Chamber and committees

I have one small point to make, convener. We are concerned that bringing more commissioners into the mix could create further confusion and could make things even more ineffective for young people by making it harder for them to figure out who to go to who could act as their champion. Such confusion in the landscape comes with costs and creates more barriers to justice. That is my final word.

In digging in and getting a bit more detail about the children’s commissioner, the challenge is the work plan that we all have to work towards, specifically the education committee. Our heavy legislative agenda prevents us being proactive about going into more detail with the commissioner about some of the work that they do. If you want us to have that increased level of scrutiny, perhaps the capacity of the existing system needs to be reviewed. That does not necessarily mean that there needs to be another committee; perhaps the Parliament’s whole work plan needs to be reviewed.

This comment might be more from me than from me as a convener. A leaner legislative programme would allow committees to do more in-depth work and have more of a proactive agenda.

It is, clearly, public money—we need to be mindful of that. We are in a very challenging environment. When the public see spiralling costs and the Parliament carries on spending like that, they think that we are a little bit disconnected from reality. We need much more accountability. As I said, the SPCB has the governance procedures around that, and the Auditor General for Scotland has a role in inspecting the annual accounts, but we need a reality check in many of these offices about the tight financial envelope that we are all working within. That is my steer on that.

Martin Whitfield has alluded many times to the commissioners’ independence, and I think it would be difficult for us to pick some of the budget areas and the activities that the scrutiny body carries out and make judgments about the value those bring from the spend. You are looking quizzical, but I am trying to form my—

Indeed.

The information gives us a sense that the services are failing. I am thinking of the evidence that we took for our scrutiny of the Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill and the evidence on secure accommodation that we took recently from the commissioner for our scutiny of the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill. What is happening on the ground does not match the intention of the policy—the mismatch is quite vast and seems to be growing—and the commissioner highlighted that.

I am talking about the new commissioner, but, looking back, the previous or outgoing commissioner was critical of many of the Government’s policies when he was in post, and he shone a spotlight on, and was very critical of, their development and implementation. We are transitioning to a new commissioner, so I am trying to figure out how best to respond to your question. In the past, the previous commissioner very much challenged the implementation.

I alluded to the massive gap that people see between the policy and how it feels to the young people on the ground. There is a massive disparity there, and the commissioner plays an advocacy role in championing the rights of those children.

Your question has answered itself, Mr Greer. Fitting it into our work plan would be a challenge, and there is also overlap. The children’s commissioner represents disabled children and children who are neurodivergent. She is responsible for advocating for all those people. Far too much overlap would cause conflict for young people. Who is their advocate? Who is best placed to serve them going forward? It would make scrutiny within the committee system and the education committee more complex.

Whether they have a vote is irrelevant. Young people deserve to have someone to act as their voice in here, regardless of that.

The role of the Children and Young People’s Commissioner is specifically to give voices to young people, which is something that the Government makes assumptions about. The other week, when the commissioner was giving evidence to us, some of our questions about the challenges were about what we presumed to be important, but she kept bringing us back to the point that she was there to make representations on what the young people had said. She was quite clear in reinforcing that argument. The assumptions that we make about the challenges that young people face today—and all these things—can be quite sweeping sometimes.

Going back to budgets and the spend, you may struggle to pinpoint the value added—it is a fine balance—but there is potentially the chance to be a little bit more critical about some of the more tangible things like spending on travel and ancillary items.

Part of the commissioner’s evidence—as a committee, we hear far too often about this—was about the massive implementation gap that exists between policy and what happens on the ground. The evidence outlines that the creation of another body or person to champion the needs of a specific group appears to be a reaction to ineffective policy implementation and a lack of access to justice.

We need to be mindful about how we proceed, with the potential for exponential growth in the number of commissioners or in their budgets.

I am here as the convener of the Education, Children and Young People Committee, and I am struggling not to give my party’s view—but thank you for your question. I will leave it there.