To be fair—as a woman with caveats—this is not a Government bill. I am being candid with the committee here. We published guidance last November; we are not even a year on since the guidance was published. We need to review that guidance, and it would be remiss of me not to say that we need the data to inform good law. That is important. I am supportive of the bill at stage 1, and I understand the aspiration. I have had a lot of engagement with Mr Johnson on that, and I have set out our position on a number of different areas in correspondence to the committee—in relation to the definitions, which we have discussed, and in relation to the duty to record, on which there is an issue in the bill, although I think it can be resolved pretty easily. There is no requirement for education authorities—our councils—or for independent or grant-aided schools to report the use of restraint and seclusion at a national level under the terms of the 2024 guidance. I think that Mr Johnson’s bill has grant-aided schools and independent schools reporting to the individual local authority. Is that correct?

We had just launched the guidance in November 2024. Our preference was to review the guidance, and our view was that the timescales did not meet the Government’s requirement to take on the bill, because we had not yet carried out or started the review, and we needed that granular detail to inform any legislative change. To my mind, it would have been jumping the gun somewhat for us to adopt a bill not four months after the publication of our own guidance.

I do not necessarily agree with Mr Rennie’s characterisation of the Government’s position as opposing the bill. I think—

Let us look at the history, which is that the previous cabinet secretary was asked to provide guidance. That was asked for by lots of different stakeholders, before my time as cabinet secretary—I think that that goes back to 2019. The original agreement was to provide guidance. We have moved on from that to putting things on a statutory footing, so I am not sure that I agree with—

Yes, I think that that is a risk, and the committee and the Parliament need to be mindful of that and how we can guard against it with regard to the next steps. However, I would counter that there is probably already a risk of such reticence on the part of staff, which speaks to the issues that the convener raised earlier about reticence with regard to reporting. So that reticence exists already to some extent in the teaching population and the education workforce. If the bill gets to stage 2, which I suspect that it will, we can consider how we might ameliorate that situation by working with local government. However, that is not without its challenges, which is a point that trade unions raised.

If individuals are not being informed, it is the local authority that is accountable. The headteacher has a responsibility in that regard, too, but statutory responsibility is with the local authority. Therefore, the local authority should have practices in place. I think that the committee has taken evidence on that from ADES and others. Local authorities should have policies in place, and individual schools should be working with parents and carers. The committee has heard evidence that, sometimes, parents are not informed and things go wrong. In my experience, parents are informed. However, we are here talking about how we can ensure that things do not go wrong in the future.

The national guidance sets out the Government’s expectation that parents are notified by the end of the school day, so if a school did not do that, that would run contrary to the national guidance. However, the guidance is not statutory, which is why we are discussing legislation.

That question speaks to the point that Mr Rennie was pursuing in relation to our role in opening up the discussion. Mr Johnson’s bill is focused on education settings because, as Ms Duncan-Glancy has alluded to, we have different approaches in care settings and in ELC settings, where the Care Inspectorate has a role. If we were to take a similar approach in education, we would need to be mindful that that would completely alter the nature of the bill. I think it is fair to say that that would elongate its passage, because it would be asking much bigger questions. That is not to say that the issues are not important but, currently, we do not have the national data that we need on those incidents. I agree with Ms Duncan-Glancy’s intention in that regard.

There has been a suggestion that the inspectorate would have a role in gathering the data. When the committee is considering the bill at stage 2, I am sure that it will want to hear from the inspectorate with its views on how that would operate and how local government in particular would co-operate. It would depend on local reporting and recording practices, and we would need there to be much greater consistency across the piece. The Care Inspectorate’s approach is quite different from the approach that is taken in education, where there is no statutory requirement to record incidents. Ms Duncan-Glancy makes an interesting point. However, if we were to follow that approach, it would change the nature of the bill that we are discussing. I understand why Mr Johnson has focused on education settings.

That has been part of the challenge facing the Government for a number of years. Indeed, the point was pursued by one of the trade unions when it raised concerns about individual school-based data. I think that that sort of thing would need to be undertaken in a very sensitive way. I do not think that the issue is insurmountable, and of course it is part of the bill, which we are supportive of. We will continue to engage with Mr Johnson on this at stage 2, because we need to reassure local government that authorities are not going to be measured against one another and that national data will help inform better practice.

I suspect that you are right.