Chamber and committees

I am glad to follow the speeches of Ross Greer and other members this afternoon, which have been useful in highlighting the challenges that exist in the bill; my opening remarks focused on that, too. I found the contributions from committee members particularly helpful. Douglas Ross, as convener, set the context. Willie Rennie, Ross Greer, Jackie Dunbar and others contributed much of what they had heard in evidence at stage 1.

I am grateful to the committee for the work that it has done. It has produced a robust and important report with important recommendations that have helped to focus this afternoon’s debate and will help to inform what happens at stages 2 and 3. Willie Rennie set the context for where we are and the challenge that exists for the minister, having inherited the Promise and the work around it. I agree with Mr Rennie in that I respect the minister, and I believe that her intentions are good and that she has been doing what she can to drive the bill forward. However, there is much work to be done, as I outlined in my opening remarks.

Context is really important, and Ross Greer set out much of it in his opening speech. It was useful that he took us back to reflections on Duncan Dunlop and the young people who came into the Parliament to tell their story all those years ago, beginning the whole process of what we have come to understand as the Promise, which was made in this place. It is important to put that on the record again.

Thinking about those who are now adults, young people who are in the system at the moment and those who are yet to come into the system, there will be many reflections this afternoon on trying to get it right first time and avoiding situations that have arisen over many years whereby young people have been failed, with a catalogue of promises made to them that were broken. We are all agreed that we want to avoid that, and that is at the heart of this afternoon’s debate.

No one is saying that the Government is moving back or away from its commitment to the Promise and to the whole agenda; it is just that so many frustrations are coming through as a result of the process, including the legislative process, with only 30 days of legislative time left, as I said at the outset of my remarks. There is frustration that we have not done more and that it will fall to the Parliament in the subsequent session to move much of the work forward.

There are concerns that we will not achieve the Promise by 2030. In the course of the next session, 2030 will not be that far away. I have heard colleagues saying that we need to do more work in the next session, but the reality is that we will have to make significant progress very quickly in the life of the next session—in its early days—if we are to have any hope of meeting the commitments that have been made.

I recognise many of the reflections that have been made this afternoon, including the point that one bill was never going to be able to deliver the Promise. I recognise much of what Nicola Sturgeon said in her speech about changing mindsets, changing hearts and minds and changing our processes. Of course we need to make a whole-system change. Indeed, that chimes with what Willie Rennie said in his speech about the Promise not being the responsibility of just one minister or one bill; it sits across a wider piece. There is something crucial and fundamental there.

I recognise what Nicola Sturgeon said in her speech about not wanting the bill to fall foul of the knockabout politics that we sometimes have during an election campaign. We would all want to avoid that in relation to the core issues, but we cannot escape the fact that there is a bigger debate about resourcing and the choices that are made around resource, particularly for those in local government, for the social work profession and for those who provide a support function. That also concerns issues such as housing, access to justice and all the things that sit around the work that we are discussing today. There will be and has to be a debate around much of that. We heard much of that yesterday in response to the budget, and I know that there will be much of that in the days ahead. That goes back to the fundamental point that we need to ensure that the scaffolding that sits around all the services is right and is well funded, so that professionals can do their jobs to support young people in the system more broadly.

We have outlined our position this afternoon. We are clear in our support for ensuring that the bill can move to its next stage. Martin Whitfield eloquently and passionately outlined where our significant concerns are and our disappointment with the approach taken thus far, as well as our desire to re-engage ahead of stages 2 and 3 to move the bill to a place such that people can be proud and pleased that we have made significant progress.

That will be the test for many colleagues. Will we walk away from this session having passed an act of the Parliament that will make a demonstrable difference? Members might view that as being life changing or as making an impact on some of the resourcing issues that we have been discussing. Nicola Sturgeon has said that she wants to walk away with a sense of pride. That is the test for us all; it is the crucial test that we must apply to the amendments lodged at stages 2 and 3.

We once again give our commitment to engage in the process, but that will be a high bar to reach in whether or not we support the bill at its subsequent stages.

I declare an interest in that my husband is a service manager in children and families social work and is also a registered social worker.

With only a few months of this parliamentary session left, I am sure that we are all reflecting on what has been achieved and prioritised over the past five years—and, with only some 30 sitting days left, on what has perhaps not been prioritised as we would have expected. Indeed, we are reflecting on a period prior to that, going back into the previous session of the Parliament. In the final year of the previous session, the SNP Government asked the Parliament to make a promise to deliver on the findings of the independent care review by 2030. It then fell to the Parliament to progress that in its current session. The former First Minister herself made that ask of everybody in the Parliament and is asking everyone here today to move that forward.

This afternoon, we should begin by reflecting on the evidence on the progress that has been made in the delivery of that promise. Although it is the responsibility of Parliament, it is the current Government that sets the direction, the agenda and the legislative programme in the Parliament in order to drive forward the progress that we would all expect to see. We are all concerned—as we should be—about the evidence pointing to our not being as far on as we should be and not making the progress that we are all committed to.

The third report of the Promise Oversight Board, which marked the halfway point in time on the journey to keeping the Promise by 2030, has made that abundantly clear. The minister needs no reminding that that report was lamentable for the Government in many ways, and concluded that

“Scotland is not halfway towards keeping its promise.”

The report noted that the Promise cannot be kept without the Scottish Government, and that it has taken

“too long to produce a delivery plan and too long to respond to the serious concerns raised in our first two reports.”

It further commented:

“The relationship between Scottish Government and local government is creating unnecessary tension in delivering the promise.”

We have already heard allusions to that with regard to where solutions could have been found—and they were offered in evidence to the Education, Children and Young People Committee in terms of the relationship between the spheres of government and the different sectors that will have an influence on achieving what we all want to see by 2030.

The Oversight Board’s report was unequivocal in its call for the Scottish Government “to redouble their efforts”. That is part of the reason why the bill represents a huge opportunity, although there is a risk to it, too, if it is not able to drive forward the progress that we would want to see.

Interrogating the evidence before us that came through the committee process and that has been presented for this debate, I think that the bill might fall into that category of risk. That is very much of concern, and I am sure that that is lamentable for many of us in the chamber. It has taken more than three years from the commitment to a bill in the implementation plan to reach today’s stage 1 debate. As I said in opening my remarks, we will all be reflecting that we have just 30 legislative days left in this session, and we are considering a bill that is meant to drive us towards the progress that we need to see by 2030. I noted the minister’s optimism in her opening speech, but this is a serious issue. Colleagues are already picking up on that, and we will hear much about it in the debate. What can we reasonably expect in amending the bill within the 30 days that we have left, given that stage 2 will begin its progress next week? That will be a theme this afternoon: that many of the things that we would like to see in the bill might not be achievable in the timeframe that has been provided.

Much of what is in the bill as introduced falls short of what was expected. Stakeholders have been calling for legislation, but they are increasingly frustrated by the approach of the Government. Indeed, in its risk profile for the bill, the most recent oversight report said that it could end up being

“a ready-made excuse to slow the process down and to seek further consultations”.

So far, the Government’s approach to engagement with stakeholders and other parties on what the bill needs to do and how it will be amended exactly meets that warning.

I joined the Education, Children and Young People Committee only after it had concluded taking its evidence on the bill, but I have taken time to go through its stage 1 report. What I find most striking is how keen stakeholders were to talk not just about the deficiencies of what is in the bill, but—in relation to the wider point that I am making—their concerns about what is not in the bill.

We have already heard that stakeholders can see that, unless there is a step change in the bill throughout the stage 2 and 3 processes—in relation to dealing with a cluttered legislative and policy landscape, accountability for the Promise, or early intervention and workforce issues—the bill will not be the significant driver that is required to meet the Promise by 2030.

We on the Labour benches have sought commitments from the Scottish Government on the changes that will need to be made at those stages. However, there has been something of a refusal to elaborate on the detail before this stage 1 debate. That does not fill me with confidence. Our suggested amendments have included measures on aftercare, corporate parenting, advocacy services, reform of children’s hearings and the issues in relation to UNCRC compliance that my colleague Martin Whitfield outlined.

I find it disappointing that the Government has not offered fulsome engagement this week. The minister is shaking her head but, two days ago, the Education, Children and Young People Committee received a letter from her that said that she could not elaborate on many of those details and that we would have to wait until the stage 2 process. I do not think that that is good enough, given where we are in the process.

Throughout this process, the Government has liked to talk about the Promise being owned by the Parliament and about it being ours to keep together. I recognise that we all made a commitment and that we did so based on the assurances that were given by the Government and by the then First Minister about how it would be driven forward. However, this bill exemplifies that there are significant gaps in the Government’s leadership and its engagement to drive the change that is required to meet the Promise by 2030.

Of course one bill will not get us to where we need to be. However, as I have said already, it is a significant opportunity to drive the progress that we need to see. Stakeholders and the care-experienced community in Scotland deserve movement on it, and we want to give the bill the opportunity to be the vehicle that I have spoken about, so Scottish Labour will not oppose the bill at stage 1. However, I am clear that we must see significant movement at stages 2 and 3, in the time that remains in this session of Parliament, to allow the bill to progress past stage 3. We will work constructively where the Government offers its willingness to do that. However, so far, we on the Labour benches have been disappointed with the progress.

I find it extraordinary that, in the final months of the current session of Parliament, we are just getting round to analysing exactly what is happening with that spend in schools. I find that shocking, and I think that our teachers and parents across Scotland will find it shocking as well.

This Government promised to close the poverty-related attainment gap a decade ago, but it has failed to deliver. It already presides over massive disparities in attendance rates, which are still well below pre-Covid levels, and it has allowed violence and bad behaviour in our classrooms to rise. The Scottish National Party Government promised a Parliament of Covid recovery in education, yet five years later, we have, in the cabinet secretary’s words, only just turned a corner. Scotland’s once-excellent schooling system has been undermined by the SNP over the past two decades, and the latest reporting is just the latest evidence for it. [Interruption.]

I hear the First Minister groaning. He had quite a lot to do with it, from memory—

The analysis of freedom of information data from local authorities that was reported at the weekend shows that six of the eight lowest-spending councils rank among the areas with the most deprived neighbourhoods, with some schools spending less than £1 per child per week on classroom supplies. In response to those findings, a Scottish Government spokesperson—we heard the cabinet secretary echo a lot of this in her answer—pointed in particular to funding that is provided through the Scottish attainment challenge, including pupil equity funding, which is supposed to go directly to schools in the most deprived communities to support children who are affected by poverty.

Is it not clear that year upon year of reductions and cuts to council budgets have led councils to have to make such decisions and that the money, which is meant to be additional—it is meant to add to our anti-poverty strategies and work to close the attainment gap—is not getting to where it needs to go? I note that the cabinet secretary mentioned John Wilson, but does she recognise her own responsibility in this area? What confidence does she have that the funds that are given by her Government to tackle inequality are being used effectively? What analysis has she done of that?

There are adults working in Wales today who benefited from free breakfast clubs two decades ago, as the Welsh Labour scheme has been up and running since 2004. The UK Labour Government began rolling out free breakfast clubs in all state schools within a year of taking office, and it has boosted funding for after-school clubs in England to support the most isolated children.

I, of course, welcome the Scottish Government following in the footsteps of those Administrations today, even if it has taken almost 20 years because of the Scottish Government’s own cuts to local authorities and schools. However, given that it had additional money from the UK Government, if the Scottish Government cared so much and was so convinced of the benefits of the policy, that begs the question why it has taken this Government so long. The answer can surely only be that it is out of energy and out of time and that it needs to get out of the way of a Government that will do the hard work of delivering.

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports of a postcode lottery for classroom supplies and that some schools have only 93p per child per week for basic classroom supplies. (S6T-02831)

As a former teacher, does the cabinet secretary think that it is acceptable to spend less than £1 per child per week on classroom supplies? How has that happened on her watch when she promised Covid recovery?

Last year, 9,000 fewer apprenticeships in colleges and industry were asked for at a time when one in eight young people were out of work. This Government promised recovery from the pandemic. Does the minister not recognise that the hollowing out of colleges and not returning apprenticeship numbers to pre-pandemic levels is an abject failure of that promise?

I agree that the placement must be appropriate for the best interests of a child; what this legislation does is create several processes to go through that. If it is in the best interests of the child and there is an urgency to the placement, do you recognise the risk to children and young people who are living in England or Northern Ireland if they cannot quickly access the placement that is required in Scotland?

What further consultation or discussion have you had with those in the secure care sector around the concerns that they raised about the impact that limiting cross-border placements would have on the services that they run in Scotland?