Chamber and committees

We now move to our fourth agenda item, which is our final evidence session on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill at reconsideration stage. I welcome to the meeting Shirley-Anne Somerville, who is the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, and her officials. Liz Levy is unit head of children’s rights and the bill lead, Shona Spence is from the bill team and Rachel Nicholson—who is joining us remotely online, and has just popped up in front of me—is a lawyer in the Scottish Government’s legal directorate. Welcome, and thanks to you all.

I also welcome Martin Whitfield, who has joined us for this evidence session. I will, depending on the time, allow Martin to ask questions.

I refer members to papers 4 and 5, and I invite the cabinet secretary to make an opening statement.

Thank you. Naeema, would you like to comment in 30 seconds as well?

That concludes our questions. I thank all our panellists. It has been a very interesting and enlightening session. I will suspend the meeting briefly to allow a changeover of witnesses.

I am going to push for an additional response and investment in speech and language. I have to do that—my conscience tells me to ask for it—because there is a knock-on effect on communication, obviously, but also on children’s ability to self-regulate.

We have had a bit of a debate about the impact of speech and language challenges on children’s behaviour. If children are not able to communicate properly, and if staff are not trained and do not have enough exposure to the right materials to support the whole family, that will have a knock-on effect on behaviour. It is really important that we invest in speech and language therapy, to reduce the stress levels of children who cannot communicate and of their parents. I know that brilliant work on that is being done by Children 1st, for instance, which has a parent line that parents who are struggling can take advantage of.

I will touch a wee bit on play—I will not go into it too much, although I could talk about it a lot. I echo the remarks made by my colleague Ruth Maguire on the importance of outdoor play in particular. I will give a wee shout out to the investment that has been made in our playgrounds; I can see the result of that.

We have not talked about the impact of adult behaviour on children. I came across a study that was published at the beginning of October on the impact of verbal abuse of children by adults. It was by Professor Peter Fonagy, and it discovered that more than 40 per cent of children are exposed to verbal aggression or hostility from adults. Half of those children are exposed to that each week and 10 per cent are getting screamed and yelled at every day. We know that children will grow up to have increased levels of anxiety and stress from that. That takes us back to attachment theory, which leads to separation anxiety, and we know that that is coming through in our schools.

What can the Scottish Government do about that? I have suggested investment in staff training that is attachment-theory led, so that staff are fully au fait with that. There should be more investment in speech and language, psychological support services and early intervention.

We need more detail on that when we get more flesh on the bones of the programme. I know that the Scottish Government will absolutely be able to do that.

Will the First Minister provide an update on the Scottish Government’s latest engagement with the United Kingdom Government on any plans for the medical evacuation of injured civilians from Gaza in the light of his commitment to treat injured civilians in Scottish hospitals in the event that there is a medical evacuation?

I am pleased to be taking part in the debate. I hope that my previous experience can add to the conversation.

I will start by acknowledging some of the good stuff and the positive impacts, and then I will go on to suggestions that I make as a critical friend. I pay tribute to the best start grants, the food payments, the baby box and the Scottish child payment, which have inevitably made significant differences. I welcome the expansion in childcare.

We know that investment in early childhood, families, prenatal care and that crucial stage of bonding in the early stages after birth makes a huge difference. As the Dalai Lama says, the foundations of our lives are laid in our childhood, so it is really important that we get it right.

From that point of view, I would like to touch on attachment. The motion in front of us talks about child development, but it does not mention anything about attachment theory. We know that that is really important, so I want to link it in with staff training. Although I welcome the expansion in childcare, I would like the early years staff that we have to be fully trained in attachment theory. That is especially significant at the moment, because we know that our children suffered during Covid, and that it had an impact on their speech and language. I speak to teachers regularly—I was in a nursery last week—and the challenges around that are immense.

If no one else wants to come in, I just want to say on behalf of the committee that we have found this to be a very useful session. I think that we have managed to get under the skin of some of the areas of contention to ensure that we move on at pace while also providing a very thorough scrutiny process.

We all appreciated the way in which Juliet Harris brought alive the children’s voices in such a practical way through the image of the spider’s web. From our point of view, we want to ensure that that web is robust so that in the future, when we add on all the bits that will strengthen children’s rights, we have a framework—a web—that is robust enough to carry them.

I agree that children are well able to understand complicated concepts regarding their own needs, wants and rights. When I was a teacher prior to being elected and we were doing rights-respecting schools, the articles in the UNCRC and so on, I could see that children were well able to express—not only orally but through pictures and multisensory play—their knowledge of all the different articles. In one sense, it appears that they were well ahead of us adults and that the legislative process is just catching up with them.

In that spirit, then, I thank you very much for your contributions this morning. Your evidence will certainly add to our scrutiny.

I suspend the meeting very briefly to allow for a change of panels.

I bring in Fulton MacGregor, who is online.

Thank you for that. I will bring in my colleague Paul O’Kane.

I want to move on, because time is precious. I know that members are going to be covering some of the points that will come up, so everyone will get an opportunity to comment.