Chamber and committees

The data sharing arrangements are not yet in place, so they have not had an impact that would show a change. We still expect those arrangements to be in place for the end of this financial year and we are on track for that. We have been progressing work on the data sharing arrangements with the DWP, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and local authorities. As soon as we have all those data sharing agreements in place, the information will then be able to be shared with local authorities, so that they can access it and write to the parents of eligible children. With COSLA and local authorities, we will look at how that uptake goes. On current figures, we anticipate that around 25 per cent of children in Scotland will be eligible. We have to remember that England and Wales already have those data sharing arrangements, but Scotland does not.

We will monitor that, and I am sure that the committee will be interested in the figures. I can commit to writing to the committee to let you know when the data sharing arrangements are in place and how many families we anticipate are eligible. However, we need to remember that families have choice and that not every parent of an eligible child will decide that they want to access that provision.

Yes.

I will pass over to Kirstie McKerron, the lawyer, who I hope can answer that.

Thank you, convener, and good morning to the committee. The amending order will increase from 1 April the income thresholds for families with a two-year-old who is eligible for funded early learning and childcare because a parent receives a joint working tax credit and child tax credit or a universal credit award.

The Provision of Early Learning and Childcare (Specified Children) (Scotland) Order 2014 specifies that a two-year-old is eligible for funded ELC if their parent is in receipt of child tax credit and working tax credit with an annual income that does not exceed £7,920 or if their parent is in receipt of universal credit with a monthly income that does not exceed £660 per month. The amending order increases from 1 April the income threshold to £8,717 per year for households that are in receipt of child tax credit and working tax credit, and the universal credit income threshold will increase to £726 per month, which is the equivalent of £8,717 per year.

We are making this change to reflect changes at a United Kingdom level. From April, the UK Government will increase the national living wage from £9.50 to £10.42 per hour, so household income would exceed the current thresholds if they remained the same. The order’s purpose is to protect eligibility for two-year-olds whom we would expect to be eligible for funded ELC as a result of their parents or carers being in receipt of the affected qualifying benefits. If we chose to make no changes to the income thresholds, we estimate that about 1,000 eligible two-year-olds would no longer be eligible, despite there being no significant difference in their families’ household circumstances.

It is important to be clear that no two-year-old who currently receives funded ELC will be affected by the changes. Once a child has met the eligibility criteria, they will remain eligible, despite any subsequent change in circumstances.

As the amendment’s purpose is to maintain eligibility, we do not expect a significant increase in the number of two-year-olds who become newly eligible for provision. We do not expect a significant impact on local authorities’ ability to fund such provision within the current financial settlement. As such, there is no evidence that additional funding will be required to support implementation of the amendment.

The impact on uptake will be closely monitored by the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities through the appropriate mechanism, which is the ELC finance working group. Appropriate arrangements will be made if uptake is significantly above the expected level and if local authorities’ costs increase as a result.

As I said on my previous visits to the committee to discuss amending the thresholds, we will continue to monitor future increases to the national living wage, and we will uprate thresholds when that is required to keep pace with changes. COSLA agrees with that approach and agrees that it is necessary in order to maintain a similar profile of eligible children.

I am happy to respond to any specific questions from the committee.

Certainly. I can write to the committee with that information, if that would be helpful, so that all committee members can access that.

As I outlined in my opening statement, we have a lot of questions about the bill as drafted. That is not to say that the bill could not be amended or changed.

Can I just come in briefly?

I think we all want to be more ambitious, to go further and faster and to improve things, but we have to do that at a pace that stakeholders are comfortable with. We should not just put plans in place for the sake of putting plans in place; we need to have the evidence and the research behind that as we trial things and see what works. That is what the ARC pilots are doing: they are giving us the evidence.

I have some statistics in front of me, which show improvement for attainment and initial leaver destinations for the transitions of secondary school and special school leavers. I am happy to provide the committee with those statistics as one piece of data that we can point to where we can see improvement.

The additional support for learning work and the Morgan review are part of a plethora of work that we are doing to improve transitions. As Christina McKelvie suggested, some of that work is coming to its conclusion—some of the pilots are approaching their conclusion—and we will be able to point to the results of that work and identify the difference that it makes. We will be able to say why we want to expand a piece of work, or we may conclude that something does not work, so it is not a system that we want to continue working through.

In October 2020, in response to Angela Morgan’s review, we published our action plan with COSLA and ADES, which set out the actions that we would take to implement the additional support for learning review’s recommendations. In November last year, we published an updated action plan and a progress report, which highlighted that 24 of the actions had been fully completed.

Through the additional support for learning project board, we continue to work closely with local government partners to deliver the remaining actions that we have committed to taking by the end of the current parliamentary session—in other words, by March 2026. In addition, we have committed to providing an update on progress again in spring 2024, so that we can evidence the fact that we have been taking action.

We recognise that there is much more that we need to do to ensure that the current legislative duties in this area are implemented consistently and effectively for disabled children and young people. Angela Morgan’s review did not consider that new legislation in this area was necessary and, during the current parliamentary session, we are focused on the delivery of non-legislative solutions. The work that we are doing in the ARC pilots is absolutely key in that respect, but we are also doing other strands of work under the strategy for improving transitions for disabled children and young people. Therefore, we are not resting on our laurels.

This is on the back of what Christina McKelvie just said. The bill looks at disability, whereas the other plans that we have on transitions look at additional support needs, which might be short term and acute, such as in response to family bereavement or for a child whose first language is not English. As things are now, those children would be supported through transitions, but the transitions bill does not look at those issues. Its definition, wide though it is, narrows down who would have a legal right to a transitions plan.