Chamber and committees

I hear what you are saying about flexibility and that some people will always be unhappy, but do you recognise that there is a challenge when such discussions are taking place away from the Parliament? Some stakeholders worry that the people who have louder voices, who are able to lobby harder, who have more professional support, or who might be perceived to be closer to the Government politically, might have a better chance of getting what they want through that process than those stakeholders would if it went to Parliament as a whole and were subjected to the full scrutiny of primary legislation.

Do you recognise that there is a tension there? Whether or not you think that the process works well, there is a tension.

I take the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill as an example. We have a Government-initiated question that sets out that 70 per cent of funding for that would go into tier 1 and 2 as direct payments. That decision has been taken by the Government before the stakeholder consultation formally begins. That is possible to do while the bill is going through, but it is not possible to get some of the other information on details that you would normally expect to see in a bill. The Government is picking and choosing which—

The last thing I will say on this is that you can put it in the bill while the bill is going through Parliament and retain the flexibility to change it later. That is different from not including it in the bill at all and leaving it to secondary legislation.

Steering away from the political debate around specific budgets, I am concerned that the current funding model does not take into account the ageing demographic in areas such as Dumfries and Galloway and the challenges in delivering health services across a wide geographical area. In the light of the recent work on rural depopulation, will the cabinet secretary look again at whether current funding formulas truly account for the needs of ageing people in rural communities?

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to support rural health boards. (S6O-03174)

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. My app refreshed and said that I had selected yes when I had not touched the screen. I do not understand why that has happened. That is why I raised a point of order before the vote had closed.

I genuinely do not understand that in this instance, because I had not touched the screen.

I acknowledge that. However, the very good youth work services in my patch, which are award winning and for which I have huge admiration, do not have the resources to deliver that kind of support.

I also question whether such support would be a substitute for the teaching and academic support that those young people deserve; they would flourish if those things were there, too. I am concerned that, in some schools, in some parts of the country and in some quarters of our society, we say that it is okay for some people to opt out of qualifications and formal academic learning, despite the fact that they have the ability and the desire to achieve qualifications. We say, “These other things are the things for you. Don’t worry that you don’t have the qualifications that you need to follow your dreams—we’ve found some other things that can work as part of your qualification to make up for it.” We have to be very careful that we get the balance right and that we do not allow reform to be a chance to write people off.

I have enjoyed listening to today’s debate, but a little bit of balance always has to be inserted into our debates. [Interruption.] The cabinet secretary groans. I know that she will not want to listen to me, but she has committed to listening more widely.

I have spoken many times in the chamber on the subject and have drawn on the words of Lindsay Paterson. It would be wrong for his voice to be absent from the debate, so I will start by citing a couple of his thoughts on the Hayward review. He said that

“the Review ought to be challenged, rigorously and radically, because it is deeply disappointing. Its methods were flawed, and its recommendations vapid. It has a few good ideas, but they are not worked out in any detail and their practicability is doubtful. Implementing what it proposes would perpetuate the harm already inflicted by the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence, that two-decade-old reform which the present Review extols as admirable.”

I am happy to acknowledge that there are good things in the review and that it is a good opportunity for a conversation about how we move forward, but I share the concerns about how rigorous the review has been in terms of its starting point and the evidence base on which it is built.

I worry—a number of members have touched on this—that not enough consideration has been given to how the changes will impact our most deprived communities and the young people who face the biggest challenges and barriers to education. Lots of things sound good in the abstract when we talk about them here in the chamber, but, like some other members, I worry about the “personal pathway”. I worry about what it means for young people in my constituency who do not have after-school clubs to go to, or access to exciting national programmes.

Opportunities such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s award are not attainable for all young people at the moment. There are schools in my constituency with young people who would love to continue playing a musical instrument, but that opportunity is not there for them, or is not properly supported. Many young people have the aptitude and ability to take on an interdisciplinary project, but maybe not at the age of 15 and maybe not from the starting point at which they currently find themselves.