Chamber and committees

Yesterday afternoon, Police Scotland informed community organisations across Dumfries and Galloway that, following a review of its resources, it will withdraw policing support and reduce its presence at a number of community and local events, such as the riding of the marches, galas and volunteer-run festivals. Those events, which the police have supported for years, are now in jeopardy.

Police Scotland has stated that it “continues to evolve nationally” and that its risk assessment model means that such events are no longer considered a policing priority. Does the First Minister put that down to insufficient resources nationally or repeated cuts to rural areas under a centralised model, or simply to a view that community policing no longer matters?

To ask the Scottish Government what support it is providing to local residents to take forward a replacement river crossing in Annan following storm damage in 2021, in light of the findings of the recently completed feasibility study. (S6O-03967)

I thank Gillian Mackay for bringing the debate to the Parliament. I do not represent North Lanarkshire, but I represent one of the 27 other council areas that Mark Griffin referenced. I am absolutely behind parents who are campaigning on the issue because, as the motion states, the situation across Scotland is unacceptable.

I believe that the policy and guidance on the distance limits lie at the heart of the issue. It is not a coincidence that 27 councils—with more to follow, I suspect—are coming to the same decision. That guidance was written for a different age.

We are forgetting that, at the heart of the debate are children, who do not make a choice to go to school; we make that choice for them—they have to go. They do not choose where they live, either. As MSPs and politicians, there is always a danger that we accept the myth that all parents think that it is important to get their kids to school. Yes, there are some parents in the public gallery who are campaigning passionately on the issues, but there are other parents for whom that is not their priority. Likewise, it is not their priority to think about what their kids will have for lunch at school. On some of those issues, there is a strong case for universal provision and making sure that our guidance is fit for purpose.

In my constituency, children are told that it is safe to walk down 60mph single-carriageway roads, with no pavements and often with ditches at the side. They are told that they can walk through fields in the rain—often fields that have livestock in them for half the year. They are told that they can get on public buses that do not exist or that do not run to timetable and get them to school on time. Best of all, we have had council officers—I do not blame them, because they have the hard job of defending some of the changes—saying that, because of health and safety at work regulations, they cannot walk routes with parents or young people because those routes are not safe. Something not right is happening in the background.

We have to be willing to go back to the guidance because, as several members have said, the policy should be based on safety and not distance. The proposals should also be equality impact assessed. As well as the fact that there are more cars on the road, which is clearly a problem, I suspect that many young people are giving up on school and are absent more often, perhaps because they do not have the support that we would all like them to have from their families. Those young people are disproportionately impacted by the changes.

The motion touches on the provision of buses more widely and investment in active travel. I believe that, if the guidelines were changed, there would be greater encouragement for local authorities and other interested parties to work on safe active travel. As a rural member, it often seems that such projects are seen as being too difficult, too expensive or not important enough.

I draw the minister’s and members’ attention to a project at Penpont in my constituency, which has involved millions of pounds being spent on a safe route for cycling and walking, which is allowing young people who live at the boundary of the three-mile limit to cycle and walk to school. These things can be done if the will is there, but the Government needs to make changes to encourage local authorities to think again.

On reflection, I wonder whether I have been in the Parliament for too long, because I find debates such as this one quite hard. I do not want to sour the tone of the debate, but sometimes when we discuss topics such as this, we go round in circles and go through the motions, and we pay lip service to the Promise.

I do not doubt that the minister is committed in this area. I have listened to members speak of the progress that has been made, and I have read a number of the briefings that have come in. There are things to welcome, but I look round the chamber and see that colleagues are not here for the debate. All 129 of us should be pretty ashamed of the situation that still persists when we hear some of the points made by Willie Rennie and Gillian Mackay. We are not keeping the Promise. The amount of action does not match the commitment that we have collectively made, and I worry about the chronic implementation gap that Claire Burns from the University of Strathclyde talked about.

If the minister was listening, she would have heard that I did say that there are some things that we can be pleased with. However, although I do not want to be unkind, we need to be challenged and we need to keep challenging ourselves to keep the Promise. The Promise is not like an ordinary pledge that political parties or politicians make; it is of a different character and nature. We should not be forced to do it kicking and screaming or because facts and anecdotes from around the country make us feel uncomfortable; we should be driving it forward at great pace.

The ground will probably open up and swallow me, but I have a lot of respect for Nicola Sturgeon in relation to the policy. Some of the symbolic action that she took while she was First Minister—for example, she brought 1,000 care-experienced young people into Bute house to spend quality time listening to them—sent out a very strong message. Without being too political, I note that the changes that have happened since then have meant that there is not the same priority in this area, and sometimes it feels as if the foot has come off the pedal a bit. That is not good enough.

During the past week alone, I have seen examples of issues in my constituency work. I was contacted by a foster carer who has a young person who is well settled and doing well at a school. They were told by their local authority, Dumfries and Galloway Council, that it can no longer provide transport for that young person to get to the school where they are settled, because another school that is nearer could meet their educational needs. That completely ignores all the friendships and bonds of attachment that that young person has, and the potential changes that might come for that young person in the future.

In other bodies that the Scottish Government is responsible for—I am not talking only about councils—the bureaucracy that Willie Rennie spoke about has kicked in. Cost and an easy-life culture mean that, when such problems appear, they are too difficult to address. A mindset shift is needed to deliver the Promise to the timescale that Martin Whitfield was right to speak about, which is coming down the line. It does not feel as if that mindset shift has carried forward from the Government down to the level at which things are delivered. That is why we have ended up with a delivery gap.

I do not want to go back through the points that Willie Rennie listed, but that we have councils that do not know where siblings are cannot possibly be right. There are 80 recommendations in the care review. Some of the easy ones have been implemented, and some of the ones that can be delivered most straightforwardly have happened, but the Promise cannot be kept unless all 80 recommendations are met.

We cannot say that we are on a journey or are moving towards things when, at this stage in the process, basic things such as knowing where people are and where they are based, and keeping them in touch with known siblings for whom the state is also responsible, are not happening. That is not good.

Although I will soon vote with my colleagues to support the motion, it is right that we question whether we are going to keep the Promise on the timeline that has been set out and whether the things that we have done to date are good enough. I do not think that they are. As colleagues have heard through their engagement, a lot of young people are not happy. They do not feel that we care or that we are getting it right.

As part of dyslexia awareness week, Dyslexia Scotland and the University of Glasgow yesterday published a hard-hitting research project report, “Towards a dyslexia-friendly Scotland?”, which looks at the experience of 1,400 adults with dyslexia. The report highlights a number of areas of concern, including challenges in obtaining an adult assessment outwith formal education. A total of 80 per cent of participants said that the cost of getting an assessment was preventing them from having their dyslexia identified, and three quarters said that it was negatively impacting them in the workplace. Those concerns have been raised numerous times, with little progress being made. Will the First Minister therefore agree to meet Dyslexia Scotland and a cross-party group of MSPs to discuss the findings, and will he finally agree that the Scottish Government should fund those important assessments for all adults?

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to improve access to general practitioner appointments. (S6O-03775)

I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer, but the current situation remains a disgrace. The move to the increased use of same-day-only appointments, which are rationed at 8 am, simply does not work for the elderly, the disabled or people with young children.

The latest in the long line of complaints that I have had from constituents includes one from an elderly couple in Dumfries—they will probably give me a clip round the ear for saying that the next time I see them—who tried on four occasions to get a doctor’s appointment. On day 1, there was a permanent engaged tone at appointment time, so they were unable to speak to a human voice. On day 2, it was the same again—there was a permanent engaged tone. On day 3, having spent 10 minutes getting to the front of a queue, they got a human voice, but there were no doctors available. Only on the fourth day, when they decided to complain to the practice, did they get an appointment. Does the cabinet secretary think that that is acceptable?

I thank the committee convener for that intervention. I am looking at recommendation 56 on page 10 of the committee’s report. I know the wording that was agreed; I remember being there when it was discussed. The committee indicated a strong preference for a reference to missing people to be included in the bill, although we said that we did

“not have a strong preference for how such a reference be added”.

That is one of the advantages of going through this staged process: there is still time to have another look at such considerations. Including the reference in the explanatory notes is a step forward for a group of people and families, and the organisations representing them, who often feel that they are not at the centre of policy, because of the small numbers of people affected and the complexity around that. It is probably not even the most significant issue for those families. Having something concrete would be a starting point but, on the basis of the evidence that we heard, I think that we can do a little bit better. I look forward to hearing a bit more on that area from the minister, and on some of the other points that she has offered to revisit.

I am having a slightly strange day. I sat through the previous education statement and found myself agreeing with almost everything that the cabinet secretary was saying and then—I hope that this is taken in good spirit—I came to this debate and found myself agreeing almost entirely with Maggie Chapman. I think that she is right and, to a degree, what Jeremy Balfour said at the start of the debate was right, too. The Scottish Law Commission’s bills and the work of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee show this Parliament at its best and demonstrate what good committee scrutiny is like.

When I was a member of the DPLR Committee, I found it to be an easy role because the things that that committee deals with are, by their nature, far less political than the things that are addressed by other committees. After that, I moved to the ever-so-exciting Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. Perhaps in the time that I have left here, I will go on to a different committee and take to it the knowledge that I have gained from my membership of those committees.

That would be useful because, having been on some of the more political subject committees in the past, I think that the kind of work that those committees do sometimes gets lost among the politics. It is good that we have this particular process up and running and working well, because, as other members have said, those areas of law are really important to those whom they affect, and they are also areas that have been neglected for a long time.

That leads me to the one area where the minister could go further: that of missing people, which has already been referenced by other speakers. I understand the point that she makes about section 3 and whether that is the right place to include a reference to missing people, and I am open to hearing more on that.

However, although I know that the minister was, like members of the committee, very convinced by the evidence that we heard, there is a danger of not including a requirement to produce the guidance. We do not know how that area of law will evolve in the future, and there are lots of other mechanisms in the bill that would allow for changes to be made. Is there space somewhere else to include a requirement to produce that missing person guidance and to review it periodically to make sure that it continues to be effective? That might be an alternative course of action.