Chamber and committees

The Government has said that we will support the bill at stage 1, but as the committee has heard about, the trade unions are concerned about some issues. We need to work with Mr Johnson to ameliorate some of the challenges. Definitions are part of the issue. We will continue to undertake that work, but there are diverging views on the issues, particularly from the teaching unions’ perspective, of which I am mindful.

I think that the committee has heard evidence on the role of the Care Inspectorate and, potentially, the role of His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education regarding reporting in future. There are divergent views on that as well.

The committee heard from Pauline Stephen of the General Teaching Council for Scotland that, if we introduce the measures on a statutory footing, we need to be mindful that our approaches to child protection are not currently statutory. They are multi-agency measures, and the current landscape does not necessarily lend itself to a neat fix.

There is a big history behind the bill, with parents pushing for the proposed measures to happen, but it is fair to say that it has been challenging for the Government, over a number of years, to resolve the issues.

As for reducing the number of incidents, my understanding is that the Care Inspectorate has moved away from some practices over a number of years. That has partly been informed by the Promise—from which, I put on the record, I am recused. The committee has heard about the movement and change in behaviour, approaches and practices that has been happening organically over time. There has been a focus on moving away from such types of practices, and the committee has taken evidence on that from witnesses who have concurred with the opinion that has been expressed.

Remember, however, that the Care Inspectorate evidence is only one side of the coin. We do not have the granular detail from education services, and I think that we need it to inform the review.

What they are is quite important—this is a bit hypothetical.

I am not necessarily sure that I am reluctant to say that it is better. It is just that I suppose that Mr Rennie presumes that the relationship was bad at some point. I mean, we are bailing out a—

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 cannot recall, on the second point, but I am happy to write to the committee on that. However, I have engaged with Mr Johnson on the matter over a number of years. We have been engaging with Mr Johnson on it throughout my time as cabinet secretary. We have been discussing it, and he has been aware of the need for us to publish guidance. He has fed into some of that process, and his team have been helpful in sharing their thoughts. We have been engaged throughout the period in question.

Convener, you are right that the Government could perhaps have taken a decision earlier on whether to take on the bill. We did not do that because of the timescales associated with the publication of the guidance. We are content to support Mr Johnson’s bill at stage 1, but we are still going to carry out a review of how the guidance is operating in practice, which we hope will help to inform the passage of the bill.

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

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.

We will have to agree to disagree with my caveats, Mr Rennie.

Yes. I have written to the committee on that. Mr Johnson’s approach is quite focused on education settings. I completely understand why he has done that, which is not to take away from the approaches that are used in other settings. We think that there is a way in which they could complement each other, and that is the approach that we suggest should work.

However, there are issues in relation to the policy memorandum and why the bill needs independent and grant-aided schools to report restraint to the education authority in which they are situated. That needs to be looked at. There are issues in relation to the role of the inspectorate, and there is an ask that the inspectorate is involved in national reporting. We look at the financial memorandum in that regard to consider whether this approach will drive more costs. These issues need to be flushed out during stage 2 deliberations, but I do not think that they are insurmountable.