidence, the benefits to children and families are clear in those parts of Scotland that are furthest along with its implementation. As Barnardo’s Scotland said in its submission to the committee:
“We ... welcome the proposals to put elements of GIRFEC into law. GIRFEC has been a great success where it has been fully implemented and it is right that the Bill should seek to secure its wider adoption.”
The third principle in the bill is acknowledgement that we must continue to improve how we support our most vulnerable children and young people. The challenge that the Education and Culture Committee’s report of its inquiry into taking children into care has set is one that none of us takes lightly. The bill rises to that challenge by making it easier for children who need to be looked after to stay in their families through the kinship care order; by extending the support that is available to care leavers; and by ensuring that the wider public sector understands our shared corporate duty in relation to those who have been in care.
Moreover, the bill recognises that, for some children, we need to respond more quickly to the terrible risk of abuse and neglect. We are all familiar with the tragic stories in the media of children who were below the radar, the signals on whom were not picked up or acted on, and in relation to whom the need to act would have been apparent only to someone who had access to all the relevant information, which was spread among a number of different organisations. As I said on 25 September, the recent tragic case of Daniel Pelka highlights the importance of professionals putting the child’s interests at the heart of what they do and communicating their concerns. We can never prevent every case of abuse and neglect, but our bill will ensure that our services are better placed to identify and act on any concerns before those cases, too, become tragedies.
The fourth principle is the very simple idea that services to support our children and young people are better when they are planned jointly. That idea underpins our proposals for joint planning of services by local authorities and health boards, and it is equally well planted in the planning that we expect to be done for individual children who need additional support from services. We do not need scores of unco-ordinated plans across different services and professionals. Children need services that work together with one another and with their families.
I am grateful to the minister for giving way.
In linking her first and fourth principles, will she give an undertaking that she will ensure that children and their families are as closely involved as they can be in the process of developing those children’s plans?
Absolutely. They need to be fully involved in the planning. That is the underlying ethos of GIRFEC—it is about ensuring that children and families are respected.
Lastly, the bill is watermarked with the principle of early intervention. Early intervention has been a mantra for years. We all know about the benefits to children and families of providing support as soon as problems arise, and to services whose resources are increasingly stretched. The bill will make real that recognition of the value of early intervention to our aspirations for early learning and childcare.
The benefits of investing in the early years are known when quality services are provided. We must ensure that those services meet the needs and wishes of families. With the resources and powers that we have now, we have made a start on transforming childcare. We want to match the very best in Europe and, as a step towards that, the bill will give three and four-year-olds 600 hours of free nursery education. That represents an increase of almost half on the figure of 412.5 hours that we inherited, and we are extending that provision to the most vulnerable two-year-olds. In total, around 120,000 children will receive more childcare, more nursery education and a better start in life. Families will be saved the equivalent of £707 per year per child.
I am grateful to the minister for giving way and for the additional spending on that front.
How will the Scottish Government respond to the criticisms that Reform Scotland has levelled about the difficulties to do with when a child’s birthday falls?
I will touch on that later in my remarks, but the increase in free nursery education that I have set out represents a huge step forward for children and families. In delivering a tangible increase in the number of hours of early learning and childcare, we will benefit families by protecting their budgets, as they will be able to save the equivalent of £707 per year per child. That first step should be recognised. We can look at what Reform Scotland has said, which will contribute to the wider debate that we must have in this country about how we transform childcare.
Those are the principles that steer our proposals. I am pleased that in its report the committee agreed that the bill’s principles are sound, and I am pleased that the bill will set our country on a path towards becoming the best place in the world in which to grow up—a Scotland that takes active and shared responsibility for the wellbeing of our children and young people and that recognises the continuing challenges and is never complacent. That is an ambition that I think members share.
We have listened carefully to everything that has been said during the bill process, taking full account of all interests in and perspectives on how to improve the delivery of services for all children and young people and ensure that their rights are respected across the public sector. Of course, there has not been agreement about all the detail of the bill. Throughout the process, we have welcomed constructive discussion, and in that spirit of positive debate I will address some of the issues that have been raised.
On the children’s rights provisions, I note the committee’s view that incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law does not represent the best way to progress the rights agenda at this time. That is our view. The whole premise of the bill is to make a practical difference in children’s lives, and we think that the balance that we have struck in the bill achieves that. We agree with Ken Norrie, who said:
“to incorporate the convention into the domestic legal system of Scotland would be bad policy, bad practice and bad law.”—[Official Report, Education and Culture Committee, 3 September 2013; c 2682.]
We recognise that the committee feels that there is scope for the current ministerial duties to be strengthened. Our view is that the proposed package of legal measures represents a major and significant step forward, but we remain open to suggestions on strengthening the provisions.
On the new powers available to Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People, we welcome the committee’s comments on the proposed changes. We recognise that the new investigatory function will undoubtedly have resource implications for the commissioner. The financial memorandum suggests a staffing structure to support the new functions. However, staffing and governance issues are entirely a matter for the Parliament. Indeed, the commissioner’s ability to operate entirely independently of Government is a key strength. Nevertheless, we remain willing to support the commissioner and the Parliament in considering some of the practicalities associated with the proposed changes.
On the role of the named person, I am pleased that the committee endorsed the value of the role and shares my determination that GIRFEC should be implemented consistently and effectively throughout Scotland. I note the committee’s comments about areas in which the practical implementation of GIRFEC needs further clarification and support from the Scottish Government. We will seek to clarify, through guidance in many cases, many of the issues that are raised in the report. On resources, we have set out our estimate of costs in the financial memorandum, but we recognise that costs will need to be monitored as implementation goes forward. We will reflect further on how best such monitoring can take place.
The Royal College of Nursing Scotland said that the Scottish Government must recognise the Education and Culture Committee’s concerns about the capacity of the health visiting workforce to deliver on its existing duties, let alone the duties that are associated with the named person role. The people on the ground think that 450 additional health visitors will be required. Does the minister recognise those concerns? Will she give a commitment to increase the number of health visitors?
We recognise very strongly the important role that health visitors have in the early years of a child’s life. Our ratio of health visitors to the people with whom they work is healthy compared with that in other parts of the United Kingdom. I have given a commitment to monitor implementation.
We note what the committee and some stakeholders said about information sharing. I think that all members understand why information sharing is such a critical and difficult area. Every inquiry into a child’s death in the UK over past decades has echoed the same crucial finding: that effective sharing of information within and between agencies is fundamental to improving the protection of children and young people. We have seen that too often to risk the same happening again. Proportionate, appropriate and timely information sharing is essential to ensuring that our children are kept safe from harm.
On our early learning and childcare proposals, we are delighted that many of the organisations that were invited to the Education and Culture Committee welcomed our focus on quality alongside the increased hours and flexibility. This is the first time that flexibility and choice have been put on a statutory footing and the first time that local authorities will be required to consult local parents to identify their needs.
The bill also introduces a new concept of early learning and childcare to replace the traditional concept of pre-school education. It recognises that the learning journey begins from birth, and sets the stage for our longer-term aim to develop high-quality and flexible early learning and childcare that is accessible and affordable for all children, parents and families.
We know that a number of organisations would like us to go further, especially in relation to additional vulnerable two-year-olds. Research shows that high-quality provision makes a difference to those children. We will not compromise on quality in ensuring that we improve the outcomes for our children.
I have, of course, dealt with some of the issues that Liz Smith raised in relation to Reform Scotland’s publication today. I look forward to continuing the debate with it.
I want to discuss the bill’s provisions for looked-after children and young people.
In 15 seconds, please. Regrettably, we are extraordinarily tight for time.
The kinship care order recognises that the extended family has a responsibility to help when children are at risk and ensures that when kinship carers step into a parenting role, they will receive the support that they need. That is a huge step forward. Previously, any support that was provided to that group of carers was provided by local authorities on a discretionary basis only. The kinship care order will empower families to provide each child with a safe, stable, loving and nurturing home and will help some children to avoid formal care, if that is not in their best interests.
We also have strong commitments to ensure that we get things right for our looked-after children who are moving on to independent living. Our engagement on that with Who Cares? Scotland and others can ensure that we get things right in the final draft of the bill and that the bill works for our looked-after children.
I have set out the principles of the bill. Those principles represent the highest level of ambition for our children and young people, so it is not surprising that the bill covers a lot of ground.
I sincerely look forward to hearing the views of other members and the rest of the committee as we work together to ensure that the bill works for Scotland’s children.
I move,
That the Parliament agrees to the general principles of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill.
We are extraordinarily tight for time. I invite members to speak for their allocated time or for less than that in order to allow as many members into the debate as possible.
15:22
I am, of course, speaking today as the convener of the Education and Culture Committee.
As the minister said, the bill contains a wide range of proposals across its 13 parts. Consequently, we took a large amount of oral evidence and considered more than 180 written submissions. The input of all the organisations and individuals who submitted views to us has been essential, and we thank everyone who contributed. I also thank the committee clerks for all their hard work, my committee colleagues for their efforts in scrutinising the bill, and our Scottish Parliament information centre researcher for assisting us.
The Education and Culture Committee has spent significant time in this session examining issues that are linked to child welfare—specifically, the educational attainment of looked-after children and decision making on whether to take children into care. It is clear from our inquiries that much more is needed to improve outcomes for disadvantaged and looked-after children. That work has helped to inform our scrutiny of the bill. We support the bill’s central aim of promoting early intervention and preventative action to give children the best possible start in life.
A number of areas received particular comment in the evidence, which is reflected in our report. I cannot cover everything in the time that is available, so I will focus on five areas: children’s rights; named persons; information sharing; the extension of early learning and childcare; and aftercare for young care leavers.
Part 1 of the bill relates to the rights of children. Many children’s organisations supported the full incorporation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law. They considered that that was the best way to embed children’s rights into the culture of our society, enhance respect for our children and send a clear message about how we value them.
Those are laudable outcomes, but the committee was unanimous in its view that the case had not been made for full incorporation of the convention. Our main difficulty was that it was not always clear what practical improvements such a move would bring for children and their families. Our view is that, although the outcomes arising from incorporation are important, it does not necessarily follow that incorporation is the best or the only way in which to achieve them. In addition, the convention is already implemented in Scotland in a number of ways, such as under our obligations in the Scotland Act 1998.
Although we are not persuaded by the argument for full incorporation, we agree that the duties on the Scottish ministers and public authorities should be strengthened. Ministers must report every three years on what they have done to further the convention, for example. We want the bill to go further, so we have called on ministers to set out their vision on what they will do for each three-year period. We have also asked the Government to explain why it has chosen to require public authorities to report on
“what steps they have taken ... to secure better or further effect”
of the convention and not to require them to act on those findings.
The second area that I want to focus on is the introduction of a named person for every child and young person up to the age of 18. I should of course acknowledge that one committee member, Liz Smith, did not agree with the inclusion of that proposal in the bill. However, it was supported by the rest of the committee. The named person proposal forms part of the wider policy of getting it right for every child, or GIRFEC.
As members will be aware, the proposal to introduce named persons has received considerable comment. Some of the most compelling evidence that we received was from Highland Council, which is seen very much as a trailblazer for GIRFEC. The council told us that the named person role was developed through practice and experience, and that it was based on what families and professionals wanted. The initiative has been fully implemented since 2010 and the results are encouraging. Families like having contact with someone whom they know and who knows the child, and they do not have to deal with bureaucratic systems to get some extra support. Professionals, too, have welcomed the initiative. Teachers, health visitors and midwives feel that the named person role has not changed what they do but has made them feel empowered.
We also heard evidence from health and teaching professionals that the named person role could lead to a reduction in neglect. According to Highland Council, the introduction of named persons meant that children were more likely to get the help that they need when they need it, and fewer children were referred to the children’s reporter. However, the committee is mindful that some of that improvement is due in part to the culture of integration and collaborative working across front-line services in Highland.
As we have said in our report, we want the Scottish Government to give details of the range of support that it will provide to ensure that local authorities and health boards can replicate the successes that have been experienced in Highland, recognising the different circumstances that will prevail in different parts of the country. We also highlighted a number of practical issues that need to be resolved, such as the types of intervention that a named person will be expected to make and how the role will operate during school holidays. We believe that the success of the named person role will depend on the Government’s ability to work with its local partners to clarify those and other issues.
The Scottish Government must also be prepared to ensure that health boards, but particularly health visitors, can cope with the demands placed on them. The Finance Committee raised that point with us, and we have asked the Government to explain how capacity issues will be managed to ensure that the bill’s good intentions can be put in place.
Linked to the introduction of named persons is the proposal to lower the threshold for sharing information about individual children or young people without consent. The bill will allow professionals to share information where there is “concern about the wellbeing” of a child rather than only where, as the current test requires, there is “risk of significant harm”. It is crucial that all those who share information are properly trained. Training and guidance must cover all relevant service providers, including the private and third sectors, and must engender a common understanding of what constitutes proportionate, necessary information sharing.
We also refer in our report to the concerns that were raised by witnesses about the drafting of the information sharing provisions in the bill. For example, Professor Norrie described the provisions as “contradictory” and the Information Commissioner’s Office felt that the scope of section 27 was too wide and wanted it to be redrawn. We therefore welcome the minister’s commitment to look again at the drafting of those important provisions. I know that the Government will carefully consider the comments of the committee and others before we approach stage 2.
The bill will also extend the number of free hours of pre-school early learning and childcare to which children are entitled from 475 to 600 hours per year. That is indeed a positive step and it reflects the crucial importance of early years intervention in children’s development. We also very much welcome the plan to introduce increased flexibility in the provision of the new entitlement, which will make it easier for parents to take up employment opportunities. However, we urge the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to work to ensure that flexible arrangements are made available as quickly as possible to enable families to take advantage of the new provision.
Finally, I want to touch on the important proposals to extend support for young care leavers up to the age of 26. Currently, local authorities must provide support up to the age of 18 and have discretion for those up to the age of 21. As we heard during our previous inquiries, young care leavers are particularly vulnerable. We must do all that we can to ensure that they receive adequate and appropriate support so that they can enjoy exactly the same outcomes in life as many of us take for granted. We recognise the difficulty of that and we recognise that the transition from being in care to independent living can often be an extremely difficult time in a young person’s life. We therefore support the bill’s proposals but invite the Government to respond to the three questions that are asked in paragraph 178 of our report. The minister referred to that earlier in her comments about the campaign led by Who Cares? Scotland.
I should mention that the committee will take evidence on school closures before stage 2. The Government intends to lodge amendments on that, and we want to hear from stakeholders, which will inform our scrutiny of those amendments.
The committee supports the bill’s aims of putting children and young people at the heart of the planning and delivery of services and of ensuring that their rights are respected throughout society. We welcome the Government’s aim of improving outcomes for children and young people and particularly those who are disadvantaged.
Other than on the named person provisions, the whole committee agreed with the bill’s general principles and we hope that our suggestions for improvement will help to make the bill stronger still.
15:30
I am pleased that we have finally reached the stage 1 debate on the bill. As we are all aware, it is a substantial piece of legislation, which is not surprising, given its origins as two separate bills. With that in mind, I will not explore in detail all the points that we hope to cover in the bill’s later stages.
Labour will support the Government and vote for the bill at decision time. We will go into stage 2 in a constructive and positive frame of mind. We will test the elements of the bill that concern us and look to enhance and improve other areas of it, where we feel that it is not ambitious enough for Scotland’s children. When considering our proposed amendments, we will focus on early learning and childcare, which my colleague Neil Bibby will address in his closing speech, and on issues that relate to care leavers, which my colleague Kezia Dugdale will focus on.
The potential for the bill to have a real impact on Scotland’s children should not be underestimated. Everyone in the Parliament is ambitious for Scotland, and that can be realised through improving our young people’s life chances. That is why I am pleased that Labour’s newest MSP, Cara Hilton, will make her maiden speech in the debate. I hope that the Parliament will join me in welcoming her.
Too many children’s life chances are determined by the circumstances in which they are born and grow up and not by their own unique potential to achieve, develop and thrive. For too many children and young people, access to opportunities is bound up in a tangled web of poverty-related issues that impact on their health, their home life, their interaction with their peers and their educational attainment. The key to the bill achieving its potential will be our making inroads into those issues, many of which are deeply rooted in our communities.
There are some headline-grabbing figures in the bill. Scottish Labour welcomes the increase in the statutory provision of free early learning and childcare, although it has been a long time coming, as it was a Scottish National Party manifesto commitment back in 2007. However, the danger is that introducing the bill places too much focus on the headlines, at the expense of working through the details of how the measures will be achieved. An increase in free early learning and childcare sounds excellent, but unless those hours support the childcare needs of the parents and guardians who use the service, they might not have the impact that many of those people are looking for.
I reiterate that the bill will put flexibility on a statutory footing, to ensure that the provision works for the parents and carers whom Jayne Baxter refers to.
I will touch on that as I proceed with my speech.
Earlier in the year, I was privileged to speak at the launch of a report by Fife Gingerbread and the Poverty Alliance on the impact of lone parenthood on families in rural areas. That report and the feedback from many conversations with parents supported by Save the Children have highlighted how important flexibility of childcare provision is to many parents who are in work or trying their hardest to get work.
I remain concerned that the proposals do not address that point in the short term. I look forward to hearing from the minister whether increased flexibility in early learning and childcare provision and in out-of-school childcare could be incorporated in the bill.
The point has been made at committee that we need to have a clearer understanding of how the bill fits in with other legislation that is aimed at planning services for children and young people. I referred to the value of framing the measures in the bill in the context of how poverty can be tackled. We will examine the extent to which the bill fits with or supports the Scottish child poverty strategy. One example would be to extend early years provision to include two-year-olds who are in poverty, as many children’s charities have recommended. We will also seek an amendment so that all three-year-olds receive the same entitlement regardless of where their birthday falls in the school year. For many parents, those few months could make an enormous difference, as Reform Scotland has said today.
Much of the controversy about the bill has concerned the named person provisions. If we cast our minds back to the Conservative Party debate on that a few weeks ago, we will be aware of the many concerns that have been raised. However, we are minded to support the principle of the named person, just as we support in principle the entire bill.
I return, however, to comments that I have made previously: this is the nugget of a good idea, but we need to ensure that it can work well and be effective. I want the positive outcomes that have been experienced in Highland to be replicated across the country, but the devil will be in the detail.
The member makes a wise point about ensuring that the bill is implemented well. I am sure that she will wish to do this anyway, but I recommend that she visits Angus, for example, or goes to see some of the excellent work that is being done in my constituency, in Argyll and Bute, to find out how policy is being converted into practice in a most impressive way. I think that it will set her mind at rest to know that people’s imagination, hard work and resources are resulting in that.
I agree that resources will be fundamental to making the bill work. I reiterate that everywhere is different. What works in Highland might not work in other places. We need to take time to consider individual circumstances in different communities, and we need to work out what works for each place. It is not as simple as saying that things will happen in a certain way. It will take a bit of time, imagination and commitment to make the policy work in every area.
The training and support that are necessary for effective implementation of the role of the named person must be appropriately resourced, and I hope that the roll call of concerns in the committee report is considered carefully. In their evidence, both the Royal College of Nursing Scotland and the Educational Institute of Scotland highlighted concerns in relation to funding and support. Further clarification of the role of the named person needs to be provided by the Scottish Government. Although we support the principle of what the minister is trying to achieve, we will continue to push to ensure that the proposals are fit for purpose. The volume of comment and debate surrounding that point is an indicator of Scotland’s wish to do better for vulnerable children and our desire to get this right. We have a golden opportunity to do so, and we must be able to say with confidence to parents, children and practitioners that the wholesale adoption of the named person model will promote a step change in how services are delivered to children and their families.
With that in mind, the Government must also address the concerns of kinship carers. My Labour colleague on the Education and Culture Committee and I have offered cautious support for the proposals at stage 1, but we will consider the matter carefully, with a view to lodging an amendment to provide greater clarity in the bill, rather than waiting for the detail on kinship care orders to emerge in secondary legislation.
I am pleased to have heard the minister reflecting on the publication of Together’s report on the “State of Children’s Rights in Scotland”. I was keen to read the assessment of where we are now on the implementation of the UNCRC. The report makes a fairly brutal judgement on the bill, stating that it
“lacks a coherent child rights framework through which the Scottish Government’s policy intention to ‘make rights real’ can be achieved.”
Clearly, improvements can be made in that area of the bill, and I support looking towards having a duty on ministers to “have due regard to” the UNCRC when making policy decisions, as has been adopted in Wales. Our Welsh colleagues also require ministers to produce reports, and I hope that the minister will reflect on the committee’s recommendations in that regard.
In supporting the bill in principle, we will aim to be as constructive as possible in our comments and to reflect the huge amount of evidence and information that has been shared with us from the children and young people and care sectors throughout the country.
We are lucky to be able to work with such a range of organisations, which have such knowledge, skills and a genuine commitment to improving young Scots’ lives, and I thank them all for their hard work. I look forward to listening to the rest of the debate and to working with colleagues to improve the bill.
15:38
The Scottish Government has made it clear in its introduction to the bill that its primary function is to ensure that there is a much more collaborative and integrated approach to the provision of children’s services, so that all young people can access the opportunities and support that they need. Given the better outcomes for young people that have been achieved by those service providers that have engaged in that greater collaboration and integrated approach, that is a reasoned approach for the bill, and it is an approach for which there is clear cross-party support.
Too many young people are losing out—whether they are children with foster families or kinship families, young carers, children with long-term illnesses who are unable to go to school, or children who cannot access the full entitlement for nursery provision.
On that last subject, I welcome the opening that the Minister for Children and Young People gave us to discuss the matter further. The issue about when the child’s birthday falls is different from the issue about the monetary provision. We will wish to pursue that matter at stage 2.
The Parliament knows that we have serious concerns about certain parts of the bill. In some cases, those concerns are substantive. In others, they are administrative and resourcing issues. Sometimes, it is a matter of drafting.
The legal profession rightly asks politicians to be mindful of what constitutes good law: whether proposals are clear, coherent, effective and accessible and therefore easily understood. Throughout the bill’s early progress, we have examined the proposals against those criteria and questioned whether new legislation or a change in culture and attitude is required, or perhaps a mixture of both.
For the most part, the Scottish Government has decided on a legislative route, so I will deal first with some substantive concerns in that respect. First, there has been a move to legislate with primary regard to the child’s “wellbeing” rather than to their “welfare”, which is a term that underpins most of the existing legislation. I well understand why there is a certain attraction in that, as it is generally assumed that wellbeing has a deeper and much more holistic meaning that might bring some added qualitative value. However, it has exposed the tension between the theory and the practice. Although I think we can all agree that wellbeing is a good thing, it is exceedingly difficult to define, notwithstanding the SHANARRI—safe, healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected, responsible and included—indicators and their subdivisions, which have been operating in some local authorities. The bill is not entirely clear about the definition of wellbeing and it is too often conflated with welfare. The more the Scottish Government has tried to make legislative provision for improved children’s services, the more it has encountered difficulties with those definitions.
In evidence to the committee, Barnardo’s Scotland spoke about how the SHANARRI indicators that go along with wellbeing give professionals who work with children a much greater understanding of what they are all talking about and enable them to work more purposefully with the child to ensure that their wellbeing needs are met and they achieve positive outcomes in later life.
They do, but the point is that the terms “wellbeing” and “welfare” are sometimes conflated in the bill, which causes difficulties in how the rest of the bill hangs together. We have to consider that carefully.
Secondly, there is the issue of inconclusive legal advice, foremost with regard to whether to incorporate the UNCRC into Scots law. There is a wide divergence of opinion on that, as the minister indicated in her speech. Opinions include the one that the minister quoted, which suggests that incorporation
would be bad policy, bad practice and bad law.”—[Official Report, Education and Culture Committee, 3 September 2013; c 2682.]
However, Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People and some of the children’s charities say that incorporation is essential if we are to embed clear and robust means of accountability. The divergence in legal opinion is nothing new, but what has made life difficult for the committee is the relative lack of detailed evidence to support the contrary views, and the fact that the evidence that we took on this crucial issue is rather incomplete.
The Parliament already knows that the Scottish Conservatives oppose the section of the bill that includes the universal provision of a named person for all young people up to age 18. We have done so for several reasons, and I will not go over them again, as we have already held a debate on the issue.
We have been very persuaded by some of the evidence that was presented to the committee by the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, the Faculty of Advocates, the Law Society of Scotland, the Govan Law Centre, churches and experienced practitioners such as Maggie Mellon. They have all made the point that a universal provision for a named person clearly undermines the role of some parents, and the family and communities, and instead places professionals in the front line of responsibility for the child.
When that is taken together with the proposed extent of data sharing and the extension of powers to the children’s commissioner—and, in some cases, to Scottish Government ministers—in a way that Kenneth Norrie described as “open ended”, it makes the bill a bit too statist in its approach for our liking. We will abstain from the vote this afternoon because we are not yet satisfied that the bill is dealing with those issues in a way that would suit.
I have heard SNP ministers and back benchers claim that local authorities are facing incredibly difficult—and differing—challenges in their respective areas. That is absolutely true, and we must be careful to acknowledge that in the bill and ensure that we are not putting on large structures that take that away.
We have been very careful and we have thought about the bill and the vast number of submissions that have come in. The rights of children do not stand in isolation; they should be seen in the context of the rights of parents and families and all the communities that they represent. We are looking to develop the area when the bill reaches stage 2. We have a lot of sympathy with many of the bill’s principles, but there are still some fundamental issues that we want to tease out at stage 2, so we will abstain in the vote at decision time.
We move to the open debate, with speeches of up to six minutes.
15:45
It has been enjoyable and a great honour to be involved in the work of the Education and Culture Committee on the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill. We took a significant amount of written and oral evidence. Unfortunately, we could not see everybody who wanted to appear at the committee, but we took on board the written evidence that the committee received. The care and attention that had been given to the briefings on the bill that members received are a testament to how much the people and agencies that are involved want the bill to work and to improve outcomes for young people.
The policy memorandum sets out that the fundamental reforms of children’s services are in line with the Christie commission report, which highlighted
“the importance of early years, prevention and personalised service delivery”.
We should remember that the Christie report received significant cross-party support on its publication. It is to be commended that we are moving towards that.
We need to take stock of what is happening in Scotland, because we are not starting from zero in respect of children’s services. Colleagues in the national health service, local authorities and education services have all been working hard to take on board the recommendations of the Christie report. They are moving towards more collaborative working practices, not only in the early years and children’s services but in services for elderly people. A great deal of change is already happening in the sector.
I want to highlight some of the work that is being done in the area. The committee is on record as commending NHS staff, local authority workers and education staff for their dedication and commitment to their roles. I want to highlight the Roots of Empathy programme pilot that happened in North Lanarkshire. From the research that underpins the bill, we all know about the importance of early intervention. We know that a child’s emotional development can be badly damaged by poor parenting in the early years and in early schooling. The Roots of Empathy programme was piloted in the Berryhill primary area in North Lanarkshire. It is a Canadian programme, founded by Mary Gordon, that is designed to improve the emotional capacity of young children and their capacity to empathise with other people. It involves a young baby being brought into a primary classroom, with a structured series of questions and engagement with the baby, such as game playing and song singing. I shall spare members my rendition of the song for baby Ruben that I heard in Berryhill primary, but it was a delight to see the reaction of the young baby on hearing the children in the class welcoming him with that song.
The programme is well documented and the research has shown how much it improves the capacity for empathy in young people. Of course, for many young people, that will not be necessary because they are growing up in warm and nurturing homes with good responsible parenting and the opportunity to engage with other people. However, for children who have been denied that upbringing, the results are impressive in relation to anger management issues and reducing the behavioural problems that sometimes result from the complex issues that Jayne Baxter so eloquently described in talking about the damage that poverty can do to young people.
Far from starting from new on the issue, there is much good work going on in Scotland. We should acknowledge that and recognise the dedication and commitment of the people who are involved in that work. As the minister said at the launch of the roll-out, the Roots of Empathy programme shows
“our commitment to early intervention and the importance of positive relationships as the cornerstone of a better Scotland.”
She continued:
“This is an investment in the future; by encouraging empathy and respect in children we are giving them the foundations to be positive, successful adults who will pass those skills onto their own children.”
In its support for the principles of the bill, the committee is showing how important that is for moving forward. Putting that in statute will create a marker that sets Scotland out as one of the foremost countries in its support for young people and their development.
The member is in her final minute; I mention that because we are tight for time.
Thank you.
The report was based mainly on consensus and I do not need to repeat its recommendations or conclusions. The one issue on which committee members differed was the named person. We should therefore consider some of the support for the named person role. The Royal College of Nursing said that the named person role was working well in areas where GIRFEC is being implemented. Children 1st said that it supported
“the idea of the named person, as we believe it could offer a way to avoid children ‘slipping through the net’ when they are at their most vulnerable, and a useful point of contact for families so they can access advice and services without having to deal with excessive delay or red tape.”
In addition, we should take on the success of Highland Council and North Ayrshire Council and other authorities that are working on and rolling out GIRFEC successfully and implementing the named person role.
15:51
I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate. I do so from the pack and in recognition of the hard graft that my colleagues Neil Bibby and Jayne Baxter have done in working through the detail in committee.
I want to use my time to talk specifically about looked-after children and, in particular, parts 7 and 8 of the bill. Why? From everything that I have read and learned, every story that I have heard and every person whom I have met, nothing has angered me more than the experiences and life stories of looked-after children.
Let us go through some of the key statistics. There are 16,200 looked-after children today, which is up 25 per cent from 2006. Thirty per cent of them have experienced homelessness and up to 80 per cent of our young offender institutions’ population have been in care at some point; that figure was as high as 88 per cent of Polmont’s population when Barnardo’s published its plan B report. A person is far more likely to go to jail than to university if they have been in care—and that is before we even look at the difference in educational attainment between those in care and those beyond it. Such wasted potential somehow now feels inevitable.
While I was reading ahead of the debate, I followed the footnotes through to the 2007 report in the name of the then education minister, Hugh Henry, titled “Looked After Children and Young People: We Can and Must Do Better.” It is a fantastic report, brimming with statistics and action points to make things better. I was struck by just how little has changed in the six years since the report was published. When I put that to Who Cares? Scotland today, I was told that 17 different reports have been written on looked-after children since the dawn of the Parliament. One care leaver told me that each one somehow reads like an apology. Perhaps that is an apology for inaction, but it is more likely an apology for what feels like the inevitability of poorer life chances for looked-after children, which is a problem that somehow seems too big to fix.
I am not interested in a blame game of how we got here, because that care leaver could not care less about that. She wants to know what will happen now, and she is looking to the bill as a huge opportunity that must not be missed. That is why I am committed to lodging a number of amendments at stage 2, in conjunction with Barnardo’s, the Aberlour Child Care Trust and Who Cares? Scotland.
The legislation alone is not enough; we need a cultural shift in the public’s attitude towards looked-after children. I have two reflections on that issue. First, the public are largely ignorant about care leavers—how many there are, what being looked after at home is and means, and how poor their life chances are. Too many people think that those are bad kids worthy of little sympathy from anyone other than the biggest softies, rather than them being fundamentally good kids who find themselves where they are because of a life that has been free from care and full of neglect, and kids who have more experience of violence than affection and more experience of physical contact defined by restraint rather than by love. We need to put those children at the front and centre of our public discourse. We can start to do that with the bill.
I agree entirely that we must change the myths that surround looked-after children and ensure that they are given the support and nurture that they need. Does the member welcome our support for Who Cares? Scotland’s time to listen campaign? Has she signed that pledge? If not, how can we work together so that more people sign the pledge? We need to listen to looked-after children. They are our responsibility and we must ensure, in our corporate parenting duties, that they have no less fulfilling a life than their non-looked-after peers.
I would be delighted to support the minister with that ambition and I speak for all my colleagues when I say that we are willing to work with the Government to improve the life chances of looked-after children. The minister can count on that not just throughout the bill process, but throughout this parliamentary session. I will speak more about that in a second.
We need to talk more about looked-after children and we need to challenge the media to do the same. We need to unite as a Parliament and agree that nothing should be inevitable about looked-after children’s life chances except the fulfilling of those children’s potential. They are our children and we should demand that their lives are full of love and expectation. In this Parliament we should create the rules by which that might happen.
My second reflection is on care leavers. It was put to me that the stigma associated with being in care is so strong that when a young person turns 16 they want to rid themselves of that label and everything to do with it. In so doing, they lose their rights to expect support as they transition into adult life. I can understand that, but I would like to get to a place where young care leavers can wear their label with pride and demand support to enhance their lives. In many ways it should be a liberation issue: care leavers should have more rights to support into their adult life exactly because of where they have come from and who they are. That will require a cultural shift in our attitudes to looked-after children, but it also requires care leavers themselves to make demands and exercise their rights.
Every care leaver whom I have met can name the date on which they left care. I cannot imagine that many people around the room can remember the date on which they left their family home. Why is that? The reason is that leaving home is a process, not an event. I want to see the bill greatly enhanced in that respect.
I hope that the Government will engage constructively on the bill. I appreciate that we cannot change society’s attitudes to looked-after children overnight, but I hope that by the end of the bill’s passage we will have a clear vision of our ambition for care leavers and a clear route map for how to get there.
Let me make it absolutely clear: I will do everything that I can to work with the Government to improve the lives of looked-after children, not just on this bill but throughout this parliamentary session. I have a strong and clear ambition for where we might be in 10 years’ time.
15:57
We often talk about wanting Scotland to be the best place in the world to grow up in. I believe that the bill will help us get to that ambition. It will build foundations for us to ensure that we can do something. Whether we need one bill, two bills or whatever, this bill is very ambitious and deals with Scotland’s most important commodity: our children and young people. What we do here will make a massive difference to young people’s lives.
Clare MacFarlane is quite right when she says that various charities are still involved in the bill and want it to do extremely well. That is how important the bill is and we appreciate that. Charities have engaged with the committee and various other groups throughout the process.
It is interesting to see how the committee got to this stage. Before we started considering the bill, the committee had looked at length into looked-after children and their educational attainment. We heard some of the stories about what happened to young people, which made a big difference for every one of us on the committee, because it brought the issue into the real world. We were discussing not just a bill—a piece of paper—but real people’s lives. Every one of us took that forward into this process.
Not so long ago, I visited HM Young Offenders Institution Polmont, where Barnardo’s is running a project. I met a lot of young people who were in that secure unit because of various things that had happened in their life. Barnardo’s had a programme to help educate younger people in the system. We talked about the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill and when the young people explained some of the things that had happened in their lives, they started to come round to the idea that the provisions in the bill might have been a way—although not in every case—to help them not get into the position of being in a secure unit.
That is the most important thing that we have to take from this. We live in challenging times and young people have challenging lives. We have to look at that and do what we can for those people.
When I was on that visit, I had instant credibility. One of my constituents was there and when I told him that I came from Seedhill in Paisley, he said to one of his colleagues, “George is one of us, so we can listen to him.”
The whole point of the bill is to put children and young people at the centre of decision making, empower them and give them opportunities.
Much has been said about the UNCRC but my view is that its principles actually inform GIRFEC. Indeed, the great work that has been done in Highland Council has clearly made a difference. When we took evidence on that project, we heard that, in many cases, problems arose when parents did not have a named person; once they understood what the named person did, they wanted to engage with them. With my constituency in mind, I certainly see how that approach can work in areas of deprivation and areas where there are various challenges.
We are here to get something that deals with the various issues. We can of course discuss at stages 2 and 3 how we might further develop the legislation, and I am glad that the Labour Party has decided to work with us and move things forward. As the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning made clear at question time, this Parliament is at its best when, as in last night’s debate, it looks at how problems might be dealt with and solved and when members do not simply play the political game. The exciting thing about this bill is that it gives us an opportunity to make a difference in every young person’s life. That is not hyperbole or exaggeration; if we get this right, we can ensure that young men and women do not end up in places such as Polmont or in care.
I know from my time as a councillor in Renfrewshire that issues can arise when young people in care become adults and move out into adult life. Of course, going out into the big bad world is challenging for those of us with the best of lives—after all, the world is not an easy place to live in—but while I was at Renfrewshire Council we worked with one of the local housing associations to provide housing to these young people and support them in that respect. However, as a social housing provider, the council found that within two or so years of giving a young person the keys to their new home it was trying to evict them from it. We have to find a way of looking after these young people, and there are other ways of doing that than through legislation. We can, for example, work with other partners and organisations to offer support.
Today is about the vision; it is about the idea that we can make Scotland the best place for young people to grow up in. As long as we all work together and stay focused, we can make that difference.
16:02
Like other members, I thank the very many people and organisations that submitted oral and written evidence on the bill and those responsible for the veritable snowstorm of briefings that we have received over the past few days. I also thank the clerks and committee colleagues for their contributions to what I think is a very reasonable report on a very wide-ranging bill.
Let me be clear: the Scottish Liberal Democrats support the bill’s principles and believe that it actually delivers on them, which perhaps distinguishes it from the Post-16 Education (Scotland) Bill. Like any bill, it needs to be improved in many areas—indeed, the Finance Committee’s report on the financial memorandum was particularly critical—but I welcome the minister’s willingness to address areas of concern pretty much across the board.
I am not sure, for example, that the bill properly reflects children’s rights at this stage and do not think that the committee was convinced that the case for full incorporation of the UNCRC had been adequately made. However, we were seized of the importance of looking again at incorporating specific rights, and the Law Society of Scotland’s description of the duty placed on members as a
“diluted version of the existing obligations”
and the Faculty of Advocates’ view that the bill does not further develop the rights of children and young people in Scotland to a significant extent suggest that more work needs to be done, particularly in relation to putting children’s rights impact assessments at the heart of the legislative process.
One of the most controversial areas was the named person provision, which the Parliament has already debated. Although I again make clear my support for the principle, I, like all committee members, must acknowledge the inherent practical and resource issues, some of which arise from uncertainty about roles and responsibilities, the interaction with lead professionals and some of the training requirements.
That, in turn, has consequences for resources—a point that was picked up by the Finance Committee, the education unions and the RCN, which in its briefing suggests that
“concerns regarding the capacity of the health visiting workforce to deliver existing duties let alone those associated with the Named Person role”
need to be borne in mind.
The practicalities stem from the lowering of the threshold to one of wellbeing, which has implications for information sharing and, indeed, where the consent of the individual is sought. Professor Kenneth Norrie, the Information Commissioner’s Office and others have highlighted their concerns in relation to sections 26 and 27. I am grateful to the minister for acknowledging that and for agreeing to take that issue away. There are practical and resource issues and we need to maintain a ruthless focus on welfare. I hope that the Government will ensure that there is a presumption in favour of consent in relation to information sharing.
The political heart of the bill is to be found in part 6, on early learning and childcare. It is a vehicle by which the Government can deliver on its commitment to provide 600 hours of early learning and childcare for three and four-year-olds. I restate my welcome for that policy, which I believe will deliver real benefits. The concerns that have been raised by Liz Smith, Jayne Baxter and others about the points that were made by Reform Scotland have been taken on board by the minister. However, there is scope for more ambition, particularly in relation to two-year-olds. The minister will argue that the bill represents a first step. I acknowledge that, but I do not think that it shows sufficient ambition. The Scottish Liberal Democrats have put forward reasonable and costed proposals for extending that provision to two-year-olds from the poorest backgrounds. In its briefing for the debate, Save the Children says that
“to be effective at meeting its aims, we believe there is a strong case to also include two year olds growing up in poverty”.
It goes on to say:
“Evidence shows that every month of pre-school provision after age 2 is linked to improved outcomes including increased educational performance at age 14”.
That is picked up by Children in Scotland, which points to the provision for 40 per cent of two-year-olds that is delivering to 92,000 two-year-olds south of the border.
Will the member give way?
I do not have time. I know that the minister will pick that up in her winding-up speech.
That is achievable and the bill offers a vehicle for delivering it. It can be done without impacting on quality, allowing the flexibility that the committee pointed to in ensuring that two-year-olds from the poorest backgrounds in Scotland do not fall behind those south of the border.
In relation to part 8, which strengthens the support for care leavers, I associate myself very much with the comments that Kezia Dugdale made in her excellent speech. The area has been a focus for the committee in at least two inquiries, and the bill represents a real step in the right direction in aftercare up to the age of 26. However, as our inquiries show, we need a renewed focus. There is no magic bullet because the reasons why those who go through the care system struggle with outcomes are many and varied. In last night’s excellent debate, the emphasis was on the need for strong, stable, loving relationships. That is very much the message that we got back time and again in our inquiries. More can be done on aftercare, building on the good provisions in the bill to deliver what Aberlour Child Care Trust, Who Cares? Scotland and Barnardo’s have talked about:
“transforming aftercare into a much stronger form of continuing care, which combines the continuation of support and the continuation of the strong relationships that young people in care have come to rely on.”
There are many issues that I have missed, which I will turn to at stages 2 and 3. We would all subscribe to the ambition for Scotland to be the best place to grow up in. We might disagree on how far we are from achieving that, but it is the right vision. The bill can play a part in delivering that, but it needs further clarity and ambition—clarity around resources and practical implications and ambitions around early learning for two-year-olds, aftercare and children’s rights. At stage 2, there will be an opportunity to provide that opportunity and ambition, building on an excellent start.
There is no extra time in the debate.
16:09
It is a privilege to speak in the debate. I will deal almost exclusively with kinship care and the development of the new kinship care order. I reiterate my belief that kinship carers should be given the same support as is given to foster carers. I made a promise to campaigners at a national kinship care hustings in Possilpark in 2007, and I have continued to champion the cause ever since.
The views that I express are heavily influenced by constituents of mine, such as Jessie Harvey and Ruby Grant who are members of the kinship care group in the north of the city that I represent, and by several other groups that I work with within the city. Put simply, kinship carers step in and take on a caring role for loved ones, for children, when mum and dad are unwilling or unable to do so. If kinship carers were not there to pick up the pieces, the life chances and life outcomes for such children would be far worse. That would also cost Scotland’s councils a small fortune, as they would instead need to use foster carers or residential care for those vulnerable children.
I pay tribute to our former children’s minister Adam Ingram for advancing the cause of kinship care under the SNP Government that was elected in 2007. Putting a kinship care outcome into the Scottish Government’s concordat with councils was vital. That sought to move to parity the financial support given to kinship carers and that given to foster carers. Clearly, although that aspiration was not fully met, that has made a real difference. I agree with the Child Poverty Action Group, which told the Education and Culture Committee:
“The initial agreement, which was to pay kinship carers of looked-after children at a rate equivalent to that for foster carers, has not become a reality, but all local authorities have shifted to a position where they are making payments of some sort to kinship carers of looked-after children. Quite a few local authorities are also making payments at some level to kinship carers of non-looked-after children.”—[Official Report, Education and Culture Committee, 24 September 2013; c 2821.]
That is not enough, but we have driven a real change and it is important to put that on record.
Some kinship carers have asked me why the financial memorandum includes projected cost savings from kinship care. They ask how improvements can be made in the support for kinship carers while cost savings are also expected. However, the financial memorandum states that one reason for developing the kinship care order is
“to reduce unchecked growth in formal kinship care”.
In other words, as children in kinship care come to the attention of social work or are placed in kinship care by social work—a vital distinction that, if I have time, I will return to later—they are less likely to become formally looked after. Kinship care orders will still provide support, but a crucial point is that the level of direct social work involvement will necessarily be less than if the child was deemed to be formally looked after.
I understand that the bill will lead to a projected saving in social work time, and that is the saving referred to in the financial memorandum. Fundamentally, those savings do not signal a reduction in direct cash support to kinship carers, but I would welcome some clarity and reassurance from the minister on that when she sums up the debate.
I also ask for some certainty that the bill does not put up any barriers to providing financial support to kinship carers. Can the minister confirm that the bill contains nothing that would instruct councils to pay less or, indeed, hinder them from paying more?
I just want to put on record—
Minister, I am afraid that you must face your microphone.
The kinship care order—
Sorry, minister, we cannot hear you unless you face into the microphone.
The kinship care order will enhance support for kinship carers by giving more kinship carers the help and support that they need. Whether financially or otherwise, support will be provided to them to ensure that they are the best possible family for the child to have a long and lasting and nurturing life.
I thank the minister for that intervention.
I will move on to the financial working group that the Scottish Government has set up, which will report shortly. My understanding is that the financial package of support to kinship carers is not contained within the bill—that is not what the bill seeks to do—but is the job of the financial working group. Can the minister provide more information on when the working group might report and how long it will take the Scottish Government to consider the group’s recommendations? If she can tease out how that will be taken forward, that would be very helpful.
Another issue that I want to mention is the postcode lottery or lack of consistency in how local authorities deal with kinship care. In Glasgow—I single out Glasgow City Council only because that is the local authority that I know best—the council provides payments of £50 a week for voluntary kinship care arrangements. Those payments are not enough, but I welcome them. However, the council makes a distinction between situations in which granny and granddad have decided to look after the vulnerable child, because they know that the child is at risk, and situations in which the local authority has turned up on the doorstep and placed the child with granny and granddad. In one case, the local authority has stepped in, whereas in the other case there is a voluntary arrangement, but I do not think that distinctions should be drawn when providing financial support for those families. I ask the Government to consider that.
The final thing that I would like to mention is the need for consistency in social work assessments of kinship carers across the country. Kinship carers in Glasgow believe that they are already going through an assessment process pretty similar to that for foster carers and they are asked for some deeply personal information and access to their personal medical records. Better guidance, better training and more consistency in social work assessments would also be welcome.
I am now very pleased to invite Cara Hilton to make her maiden speech in the chamber.
16:15
I am pleased to be making my maiden speech in this important debate on the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill. It may be the tradition for members to pay tribute to their predecessors in such speeches, but on this occasion I think that the less said about my predecessor, the better.
I am extremely proud to have been elected as member of the Scottish Parliament for Dunfermline. Dunfermline is the community in which I live, it is where my children go to school and nursery and there is no greater honour for me than the opportunity to serve the people of Dunfermline at Holyrood. In my election campaign, I promised my constituents that I would always put Dunfermline first and that I would focus on the issues that matter to people in their everyday lives.
Anyone who took part in the by-election campaign will know that Dunfermline is a growing area. We certainly have a large proportion of young families, and the number 1 challenge facing many of the young families that I represent is childcare. They face the constant challenge of juggling work, childcare, school pick-up times and family finances. Politicians in all parties say that they want to address that challenge, but for too long they have failed to do so. That is why I welcome the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill and support its general principles.
However, for the constituents that I represent, the bill is a missed opportunity and I think that it lacks ambition. The 600 hours of free childcare is extremely welcome, but it is long overdue. When the SNP originally pledged 600 hours, my oldest son was almost three years old and was just about to start pre-school. Like all my friends, I was looking forward to the extra provision that was promised back in 2007. My son and his friends are now aged nine and they are in primary 5, yet the 600 hours of provision still has not been delivered. There are few better examples of Scotland being on pause than the seven years for which the SNP has made parents in Dunfermline and across Scotland wait for extra free childcare.
The reality is that we are still playing catch-up with England and Wales where, despite the coalition Government’s best efforts to dismantle the good work that was done by Labour, families continue to benefit from better provision than exists here in Scotland. At the UK level, Ed Miliband has pledged to deliver 25 hours a week of free childcare to working parents of three and four-year-olds if Labour wins in 2015, and to guarantee wraparound childcare for families of schoolchildren.
Why does the bill that we are discussing not include childcare provision for school-age children? Why does it do nothing to address the unfairness of birthday discrimination, which means that a child who is born after 31 August has to wait an extra six months—often until the end of January the next year—for a free pre-school place? Why is the SNP Government happy for Scotland to be lagging behind the rest of the UK when it comes to providing care for some of our most vulnerable two-year-olds? To quote a phrase from the Dunfermline by-election, Scotland “deserves better” than that.
The bill as it stands does little to tackle the number 1 issue facing families, which is the lack of flexible, affordable childcare. As the mum of three children, I was delighted when my five-year-old started school in August, not just because she was so looking forward to it, but because for the first time in years I was no longer paying every single penny that I earned in childcare. Up until then, with two pre-school children in childcare, even with juggling my working hours to finish at 3 o’clock and pick up my eldest from school and my daughter from pre-school, I was paying £1,200 a month in childcare, and that was for a four-day working week. Even now, with my oldest two at school and my youngest at pre-school, like families across Scotland, I pay more for childcare than for my mortgage.
Without the support of friends and family, I could not be standing here. I could not have stood for election to Holyrood, because getting home in time to pick up three children from different locations by 6 pm is simply impossible. I could never have afforded to return to work at all after having children if it was not for the support that a Labour Government at Westminster put in place with child tax credits to make work pay. That support has been cut by the coalition Government, which means that so many mums and dads now do not have the option of returning to work after having children.
As every parent knows, childcare costs do not stop when children start school. In fact, it is when children start school that some of the problems start. Parents face the challenge of juggling working hours around the school day, and let us not even get started on the 12 weeks a year of school holidays.
Many schools do not offer wraparound provision at all, and when they do the hours are restrictive. The only way that most parents I know manage is by working different hours and taking different holidays. That cuts childcare costs, but it means that families rarely spend time together. The chance of a family meal at teatime is a rare event. The reality is that, for many mums and dads, just finding, organising and paying for childcare at all is like a full-time job in itself. Is it any wonder that a recent survey of mums by Asda found that seven out of 10 stay-at-home mums said that they would actually be worse off in work than they are at home?
Although I support the bill, I believe that it needs to go further. Childcare is a vital service for families and every family in Dunfermline and in Scotland should have the right to high-quality, affordable, flexible childcare. Childcare should not be a luxury that only the better-off can afford, but for many families that I represent in Dunfermline, work is simply not an option because of the high cost of childcare. A family at Pitcorthie told me during the by-election that they can never hope for their two-year-old daughter to have a little brother or sister, because even with both of them working they would never be able to afford the cost of childcare. A family in Duloch, where I live, told me that they have resorted to putting the childcare costs on credit cards, because rising food bills, energy costs and train fares mean that they simply have no other option. How many other families are in that position in the run-up to Christmas? A mum in Abbeyview told me that she loved being a working mum, but that because of cuts in tax credits she had to give up the job that she loved.
Parents in Dunfermline and across Scotland deserve better than a Government that talks about delivering a better deal on childcare but in reality lacks ambition. The Scottish Government has the power now to revolutionise childcare in Scotland. We can do it now and parents are fed up waiting, so although I will support the bill today, I hope that we can work together across the political divide to deliver the better deal on childcare that families across Scotland deserve.
16:21
I welcome the bill as a significant advance for the position of children and young people in Scotland. As my fellow Education and Culture Committee members have said, the committee has, in two other inquiries, examined outcomes for looked-after children. We agreed in both those inquiries that we need to tackle the problems of underachievement, neglect and poor parenting before families reach crisis point. We need a fundamental shift in philosophy and approach towards a focus on prevention. I believe that the bill will help to do that, and it is the reason why so many child welfare organisations also support its broad principles.
In Scotland last year, there were more than 16,000 looked-after children. Although recent years have seen the number of new referrals fall, Scotland still has a higher proportion of looked-after children than other parts of the UK. The Government estimates that between 10,000 and 20,000 children live with drug-abusing parents, and that between 36,000 and 51,000 children in Scotland live with parents who have alcohol problems, so there is a crisis that we need to tackle.
I mentioned the bill’s important emphasis on early intervention to prevent serious problems before they occur. An important means of delivering that step change is construction of a system in which it is easy for professionals to share information that could prevent a vulnerable child from coming to harm. As the minister has said, we are all familiar with the tragic cases that are covered in the news of children who die at the hands of their parents and carers. The common theme of the subsequent inquiries tends to be the same; someone had a vital piece of information that could have saved the child in question, but that information was not shared.
That is why I want to concentrate today on how the bill seeks to improve information sharing between relevant public authorities where there are concerns about the wellbeing of individual children and young people. Key to that is the introduction of the named person, which was supported by 72 per cent of respondents to the bill consultation. It is supported by the Royal College of Nursing, by Tam Baillie—Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People—and by the wonderful John Carnochan, who is the inspiring co-founder of Strathclyde’s violence reduction unit.
There has been considerable misunderstanding about the role of the named person, which already exists and works well in the Highlands, and we have heard colleagues talking about the evidence from that region. The role of named person must be universal, because if it is not some children will slip through the net, which is exactly what we are trying to prevent. To some extent, we already have universal provision. For example, everyone who has a baby has a health visitor allocated to them. When I had my children, which is quite some time ago now, the health visitor made one visit, saw that I had lots of support and was then able to go away and concentrate on people who needed support. In that sense, the measure is an extension of what we are already doing.
The evidence from Bill Alexander of Highland Council showed how important the named person is as a means of ensuring that GIRFEC does what it is supposed to do. GIRFEC is rooted in co-operation between services, with the child being at the centre, and it ensures that children and families receive holistic services that are underpinned by collaboration.
The committee’s convener has outlined some of the operational concerns about how the named person would work in particular circumstances, and I would like to endorse his comments about the definition of “wellbeing” and the lowering of the threshold for information sharing. In Scotland, under GIRFEC, the wellbeing indicators are known by the acronym SHANARRI—members of the Education and Culture Committee are very used to acronyms—which stands for safe, healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected, responsible and included. Those are all extremely positive things, which I think we would all want for our children, but how will different professionals apply SHANARRI when it comes to lowering the threshold for information sharing? I am sure that although most professionals will act responsibly, it is not unreasonable to raise concerns about overzealous individuals applying subjective views.
I will give an example of what I mean. My children did not travel to primary school by themselves. Some people might think that I was an overprotective mother. That was my way of keeping them safe but, equally, it could be argued that I was breaching other SHANARRI indicators, because my children were not as active as they could have been, they did not get as much fresh air as they could have done and they were not included. People have different forms of parenting, so I would welcome reassurance that the use of the wellbeing indicators—which I know are already established—to lower the threshold for information sharing will be monitored by the Government, so that we can ensure that there are not cases in which it is abused and that interference does not go too far.
That said, I support the bill and I support the principle of information sharing as a way of protecting the most vulnerable children.
16:27
I congratulate Cara Hilton on her maiden speech, which I thought was pretty thoughtful. I predict that if she makes a similar speech at stage 3, she might get a couple of interventions from members on the Government benches and perhaps elsewhere, but we will see what happens.
I want to focus the bulk of my remarks on the named person and, specifically, on what the financial memorandum says, which was the subject of Conservative business just a few weeks ago. It is something that I and other members of the Finance Committee looked into in some detail. Our difficulty with the financial memorandum centred on the costs that it puts forward. The prediction is that the named person will cost local authorities just shy of £8 million in the first year of implementation and that it will cost them nothing—zero pounds and zero pence—in year 2. When I first read the financial memorandum, I did not think that that was realistic or credible. When I read the evidence that was submitted to the committee by various councils and others, it became even less credible, and when the committee took oral evidence from various councils, it became still less credible, to the extent that the committee felt that that was not something that was likely to happen in practice.
I listened carefully to what the minister said and her response appeared to be—I hope that I have written it down correctly—that
“costs will need to be monitored as implementation goes forward.”
I do not take huge comfort from that because, in my opinion, any policy that the Government implements must be monitored as it goes forward. That should happen regardless of whether the policy is controversial or whether questions are asked about it. Every policy ought to be monitored as it is implemented.
Gavin Brown said that he had read the submissions to the committee. I wonder whether he read the one from City of Edinburgh Council, which said:
“The Council believes that the costs and any savings for Children’s Rights, GIRFEC, Early Learning/Childcare and Other Proposals are accurately reflected based on our understanding of the requirements of the legislation.”
Given what he has just said, how does he respond to that? Did he read the submission?
We are very tight for time now.
Presiding Officer, I think that the minister’s tone is a little uncalled for. Of course I read that submission; I read every submission to the Finance Committee, and I have read every report to which the minister has referred the committee since her response. She will know that City of Edinburgh Council had already implemented the approach, so the financial costs on the council will not be the same as they will be for other councils. The minister has cherry-picked the submission of one council, which had already implemented most of the approach.
Let me quote another council. Scottish Borders Council said that it
“believes that additional funding to support the Named Person needs to be available for more than one fiscal year. The Highland Pathfinder”—
on which the Government rests almost everything—
“showed it took several years to implement the cultural changes required within and across organisations in order to implement GIRFEC. Scottish Borders Council believes funding requires to be available over three consecutive years starting in 2014/15 to ensure the successful establishment of the Named Person role.”
That could not be clearer. It took a number of years—
Will Gavin Brown give way?
Give me a moment.
The process took a number of years in Highland Council. I read in detail the Highland Council report to which the minister referred me—I will return to that, but first I will take an intervention from the convener of the Education and Culture Committee.
Please be as brief as possible.
I am grateful to Gavin Brown and I am interested in what he has to say. Surely he accepts that a pathfinder project will always take longer to achieve change, because it is designing the system that others will follow. The time and money that it takes to do something will always be greater in a pathfinder project than in those that come after.
That is probably true, but I do not accept that implementation can cost £8 million in year 1 and zero by year 2. No doubt we learn lessons from pathfinder projects and change can happen faster than it happened in Highland Council, but no council with any credibility has suggested that the cost will be zero in year 2. If anyone has evidence that the cost will be zero in year 2, I will be very happy to take an intervention from them, whether they are a minister, a committee convener or anyone else.
You are in your final minute, Mr Brown.
The same argument can be made about the NHS costs in the financial memorandum. The Government says that year 1 costs will be £10 million and that by year 3 they will be only £5 million—half the amount in year 1. Health boards that gave evidence to the committee described that as being not credible, as did the Royal College of Nursing Scotland. The experts who gave evidence to the Finance Committee made it clear that the costings are not credible, which is why the committee—en bloc, without division—expressed concern about the matter. In my view, the answers that we have received are not good enough.
The reason why all that is important is that by creating the bureaucracy that will result from giving everyone a named person, whether or not they need or want one, the Government will be taking money away from those who need it most.
I am afraid that you must finish, please. I have already cut the next speaker’s time.
Thank you. I will leave it there.
Thank you. I call Colin Beattie. I am afraid that I can give you only five minutes.
16:33
I am delighted to speak about the bill. I am a member of the Education and Culture Committee, so I have been very much involved with the bill.
As Stewart Maxwell said, the committee agreed on the basic principles of the bill, and it is evident that there is widespread support from children’s charities and public bodies. Barnardo’s Scotland, in its written submission to the committee, said:
“This Bill has the potential to be one of the most far-reaching and influential bills considered in this session of the Parliament. At the heart of the Bill is a vision that Barnardo’s strongly shares—making Scotland the best place in the world for children to grow up.”
I think that we can all subscribe to that. We must ensure that we do not lose sight of the fact that the bill is about protecting vulnerable children. We must put that at the heart of all our arguments.
I have been struck by the level of support that the named person approach received in the Government’s consultation. I note that 72 per cent of respondents supported the idea of providing a named person for all children and young people under the age of 18. It is also worth looking at the evidence from a survey that Children 1st carried out, which received 117 responses from kinship carers and support groups. Children 1st found that 90 per cent of respondents thought that every child in Scotland should have a named person, and that some 78 per cent thought that having a named person would have been beneficial to them and their families.
In this instance, we have a ready-made example to look at. In 2010, Highland Council successfully put the named person approach into practice as part of its getting it right for every child approach. In its evidence to the Education and Culture Committee, that council highlighted the fact that the named person approach has led to a clear process for ensuring that relevant information is passed to the correct person, in contrast to what happened under the previous system, in which information was bounced around various agencies in the hope that it would get to the relevant organisation at some stage. The consequence has been earlier support to, and more effective intervention for, children. Getting that support to a child usually means that a successful outcome is more likely. We therefore have irrefutable proof that the named person approach can be successful if it is done right. It has the evidence to back up its success and it has widespread support, and it is an important element of the bill.
On childcare, I fully support an increase in free nursery provision from 475 hours to 600 hours for three and four-year-olds and looked-after two-year-olds. That will benefit 120,000 children throughout Scotland and will mean an increase of 45 per cent in free nursery hours provision since the SNP came to power in 2007. Perhaps Cara Hilton should reflect on that fact.
I feel that there is more to be done on that issue, but the Government has, with the powers that it has, acted and provided more support for families than any Government here to date has. I cannot help but consider the countless other things that could be done with the powers of independence. With those powers, we could work to ensure that there is further support for parents and their children. Scottish Government estimates suggest that Westminster welfare reform will put 50,000 children in poverty by 2020. It is time that we took control of our own affairs in order to protect our young people from Westminster.
I particularly welcome the First Minister’s statement at the SNP conference. He said:
“I believe a transformational shift towards childcare should be one of the first tasks of an independent Scotland.”
I also noted with interest his announcement that the Council of Economic Advisers has been asked to analyse the social and economic implications of raising levels of childcare in an independent Scotland.
I want to highlight the issue of kinship carers. The kinship care order, which is included in the bill, will provide great support for kinship carers. I am pleased to note that the Scottish Government is currently reviewing the financial support for kinship carers in order to address inconsistencies across the country.
You are in your final minute.
Again, I refer to the Children 1st survey, which shows that 60 per cent of kinship carers thought that a kinship care order would be a good thing. A further 27 per cent wanted more information. It was no surprise that 60 per cent said that they would apply for a kinship care order. We must remember that, before the SNP’s election victory in 2007, there was no support for kinship carers in Scotland and that, since 1997, successive Governments at Westminster have failed to consider the needs of children in kinship care through the benefits system.
I am proud that, in the previous parliamentary session, the Government launched the Looked After Children (Scotland) Regulations 2009, which allowed local authorities to give vital financial support to kinship carers, but I am deeply concerned that the Westminster Government is threatening to undermine the support that the Scottish Government provides.
I am running short of time, so I will go quickly to the end of my speech.
It seems to be self-evident that being proactive is always better than being reactive. Preventative spending will help us to ensure that our children get a better start in life right from the beginning, and it provides added benefit in that it helps to ensure greater value for the public purse. Spending now should always reduce spending later.
The bill is an important milestone in achieving better outcomes for our children. I commend the Scottish Government and my colleagues in the Education and Culture Committee for the huge amount of work that has been done and for bringing the bill before Parliament.
We turn to the closing speeches. I am disappointed to note that two members who participated in the debate are missing from the chamber.
16:38
I, too, congratulate Cara Hilton on her maiden speech. She certainly made the most of our policy of not intervening in maiden speeches; I say well done to her. I am sure that she will continue with the same passion and commitment in future debates.
I remind Colin Beattie, who is a colleague on the Public Audit Committee, that we do not have independence in the Highlands. However, I think that every member in the chamber has commented on how well GIRFEC and other measures are working there. We can certainly do an awful lot without independence.
I congratulate the Education and Culture Committee on its excellent scrutiny of the bill. I am not a member of that committee, but I recognise the complexities of the bill, which, obviously, I am new to. Given my experience of many bills since 1999, I can acknowledge the measured and constructive speech given by the committee convener, Stewart Maxwell, which I thought was commendable.
As Liz Smith said, the Scottish Conservatives agree with many of the bill’s proposals. In particular, we agree that we should do more to develop the collaborative approach to ensuring that children’s services are delivered more effectively. Like other members, we very much agree with the plans to extend childcare, enhance nursery provision and better train nursery staff. In 1999, conditions such as autism and dyslexia—Margaret McDougall referred to dyslexia in a question earlier today—were not picked up in nurseries. I therefore commend the training that our nursery staff now receive, as well as the additional support for kinship carers, to which Bob Doris and others have referred.
Neil Bibby made a critical point about health visitors. Some years ago, Dr Phil Wilson said in evidence to the Health and Sport Committee that there was overwhelming evidence to support the retention of health visitors. However, over the past decade, we have seen the demise of health visiting in this country, which is not something that we have supported. Last week, I met Bill Alexander, the director of social work in Highland Council, and I was pleased to learn that Highland is now employing more health visitors. We very much support that and hope that it will be replicated throughout Scotland.
We have several concerns about the bill, one of which is that, as Professor Kenneth Norrie stated, the bill will give ministers more powers that are open ended and not sufficiently well defined. In some key written submissions to the committee, concerns were expressed about the proposed extent of data sharing and about the extension of the powers of Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People; the concern that parental and family responsibilities will be diluted was also expressed. I support COSLA’s point that the children’s commissioner should be the last resort after all local avenues of complaint have been exhausted. We will obviously keep a watching eye on that provision. Whether the additional £160,000 of funding for the children’s commissioner’s office is value for money, only time will tell. I say that with my Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body hat on, because members of the corporate body must decide on such additional moneys.
We are concerned that having a named person for all children in the terms stated by the bill might take resources away from the most vulnerable children. John Stevenson of Unison said that the bill’s provisions would mean that children’s services would have to deal with far more children than they deal with currently. Like the EIS, Unison also had concerns about the implications for resources and training in an already well-stretched budget.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, if the member does not mind. I have less than two minutes left for my speech and I still have quite a bit to cover.
I was a lecturer for 20 years before I became a member of the Scottish Parliament. However, if I was the named person for any 16 to 18-year-olds entering further education now, I would not know where to start or what I had to look for. It is a bit naive to assume that no training would be required.
We also have practical concerns about the named-person role. What will happen if relations break down between the named person and the family? What will the relationship be between the named person and the lead professional? Will there be a single point of contact? Stewart Maxwell raised a good question about what will happen with regard to the named person during the school summer holidays. It is reasonable to raise such important questions at stage 1. I have no doubt that we will get more clarity on those issues at stage 2.
Unison stated that the named-person proposals were not clear and it felt that what it regarded as a rather woolly approach would mean that, to cover their backs, named persons would end up sharing information that strictly speaking they did not have to share. Joan McAlpine made some very good, constructive points about that.
When I visited Inverness College two weeks ago, I came across two Gypsy Traveller girls and wondered what their families would think about their having a named person. I wonder whether any thought has been given to the Gypsy Traveller community in that regard.
16:44
I congratulate Cara Hilton on her maiden speech, in which she showed passion and commitment—the sort of passion and commitment that helped her to win the Dunfermline by-election.
As Cara Hilton and my colleague Jayne Baxter said, Labour supports the principles behind the bill. Labour wants to make Scotland a better place for children to grow up in. Labour believes that we need to get it right for every child and supports the aspiration of improving life chances for children and young people in Scotland.
However, as some of the evidence says and as has been said this afternoon, we believe that the bill lacks ambition and we have concerns about practical issues, wording, details and financial and resource issues, which will be difficult to sum up in a seven-minute speech. Put simply, getting it right for every child means getting the bill right. We cannot let it be a missed opportunity.
The committee heard about a considerable number of issues from organisations and individuals and a significant number of them have been raised today. We have also received many briefings this week, which have contained specific concerns. I will raise a number of the issues that have been presented to us. I thank Children in Scotland and all the other children’s and youth organisations for their helpful briefings in advance of the debate.
A while back, the bill was described to me as four bills in one. It is clear that we need a joined-up bill and a joined-up approach. We should be concerned when NSPCC Scotland says:
“there appears to have been little strategic thinking about the position of children’s services in the raft of legislation currently underway in Scotland. We are concerned that the disparate nature of the various pieces of legislation which affect children’s services indicates a lack of coherent vision for how the whole range of services meet the needs of children.”
The NSPCC is not alone in raising concerns. There have been concerns that the Government’s proposals on children’s rights will not extend those rights or make a practical difference to children’s lives. The Law Society of Scotland described the duty on ministers as
“a diluted version of the existing obligations”
and it noted that the duty requires ministers only to consider the UNCRC and not to act on or explain those considerations. Children in Scotland noted that the proposals fall short of those that the National Assembly for Wales has embraced. A number of suggestions have also come from UNICEF and others about the use of child rights impact assessments and the duties on public bodies. We will have to look at that again at stage 2.
We have heard a great deal of concern about the controversial named person proposals. As I have said, the Royal College of Nursing has said clearly that
“The Scottish Government must recognise the Education Committee’s concerns regarding the capacity of the health visiting workforce to deliver existing duties let alone those associated with the Named Person role.”
Health visitors—the people on the ground—tell us that an additional 450 health visitors are needed. I say gently to the minister that that needs to be not monitored but acted on.
In its briefing, the RCN makes the shocking statement that
“It is not currently known how many health visitors there are in Scotland.”
I am sure that I am not the only one who is extremely concerned by that comment. If the minister does not know how many health visitors there are, how can the figure be monitored and how can they be expected to take on the additional role?
Other concerns have been raised. Children 1st said:
“We remain concerned about the potential for confusion, which we already have experience of directly in practice—between the role of the named person and lead professional.”
YouthLink Scotland has called for clarity on the practicalities of a named person for a young person who is under 18 and who has left school. Questions have also been asked about inadequate funding for training and about who will take on the duty during school holidays.
Those issues are not going to go away. The minister and the Government need to take them seriously and address them accordingly if they want the provisions to be supported and to work.
We have been lobbied by Who Cares? Scotland and a number of our constituents about care leavers and we have been asked to speak up for them in the debate. I will speak up for them, just as Kezia Dugdale and others did. We should extend support for care leavers, and I hope that the Government will consider that request and look favourably on stage 2 amendments about that.
Jayne Baxter made a good contribution on kinship carers. The Government has more work to do to convince them of the merits of what it proposes.
I said that the bill should not be a missed opportunity. However, I feel that it will be a missed opportunity and that it lacks ambition on nursery education and childcare. I welcome again the Government’s flagship policy of an increase to 600 hours of provision for three and four-year-olds but, as we know, that was in the SNP’s manifesto in 2007. I have said it before and I will say it again: the Scottish Government will not solve the childcare problems of 2013 with a policy from 2007.
John Swinney was on television the other night, rightly saying that, if we increased childcare and female employment, that would be a good thing and it could create jobs. My message to the Government is this: do it, then! Actions speak louder than words. It has the powers right now to introduce more childcare than it is doing.
Labour in government acted to support and massively expand universal nursery education and childcare. The SNP in government has done very little in comparison. Instead, it has offered empty and vague referendum bribes. Members should not just take my word for it that that is unambitious. As Children in Scotland and Save the Children point out, the bill does not go nearly far enough in providing support for two-year olds. Only about 1 or 2 per cent of two-year-olds are to be guaranteed nursery in Scotland, whereas 40 per cent of those in England are going to be offered it. You have a stated aim of making Scotland the best place to grow up in the world, but you cannot even offer the best nursery package in the UK.
You are in your final minute. Speak through the chair, please.
The SNP actually cut nursery funding for vulnerable two-year-olds when it first came to power.
Other concerns have been raised about the proposals’ impact on quality, about the definition and split of early learning and care, about flexibility issues and about the need to consider the fact that some children are missing out on months of early years education.
As Children in Scotland notes, the bill says absolutely nothing about out-of-school care for primary school-aged children. It is shocking that the Scottish Government rejected Labour’s call for a cross-party childcare commission to consider the issue back in May. That is deeply regrettable.
The challenge for the Government is to act on the suggestions that have been made and to deliver a better bill. We support the principles of the bill, but it is only good as far as it goes. At present, sadly, it will not be a “landmark bill”, as the minister called it, but a landmark opportunity missed.
16:51
This has been, by and large—with the exception of the last few minutes—a positive and useful debate. The purpose of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill was defined by Aileen Campbell at the outset, and I will repeat what she said: the whole purpose of the bill is to improve children’s lives, and everything we do or say about it should be judged in that way. That is absolutely correct. By and large, members have responded to the challenge.
It is right to say that the bill is not a single bill, but the coming together of two bills into one bill. We thought about and consulted on how to improve lives, doing just what Aileen Campbell asked us to do. I pay tribute to Aileen Campbell’s leadership on the issue—her leadership on the bill and her leadership within the ministerial team. She has a strong commitment, as have I, to continue to work with members across the chamber to improve the bill and put it on the statute book. That is what we should be doing.
I thank everyone concerned with that process, particularly the Education and Culture Committee. The convener restated, cogently and eloquently, the constructive points that arose at committee—and they are constructive points, which are being considered by the Scottish Government. As with all proposed legislation, we are keen to improve the bill as it goes into detailed legislative scrutiny.
The bill will have material added to it. As the committee convener indicated, I will be lodging amendments at stage 2 regarding school closure proposals. I look forward to giving evidence to the committee on 3 December and to discussing proposals on the subject that have—by and large, albeit not completely—been well received.
I thank Jayne Baxter for her opening speech, and I welcome the support that she indicated in it. I am certain that, working together, we will be able to make the bill the best that it can be to ensure that Scotland is the best country to grow up in. I am positive that we can find ways to go forward together in that regard.
Liz Smith’s speech was measured and positive, and I am grateful to her. It is wise that we acknowledge the concern within the Conservative Party about the named person provision. I think that the named person is a positive provision. I have taken some time to be persuaded of that, because I wanted to see the work that was going on and the actions that were being taken across Scotland, but the named person provision is immensely impressive to see in operation. It is wrong to define it as more work; it is about smarter work and how professionals change and develop what they do to meet the challenges that exist.
I thank the cabinet secretary for his remarks just now. Our concern—as Gavin Brown mentioned in his speech—is that, if we are to develop those resources, we might detract from the issues that are facing some of our most vulnerable children. We have a lot of evidence before us from a variety of stakeholders who say that we will indeed have to spend a lot more on the named person provision.
I understand that concern, and I think that Liz Smith—if I might say so without embarrassing her—put it much better than did Gavin Brown, who got trapped by his ideological views. However, there is contrary evidence from a variety of places, in particular from those who are doing the job, to say that the provision is not about increased activity or primarily about increased resource, but about different methods of operation.
In giving evidence to the Education and Culture Committee, Bill Alexander stated in respect of the named person provision that
“It is much easier to understand what is going on”.
He went on to say that:
“Teachers ... and midwives tell me that it does not change what they do but it changes how they are regarded”
and that
“they feel that it has empowered them.”—[Official Report, Education and Culture Committee, 24 September 2013; c 2861-62.]
Bill Alexander knows more about the subject than almost anybody else, and I have found what he says to be true when I have spoken to the people who are involved. I want that to be demonstrated to the committee and to the chamber, and if there are ways in which it can be demonstrated, it should be.
The named person provision is about enabling, not enforcing. It is about not interference or approved parenting, nor substituting professionals for parents, but helping and assisting. It is a very important innovation.
There have been some concerns about the lack of consent for information sharing. Can something be done in the bill to lay down a presumption of seeking consent except in those exceptional circumstances in which welfare issues are at stake?
It is possible to envisage that being included in the guidance, but I—and the minister, I think—would welcome a discussion with Liam McArthur and other members on the matter, because there are ways forward. I am grateful for that contribution.
I will deal quickly with one or two other points. I share Kezia Dugdale’s anger about looked-after children; I expressed it in an article that I wrote in 2006 about the fact that the Parliament had, until that stage, talked about the issue a lot with genuine feeling but had not brought about change.
The bill can help to bring about change, but it can also do what Kezia Dugdale wants it to do, which is to raise the profile of looked-after children—once and for all—in a way that makes us understand our responsibilities; makes society understand the issue; and ensures that we can make progress in a way that none of us has succeeded in doing until now.
I say to Bob Doris that there is nothing in the bill at all that will interfere with the opportunities or rights of local authorities in relation to kinship carers—it is quite the reverse, in fact.
I pay tribute to Cara Hilton for her maiden speech. She was quite right to drop the convention of paying tribute to her predecessor at the beginning. To be fair to her, she dropped quite a number of other conventions too, including the convention of making a maiden speech of a consensual nature.
There was no harm in that at all—she has her mother’s passion for those whom she represents. I will be unconventional too, and pay tribute not just to the member but to her mum. Cathy Peattie is a loss to the chamber. We worked closely together in the first session of Parliament on the Education, Culture and Sport Committee; I regard her as a friend and I always will. She was a doughty fighter for her constituency, for education and schools, and for Scottish culture.
Cara Hilton asked a number of questions of the Scottish Government, and the answer to most of them lies in the need for this chamber to have full powers. Her election literature—[Interruption.] If questions are asked, they should be answered. Her election literature asked why the SNP Government would not match Labour’s commitment to 600 hours of free childcare. With the greatest respect, I suggest that the question was put in the wrong way. Why did Labour not deliver those hours when it was in power? Indeed, it did not even deliver the 475 hours that we have now—it was delivering only 412.5 hours. We are delivering, and we could deliver much more with the full powers of a normal Parliament.
Cara Hilton’s election slogan said that, “Dunfermline deserves better.” I agree, but I would go further and say that Scotland deserves better than the limit that her party has placed—and continues to place—on progress for her constituents. Let us have even more ambition for those powers.
The centrepiece of the bill is the 600 hours of free childcare. It is there on offer and it needs to be supported. In supporting it, we will make a difference and make this country the best country in which to grow up.
The bill is a major step forward, and the fact that members on all sides of the chamber wish to support it is incredibly welcome, but the task with all legislation is to make it as good as it can be. With the work that Jayne Baxter and Liam McArthur have offered to do, and perhaps with the consent and the work of the Scottish Tories—except on one issue, although I hope that we will be able to draw them into supporting that provision—we will have a bill to be proud of. We will have a country to be proud of in terms of how we look after and lead forward our children, and then, with independence, we can do even more.