Chamber and committees

This has been a fulsome debate on the importance of advocacy and understanding the scaffolding and ancillary services that are required to support care-experienced people. I acknowledge much of what the minister said regarding her willingness to engage with other colleagues ahead of stage 3. It is important that we explore the issue of the wider role of advocacy, particularly for parents and families. I recognise what the minister said about provisions that already exist to support advocacy and the differences that exist in how people access and require advocacy.

Given the minister’s undertaking to engage ahead of stage 3, and also the undertaking that she gave to Mr Whitfield in relation to his amendments, I am happy to withdraw amendment 145 and re-engage ahead of stage 3.

Amendment 145, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendment 146 not moved.

Amendment 147 moved—[Ross Greer]—and agreed to.

Amendments 148 and 8 not moved.

Amendment 9 moved—[Jeremy Balfour].

I recognise Ross Greer’s point and some of the concern about renaming the bill. I have heard the flip side of that, too. I have met many care-experienced people—for example, through the cross-party group on care leavers—who have referred to the bill in shorthand as “the Promise bill”.

We need to strike a balance. We could perhaps refer to the “Promise 1 bill” and the “Promise 2 bill”. I do not want to get into the weeds of all that, but to focus minds and attention, we should call the bill what it is, because it is an opportunity. There is still mileage in the bill being an opportunity to begin to fix some of the challenges that Mr Greer referred to. However, I fully accept—as he knows, I said this at stage 1—that the bill will not do everything that we need it to, and it needs to go further and faster. I maintain that renaming the bill would be helpful, but I acknowledge the caveats that Mr Greer pointed out, which are very fair.

The challenge to the Government and to everyone here today is that, if we are serious about keeping the Promise and want the legislation to be part of that, we should, although recognising that the bill is not the full solution, call a spade a spade. If we are unwilling to do that and to call it “the Promise bill” because we simply accept that, as drafted, it will be another missed opportunity, it will set us back and we will not be able to meet the aspiration that we all share.

Amendment 139 would place duties on corporate parents

“to provide pathways and support”

for care leavers

“to find employment and training”.

That includes the provision of careers guidance and support by dedicated officers, as well as the provision of dedicated work experience and traineeship opportunities.

In addition, the Scottish ministers would be required,

“as soon as reasonably practicable,”

to introduce guidance for local authorities on supporting care-experienced young people into work. That guidance would include information on

“the role of employment officers”

and how local authorities should implement employment pathways such as work experience opportunities and apprenticeships for care leavers.

The effect of amendment 139 is to require corporate parents to have dedicated employment officers who are responsible for supporting care-experienced individuals into work, and it follows examples of good practice from local authorities in Wales. In 2017, the Children’s Commissioner for Wales produced the “Hidden Ambitions” report, which involved commitments from the Welsh Government to act like a large family business by providing pathways into employment for care-experienced young people who are not in education, employment or training.

As I think that we will acknowledge, one of the roles that most parents play for their children is to help them through the transitions to adulthood. That will include their entering the workplace and moving beyond the world of formal education, and I think that that is also relevant to the duties that we place on corporate parents. If we want to do right by Scotland’s cared-for and care-experienced young people, we need to ensure that people and entities are charged with acting out their corporate parenting responsibilities in all their functions, not just to care for them in the moment, but to show care by providing future and positive pathways and on-going support.

I move amendment 139.

My amendments in this group would strengthen the duty placed on public authorities by ensuring that they must have “due regard” to guidance. Those amendments were called for by many stakeholders, including The Promise Scotland, in recognition of the well established and understood meaning of “due regard” in law.

Amendment 157 would have the effect of ensuring that people can self-identify as being care experienced, rather than being subject to a top-down definition of care experience, and of ensuring that they can access the support that they need and are entitled to. The effect is self-explanatory.

I acknowledge the on-going work to progress a universal definition of care experience, but without a clear timeline for that work, and without knowing the expansiveness and inclusiveness of the final definition, it is important for us to talk about an inclusive approach to ensure that the definition gets to where it is needed as quickly as possible. I am open to hearing the minister’s update on those efforts, which I am sure she will provide shortly.

I also acknowledge the concerns that self-identification is an open process that may be abused and that people might wrongly identify themselves as care experienced. I acknowledge the risk of those unintended consequences, but I think that risk is far lower than the risks that would be caused by not having a definition as quickly as possible to allow people to access the support that they require.

Amendment 157 probes those issues and I am willing to engage in debate.

I draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of interests, which shows that my husband is a service manager in children and families social work and is a registered social worker.

I do not intend to speak for too long on amendment 225, because it is fairly straightforward and self-explanatory. However, I think that everyone in the room and more widely will be familiar with the words of the Oversight Board’s third report, which was published a year ago tomorrow. It said:

“2025 marks the midway point since the promise was made to when it must be kept. But Scotland is not halfway towards keeping its promise. There have been unexpected events, delays, and unnecessary barriers. This means there are children and young people not receiving the care and support they need. That means for some in the care community the promise has already been broken.”

That report was a wake-up call for everyone, and I hope especially for the Government, which has long hung its hat on the promise that there would be a bill in this parliamentary session to advance the goal that we all share and to make up for lost time and missed opportunities, many of which the board referred to in the quote that I just read.

Perhaps more pertinent to the amendment is something else that the Oversight Board said in its report:

“The upcoming Promise Bill to be lodged in Parliament represents an opportunity and a risk.”

The “upcoming Promise Bill” is how it referred to the legislation that is before us. We should talk about what we are talking about, which is why amendment 225 would rename the short title of the bill The Promise (Scotland) Bill.

I will begin by picking up on what we have heard this afternoon, starting with the Education, Children and Young People Committee’s work, which has been very important. We have heard it referred to throughout the contributions, including those from members of that committee. I was not a member of the committee when it took evidence on the bill. However, it is clear to me—particularly now that I have been inducted into the committee’s lengthy meetings on Wednesday mornings—that the committee spent a lot of time looking forensically at the detail of the evidence that was presented, and that is reflected in the report. We also heard about that work from Willie Rennie, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills and the committee’s convener.

That was about ensuring that there was strong scrutiny of the bill—Daniel Johnson was put under that scrutiny so that he would explain how he felt the bill would progress—and that the voices of campaigners were heard, as we have heard already, as well as those of teachers and other school professionals who have concerns. I know that Daniel Johnson will turn to those points in his closing speech, but we also have an opportunity, as the bill progresses, to address some of those points more fully.

In reflecting on some of the process that sits around the bill, what Daniel Johnson said about the non-Government bills unit was correct. That unit is the unsung hero of Parliament in ensuring that bills are well drafted and well considered and that they can be brought to Parliament for scrutiny and for us to discuss the issues, decide on the general principles—as we will this afternoon—and then move forward into the subsequent stages.

In opening, I reflected that I worked for Enable Scotland for seven years. In my time there, we produced a number of important pieces of work and reports on seclusion and restraint in schools and the abuses that have happened, which we have heard reference to this afternoon. However, Enable tried to look more widely at the school experience of children and young people who have a learning disability, autism and neurodivergence. We tried to reflect on their experience and, crucially, how we could make it better for them and for their parents.

I remember a statistic that came from the report “#IncludED in the Main?!” At that point, the hundreds of parents and carers of young people with a disability whom we surveyed said that they found their experience of the school system stressful and a battle—those were the words that were used—and that they felt alone and cut off from decision making. That is probably what has been reflected most in this afternoon’s debate.

We are trying to set things right for children and young people who have experienced the inappropriate use of seclusion and restraint, but we are also trying to support parents and carers who face daily challenges and often find it hard to get to the truth of what is happening to their children and young people and to move beyond that to build a strong relationship with those who, as Daniel Johnson said, are in loco parentis.

I hope that, as a result of agreeing today that the bill should proceed and as a result of the work that we will do to progress the bill to stages 2 and 3 and put it on the statute book, when we return to Parliament in the next session, we can look back and reflect on the work that will be carried out in our local authorities, in the hope that we will have reduced the burden that parents have felt. We hope that there will be fewer parents who describe their school experiences as stressful or a battle or who feel alone or cut off.

15:38

I raised with the First Minister last week at First Minister’s question time the cabinet secretary’s comments, when, in response to the issue of teachers moving abroad to access jobs, she said that people are

“opting not to travel to jobs”

in Scotland, and that they are

“much more expensive to employ”.

The First Minister accused me of skating past his stellar record on education, but I suggest that he somewhat skated past the defence of the cabinet secretary’s comments. To go to the point that Willie Rennie made, does the cabinet secretary why teachers are so angered by what she said? Does she also accept that a recruitment campaign at this stage in the current parliamentary session, in which she promised recovery and made a very clear pledge on teacher numbers, is just not going to cut it?

Would Beatrice Wishart take an intervention?

I am grateful to Beatrice Wishart for taking my intervention and I am sure that her speech will be as good as the others in the debate.

This is obviously a difficult subject to discuss, but does Beatrice Wishart agree that young people are really important in relation to the Holocaust commemoration debate? I am sure that she will have seen—in Shetland and her community—young people standing up to speak and contributing to ensuring that we all continue with Holocaust remembrance.

This is the fifth debate on Holocaust memorial day in the current session of Parliament. It has been an honour for me, in my time in Parliament, to participate in each of those debates, alongside colleagues from across the chamber. Holocaust remembrance in this Parliament has been a collective endeavour across the parties. I pay tribute to Kenneth Gibson for leading our debate today, and I pay tribute to Jackson Carlaw for his efforts over the years, along with myself. Indeed, I pay tribute to both members for their collaboration on the commemoration events in the Parliament last week and for their collaboration over many years.

At this point in the parliamentary session, it is important that we all rededicate ourselves to Holocaust remembrance and education and that we put on record today the importance of continuing that into the next Parliament. We can try to read the runes, but none of us knows what that Parliament’s make-up will be. It is important that, whether we are hoping to come back or not, we all rededicate ourselves to ensuring that this place continues to lead the nation in our remembrance and our calls for education.

One of the most encouraging things in the past five years, which have often been difficult years in terms of geopolitics, as members have referenced, has been the voices and the participation of young people in this Parliament and across Scotland in remembering the Holocaust, educating their peers and learning for themselves, often through encountering for themselves the places that Jackson Carlaw touched on and broadening their horizons and their understanding of the Holocaust and subsequent genocide.

We can reflect on the wonderful ambassadors of the Holocaust Educational Trust and of the Anne Frank Trust; on the vision schools Scotland programme, which does such great work in our schools; on the drama work done in schools by Beyond Srebrenica; and on the time for reflection leaders that we heard from this week. We have heard a rich and diverse range of young voices in Parliament—they have been passionate and eloquent, and they have led by example.

That really speaks to this year’s Holocaust memorial day theme of “Bridging Generations”, because it is the duty of all of us to ensure that we are bridging the gap that now exists between living survivors and subsequent generations. We now have a generation of young people who will encounter the Holocaust only through secondary sources and will not have the opportunity to meet survivors, many of whom, although they were children when they escaped the Holocaust, are now advanced in age. I pay tribute to the survivors who continue doing everything that they can to educate.

In my remaining time, I will touch on something else that is really crucial this year. Scotland’s senior rabbi, Rabbi Moshe Rubin, who will be known to many here, spoke at the East Renfrewshire Holocaust memorial day commemoration on Monday night and raised concerns that the number of schools in the United Kingdom participating in events to mark Holocaust memorial day is reported to have fallen by 60 per cent since the 7 October terrorist attacks on Israel. Surveys also show that many young adults—indeed, a third of young adults in the UK—are unable to name Auschwitz or any other concentration camp or ghetto where the crimes of the Holocaust were committed. When asked if they had encountered Holocaust denial or distortion on social media, 23 per cent of young people surveyed said that they had and 20 per cent of survey respondents more widely in the UK believed that 2 million or fewer Jews were killed, while others did not know that 6 million Jewish people had been killed in the Holocaust. Those figures should concern every one of us, and it should be our duty to renew the call for education and remembrance among young people.

As I said, we have wonderful examples of that happening in Scotland. I pay tribute to the Government, which continues to invest in that work, and I believe that there is a collective will across this Parliament to do that. However, there are really clear examples of what can happen when we do not educate, do not allow a space for debate and discussion or do not encourage young people to ensure they are accessing reputable and true sources.

As we end this session of Parliament, my call to those of us who are fortunate enough to be here in the next session is for a rededication and for an effort to ensure that all young people, and all people more generally, can have high-quality Holocaust education and remembrance.

13:12