Chamber and committees

I had the same experience on the justice and education committees. There is a balance to be found between transparency and proper process, but we are sometimes too keen to put witnesses in front of the camera and have a formal evidence-taking process. With the expertise that exists in the Parliament, there are better ways to do that.

Despite those reservations—if members want to call them that—there is merit in proceeding with the proposal on the scale that is proposed to see how the process works in practice, to gather evidence and to see where it takes us. However, I come back to the point that I made earlier: if we are to go down that route, we have a job of work to do to explain it to the public and justify the expenditure. A figure of £55,000 per panel might seem modest to us but, to many of our constituents, it will seem like the Parliament is spending more money on something that is not one of their core priorities.

If we are going down that route, we must ensure that we make it work. As Christine Grahame and others have said, we must ensure that the input from the public is not treated with lesser respect or as having less value than that of MSPs, and that it makes genuine changes to policy and outcomes.

Having milked the public purse for years while the going was good, Stagecoach has now decided to throw Dumfries and Galloway under the bus. There are reports that the company is planning to exit the region altogether, abandon more than a hundred members of staff, close depots in Dumfries and Stranraer and even hand back school transport contracts. That presents a huge challenge across a large rural local authority, and constituents are seeking urgent reassurance that they will still be able to get to work, school and hospital appointments. Will the First Minister commit the Government and its agencies to working with Dumfries and Galloway Council to ensure that bus services do not collapse and to explore alternative options that will retain current drivers and staff?

Some time has passed since November, and there is frustration in the dyslexia community about how long it is taking to progress some of the proposals and about the fact that, after years of asking, the Scottish Government still has not identified a lead official for adult dyslexia. Will the cabinet secretary look into that?

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to ensure that those identified with dyslexia at school leave education with the appropriate supporting information needed to secure reasonable adjustments in the workplace. (S6O-04668)

Does the minister see that there are fewer residential opportunities now than there were 10, 15 or 20 years ago? Despite what she is saying, residential opportunities in most parts of Scotland are diminishing.

Will the member take an intervention?

I associate myself with all the tributes to Christina McKelvie. I know how deeply she will be missed, and my thoughts and prayers are with Keith Brown and her whole family.

Yesterday, community councils across my constituency received a notification from Police Scotland that officers will no longer attend their meetings, given the rising and competing demands and challenges on policing. That move will negatively impact local democracy and, worryingly, the decision has been taken without any community consultation. It follows a similar move when local event organisers were told that long-standing police involvement in community events was no longer guaranteed, due to pressure on police resources.

Does the First Minister share my concern that vital links between the police and the communities that they serve are being eroded under the Police Scotland model? Does he recognise that the imposition of a Police Scotland central-belt policing culture is increasingly damaging public confidence and the good work of dedicated local police officers?

I thank the minister for that intervention, but when I hear her talking, what I hear is a dialling back of what Liz Smith is proposing. Liz Smith is probably too polite and too focused on trying to get something done to say this, but what I hear is a talking down of the ambition that is at the heart of the proposals.

I have had the wise counsel of Liz Smith over many years. When we were both on the Education and Skills Committee, Iain Gray used to say that she was more like my headteacher than a colleague. I have not always been very good at finding common ground, but Liz Smith has always been searching for that, looking for solutions and looking to put party politics to one side. To be honest, given that she is someone who operates and works like that in this Parliament, it is pretty disgraceful that the best treatment was to receive an 11th-hour letter at 6 o’clock after decision time yesterday, and that there was no chance for the minister to have better engagement before that—particularly when she says that she has met the member in charge of the bill.

I find that frustrating because the bill speaks to a philosophy and a vision that is about making our country better and shaking up how we do things, rather than doing what is easy. I say that because, based on the debate so far, we are having a clash on how to make it happen. Liz Smith has not shied away from the fact that this is not an easy bill—it is not a secret. It is not a £40 million carriage clock that ticks a few boxes and gets the member some legislation in her name. Easier bills might have been available, but Liz Smith believes passionately in it and has convinced many people that it is worth doing.

In that context, we should look at why someone with an education background who is very passionate on the topic believes that this is the right way to spend such a sum of money and that the results will come.

I agree with that; I was going to come to it later. Personally, I have always been a sceptic when it comes to the curriculum for excellence—that is not a secret. I am a passionate believer in a knowledge-based curriculum, and I would like to see something that is more structured and more prescriptive. However, even I have been convinced that this is the right way to go and that there has to be some balance.

We cannot listen to the testimony of the young people—including the young person mentioned by Liz Smith—and not recognise that there is something transformational about outdoor education that goes beyond what can be done in the classroom and goes right to the heart of social justice. I cannot believe that the Scottish National Party Government does not recognise what is at stake here. It is hard to accept the idea that accessing Scotland’s great outdoors is something for privileged young people, whether through a postcode lottery or a lottery of birth, and to hear pushback that it should not be universal. That is really sad. That speaks to a narrowness, a smallness and a lack of determination, which probably also speaks to the wider failings in our education system.

What makes this initiative exciting is the intensity of the experience and the chance to take everyone out of their comfort zones. That is where the transformational and lasting effects come into their own.

We talk about outdoor learning, but in most education settings, people are just playing at outdoor learning. It is not serious and it is not real. To be honest, as a result, a lot of what is done ends up being a waste of valuable time and resources. We need specialist and quality provision, and we need it to be available for all.

As a member who represents a rural constituency, where the great outdoors is not that far away, I find it incredibly sad that, for many young people who go to school in my constituency, the chance of going on a residential trip or getting that experience feels beyond their reach. Because of change in society—whether that is looking at screens or changes to land-based occupations—their connections to the countryside and the outdoors in general are very limited.

We live in a great country. Why are we not determined to make sure that every young person in Scotland enjoys it and benefits from the experience? It is not good enough. Today, we have a chance to do something daring and different and—for once, unusually—to unite and do something that will make a tangible difference.

Will John Mason take an intervention?