Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is looking for rural community housing bodies to become self-sufficient. How realistic do people think that aim is, and if it is realistic, how could it be achieved?

I will direct my first question to Mike Staples and Russel Griggs, but I am happy for anybody else to comment. The rural community housing bodies have been awarded funding of £960,000 jointly by the Scottish Government and the Nationwide Foundation. The funding is over three years and is for the Communities Housing Trust and South of Scotland Community Housing to deliver housing projects. What have you been able to plan to do with that money?

As a member of the Education, Children and Young People Committee, I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the stage 3 debate on the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill. I thank the committee clerks and our witnesses for their input to the bill, and I also thank the minister for her engagement and the other committee members for keeping their focus firmly on the rights of all the children who will be impacted by the legislation. My parliamentary office backs on to the Royal Mile primary school, and hearing the pupils as they play is a lovely reminder of our duty, which is to make Scotland the best possible place for our children to grow up in.

The bill is important. It supports children’s rights in line with the principles of the UNCRC and the ethos of getting it right for every child, and it represents a step forward in the Scottish Parliament’s commitment to keeping the Promise.

The journey to stage 3 has sometimes been challenging, but the bill represents a big step in advancing children’s rights and fostering a justice system that truly serves our youth. Like others, I want to mention our committee visit to Polmont prison. It was painfully clear that such facilities are entirely unsuitable for children. These young individuals need comprehensive support for their wellbeing, not harmful environments that fail to meet their developmental and emotional needs.

I want to spend the rest of my time talking about the victims and about safeguarding their rights. It is crucial to prioritise the fulfilment of children’s rights, whether they have caused harm, whether they have been harmed, or both. Achieving that delicate balance was certainly a focal point of our committee’s scrutiny, and I think that the bill gets the balance right.

Access to information is vital for victims as it allows them to plan for their safety and helps them recover from traumatic experiences. I am grateful to Willie Rennie for working hard to reach agreement and for lodging his amendments, which will empower the principal reporter to share information that is so critical for victims. What is more, the changes will ensure that victims have on-going access to information without the need for repeated requests, which will provide them with the consistent support that they deserve. The establishment of a single point of contact will make it easier for children and young people to access the information that they need to safety plan. It will also enable them to exercise their right to recovery, allowing them to reclaim their agency and make informed decisions, and paving the way to healing and justice.

It is imperative that we hold ourselves accountable. I thank my colleague Ruth Maguire for her amendment that will place a duty on ministers to conduct thorough assessments of the services’ effectiveness in collaboration with key agencies that are involved in the children’s hearings system. By actively listening to the experiences of those who use the support services, we can genuinely ensure that we get it right for every child.

The advancement of victims’ rights could not have been achieved without the tireless efforts of stakeholders such as Victim Support Scotland, Children 1st, Scottish Women’s Aid and young people themselves. I am grateful for the engagement on and unwavering advocacy for the safeguarding of victims throughout the bill’s journey. Delivering for our children through the legislation will have its challenges. We have heard different views from across the chamber, but the dedication to placing children and young people at the forefront of our efforts has endured.

I whole-heartedly stand behind the bill.

Good morning. We have spoken a little bit already about budget transparency, and I am quite interested in the public engagement part of that as well. The Accounts Commission says that is it important that councils are

“clear with the public about their finances and have frank conversations about what services they can realistically provide”.

What led the commission to make that recommendation?

Is that work tied in to early intervention and prevention? I ask that because you mentioned significant sums of money being saved.

Thank you. I should probably put on record the fact that I was a councillor on South Lanarkshire Council until 2022.

Have you done work to explore how councils are communicating and engaging with the public, and whether that is influencing the decisions that are made?

That brings me to my next question. We are 10 years on from the Christie commission and the vision that it set out. I am quite interested in the programmes and the transformation that we have had over recent years, and what leads to successful transformation. Do you have a good example of transformation that has gone well, and can you say what the key reasons are why it has come out better than others?

Could you give a specific example of such partnership working and the empowerment of communities that goes along with that?

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the Child Poverty Action Group’s recent analysis of official data showing that 4.3 million children were in relative poverty across the United Kingdom, up from 3.6 million in 2010-11. (S6O-03313)