Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is committed to bringing back that legislation as quickly as we can. We are working at pace through the judgment that was made by the Supreme Court. However, my constituents would certainly think that a Scottish Tory defending the cut of £20 a week in universal credit in their pockets could be construed as gratuitous and unnecessary.

We are taking a range of action to tackle the cost of the school day for children and help them to reach their full potential. We have committed £11.8 million to deliver the increased minimum school clothing grant of £120 for every eligible pupil in primary school and £150 for every eligible pupil in secondary school. We have also committed £21.75 million to continue alternative free school meal provision for around 150,000 children and young people during school holidays.

Importantly, we do not want families just to survive; we want them to thrive. As the Promise change plan for 2021 to 2024 highlighted, we need our services to feel seamless for the people who experience them.

Although there are many pockets of good practice—we have heard of them in various speeches from members—we need to support whole-system change so that the principles of good holistic family support are delivered consistently and sustainably across all areas. That does not mean a single model of family support. Instead, it means a service that wraps around families so that, when they need help, their needs are met in a seamless, joined-up and sustainable way that is unique to their own circumstances.

We also want families to be able to access support regardless of where that need is identified—a general practitioner, an early learning and childcare setting or wherever it may be. Those services need to work collectively in a multi-agency and multidisciplinary way to provide the spectrum of support that will best enable the whole family to thrive. That means working together across boundaries to support children’s services planning partnerships and our workforces to pool resources and maximise their potential to deliver transformational change.

Over the two years since the independent care review concluded, we have worked positively with The Promise Scotland and other key stakeholders to establish how we ensure that the lives of our children and families who are care experienced are improved. By the end of this parliamentary year at the latest, we will publish a single implementation plan that will set out the actions and commitments that we will deliver to ensure that we keep the promise by 2030.

We have shown our commitment to driving transformation and fundamental service redesign. As part of this year’s programme for government, we announced £500 million of whole-family wellbeing funding over this parliamentary session, with £50 million in 2022-23 and the expectation that it will ramp up significantly in subsequent years once capacity and capability build in the sector.

I am grateful to Mr Whitfield for bringing the debate to the chamber and I welcome the opportunity to discuss this issue. I want to thank members for their contributions on this important topic. I often reflect on the fact that the Parliament works well when we all work together, and this seems to be an area where we are all wanting to pull in the same direction.

Family support is not a new concept. Experienced practitioners and professionals across Scotland have long highlighted the benefits of a holistic and whole family approach to supporting families. An early offer of support that is sustained for as long as the family needs it is fundamental to our getting it right for every child approach.

As recognised in “The Promise” and Martin Whitfield’s motion, and as mentioned in a few contributions across the chamber today, children have the right, which is enshrined in the UNCRC, to be raised safely in their own families. For all but the very few, that is absolutely what is best.

Access to effective family support can be the critical factor in ensuring that that is achieved. That is even more important now, given what we know about the negative impact of the pandemic on child poverty, inequalities and the wellbeing of children, young people and families, especially those on the edges of care, or looked-after children.

The Scottish Government is already taking significant action across a range of areas to support families. Our baby box programme has distributed more than 200,000 baby boxes across Scotland to provide much-needed support to families at the very start of their child’s life. We are the only country in the United Kingdom to offer the equivalent of 1,140 early learning and childcare hours to all three and four-years-olds and around a quarter of two-years-olds, putting children first regardless of their parents’ working status. We have expanded universal free school lunches to all children up to and including those in primary 5.

We continue to invest heavily in child and adolescent mental health services. Our mental health transition and recovery plan is supported by a £120 million recovery and renewal fund, which will transform services, with a renewed focus on prevention and early intervention in response to the challenges of the pandemic.

We want to do more in recognition of the additional financial challenges that many families are struggling with. We have declared a national mission to tackle child poverty, calling on all of society to work with us to make the changes that are needed. However, while we are doing everything that we can within our devolved powers to support families, the UK Government is doing the reverse.

We are working very closely with the third sector in our planning for the funding, so it will be very closely involved in that.

I had quite a bit more to say, but I have taken some interventions, and the Presiding Officer has asked me to wind up.

I commit to write to Stephen Kerr on his specific points and give him all the detail that I can at the moment, with the caveat that we are, obviously, still working collaboratively with stakeholders and, most importantly, listening to the voices of children and families in the development of services and supports going forward.

Ultimately, we want Scotland’s children to grow up healthy, happy, safe and loved, and we recognise that, in most cases, their families are the best people to make that a reality. We need to challenge ourselves to do things differently but, above all, keep the voice of families at the heart of everything that we do.

We need to ensure that people are aware of what their entitlements are. I am sure that there are families who are not aware of that, and it is incumbent on the Government to ensure that families get access to the benefits that they are entitled to.

Recent research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that families that do not have an adult in work, and lone parents who are in or out of work, are significantly worse off than they were 10 years ago. That is before we take into account rising food and fuel costs, which will hit the poorest families most.

We have repeatedly called on the UK Government to make fundamental changes to universal credit to make it a proper safety net for all. We echo the calls made last week by charities ranging from Save the Children to Age UK for the UK Government to reinstate the £20 uplift to universal credit that was made during the pandemic and prevent more families from spiralling into destitution.

In contrast, the Scottish Government’s budget sets out our choices to back families through the cost of living crisis. We are making £197 million available in the year ahead to support the doubling of the Scottish child payment to £20 per week per child from April. That will immediately benefit 111,000 children under the age of six. Ahead of the full roll-out of the payment to all eligible children under the age of 16, we continue to deliver bridging payments worth £520 this year for as many school-age children as possible.

Yes, I can also confirm that.

Lynne McMinn can give some information about the process of automatic listing.

Anyone who is mentally ill or who lacks capacity at the time of their conviction would also automatically be added to that list.

The regulations will amend the prescribed period that must pass before a person has the right to make an application. They will increase the age threshold for what is referred to in the principal regulations as the shorter prescribed period from under 18 to 25 and under . That means that an individual who is included in the barred list when they are aged between 18 and 25 will be able to apply to be removed after five, rather than 10, years have passed since the date of inclusion.

I make it absolutely clear that the amendment regulations will not lead to individuals being removed automatically from the barred list; they will simply amend the circumstances in which an application for removal will be competent. As I said in my opening remarks, the proposed changes are consistent with the approach that is taken in the rest of the United Kingdom to when individuals can ask for a review of the Disclosure and Barring Service’s decision.

Yes.

Yes, I can.