Chamber and committees

Good morning and welcome to the fifth meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in 2026.

Today is the first day of our stage 2 proceedings on the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill. We will be joined—hopefully soon—by Natalie Don-Innes, the Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise. I welcome her supporting officials, who are with us at the moment. The officials seated at the table are here to support the minister but cannot speak in the debates on the amendments. Members should therefore direct any comments or questions to the minister.

We will welcome a number of non-committee MSPs who will attend part or all of today’s meeting to speak to their amendments and to participate in the debates.

As this is our first stage 2 day for the bill, I will briefly explain the procedure that we will follow today. The amendments that have been lodged on the bill have been grouped together and there will be one debate on each group of amendments. I will call the member who lodged the first amendment in the group to speak to and move that amendment and to speak to all other amendments in the group. I will then call any other members who have lodged amendments in that group. Members who have not lodged amendments in the group, but who wish to speak, should catch my attention. If she has not already spoken on the group, I will then invite the minister to contribute to the debate. The debate on the group will be concluded by me inviting the member who moved the first amendment in the group to wind up.

Following the debate on each group, I will check whether the member who moved the first amendment in that group wishes to press it to a vote, or to withdraw it. If they wish to press it, I will put the question on that amendment. If a member wishes to withdraw their amendment after it has been moved, they must seek the agreement of other members to do so. If any member objects, the committee will immediately move to a vote on that amendment.

If any member does not wish to move their amendment when called to do so, they should say, “Not moved,” but members should note that any other member present may move such an amendment. If no one moves the amendment, I will immediately call the next amendment on the marshalled list.

Only committee members are allowed to vote and voting on any division is by show of hands, so it is important that members keep their hands clearly raised until the clerks have recorded their votes. The committee is required to indicate formally that it has considered and agreed to each section of the bill, so I will put the question on each section at the appropriate point.

Now that we have covered the procedures that we will be following today, I should move to our substantive business, which is consideration of amendments. However, the minister is still not here and her office has informed me that she is stuck in traffic, so I will suspend the meeting until the minister gets here.

09:02

Meeting suspended.

09:04

On resuming—

Before section 1

The result of the division is: For 3, Against 7, Abstentions 0.

Amendment 87 disagreed to.

I am asking you to move amendment 1 and speak to all the amendments in the group.

Michael Matheson wants to come in quickly, but I point out that time is marching on—sadly, the clock never stops for the committee.

Mr Hogg, just for the record, what was the date on which the sponsorship team started attending the board?

Which May?

But if you cannot get the candidates and if it means that vacancies are being kept open for longer, someone who really does not want the job could put themselves forward so that there could be an election to get over the barrier. Should that barrier be there in the first place?

Can we perhaps do it later? There are other questions on this, so I want to bring in Paul McLennan in a second. If we get further through the session and you have not been able to get your points across, I will bring you back in. I just want to ensure that members from all parties get the opportunity to ask questions.

Okay. I am seeing a lot of nods.

Before we do that, I have a supplementary to Willie Rennie’s supplementary. The Higher Education Governance (Scotland) Act 2016 stipulates that there cannot be elections to the chair of court position unless there is more than one candidate. Ms D’Ascenzio, your submission says that part of the problem at Dundee university was the number of interim positions. We were told by the interim principal and vice-chancellor that he had been in post for longer because he could not get a full-time chair of the court to start the process to get a full-time principal and vice-chancellor, so this all seems to be getting muddled up in the process. Is the specific requirement of the 2016 act that there must be more than one candidate a good thing, a bad thing or something that you do not have much of a view on?