Chamber and committees

Convener, I hope that, on the matter of fairer funding, you will not mind me mentioning that you are convener of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, on which I also sit, and that some of the movement in Government is based on recommendations from that committee. I think that we should acknowledge that committee’s work in that regard.

It would be helpful if you could write to the convener with that information so that we all have it. In the previous evidence session, one of the witnesses from the people’s panel, who is a GP, mentioned that they had not even got basic information about whether there was a treatment plan in place for one of their patients when they were released from prison. Basic stuff is not happening that I think that we would all expect should be happening.

You can respond to that point now if you want to, cabinet secretary. I just thought that it was important to emphasise that while you are before the committee.

That is helpful.

Recommendation 5 from the people’s panel says that

“All services should be able to refer to each other”,

be they in the health or social care environments or in the third sector. A number of services are involved in a constituency case that I am dealing with. They include addiction services; environmental services, which are sometimes based in the council; landlord registration and private landlord services; and Police Scotland. In that case—I will not say where it is—there is a close that cannot be used for housing. The private landlords have given up in despair because it has, in effect, become a place for vulnerable adults to gather and consume drugs. I visited it relatively recently and there was drugs paraphernalia strewn everywhere. It was quite a sight. The back court is an environmental hazard.

The private landlords are keen to do the right thing, which is why they reached out to me. I am leveraging in—I hope—addiction services, environmental services and Police Scotland, because the landlords hope to secure that place and bring those properties back into use. However, I am conscious that there are very challenging but very vulnerable adults using that location. The private landlords reached out to me and I fed stuff in.

In such cases, should we expect implicit co-operation, without the MSP being involved, between local authority environmental services, landlord registration services, Police Scotland and others, in order to join those dots? At the moment, I will join the dots, and I see that as an opportunity. The cabinet secretary spoke about taking every opportunity to engage with those who are vulnerable, to do the right thing and to support them. In my example, they are very challenging. There is a blight on the community—it is not the vulnerable people, but the impact of their addiction—and we all want to do the right thing to fix it. Are you confident that, based on recommendation 5 of the people’s panel, services implicitly co-operate with one other to do the right thing?

Thank you.

Mairi, I thank you for reflecting on some of the aspects of the report that I am going to draw to your attention. My question relates to drug education. The report talks about ensuring that education is embedded in the mainstream curriculum from primary 5 onwards and that it is co-produced with strong engagement, including with parents, on what age-appropriate education looks like. All those points are really well made. There is also stuff in there about ensuring that there is proper

“financial support ... for external organisations”

to deliver some of that, and about the need for wider community outreach to be part of education.

I am trying to summarise for the committee, as quickly as I can, some of the recommendations that you and your fellow panel members have made. Do you have any reflections on why those specific things are important? I am conscious that we have heard that you did not want the process to be a “tick-box exercise”. The Scottish Government’s response says that Education Scotland is already looking at some of this stuff and there are reviews on-going, and that the whole family wellbeing fund will deal with some of it.

Do you think that the production of the recommendations is where your participation in the story should end? Alternatively, should there be on-going engagement so that panel members can say, “Well actually, we want to know how our views are being reflected in that Education Scotland review, and in the reprofiling of the whole family support fund”?

Perhaps you can reflect not only on the importance of your recommendations but on how you can follow those through to delivery, so that the process is not simply a tick-box exercise.

Can you say any more at this stage about what overall monitoring of compliance will look like?

We could return to the matter when we consider the evidence but, as Mr Ruskell mentioned local place plans, I wanted to tie together where they sit in the planning framework.

A breach of a land management plan could be simply not preparing one in the first place, or it could be not fulfilling the obligations in the plan. There has been much debate about the costs of producing a plan. If the maximum fine is £5,000 for not producing or not complying with a plan, might there be an incentive to simply pay the fine and not produce a robust plan that is compliant? How was the figure of £5,000 arrived at? Will it be a one-off fine of £5,000 or might it be £5,000 levied on an annual or a recurring basis, depending on the level of compliance or otherwise? What more information can you provide?

The Scottish Land Commission suggested that we should extend the relatively narrow list of those who can report non-compliance or a breach of a land management plan to include community councils, national parks and enterprise agencies. What would the benefits be of extending the narrow list? What is the Scottish Government’s position on that?

So you are open minded about reviewing the level of fines that could be levied.

I do, convener—I am inspired by your line of questioning. We heard evidence that large landowners who are doing their job properly do all this community consultation and meet all the requirements of land management plans anyway, because that is what good landowners do. However, the same landowners tell us that it is going to be really expensive to do what they are already doing anyway. What is the cabinet secretary’s view on the idea that many of the costs that are associated with land management plans are the costs of activities that good landowners are probably already doing anyway?