Chamber and committees

I feel that it is a bit unfair to keep pushing an official, so I will stop there.

You will recognise that it is hard for the committee, or for individual members of the committee, to come to a view on the scope of that Lord President’s consent provision, which will now run through a substantive part of the bill, without knowing how it will work in practice or what the process would look like. How would we know what discussions had taken place around that? How would stakeholders know if there were concerns about the proposals? Will the regulations be introduced to Parliament before consent is sought, or will consent be sought before the regulations come to Parliament? Will there be ministerial-level discussions with the Lord President before Parliament knows about it? How will the process actually work?

I do not want to be confrontational, but it appears that you are doubling down on the same strategy of making the Lord President’s consent central to the provisions. Last week, we heard from the two biggest legal stakeholders outwith the judiciary, who said that they were deeply uncomfortable with that, that it would undermine confidence in the rule of law and that the powers were too broad. Those are pretty serious concerns. They were saying that that approach would embarrass Scotland around the world and that there were concerns from the Commonwealth Lawyers Association. They did not just have light concerns.

You have come today to tell us that you are just continuing with that approach and adding in a few quite minor safeguards. That makes me concerned that the Government does not really understand the strength of feeling in the legal profession.

I will leave it there, convener.

Would you recognise that what is proposed in the bill is a significant expansion of that? The mechanism in the current statute is a one-off, whereas the one that is proposed in the bill runs right through the topics that the bill covers. The range of provisions to which the mechanism applies and their potential reach are far wider than in previous legislation. Is that fair?

Do you not think that the consent procedure is too fundamental for us to have got to this point in the process and still not be able to give a relatively high-level explanation of how it would work?

I am deeply concerned by the start to this morning’s evidence session. I had hoped, after the evidence we heard last week, that the minister would be in a better position to tell us about the way forward. I share concerns about what is a big change to the Lord President’s role, and I want to understand the situation.

It is clear that there is an uncomfortableness in the faculty and in the Law Society about the provisions, and it is clear that there are on-going discussions, to put it in its most positive sense, with the Lord President. If the power was in the bill, what would prevent negotiations and strong-arming happening to get agreement to changes to the principles or changes to regulations?

That offers me zero reassurance. I am very proud of the Scottish legal system and of our unique traditions. Aiming to model our legal system on what happens in England and Wales is not the approach that we should be taking. We have a very different and distinct system. I am sad to hear that from a Scottish Government minister. Furthermore, I have spoken out in relation to the Scottish law officers and on politicians having less of a direct role in their involvement in the legal profession. I do not think that pointing to the situation with the UK Government is helpful in that regard.

On section 20(6), which confers a power on Scottish ministers to make regulations specifying other measures that they may take in relation to a legal regulator following a review of their regulatory performance, measures already set out in the bill include setting performance targets, imposing financial penalties and changing or removing some or all of a regulator’s regulatory functions. Last week, stakeholders told us that they were fundamentally opposed to that provision and have called for its deletion. Is there any movement on that?

I have tried hard to listen to what has been said. At the start of the debate we heard about how there has been great success in Scotland with breastfeeding—that 46 per cent of mothers are breastfeeding. When we dig into the statistics and look at the detail, however, we find that twice as many mothers from the most affluent areas as mothers from the most deprived areas are breastfeeding . The figures are 63 per cent versus 31 per cent. I find it hard to hear things from the Government about deprived communities and deprivation when such statistics are covered up in what is presented to us, as happened at the start of this debate.

I welcome the opportunity to speak in today’s debate. It is personal to me, having two relatively young daughters and many friends who have children in this age bracket.

I will always be exceptionally grateful to those individuals who have supported my family, but, having been through the system recently, I have no doubt that it is under great pressure and huge stress. That leads to many people experiencing patchy delivery and poor outcomes. There is a growing sense that our health and social care system is now in a position where it is good at responding to emergencies but it is not always there to meet the care needs, particularly of mums and their babies. That should make us pretty sad.

I have spoken previously in a debate about support for the whole family. I do not think that we can even get to that point, because we are failing at the first hurdle when it comes to pre-birth and post-birth support.

We know that when families get off to a bad start it makes everything more difficult and can have lasting impacts for children. The quality of services and support on offer for mothers and young children, both clinical and in the community, causes me serious concern. I say that on the basis of my experience in my constituency and listening to colleagues in debates around the country.

We cannot fault the Government when it comes to ambitious rhetoric. Like other speakers, I do not aim this criticism at Jenni Minto—I have a great deal of respect for her and believe her to be a very hard-working minister. However, we are doing families and our young people a disservice if we do not own up to the reality that we often fall a long way short when it comes to delivering a Scotland that is the best country in which to be born and grow up.

I do not want to fall into the trap of getting bogged down in petty debate about the baby box. Equally, we have to be grown up enough to say that, although the baby box is nice and is helpful for many people, it does not fundamentally shift the dial for many of our most vulnerable families. After 16 years, if that is the best that things get, we need to be asking serious questions.