Chamber and committees

A significant amount of public money is being invested to support the institution. You know that that is extremely unusual, because our universities are independent and autonomous. It is not the case that any other institution is receiving the financial support that Dundee university is receiving at this time, and we need to be mindful of that.

If Mr Rennie thinks that the relationship has improved, that is a good thing—I think that it is positive. Like me, he is a Fife MSP; he wants Dundee university to survive and thrive. It supports a lot of our constituents and a lot of young people in the areas that we represent, so I am absolutely committed to working with the management team to support the university to have the future that will see it thrive.

We have also had really positive engagement with the trade unions, and I am sure that the committee will engage with them and listen to their views, because it is really important that the management team listens to staff and students throughout the process. As the committee has heard in recent months, that has been a challenge.

I am not sure that I follow the line of questioning. We published the guidance in November last year; we need to review that guidance, and that was happening regardless of the passage of the bill. With regard to the bill’s general principles, we have always been supportive of the kind of approach that Mr Johnson has taken. I do not really have an issue with his approach. I have set out a number of areas that we would like to see amended. It is for Mr Johnson to amend the bill, but the Government can assist with that, and I have been very clear about that. Therefore, I am not sure that I accept that things have changed in that regard.

What has changed is the requirement for the approach to be put on a statutory footing, so we have had to reflect on that. I do not have an issue with that at the general principles level. We will need to look at the amendments that are lodged at stage 2 and at what our stakeholders’ asks and aspirations are. As the committee has heard, there are divergent views on the matter. There are lots of different stakeholders involved in this matter. To be candid, that has been part of the issue that the Government has faced over a number of years—bringing stakeholders together on the publication of guidance. I still think that it is important that we review the guidance, that we have the data and that that informs the legislative process.

I have written to the committee about the issue of definitions. The definitions that are used in Mr Johnson’s bill are different to those that we proposed in the guidance. We think that the definitions that are currently proposed in the bill are too broad, so we want to see them finessed somewhat. For example, the committee heard anecdotal evidence about whether taking a child’s hand while crossing the road would be considered to be restraint.

We need to be much clearer about definitions of restraint. We have suggested that to Mr Johnson in private session, and we will work with him to that end. Of course, it would not be for the Government to amend the bill; it would be for Mr Johnson to lodge those amendments.

With regard to seclusion, the committee has heard evidence on practices that we would not understand to be seclusion. To my mind—I will be corrected by officials on this if I am wrong—seclusion is about a deprivation of liberty whereby, for example, a child would not be able to leave a room. That is quite different to approaches to behaviour and relationships in mainstream settings whereby a child might, for example, be asked to work elsewhere because there are challenges in the classroom, but that child might still be able to go to the toilet—their liberty has not been deprived of them. We need to be more careful with and clearer about our definitions of seclusion. We have made suggestions to Mr Johnson, and, in my correspondence to the committee, I make the point that the definitions are too broad at the current time.

Robert Eckhart, do you want to say anything further on that?

I have been reflecting on some of the evidence that the committee has taken. As I said in my opening statement, most teachers in Scotland are not trained in restraint practices, which I think that we need to be very careful about. In most mainstream settings, those practices would not be used ordinarily. However, as the committee heard from Lynne Binnie, ADES’s evidence suggested that the practice was mostly used in early learning and childcare and primary settings and in specialist settings. To my mind, we do not yet have a national picture. During evidence sessions, Mr Briggs quoted statistics from the Care Inspectorate, but that covers settings only in which the Care Inspectorate operates. At the moment, we do not have the national picture for education services, because we do not gather the data. The review is extremely important, as it will provide us with a clearer understanding of what is going on in which settings and which staff are using or not using those practices.

The teaching unions are very keen to point out to me that many teachers do not want to be trained in restraint practices. Certainly, from when I undertook my teacher training many years ago, I know that most people in education will not engage in restraint, but in a specialist education facility, such as an ASN unit or some ELC settings, there may be a member of staff who has been trained in those types of approaches. It is quite a unique approach in Scotland that exists in our education system—although it is not unique to Scotland. We need to be mindful not to set hares running about where we are with restraint because, in my experience, it is not used commonly in mainstream settings.

However, we do not yet have the evidence base. To answer Mr Adams’ point about individual incidents, we need the evidence base to inform and to help to support the next steps.

I share Mr Briggs’s concerns—the issues at Dundee university should have been known to Government long before they were. I reassure the committee that I have put those issues to the SFC. The Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill is currently a bill before Parliament, and members may want to consider the issues that it concerns more broadly in respect of the role of the SFC and the powers it may have as an organisation in the future.

There are.

It is fair to say that there continue to be issues in relation to the court, but that is a matter for the management team, and the university itself, to engage with.

The issues in relation to the court speak to the governance issues to which Pamela Gillies referred. That is for the committee to consider; it needs to be mindful of those aspects. Part of the challenge that Pamela Gillies spoke about was that the court was not working in the way that it should have done in order to provide challenge to decisions that were made previously. I am sure that the committee will want to explore those things, but I will, of course, explore them further with the SFC later to give me reassurance in that regard.

Richard Maconachie has been attending a number of court meetings with observer status for the SFC, so I am sure that I will engage with the SFC further on that this week.

I think that there were issues with membership. There were issues with trade union engagement as well, and issues with papers being shared late. That is off the top of my head, convener.

Yes.

Of course we can—and we may yet do so.