Chamber and committees

The suggestion was that at least some local authorities were almost requiring parents to take up hours in council facilities, if those were available, and to get the extras around the edges.

That is great—thank you.

On a wider issue, one of the things that we are trying to look at—this bill provides one example of it—is how financial memorandums work overall. I do not know how many financial memorandums you have been involved in. I think that you said that you came into this area in 2016, so you were not there when the financial memorandum for this act was produced. If you are able to comment, will you tell us how easy it is to produce a financial memorandum? Are we expecting more accuracy than is possible?

You mentioned that the number of eligible kids had dropped by 7.5 per cent but, when we looked at the whole picture, we saw that it had dropped from 225,000 to 206,000 to 184,000. There has been a dramatic drop in what everybody expected, probably, so I do not think that anybody is criticising the original forecast. With that kind of change, is it impossible to get a financial memorandum that is accurate?

That is a fair answer. Speaking specifically about two-year-olds, I see that the uptake has not been as great as had been hoped or planned. If I wrote it down correctly, the uptake has been between 41 and 45 per cent, but the hope is to get up to 75 per cent. Is that realistic?

To follow on from Ross Greer on capital costs, there seems to be some uncertainty as to whether the original plans for capital meant that some of the money would go to local authorities and some would be passed on to the partner providers, who have suggested that very little went to them. Will you clarify what the intention was and whether that happened?

Talking about local authorities and data, I was very surprised that we had robust data from only 17 local authorities, and that was after some were questioned and chased. Can you explain why only 17 provided data and whether that was the fault of the local authorities?

Is that the case even if we do not know and we are just being honest with people about that? Do you agree with the previous comment that, if we are uncertain about some things, we should just be honest with people about that?

We have talked a lot about communication, and I want to continue that with regard to the communication of uncertainty. We have had some advice from the scientific community that we should be very open about uncertainty, because that increases transparency and, therefore, trust. However, given that we have already accepted that getting simple messages across in all the different languages to all the different groups in society is quite difficult, I wonder whether that is realistic, when there is uncertainty, which there obviously is.

One example was the uncertainty at the beginning of the vaccination programme about whether pregnant women should be vaccinated. I think that the vaccine had not been tested on pregnant women and, therefore, a decision could not be made, so it was publicly said that that would have to wait. However, the message that many people took from that was, “Vaccines are dangerous for pregnant women.” Can you comment on how we deal with uncertainty? Perhaps Professor Pell could start.

That is helpful. I think that all the witnesses have given a consistent message so far, which is good.

Dr Witcher, you have emphasised the use of words, and I fully accept that words are really important. However, I am a little wary about what you said about only using the word “protections” and not the word “restrictions”—it strikes me that they are both. If we were to only use “protections”, I wonder whether people would say, “You’re just putting a spin on it, because the reality is that my life is being restricted. I cannot go to visit my friends in London, for example.” My suggestion is, surely we should use both “protections” and “restrictions”, so that we are being honest with people.

In your written evidence, you also seem to be critical of the use of the word “vulnerable”. Could you expand on that? I am interested in that, because I have to say that we use that word in the Parliament quite a lot. We talk about people who are financially vulnerable, and we use the word in a health context and in a variety of other contexts. Could you comment on the use of words?

That is helpful. I think that we are more in agreement than I thought we were at the beginning.

I want to move on to another subject. In its submission, the alliance talked about the idea of the third sector filling the gap, so I wonder whether that was a complaint. Maybe Gillian McElroy and Adam Stachura could come in on that. Is not that the place for the third sector? The public sector is largely lumbering and bureaucratic, and there will always be gaps. I see the third sector as being very good at filling the gaps. Am I right? What is your thinking?

You do not think that it increases confusion.