Chamber and committees

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.

Does the member agree that it would also be helpful if before today’s debate, Opposition parties had been made privy to what the programme would actually mean for young people?

No, it does not work, as was referenced by Pregnant Then Screwed. The research from the charity that I have in front of me shows that it is due to childcare issues that parents are choosing not to have any more children and that parents are finding it difficult to manage that work and childcare balance.

Will the minister take an intervention?

Will the minister give way on that point?

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.

That suggestion about flow charts goes back to the idea that children might expect to have some kind of visual demonstration of their rights.

Does anyone have any other comments on the redress scheme?

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.