Chamber and committees

I, too, congratulate my colleague Liz Smith on securing this important members’ business debate.

I will start my short contribution by sharing with members that I regularly visit Blantyre leisure centre with my daughter Charlotte. As members might be aware, Charlotte has just turned one, and she has gone swimming since she was four months old. She loves the water, and she has taken to paddling her legs in her swimming ring as a duck takes to water. I want Charlotte to be a confident swimmer. That is why swimming pools are so important. Swimming is a vital life skill and, without our swimming pools, children and young people’s lives are put at risk.

Further, without swimming pools, talent would also be stifled, as Liz Smith has pointed out. Here in Scotland, we have developed talented people who have gone on to become some of the most successful and well-known Olympians and decorated GB medallists.

We need to save our pools in order to develop and nurture sporting talent but also—and this is most important—to save lives. Recently, I went back to the Sir Matt Busby centre in Bellshill, where I first learned to swim. I was one of the fortunate school pupils in North Lanarkshire to benefit from free swimming lessons during my last year in primary school, something that has long been cut due to reductions in council budgets. Budget cuts have devastating consequences for our communities and, if the Government cannot find a fair settlement for councils, I fear that a number of public swimming pools will close for good.

I want to finish by talking about a fantastic bunch of parents and talented young people at the Bellshill Sharks Amateur Swimming Club, which was founded in 1968. When I had the pleasure of attending one of their swimming sessions, I spoke to some of the young people, who showed me the medals that they had won during swimming meets and, of course, told me the history of the club that they are so proud of. Parents told me how much personal time they give up in order to fit in training and attend the various competitions that their children participate in. The club is a community and it gives young people more than just a vital life skill; it gives them a sporting hobby and friendship as well as routine and discipline.

Not that long ago, the Bellshill Sharks were worried about their home in the Sir Matt Busby centre, which they feared might not reopen after the pandemic. It took pressure from myself and other councillors at that point before the council would confirm that the centre would reopen. However, that threat is still there, because North Lanarkshire Council has to find £60 million-worth of cuts over the next three years, on top of the £228 million-worth of cuts that have been made over the past decades. The fact of the matter is that there is nothing left for councils to cut, which is why we are seeing councils up and down the country making painful decisions that will have detrimental impacts on our communities.

Thank you for your warm welcome to the committee, convener. I have no declaration of interests to make now, but that could change in the future. If it does, I will alert you to that.

I recently held an event in Parliament with the Miracle Foundation to raise awareness of the incredible work that it does to support children and young people with bereavement and trauma. It advised MSPs in attendance that it is proving extremely hard for families in the Motherwell area to access support services as a result of high costs associated with private counselling and therapy services and of waiting times of more than 24 months for NHS and child and adolescent mental health services.

Despite the pilot programme, the latest figures show that almost 1,600 children and young people are currently on a CAMHS waiting list in Lanarkshire. With charities and third sector organisations stretched, what strategy has the Government put in place to tackle mental health backlogs for children and young people in Motherwell and across Lanarkshire involving those vital organisations?

The First Minister will be aware of the recent decision taken by North Lanarkshire Council to let go of 130 teachers before the summer holidays. Education chiefs emailed 80 primary and 50 secondary teachers last Friday to tell them that they could no longer offer them temporary or fixed-term contracts from August. The Educational Institute of Scotland has rightly condemned the decision, as many teachers will be looking for jobs over the summer holidays. The council has responded, saying that Scottish Government funding for teacher recruitment has fallen substantially. Indeed, in the past two years alone, there has been a £1.8 million reduction.

Cuts to education budgets mean cuts to teacher numbers. What reassurance can the First Minister provide to the 130 teachers who will be really concerned and upset by the decision that has been taken by North Lanarkshire Council?

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to Police Scotland’s latest quarterly performance report, which found that there were 1,928 recorded crimes of online child sexual abuse during 2022-23. (S6O-02435)

Detective Chief Superintendent Sam Faulds, who is the head of public protection and Police Scotland’s national child abuse investigation unit, has said:

“Behind every image of abuse shared online is a child. These images are viewed and shared thousands, if not potentially millions of times around the world. This is a horrific trade in trauma and misery.”

That is an extremely powerful statement yet, all too often, such crimes are not punished severely enough. The Scottish Sentencing Council has confirmed that a person who is caught in possession of indecent images would likely attract a community sentence, despite public opinion favouring a lengthy prison sentence. Will the cabinet secretary commit to publishing data so that the public are aware of the reality of sentencing in such cases?

I am becoming increasingly annoyed by the Government and its inability to legislate. It has been 834 days since Parliament passed the UNCRC bill and 630 days since the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the UK Government’s challenge to the bill. That means that the Scottish Government had 630 days to decide whether to write a letter to the UK Government about the UNCRC bill. No wonder nothing gets done in this place.

Instead of making the necessary changes to the bill, the Scottish National Party has deliberately provoked grievance, continued to politicise children’s rights, played constitutional games and prioritised a debate on independence this afternoon. However, the SNP has been found out. If the Government really cared about children’s rights, work would have progressed by now. If this was really about young people, members of the Scottish Parliament would have something to scrutinise today, but it appears that the Scottish Government has done nothing. We still do not know when the bill will come back to Parliament. What on earth has the Government been doing?

Why did the Scottish Government not do its homework before introducing the bill to Parliament? When will the bill finally be brought back to the chamber?

How many more statements will be made to this Parliament before we see legislation that will transform our education system?

Does the minister share my concern—a concern that is shared by the Finance and Public Administration Committee—over the bill’s financial implications and the ability to resource what is outlined in the bill?

There is a lot to digest in the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill, and I am sure that many members would have preferred to have a stand-alone debate this afternoon. I fully understand the challenges for members who have been allocated only four minutes, because they will be stuck for time to develop their arguments. That does not allow for good debate. However, I understand that it is process-related and is a matter for the Parliamentary Bureau. When it comes to important bills such as this one, members need the time to debate and challenge the thoughts of others in the chamber.

On the bill itself, I will start on a positive note. The Minister for Children, Young People and Keeping the Promise and I recently had a productive meeting in which we discussed issues relating to her brief, which I shadow. I hope that we can work together on the bill and across other issues. We both care about the wellbeing and safeguarding of children and young people. I also agree with the principle of the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill—supporting young people, whether they are victims or perpetrators of minor crimes, to try to reduce reoffending, and ensuring that wraparound care is available.

Should the bill be approved by the Parliament, it would increase the age of definition of a child from 16 to 18 in the criminal justice system and will mean that most offences that are committed by under-18s will be dealt with by the children’s hearings system rather than by the court system.

However, the bill does not come without its problems. Some are historical but it is imperative that we MSPs do not allow bad law to pass through Parliament.

I welcome the opportunity to debate at what age a child becomes an adult. I have struggled with that when looking at devolved law, because the Scottish National Party has moved the goalposts, depending on portfolio area. For example, a person can get married at 16 and can buy alcohol or get a tattoo at 18, but is not viewed as an adult until 21 or 25 for justice-related issues.

Then there is the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. The SNP suggests that young people should be able to change their gender at 16, but the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill changes the age of a child from 16 to 18. We need to have a serious conversation about age, but I understand that that discussion will need to be for another day.

My colleague Sue Webber, in her capacity as convener of the Education, Children and Young People Committee, highlighted the valid concerns of MSPs who sit on that committee. She raised the important issue of finance and resource. As it stands, the bill lacks detail on costings and outlines issues regarding key agencies. The Finance and Public Administration Committee also highlighted the lack of financial information in the financial memorandum. That already puts the bill at a disadvantage; it causes doubt about its deliverability and provides no reassurance that bodies such as local authorities and Children’s Hearings Scotland will be able to implement the changes that the proposed legislation will introduce.

I could not agree more with Sue Webber about the timings for the bill. With no full costings, debating the proposed legislation is like putting the cart before the horse.