Chamber and committees

I am grateful to have the opportunity to outline our approach to implementation of the Children (Scotland) Act 2020. I set out our plans in my letter of 11 March to you, convener. We remain committed to implementing the 2020 act in full.

To date, the Scottish Government has made three sets of commencement regulations in relation to the 2020 act. The most recent set will commence provisions to amend requirements when a parent or another person with parental responsibilities and rights is making a major decision about a child’s life. Those provisions will commence on 21 September this year. Those regulations also commenced, as of two days ago, provisions that require a court, when considering a child’s welfare in a range of proceedings, to consider whether any delay in those proceedings would negatively affect the child.

We will also lay SSIs in September this year to bring in the regulation of child contact centres. Laying instruments as soon as we can will provide clarity on how regulation will work.

We will lay a further commencement SSI later this year, in October. It will cover a number of areas, including the remainder of section 1 of the 2020 act, on the views of children in court cases in areas such as child contact; sections 2 and 3, on views of children in relation to adoption and permanence proceedings and children’s hearings proceedings; section 16, on factors for the courts to consider before making an order on matters such as child contact and residence; section 18, on the duty on the courts to consider the child’s best interests when allowing access to information; and section 30(2), on delay in relation to child contact and residence cases.

There is still more work to do. For example, the planned register of child welfare reporters is a key provision of the 2020 act. Child welfare reporters can play a key role in contact and residence cases—they provide reports to the sheriff who is hearing the case and they interview key people, including the child who will be at the centre of the case. We have re-established the child welfare reporter working group, which will look back at changes that were made previously and look forward to the implementation of the register.

I hope that that brief introduction reassures the committee that implementation of the 2020 act is taking place and is continuing and that we recognise the need to implement legislation. The 2020 act is particularly important, given that it is about children. I am happy to answer any questions.

I will ask Simon Stockwell to confirm this, but I understand that we will lay the SSIs that I just referred to—in relation to sections 1, 2, 3, 16, 18 and 30—in October this year and that the provisions will come into effect in October 2026. However, the lead-in time for the child contact centre SSIs will be a bit longer, at 18 months.

That is all considered when thinking about how we move forward with everything. I do not know whether Jeff Gibbons or Matt Elsby wants to add anything.

Thank you very much. Good morning, committee. Convener, I have an opening statement on part 1 of the Domestic Abuse (Protection) (Scotland) Act 2021 and another on the housing aspect, which is in part 2. Is that all right?

The capacity of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to provide emergency cover in any particular area is an operational matter for the service. Having said that, the emergencies that the service responds to have changed significantly over the years and it is right that it carefully considers how to adapt to the changing risks in order to remain effective and efficient, with firefighters being in the right place at the right time. The SFRS carries out detailed risk assessments based on a community risk index model that takes into account a wide variety of factors, including future population growth, industry and other hazards.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is undertaking a strategic service review, and a full public consultation will be published next week. I urge anyone with any interest in it to please engage with that. I have been kept updated on the SFRS plans for the consultation and have received assurances that supporting evidence will be published alongside the consultation. I emphasise that it is about providing an optimal service to maintain community safety and inform final decisions. Robust evidence and data will need to be at the heart of decisions concerning any possible changes following the review. I reiterate to the member that I am always happy to meet him, and I will have a drop-in session next week if he would like to attend that.

I thank Stuart McMillan for securing this important debate to mark the extensive work of the Scottish Law Commission over the past 60 years. The Scottish Government supports the motion and associates itself with members’ warm and positive words. I am delighted that the chair of the SLC, Lady Paton, is here, along with a number of other commission members, to hear in person what has been said. I give a very warm welcome to them and to Michael Clancy from the Law Society of Scotland.

As we all know, on the 15 June, it will be 60 years since the Scottish Law Commission came into existence under the Law Commissions Act 1965. The act was introduced to Parliament on 20 January 1965, received its second reading on 8 February and gained royal assent on 15 June—a remarkably fast passage for a bill, which is something that I am sure that we all aspire to in respect of Scottish Law Commission bills, too.

The commission is now delivering its 11th programme of law reform, and, over the past 60 years, it has examined around 30 broad areas of Scots law. In addition, it has worked with its counterparts in England and Wales to examine a range of reserved areas of law, including insurance, surrogacy and automated vehicles. As part of its duties under the 1965 act, the commission also continues to examine the law for anomalies or defects that appear to it to call for changes to the law. It has also carried out extensive and detailed but essential work on statute law revision and on the consolidation of Scots law.

After only its first year, the commission concluded that one of the requirements should be that, as far as possible, it work should be

“intelligible and acceptable to the general public, in whose interests, fundamentally, all its work is done.”

It was as important then as it is now that the public are aware that recommendations of an apparently technical or even abstract nature will, if adopted, have the effect of improving and modernising the law in such a way as to directly affect them. That theme has been very much sustained, and it is no coincidence that the title of the conference that the commission is holding to mark its 60th anniversary is “Law Reform: Shaping Society?” Ensuring that Scots law effectively meets society’s needs has always been at the heart of the commission’s work.

Clearly, the Scottish Law commission does not operate in a vacuum or an ivory tower. There would be little point in expert commissioners taking the time to carry out detailed, thorough and thoughtful work that results in recommendations if those recommendations were not then given careful consideration and taken forward. Implementation of law reform is a challenge that many jurisdictions face, and I was interested to hear that, at this year’s Commonwealth Association of Law Reform Agencies conference, which was held in Malta in April, Lady Paton delivered, remotely, a reflection on the commission at 60 years in which she spoke about the collaboration and focus that are needed to ensure that recommended law reform happens.

As is noted in the motion, in May 2013, the Parliament agreed a change in standing orders to allow certain SLC-derived bills to be considered by the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. That change was intended to improve the implementation rate of SLC bills by ensuring that the workload of the Justice Committee, and its successor committees, within whose remit SLC bills invariably fall, would be less of a blockage to delivery.

The work to improve the implementation rate did not stop there. In May 2019, the DPLR Committee agreed to the remit of a working group to review the Presiding Officer’s criteria for designating bills as Scottish Law Commission bills that may be referred to the committee for scrutiny. The working group comprised officials from the Scottish Government, the Scottish Law Commission and the Scottish Parliament, and it was a great example of collaborative working with a clear goal. It made important recommendations on what further steps it might be appropriate to take to improve implementation.

On Rhoda Grant’s points about implementation, there are sometimes good reasons for not progressing something. For example, there has been a shift in societal expectations as a result of the removal of the time bar for victims of historical childhood sexual abuse. In other cases, a different policy approach might be developed—for example in relation to adults with incapacity. That speaks to the independent status of the Scottish Law Commission and its relationship with the Government. In addition, not all reports are for the Scottish Government to implement; some sit with the United Kingdom Government. The most recent examples of such reports related to surrogacy, electoral law and automated vehicles. Therefore, the implementation rate is good, but it is important to note that, over the past 10 years, we have been getting significantly better at implementation. In this parliamentary session, commission bills will account for around 9 per cent of the legislation that has gone through the Parliament.

I wish to place on record my thanks to the Scottish Law Commission for its sterling work over the past 60 years. Its work has transformed, through law reform, the lives of individuals and the operations of businesses across Scotland. I am sure that the commission will continue its excellent work for the next 60 years.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. Unfortunately, my app did not work, but I would have voted yes.

Delay in child contact proceedings is not in the child’s best interests. We plan to make further commencement regulations later this year in relation to the Children (Scotland) Act 2020, including section 32, which requires the court to consider how delays in contact cases can have a negative impact on the child’s welfare.

Case management rules for family actions in the sheriff court came into effect in September 2023 and are intended to help prevent undue delay in proceedings relating to the welfare of children. If a party to a case considers that another party is causing unnecessary delay, they can raise that with the sheriff.

I recognise the negative effect that non-compliance with contact orders can have on a child. Where somebody believes that another person has not obeyed a court order, they can ask the court to vary the order to hold the person in contempt of court. There is a provision on penalties for contempt of court in section 15 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981, including a fine or imprisonment.

Conducting proceedings in such a manner amounts to an abuse of process and may also involve contempt of court and result in penalty. In addition, it is open to the court to use its power to regulate the expenses arising from the court action to penalise a party for their conduct in the course of proceedings.

The Police Scotland budget has been increased this year by £90 million, and we have committed £26 million to the cashback for communities scheme to be reinvested into our youth programmes across all 32 local authorities in Scotland.