Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is investing £185 million this year to support high-quality apprenticeships, aiming to strengthen the skills system and ensure efficient use of public funds. Our approach to proactive contract management allows flexibility to respond to emerging demand, aligned with Government priorities. Skills Development Scotland supports providers to maximise opportunities throughout the year. We remain committed to working with employers and industry leaders to reform the skills system. Improving skills planning is key to ensuring that supply is better aligned with the demands of Scotland’s economy.

Thank you, Presiding Officer, for the opportunity to open the debate, which will focus on proposed changes to United Kingdom legislation that have the potential to increase and improve opportunities for Scottish children and young people, and to put their best interests at the heart of decisions that affect them.

In December, the UK Government contacted the Scottish Government about extending to Scotland the provisions in its Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that relate to child employment and community-based and secure accommodation. More detail was sought from the UK Government to allow there to be consultation with stakeholders and to provide advice to Scottish ministers. Although our engagement has been constructive, a delay in securing the necessary detail to inform our approach has impacted our ability to engage as we would have wished with the Scottish Parliament. However, the positive feedback from children and young people and from other stakeholders enables me to recommend that the Parliament consents to the legislative changes.

Currently, children from the age of 14 up to the leaving age for compulsory schooling can work for up to two hours on a Sunday. The bill proposes to amend those restrictions so that children can work the same number of hours on Sundays as they can on Saturdays. Children will also be able to work up to an hour before school and until 8 pm on any day. Currently, they cannot work before a school day and can work only until 7 pm.

Schools and local authorities need to do all that they can to ensure that children and young people are included, engaged and involved in their education.

More than £60 million has been provided to local authorities through the care-experienced children and young people fund as part of the Scottish attainment challenge. We are working with Education Scotland and local government to improve the educational outcomes of care-experienced children and young people. The Government also continues to provide £100,000 of annual funding to CELCIS to support the facilitation of the virtual school headteachers and care-experienced teams network, which is playing a key role in reducing exclusions.

Our national policy on exclusion has a strong focus on approaches that can be used to prevent the need for exclusion. Exclusion should be the last resort and, when used, it should be a proportionate response where there is no appropriate alternative.

I hope that the member recognises that that is not my particular area of responsibility, so I will ask the relevant minister to write back to her.

I am quite pleased to hear that she is concerned about exclusions, because we regularly hear from the Conservative benches a demand for a greater number of exclusions. There seems to be a slight disconnect in the Conservatives’ positioning on that. However, she makes a fair point, and I will ask the minister to write to her.

The Scottish Funding Council is responsible for allocating funding to colleges in line with ministerial priorities, as set out in the SFC’s annual letter of guidance. Colleges are responsible for determining their own operational decisions, including course provision. I expect colleges to engage with employers and local partners to understand skills needs and to continuously plan and adjust their curriculum to meet the emerging needs of the economy. The post-school education and skills reform programme aims to make further improvements. The 2025-26 budget allocates £656.2 million in resource funding to colleges, which is a 2 per cent uplift on 2024-25.

As ever, Pam Duncan-Glancy brings problems, never solutions. Both she and I are well aware of the challenges in the college sector in Glasgow and elsewhere. I will say to her what I said a moment ago about the on-going work through the tripartite alignment group—of which the principal of Glasgow Kelvin College is a member—to best equip colleges to tailor their offering to the needs of their student cohort.

There were a number of questions in there. On the timing and why we are discussing the LCM now instead of waiting, there is a compatibility issue with legislation if we do not do it immediately. As a former minister for parliamentary business, I place great importance on giving the Parliament its rightful opportunity to scrutinise legislation. In this instance, I am afraid that a couple of things were at play. There were delays in obtaining the necessary information from UK Government officials to allow us to move forward, but I accept that there was also an element of delay at this end. I apologise to the Parliament for that, because I think that it is important. I hope that that provides the answer for the member.

Existing caps on weekly hours and a prohibition on working during school hours will remain in place.

The young people whom we engaged with on the changes viewed them as beneficial, because they will allow them more opportunity and greater flexibility to work. Young people said that they feel restricted by the current limitations and find it difficult to save money. Young people often find it harder than adults to find employment. Expanding Sunday working hours provides more opportunities for children to gain skills and experience, save money, develop their independence and better prepare themselves for their futures.

The bill also proposes changes to the rules on the conditions in which children can work. Those rules are currently set by local authorities through individual bylaws and they differ across Scotland. If consented to, the provisions would allow Scottish ministers to make child employment regulations, replacing local variations and providing a more consistent approach across Scotland. Local authorities will retain responsibility for issuing child employment permits and control of the process at a local level. Local authority representatives with whom we have engaged generally support that. In our discussions, the Federation of Small Businesses has also been supportive of the changes.

We will ensure that local authorities are able to engage in creating and implementing the regulations to reflect their local knowledge of businesses and regional differences in employment. Children and young people will also be given the opportunity to express their views, and any changes will be considered in line with their best interests. All other existing relevant legislation will remain in place, including safeguarding measures.

The second area that is covered by the provisions is secure community-based accommodation. The bill proposes a statutory mechanism that will allow children to be placed in community-based provision in England that can provide for deprivation and restriction of liberty measures, if that is in the best interests of the child. Placements in secure accommodation in England are currently possible for children living in Scotland. Provisions in the bill would enable them to be accommodated in the new proposed settings, if appropriate. Ministers are clear that any cross-border placements should happen only in exceptional circumstances and that such alternative provision should not be used where there are capacity challenges in Scotland.

However, flexibility with regard to placement options to meet the varying needs of children is important. There might be occasions when it is in a child’s best interests to be placed in provision in England—for example, to ensure that children are placed closer to their families, which is critical to relationships and wellbeing. The arrangements for and the monitoring and review of such placements will be clarified with relevant stakeholders and the UK Government to ensure that the circumstances align with Scotland’s work on the report “Reimagining secure care: a vision for the future”, the response to which the Scottish Government published today.

Just as there might be exceptional circumstances that make it appropriate to place a child from Scotland in England and to deprive them of their liberty, children from England may also be placed in secure accommodation in Scotland on welfare grounds. Amendments that the bill will make to section 25(5A) of the Children Act 1989 clarify that the person in charge of secure accommodation in Scotland can deprive a child of their liberty when they have been placed there from England or Wales.

Providing consent today would allow us to continue to work with our stakeholders to ensure that the changes are implemented in line with current Scottish Government policy and Scotland’s unique and lauded approach to child welfare and justice.

I move,

That the Parliament agrees that the relevant provisions of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, introduced in the House of Commons on 17 December 2024, and subsequently amended, affecting child employment and community-based and secure accommodation, so far as these matters fall within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament and alter the executive competence of the Scottish Ministers, should be considered by the UK Parliament.

I appreciate the opportunity to clarify. Let us be absolutely clear that the bill does not in any way change the approach in Scotland. Indeed, if we take the comparator of reverse cross-border placements, I believe that there are currently only three England-based children resident in Scotland under the system—this time last year, there were 20-odd. The direction of travel has been set. I understand the commissioner’s query, but, in reality, the bill changes nothing about the approach that we will continue to take in Scotland. I hope that that offers reassurance.

A key priority for the Scottish Government is to encourage apprenticeship delivery in island and rural communities. As part of that, we introduced a rural uplift for modern apprenticeship delivery, which is an increased payment for training providers, to encourage provision in island and rural areas. In addition, travel and subsistence support, including accommodation funding, is also available to support apprentices where they have to attend formal off-the-job training outwith normal daily travel, if required as part of the MA framework.

The member’s constituency is home to one of the most celebrated rural apprenticeship successes in the shape of Marc Ingram, who works at Blair Drummond Smiddy. Marc was the 2024 Scottish apprentice of the year and is an amazing young man whose journey highlights the incredible transformative impact that an apprenticeship can have on someone’s life.

I am very much alive to the competing arguments for funding in the post-16 education space. I regularly hear asks for an increase in the payment rates, but I also hear asks for increases in all sorts of other spend in that area. Through the reform work, we are trying to look very closely at the needs of the economy and to prioritise those sectors. As part of that work, we will, in due course, look at the payment rates, but I cannot stand here today and say that we will suddenly magic up a pot of money to address the issue, although I take the point on board.