Chamber and committees

I agree that discussions need to take place around that, because we need to have a whole discussion on the issue of early years. I go back to the point about detail, because many such issues have not been mentioned today. That is why I think that the Government needs to have more open conversations with the whole of the chamber instead of having debates and not really informing us what it is trying to debate during its Government business.

I turn back to the point that I was making with regard to Pregnant Then Screwed. Carol Erskine, its head of policy and campaigns, said:

“there is a price on being a parent today is brutal. It is truly shocking that almost two-thirds of Parents are being forced to reduce their hours or leave the workforce entirely due to the cost and availability of childcare, and there is no end in sight.”

That view is coming not from politicians but from parents who are completely fed up about the fact that the system is working not for them but against them.

That brings me on to nurseries. Like Willie Rennie, I will raise the issue time and again until the Government finally gets it and sorts the problems that exist around the 1,140-hours policy. When we look at the various issues that were mentioned today around the policy, we can see that there are politicians on the SNP benches who get it: Fulton MacGregor and Evelyn Tweed get it, and I praise them for their honest assessment of childcare issues in their communities. Evelyn Tweed is right that rural communities have been left behind when it comes to nursery provision, and they have also been left behind in relation to other issues relating to pregnancy and bringing up a child. We need only look at Dr Gray’s hospital in Moray and the Caithness general hospital to see how hard it is for rural mums to bring up a family.

I realise that time is tight and I do not have much time left. There is much more that I would have liked to mention today, because there have been some really good conversations. Oliver Mundell mentioned speech and language therapy and said that the Government needs to sort those issues out, and Jamie Greene rightly mentioned the issues surrounding child dental care. There are many more issues that we need to resolve in relation to early years development as a whole, but, my goodness, this Government has a long way to go.

Presiding Officer,

“Giving children the best possible start in life”—

those are words that we can all get behind, regardless of where we sit in the Parliament. We have all heard them from the Scottish Government before. In 2009, a similar programme, the early years framework, was launched, which also promised to give

“all our children the best start in life.”

That leads me to Willie Rennie’s earlier point about rhetoric. It is all well and good for the Government to launch documents and programmes that intend to improve the lives of children and young people. However, what are its aims? What will the Government do, in addition to the policies that are already in place, to make such improvements? How will success be measured? Those are key questions that I am not sure have been answered in the debate.

I reflect on a quote from the Government motion, part of which my colleague Jamie Greene picked out earlier. The Government states that

“it can build on the targeted investments that it has already made in support of families pre-birth to three and that joint working can create a culture, environment, economy and society that prioritises and enhances early child development, to realise its ambition of creating a more healthy, fair and equal society”.

Joint working with whom? And how will joint working lead to the creation of a more healthy, fair and equal society? Detail is everything if the Government wants people to come with it on its early years journey.

The minister mentioned Government policies that are already in place. Some of them are good and some—well, we will leave that for later. However, when will we see the outcomes? Martin Whitfield was spot on when he mentioned data, and I am beyond fed up with the Government’s lack of data capture, especially across portfolios. Carol Mochan mentioned that during her speech.

Throughout the debate, we have travelled through the stages of raising a child, from pregnancy to early years, and policies and ambitions have been mentioned. However, as Oliver Mundell has rightly said, we are falling at the first hurdle. That was evidenced just last week during First Minister’s question time, when I asked the First Minister about the Pregnant Then Screwed campaign. The First Minister had no answers for parents who have had to reduce their hours or leave the workforce because work and childcare are incompatible. He has no answers for the 43 per cent of parents who cannot afford to have any more children. It has already been forecast that the number of births will drop over the next decade. The Government needs to realise that current policies are not working for parents but are working against them.

Is there a risk of overpromising and underdelivering for young people? I think that the issue is huge for young people. They have been calling for it—goodness!—since I was at school. That is how long it has been going on so, once it is over the line, we need to make sure that we are careful that we do not overpromise and underdeliver, because at the end of the day it is our young people who it will directly impact.

Thank you. I will move on to other parts of our discussion.

Dr Tickell, in your opening remarks you touched on young people understanding the rights that they will have once the bill gets over the line, if the amendments are accepted. How should we ensure that young people understand their rights? We had an excellent example of that earlier when a witness on our first panel gave us a demonstration. Do the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament need to get better at that, to ensure that we reach people across a span of ages? We are really good at talking to ourselves, but we are not necessarily good at talking to people who are outside the room.

I wonder whether Dr Tickell would like to add to that.

Thank you. It is useful to know that that communication is now happening between the cabinet secretary and young people, because that is vitally important, particularly as we move—we hope—towards getting the bill over the line. That is the crucial point and is why we are discussing the issue again.

I want to pick up on the points that Paul O’Kane raised about COSLA and Social Work Scotland. Juliet Harris, you also briefly mentioned redress. COSLA raised the concern that children might find it difficult to identify when they can seek redress for UNCRC incompatibilities using the powers in the bill. What are your thoughts on how the Scottish Government can ensure that all children who are deserving of redress receive it?

Thank you. I appreciate that time is precious, convener.

Good morning, panel. There has been a lot to unpick already, just in the answers to the first couple of questions. Your evidence has painted a different landscape to that of the previous panel. That is good, because it means that we are getting into the nitty-gritty of the legislation. My questions will stray a little from what I had planned to ask, because of how our discussions so far have gone.

I will start with a question for Derek Frew. It concerns the age of a child, which is an important concept when we consider legislation that impacts children and young people directly. In Scotland, we have an anomaly whereby people can legally do different things at different ages, because they either are, or are not, considered a child at certain points in their lives. We already have the UNCRC bill, but the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill is now going through Parliament as well. Does the Government need to be stricter on age or to define when a person goes from being a child to an adult? I am certainly wrestling with that and I know that other members are, too, in the context of legislation, because it just seems to be a minefield. In the justice system, someone can be of an age at some point, but in another context the age will be completely different.

What are your thoughts on that? I invite Dr Tickell to come in on that, too.

I offer a warm welcome to the panel. I will start with a reflective question. It has been almost two years since the Supreme Court ruling and it has taken that length of time for the Scottish Government to bring the bill back to the Scottish Parliament for reconsideration. In relation to the feedback that you have had from children and young people and, indeed, your own feedback, are you disappointed with the length of time that it has taken for the amended bill to come to Parliament to be reconsidered?

Thank you.