Chamber and committees

As I said on the record last week, it is interesting that the Care Inspectorate has reported a 40 per cent reduction in the use of seclusion in the institutions that it inspects.

Willie Rennie has touched on a really important area—I know that from some of the conversations that I have had with Beth Morrison and Daniel Johnson about it.

There is some concern about one aspect of the bill in relation to schools, although I know that Beth is keen that the campaign is not framed around it. You have outlined really well the situation with children with additional support and complex needs. Restraint and seclusion should not be taking place in Scotland today, but they are. Sadly, we have violent behaviour in our schools, and we have heard from teachers who want to know whether, if a pupil comes to hit or punch them, they can hold that individual and what restraint can be used.

The position needs to be clarified. Such incidents need to be recorded, but they are not, and the level of attacks on teachers is totally unacceptable. As Suzi Martin outlined, guidance can provide clarity. However there is a lot of concern in the teaching community that we could say that they are not allowed to touch anybody. Kate Sanger gave the example of grabbing someone who is running into the road. Let me turn that around: if someone tries to physically attack a teacher, what would it be appropriate to do, in your view? The guidance cannot be woolly in that area. We have to make sure that we get it right.

It is also important to know where the element of self-defence is for a member of staff. I am not necessarily talking about children with additional support needs; I am talking about teachers who tell us about a disruptive teenager being violent in school. We need to be clear about what would be acceptable in such a case and what that would look like. In many cases, such situations are not being regulated—it is purely about self-defence and those situations are not being recorded. I am not sure what you would suggest that a teacher in a school could do.

The bill is specifically about restraint and seclusion. I go back to John Mason’s point that there is no national guidance in Scotland on how to keep children safe. It is interesting that earlier this month, in England, the Department for Education published statutory guidance for schools and colleges on this very issue. The document is called “Keeping children safe in education 2025”. Do you support taking a similar approach in Scotland, with teachers having that wider set of statutory guidance?

Thank you.

The Scottish Government’s policy memorandum to the bill explains that care providers and care services have a duty to record instances of restraint. I thought it interesting that in its evidence to the committee the Government suggested that there had been 6,263 incidents of physical restraint and 509 incidents of seclusion in 2024, showing that there had been 30 per cent fewer instances of seclusion than in the previous year. Does the panel have any evidence of what is behind that reduction and on whether the conversation that is going on nationally is helping to change children’s services?

Moreover, what role would the school inspectorate play with regard to the bill? Witnesses have mentioned that the information will be reported to Parliament, but if the school inspectorate is going to go into schools, it will be taking a formal look at how the policy is implemented, too.

Suzi, is there anything that you would like to add?

I will return to the line of questioning that I put to the first panel in relation to the importance of national reporting of incidents. We have already touched on the value of data and, with the previous panel, I discussed some of the data that care services are now having to report. Do you think that national reporting will make a difference here?

I do not think that there are any proposals to record chemical restraint, which Ben Higgins referred to earlier. Indeed, Kate Sanger mentioned the matter, and I think it important that we get some understanding of what that could look like, too.

I will bring you in first, Ben.

How would you see that working in practice?

In some of the casework that I—and probably most colleagues—have had, it is about that point at the age of 16 when a CSO can be removed, and when a young person will often either be encouraged, or want, to get out of services. However, the aftermath of that is that they are not able to take a step back into services. Do you see that working as an appeals process or as being a right that the young person has, according to the principles of good transition, to be able to go back into services if they want? It is not clear in the bill whether it is an appeals process or how it would function. That was a long question.

I have a few more questions, but I will come back to them later.