Chamber and committees

I assure Mr Marra that we are not waiting for a national care service to address that issue.

Part of the drive for the national care service is to have consistency right across the country, so that there is access to the care that is needed, when it is needed, regardless of the part of the country where someone lives. The services that you are talking about are currently commissioned by IJBs, local authorities or health boards. That commissioning would be done by the national care service.

Are you looking for a concise answer to that, too, convener? [Laughter.]

As a minimum, the charter will set out the rights and responsibilities in relation to the NCS so that people who are accessing support have information on the complaints and redress system, which will provide recourse if rights in the charter are not met, and information on how to access information, advice and advocacy services, which was one of the points that Miss Callaghan made. That is the basic minimum but, as Mr Stewart said, we are consulting, including with children and young people, on exactly what the charter should include.

Good afternoon, and thank you for your invitation to address the committee in relation to this Scottish statutory instrument.

The SSI sets out the information that will be contained in the annual report to Parliament on the use of the place-of-safety power in section 28 of the Age of Criminal Responsibility (Scotland) Act 2019. Section 28 provides Police Scotland with the power to take a child who is under the age of 12 to a place of safety when they consider that the child

“is behaving or is likely to behave in a way that is causing or risks causing significant harm to another person.”

The SSI has been developed since the 2019 act’s commencement on 17 December 2021, which means that it has been informed by the first few months of the legislation operating in practice. The police have used the power on only four occasions since December.

In developing the SSI, I have taken account of the fact that the power has been required only infrequently, and of the risk that is therefore posed in relation to compromising a child’s identity when information is reported to Parliament. The information that will be reported to Parliament, as set out in the SSI, will not contain the same level of detail as the information that Police Scotland records and provides to ministers. The essential difference is that it will not focus on the specific date, time and location of a child being taken to a place of safety; instead, the report will contain detail on the length of time that a child was at a place of safety, how many times in a month a place of safety was used, and the number of times each place of safety included in the 2019 act was used within the reporting period.

The SSI has been designed to ensure that the reports that are laid in Parliament safeguard children’s identity while furnishing Parliament with information on the safe and proper use of the power. I believe that the SSI does that without materially altering the intent or the information that ministers receive.

We collaborated with Police Scotland on the development of the instrument, to ensure that its terms are appropriate, deliverable, proportionate and underpinned by the principles of the 2019 act. We also informally consulted with stakeholders, including organisations that have a strong focus on children’s rights.

The 2019 act requires ministers to carry out a review of its operation and to consider the future age of criminal responsibility. Should the age of criminal responsibility be raised or the frequency of the power’s use increase, the regulations can be modified to require reports to include further information.

Scottish ministers will look to provide Parliament with the first report in early 2023, after the end of the first year of the 2019 act’s implementation.

I hope that that provides the committee with a helpful overview of the draft regulations.

It would be helpful to establish for the committee and for the record that a police cell would be used only in one rare circumstance, which is when a child behaves in an exceptionally violent manner or their behaviour poses extreme risk to someone else.

Under the place of safety power, it would be unusual for the police to take a child to a police station, never mind to take the step of putting them in a police cell. If police had concerns about a child and were using the power, they would contact social work and the local authority to try to identify a relevant place that would best meet the child’s needs for a place of safety. Local authorities could identify various places; it could be a care home, or, if that child had identified medical needs, it could be a hospital. A police station would be the last resort, and the use of a police cell would be in extremis.

There would be only one reason for a child to be kept in a cell as a place of safety, and that would be, as I outlined earlier, if they were behaving in an exceptionally violent manner or posing an acute threat to someone else.

On why someone would go to another place of safety, the police would liaise with social work, which would take a holistic view using a getting it right for every child approach to consider what is in the best interest of that child and where would best suit their needs. Social work would consider the situation from a child protection and child safeguarding point of view in relation to whether the child needed to go to a place of safety until they were able to be returned home or to another appropriate adult.

I will take the first part of that question and then I will hand over to Lynsey McKean on compliance.

The 2019 act placed a duty on the Scottish ministers to review its operation in general and with a view to considering the future age of criminal responsibility. The three-year review period started on 17 December last year, which was the day that section 1 of the act came into force. In carrying out that review,

“the Scottish Ministers must consult such persons as they consider appropriate”

and must lay a report before the Parliament within 12 months of the completion of the review period.

An advisory group has been established to support that work and it has met since summer 2019. The review will ensure that the operational learning and experience from the implementation of the act will inform the discussions that we have about the future age of criminal responsibility in Scotland.

I hope that that gives the member an overview of some of the work that is going on. I am sure that we will come back to the matter in future as the review reports.

Yes, I confirm that that is correct. The police can engage with children who are under the age of 12.

I am sorry. Could you—