Chamber and committees

My sense of it so far is that the committee sees through that.

In that case, can you also respond to the points that have been discussed by the previous panel about your plans for a new radio station? It was put to us that that has nothing to do with news. Does it have anything to do with news at all?

It was just a provocative question—I am not really holding out that scenario, but it got the conversation going.

A connected question concerns grazing, which you mentioned. There is, in many communities, a crossover between the continuance of a grazed landscape and the continuance of many of the habitats that people are keen to protect. Crofting holds out at least the prospect of low-intensity agriculture that might benefit the environment. My question is about what you foresee the change in definition meaning in the future. Will it promote that relationship and the benefits of low-intensity agriculture?

On a related point, the Law Society of Scotland has also raised concerns about section 10. Some of the questions have probably been answered, but I wonder whether Chris Kerr from Registers of Scotland could offer any perspective on section 10 and the issues raised by the Law Society.

The whole issue of unattached grazing shares—or deemed crofts—is of interest to the committee. It might be helpful if somebody on the panel could take us through the history of how the two came to be divorced from each other, and then we can talk about what happens next.

Would it be fair to say that, outside Shetland, many of these situations have happened by accident rather than by design? Is the bill designed to correct situations that have happened by accident rather than by design?

To pick up on that point, my impression is that there is widespread welcome for the bill’s highlighting of environmental use.

Emma Harper referred to population retention. Some of this comes down to how not just an individual crofter but a community manages or justifies a decision. Hypothetical examples might include every crofter in a village deciding to plant trees, at which point nobody in the village would be actively using their land in the traditional sense and taking part in the common life—common grazings and so on. I am not suggesting that that will be an outcome of the bill, but how do you foresee the definition of environmental use being managed in a way that prevents such scenarios at a community level—at a common grazings level—as well as having individual crofters justify their decisions?

Most people are doing their best. The problems that you describe are very real. However, on our visit and in other contexts, the committee has been asked the question that Brian Inkster was alluding to: what can be done to ensure that a village does not end up with multiple abandoned crofts owned by people who may not even live in the country? For understandable reasons—I completely appreciate them, as I live in a community like that myself—you do not want people to be put in a difficult, poisonous situation.

I had hoped that the explanation would simplify matters, but I am not sure that it does.

I thank Jamie Greene for bringing this important matter to the chamber. Mr Greene’s motion begins by recognising

“the importance of funded early learning and childcare in giving every child in Scotland the best start in life”.

Scotland remains, it should be said, the only part of the UK where 1,140 hours a year of funded ELC are available to all three and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds, regardless of their parents’ working status. I believe that that helps to promote equality and make sure that every child accesses the same high-quality early learning foundation.

All that said, the motion notes that there are variations in the commencement date of the funded hours across local authorities. In the past few weeks, there have also been reports of some local authorities restricting funded hours to specific nurseries, including term-time-only nurseries.

Many individuals and organisations are pushing hard to ensure that local provision around the country meets demand. I can think of such organisations in my constituency, such as the Uist and Barra childcare forum and the new outdoor facility in North Uist, Otter Mountain, which just last week received its Care Inspectorate registration, allowing it to begin operating as an after-school and holiday childcare facility.

It is only right that I also acknowledge the challenges that are faced in rural and island areas, where the distances involved make it impossible for parents to shop around to access the childcare that they need. Some of the challenge is a consequence of the declining number of childminders. For instance, there are now no childminders left in Barra, Uist or Harris, and there has been a steep drop in the number of childminders in Lewis in recent years—a trend that is reflected in some other parts of the country. I have heard examples of parents having to take an interisland ferry journey daily to access a place at a nursery for their child, although that is an extreme, rather than a representative, example.

Last May, I carried out a survey among parents of young children in my constituency. Although it found that parents were making use of what was available and were grateful for it, 82 per cent of parents surveyed said that they or their partner were unable to work as many hours as they wanted because of childcare issues. Those views were reflected at a meeting that I held recently in Benbecula with parents on childcare. Solving the issue is not straightforward, but it is right that we debate it.

The countries that are often rightly cited as world leaders in childcare and pre-school education have available to them the fiscal levers of small independent countries. I respectfully suggest to those who come after me in the debate that, if we are willing to ask for substantial additional spending in this area, we must be willing either to identify the fiscal freedoms that would achieve that or to identify where in Scotland’s existing budget the money might be found.

I hope that there is a greater degree of consensus across the chamber on some of the other issues. Those include the need to ensure equity of access to funded provision across Scotland, the need to build on the good work that is already being done to boost the creation and sustaining of childminding businesses, the need for better tailoring of Care Inspectorate requirements, and the need to ensure good pay and conditions across private and local authority-run nurseries in order to strengthen Scotland’s childcare sector.