Chamber and committees

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 want to ask about the proposed powers for ministers in relation to the guarantee fund in schedule 1, paragraph 6. The Law Society suggested that the consultation requirement should be paired with a requirement to publish the outcome of that consultation. Does the Scottish Government have a view on that?

Can you provide more clarity on how the Lord President’s consent provision would work in practice? What would that look like? How would stakeholders and the Parliament follow that process?

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 am grateful to Kaukab Stewart for bringing up that issue, because I ran out of time to do so during my speech. Does she think that the response to that crisis has been sufficient, or does she feel that more resource is needed in speech and language?

I recognise them, and I am saying exactly that, but I cannot understand how the member can come here and trot off that political spiel without recognising that we have a national shortage of midwives, that neonatal services in this country are being cut and that they are struggling to provide the level of service that their many dedicated and hard-working staff members would like to offer.

Parents in my constituency are fundraising for key hospital equipment. Families are struggling to access national health service services that are near enough to their home, so they are having to travel for hours to access those services, and are then struggling to find accommodation and keep their family together.

We have had promises of flexibility. Willie Rennie made a point about the childcare policy; it is a really positive policy, but having it means nothing if you cannot access it. Those sorts of policies get announced in Parliament but they evaporate the minute we leave the chamber, because they cannot be delivered on the ground.

What about people who are trying to find a dentist for their child or to get them the chance to see a doctor quickly? What about the pressure that health visitors are under? Health visitors are great, but if they must look after more children than they personally can manage to cope with and support, they find themselves overburdened, stressed, stretched and completely disheartened. They are unable to provide the bespoke support that families who most need that help and intervention are trying to access, never mind provide access to speech and language and mental health services. I do not think that members across the chamber need new evidence to know that those services are in crisis.

The Government has the power to do something about all that now, and it really should.