Chamber and committees

In articulating his points, would the member in charge of the bill like to address the campaign email that MSPs have received from the Educational Institute of Scotland, which urges us to oppose the bill? He articulated his views on that very well in an email to MSPs, but it would be useful to get those on the record.

I am delighted to speak on behalf of the Education, Children and Young People Committee. I begin by thanking the member in charge of the bill, Daniel Johnson, for introducing such an important bill. I also apologise for intervening on him five minutes into his speech—I did not realise that he had only six minutes.

Daniel Johnson’s proposal gave the Education, Children and Young People Committee, as the lead committee, the opportunity to discuss the important issue of how to ensure that restraint and seclusion are used only as a last resort in schools. I thank my committee colleagues for their work on the bill and everyone who provided evidence, either in person or by responding to our call for views. In addition, I thank the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee and the Finance and Public Administration Committee for their scrutiny of the bill.

I put on record the Education, Children and Young People Committee’s thanks to everyone at the Donaldson Trust who generously gave their time and shared their thoughts and insights on the bill when the committee visited the campus in Linlithgow last year.

However, the biggest praise must go to two individuals without whom we would not be here today. Beth Morrison and Kate Sanger have been campaigning for more than a decade for a change in the law on restraint and seclusion. I know that Kate cannot be with us today because she is attending a family funeral, but I saw Beth and Calum coming into the public gallery. Without doubt, Kate and Beth are the most determined, passionate and articulate campaigners for change, and this Parliament has an opportunity to reward their hard work by voting for the bill tonight. I believe that we simply would not be here today were it not for their efforts.

We must think about the fact that Kate and Beth got involved as a result of terrible circumstances in their families. In dealing with the issues that Laura had to face, Kate, as a mother, could have tried other routes to get answers and not embarked on a campaign that has taken years to get here. When Calum came home from school that day, unable to articulate what had happened to him, Beth could have sat there and thought about what she could do. She could have complained or done various other things, but she tried to get change. When that did not happen, she lodged a petition. When the petition did not work, she put forward the bill, along with Daniel Johnson. It is that type of tireless effort that makes me very proud to be standing in Parliament today, supporting the bill.

The committee unanimously agreed to the general principles of the bill and welcomed the aim of putting the current guidance on a statutory footing. I am pleased to say that the Scottish Government accepted all of the report’s recommendations, some of them in part. We were concerned to hear of instances of inappropriate use of restraint and seclusion in Scotland’s schools, particularly in relation to children and young people with additional support needs or a disability.

As with all of the committee’s scrutiny, the devil is in the detail, and there were a number of areas that we felt needed to be addressed should the bill progress further today. First, consideration needs to be given to the definitions of restraint and seclusion. Although those definitions are broadly similar to the definitions in the current non-statutory guidance, we shared the concerns of witnesses that those broad definitions could lead to legal ambiguity or unintended consequences. Teaching staff, parents and carers all need clarity, and it is important that physical interventions that are not of obvious concern are not captured by the bill.

As our report makes clear, communication with parents and carers is key, and the bill would create a duty on schools to inform parents and carers when their child has been subject to restraint or seclusion. Like the member in charge of the bill, we were disturbed to hear that that was not happening already. In some cases, parents and carers were not told when their child or young person had been restrained or secluded. Given that, we said that such notification must take place on the same day and that a report should be made on any intervention no later than 24 hours after the incident occurred. The bill’s recording and reporting provisions are welcome and will provide an opportunity for school staff to conduct post-incident reviews and establish any lessons learned following an incident.

Finally, although the bill does not include provisions on mandatory training in the use of restraint and seclusion, it says that the guidance must include details of training for school staff. It also provides that the Scottish Government will maintain a list of approved training providers.

The Education, Children and Young People Committee supports the general principles of the bill. However, as I have set out today, there are issues that need to be addressed, and we have had an assurance from the member in charge that he is keen to address them. I say that on behalf of the committee.

On a personal note, I will end by saying that, when I vote yes to the bill tonight, I will be doing so to progress an important piece of legislation. More important, it will be my individual way of thanking and recognising Beth Morrison and Kate Sanger and the many other families they have represented on this long journey. At decision time, their efforts will, I hope, see the bill take a step forward towards bringing about improvements for our children and young people for which we have been waiting for so long.

14:52

We have a shortage of teachers in Moray, but not necessarily a shortage of people who are willing to teach. With the large military footprint of RAF Lossiemouth and Kinloss barracks in the area, a number of the spouses of those serving there who travel up with the rest of their family are qualified to teach in England but are barred from teaching in Scotland unless they get a Scottish qualification. It would ease the efforts of Moray Council considerably if that issue could be resolved. I have raised the issue repeatedly with the cabinet secretary, and I think that she was sympathetic to it. Can we just get a solution?

The member asked to intervene, but I can handle the suspense for a few more minutes.

I say genuinely that there is nothing in amendment 169 that SNP members should be concerned about. To go back to Christine Grahame’s questions on my gull amendments, there is nothing in here that would cost the Government any money. I have gone through it very carefully since the last group was discussed. There is also nothing in here that would mean any SNP member who represents a rural or island constituency could not proudly go back to that constituency and say, “I supported amendment 169 to get the answers that our farmers, crofters and tenant farmers want.” I cannot understand why SNP ministers would not want to be open and transparent on a scheme about which many of us were positive in relation to what it delivered for those who were successful. However, we do have questions about those who were not.

I will finish with a quote from a constituent from Moray whom I quoted in committee and who I think deserves to be quoted in the chamber. As an agent, she was involved with many of the applications in my area and was seeking to get the best for those she was working with. She said:

“The biggest red flag and huge concern to the industry is the 3,537 applications that did not meet the eligibility criteria—we need more information on this, and we need it whilst the civil servants who have dealt with the scheme are still in their current jobs.”

She continued:

“I simply do not believe that 47% of applicants were ineligible—I do not believe this possible. I do on the other hand believe that the people (or possibly AI—although this has been point blank denied in parliament) doing the scoring did not have the correct training or information available to make these assessments.”

She finished by saying:

“We need a breakdown of why each ineligible application was ineligible—and if the government refuse to provide this then that raises greater concerns on transparency and the accuracy of the assessment system.”

I do not want those concerns to continue any longer. The Government has an opportunity to ensure that there is accuracy and transparency within the system. It can back my amendment 169 and Jamie Halcro Johnston’s amendments 156 to 158 in order to finally put the issue to bed, accept where errors have been made, make improvements going forward and restore trust in a system that clearly needs it to be restored.

There remain far too many questions about the scheme, and those questions will not go away. More questions will be posed to the minister, and there will be more members’ business debates on the issue. More questions will be raised, I am sure, at hustings in the coming weeks and months, ahead of the election. Therefore, I suggest that it would be better for all of us across the political spectrum to support the amendments in order to get the answers for our constituents who have been calling for them for so long.

I will speak at length on this group of amendments, because I am glad that we are getting the chamber back to issues that are within the devolved competence of this Parliament.

I will start with amendment 60. Yesterday, in response to a point that I made, the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy complained that issues that had been decided at committee were being brought back at stage 3. Well, here we have an issue that was decided at committee in a way that went against the Government. The Government did not gain enough support at the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee to vote down an amendment on this issue, and the amendment was agreed to. The Government lost the vote.

That happened because there was clearly interest in the issue across the political spectrum, and the only party opposing the amendment was the SNP. We had support for my amendment at stage 2 from the RSPB, which urged members of the committee to support it, because it agreed that we need reliable data and up-to-date information. I am bitterly disappointed that, rather than respecting that decision and working with the amendment that was passed by the committee, the Government is trying to override it in the chamber at stage 3.

I am very pleased to speak to amendment 169, because it is crucially important.

I will start where I started in committee when I moved the same amendment. I welcome the quantum of funds that went to farmers and crofters, and I welcome the scheme. It would be churlish to dismiss the significant investment, but something went wrong here. No one can tell me that they believe that this scheme was a success when 47 per cent of applicants—let us remember that more than 7,500 people applied for the scheme—were not rejected but were deemed ineligible. If we have a scheme in which almost one in every two applicants is deemed to be ineligible before even being considered, there is a problem with the scheme. There is a problem with how the scheme is articulated, how people are invited to apply for it or how it is reviewed when it comes back in.

The scheme has been the subject of considerable debate in the Parliament—whether through questions in the chamber, stage 2 amendments or the members’ business debate that we had less than a week ago—and that has come from all sides of the chamber. Liberal Democrats lodged the members’ business motion last week, Labour MSPs have been raising the issue in the chamber and their MP colleagues have been raising it in the House of Commons, and the Conservatives have been regularly seeking updates and answers on this point.

What should have been a positive has turned into a negative for the Government, and it really risks undermining the thought process that people will go through should they have the opportunity to apply for a scheme in the future. Months on, they are still unsure about what happened here. They do not know why their application, which they spent a lot of time on, was either rejected or deemed ineligible. I would have thought it a basic courtesy to tell people who are applying for funds that they believe are vital for their farming or crofting operation why they were not successful. Was it because too many people applied for the same thing? Was it because their geographical area was oversubscribed and some people had to be rejected while others were fortunate?

What happened to those ineligible applications? The minister has outlined, both in letters and in written answers, a series of reasons why he believes applications were rejected. Many of those reasons have been dismissed by those in the industry. Speaking of the industry, I am sure that the minister or the cabinet secretary who responds to the debate on this group will say, “Well, the scheme was co-designed with NFU Scotland.” However, the same NFU Scotland said:

“Initial feedback from our members has focused around perceived inconsistencies”.

I know that many members will not want to take that information from me or from others on the Conservative benches—they might not even like to hear it from members on any of the Opposition benches—but they cannot ignore the body that represents our farmers in this country, which was involved in the scheme but is saying that something went badly wrong here.

It is important that we do not repeat these mistakes in the future. It is important to insert confidence back into the system. People being unhappy about not getting a grant is understandable, but their now being wary about applying in the future is unacceptable. If there is money available, we should encourage our new entrants, tenant farmers and those in island communities to apply for it, as priority groups in the scheme were encouraged to do before they were left with nothing—not the money that they looked for for the investment that they needed, nor, crucially, the answers to the questions that they posed.

I will highlight a point that will, no doubt, come up in summing up. Ministers will say that they promised at stage 2 to provide all the information that was required. The cabinet secretary, Mairi Gougeon, made that commitment at committee. She was very clear that we did not need to support amendments such as amendment 169 because material would be provided before recess, which was only a couple of weeks away. At that point, I and others tried to intervene, but Rhoda Grant of the Labour party made a very telling intervention. She said:

“There is a huge amount of concern about this, and there have been statements and questions on it, but we do not seem to have any better information, and I think that there is a lack of confidence that the information will come out.”

She then asked Mairi Gougeon:

“When does the cabinet secretary plan to publish the paper that she referred to?”

Rhoda Grant, who is an Opposition politician to me, continued:

“I am minded to support these amendments, because I am not confident that we will get the answers. Is there any way back from this to ensure that, if what is in the paper is not good enough, people can still get the information that they need?”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, 10 December 2025; c 95-96.]

It is very clear that the information that was ultimately published by the cabinet secretary was not good enough, because people still do not have the answers that they are looking for.

I quoted Rhoda Grant in the hope of garnering Labour’s support. I mentioned Liam McArthur in the hope of garnering support from the Liberal Democrats. Now, I come to one of my favourite members on the SNP benches: Christine Grahame. I can see that she is overwhelmed by that. Less than a week ago, she took part in the members’ business debate on—[Interruption.] Yes, I know. If I can finish my point, I will give way to Christine Grahame.

Does the member think that it would be helpful to the Government’s case to outline to Parliament how many of the 7,500 applicants have sought that information? We know that 47 per cent of those—3,500—were deemed ineligible. Have 3,500 people already requested that information, which the minister says is available, or is the true figure closer to zero? That is what it sounds like from the feedback that we are getting from our constituents.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. This has perhaps just been corrected, but the clock was acting erratically. Can you confirm that the timings will be clear? It was clearly not working about five seconds ago.

The figure is not in the financial memorandum—the minister said earlier that it is an estimate. The minister who is telling people to read documents is the same minister who lost a vote on part 2 of the bill and had to scrap a whole heap of it. None of us on this side of the chamber will be taking lectures from the Government about the bill, which is a complete boorach. The bill is so bad that members from all parties told the Government to strip parts out of it, and it did not even try to put them back in because it knows how bad they were.

I want to use my summing-up speech to sum up the debate. Rachael Hamilton made extremely valid points about the impact that the issue has had on her constituency. She has been a tireless campaigner on the issue, and that is because it affects people.

I know that there will shortly be a letter going to the minister to remind him about a 10-year-old in Inverness who ended up in hospital. Some of the people who think that this is a trivial issue that does not warrant discussion in our Parliament should say that to the 10-year-old who ended up in hospital with stitches in her head. They should also say that to my constituent in Elgin—who has now sadly passed away—who broke her leg while coming out of her house, spent time at Dr Gray’s hospital and, when she got home again, was too scared to come out of her house. They should say that to people up and down the country.

I also recognise the significant contribution that was made to the debate by Fergus Ewing, who has raised with the minister, both in the chamber and in private meetings, many of the issues that his constituents in Inverness and Nairn face.

We have an opportunity tonight to do something about the issue. Edward Mountain was absolutely right that NatureScot does not deserve the responsibility for issuing licences. It is getting things so badly wrong—with gulls in particular but also with other species, as Edward Mountain said.

It would be nice to see a bit more reflection from the Government. From day 1, the minister said, “There is nothing wrong here” and, in particular, that there is not an issue with NatureScot. He has defended NatureScot to the hilt—he is its strongest champion—whereas it actually needs to be challenged.

Will the member give way?