Chamber and committees

I will follow up on that, minister. You say that you have the targets and that you are making progress, but if I have picked it up right, you also say that you do not know why or how you are making progress. Is that accurate?

We have heard evidence that the journey into employment starts when people are at school; it can start very early. Do you accept that, if we do not identify youngsters who have learning difficulties at primary school and start to help them at that point, their life chances later will be diminished? If you do accept that, are you working with your colleagues in education to improve the situation?

We can see that the figures relating to people getting to the end of their school lives and possibly thinking about moving into employment or further education are quite stark. For instance, only 10.4 per cent of school leavers with learning difficulties go into higher education, compared with 48.7 per cent of school leavers without learning difficulties.

You can see the issues. If people leave school without decent qualifications, their chances of getting a job will be diminished, so we need to start early.

Has that strategy not been written yet, but is just being worked on?

Okay. That is very useful.

I will ask you one more question, which goes back to data. Do you have any idea how many disabled people are employed in your department?

It is brilliant that we are making progress. The Government is funding various schemes, and it seems to me that some of the schemes that you fund will do better than others. Would it not be a good idea to drill down into the data for individual schemes to see which ones are more successful than others and then to replicate the ones that work better?

Okay. That is interesting. I did not know about that strategy. That is possibly something that the committee should look at.

I thank every member who has taken part in the debate, whatever their views. It has highlighted the value of care and carers, as well as the diversity of the sector and the options within it.

People in need do not fit a formula, and in care we cannot have one size fits all. We have heard some excellent speeches today, but the one that really struck me was from Roz McCall. I say that not just because she is sitting next to me, but because she told us powerfully about her own experiences and the questions that she was asked while dealing with the care system.

I will focus on the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill, which many members have spoken about. The bill was dissected powerfully by Alex Cole-Hamilton initially and then by Craig Hoy. I cannot think of a bill that has been so derided and that has received the criticism that it has from committees in a Parliament where the Government wins every vote. That is good: it shows that the committees have been doing their job, but it should make the minister think again. So far, he has not—or he has not been told to do so.

I will go through what some committees have said, starting with the Education, Children and Young People Committee. It concluded that improvements must be made to the bill. The committee’s report says:

“At present there is insufficient information and a lack of detail in the Financial Memorandum to reassure the Committee that the implications of the Bill for children’s services, regardless of whether they are in or out of the National Care Service, have been properly costed.”

The report goes on to say that the committee

“shares concerns over the robustness of the overall costs of the Bill as outlined in the Financial Memorandum and would not be content to wait until any secondary legislation was laid for further detail.”

It concludes:

“The Committee ... cannot form a clear view on whether children and young people’s services should be included under any future National Care Service.”

Indeed, even Kevin Stewart could not tell us whether those services would be included. That is just not acceptable.

I turn to the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, which is a technical committee. Former members, including myself and Mr Hoy, do not normally get too exercised about things. However, that committee’s report said that it

“does not believe the Bill should progress in its current form ... The Committee is concerned there is insufficient detail on the face of the Bill and within the Bill documents to allow for meaningful parliamentary scrutiny.”

What a disgrace.

The report goes on:

“Given the far-reaching nature of the proposed reforms the Committee is mindful there is a real risk of letting down those the Bill is intended to help by allowing Scottish Government ministers to use delegated powers instead of primary legislation to introduce core and as yet unknown provisions.”

That is shocking.

We have also heard about the Finance and Public Administration Committee’s significant concerns. Three committees are all attacking the bill; the minister needs to take heed of those concerns. He should listen, but he is not listening—it is about time that he did and scrapped the bill immediately.

One of the main criticisms from the committees is that there is a complete lack of detail in the bill. How does the minister respond to that?

Jenny Gilruth has put the A9 on hold today. The so-called “unwavering commitment” to deliver is empty. There is no delivery programme. Why does she think firms are showing a lack of interest in working with the Scottish Government? The issue has been known about for years, and does not exist elsewhere in the UK. What is the problem?

In fact, the college board did not follow the college’s disciplinary procedures, which I have here. The principal, Aileen McKechnie, could not ask questions, call witnesses or challenge evidence and was not even shown any of the evidence against her. The outcome was a foregone conclusion, as I predicted. She was sacked, along with Brian Keegan, the clerk to the college board, who wrote the rule book on college governance and was then accused in a statement of having bullied Andy Kerr.

What really stinks is that there is no right of appeal. The college’s disciplinary procedure says that sacked employees have the right to an appeal, which should happen without reasonable delay and be dealt with impartially. Due process has not been followed, so the Government needs to step in.

The college branch of the Educational Institute of Scotland Further Education Lecturers Association—