Chamber and committees

I want to press the amendment, but not move it, if that makes sense.

Like the amendments in the previous group, many of these amendments—in this case, all but one—were presented at stage 2. We then had a lengthy debate and discussion, and the Government went to great lengths to explain why we did not need a catch-up plan for young people, why it was not necessary to ensure that historical data would not be reused when determining future exam grades, and that we did not need to worry about the financial impact of some of the decision-making powers that were being used, because any future Government would, of course, go out of its way to ensure that students were well supported.

I do not believe that we can take anyone at their word on those things, partly because of the John Mason principle and partly because we have lived through a recent pandemic in which students and those who were sitting exams were treated exceptionally poorly. At times, the way that some of the decisions were handled bordered on heartlessness.

Without being unkind, I think that the Deputy First Minister’s biggest mistake during the pandemic was to allow the chaos around the first set of examinations. Young people have gone on, whether to further study or into the world of work, feeling scarred and let down by that process.

As one of the closing speakers in a long and wide-ranging debate—not just today but through the various stages of the bill—there is a huge amount that I could say, but, at this point, very little that would be new.

As colleagues have set out already, we fundamentally disagree with the Government’s approach to the bill. The final bill is an improvement, but it still falls far short of something that we could support in full. We have heard throughout the debate that there are many unresolved flashpoints across the Parliament.

The bill could have been split up. We could have opted for draft legislation that would have sat ready on the shelf. That would have allowed for amendments, tweaks and changes in thinking and approach; it would also have allowed for the learning from the Covid-19 inquiry to be taken into consideration. I cannot help but feel that we are making the very same mistake again. Just as we planned for a flu pandemic, we are now planning and putting powers into the statute book based on the Covid pandemic.

There is something in the Government’s approach that we have seen throughout the pandemic. At the start, it was keen to work consensually, and we were told that powers would be used only if they had to be and only for as long as was absolutely necessary. Slowly, over time, there has been a breakdown in that approach, and the appearance of exactly the type of centralising “Government knows best” approach that Jackie Baillie and Beatrice Wishart talked about, and that we see all the time in the Parliament.

On something so fundamental, however, through which not just the Parliament but the people of Scotland are being asked to hand a huge amount of power to the executive—to Government ministers—there is a duty to try to build consensus, take people along, and find as many areas of agreement as possible. The approach that has been taken by the Government has not allowed for that to happen.

I still think that such a collaborative approach is best. During the pandemic, the things that worked best were those in which we could find that agreement. I am concerned that, over time, as our collective memory of the pandemic fades—as I hope that it will—there will be a temptation to use some of those powers in an arbitrary way, because that is the easy thing for the Government to do. The hard work for Government is working with partners and building consensus.

Today, we have heard much about democratic consent. I do not want to get drawn into that different debate. However, it is important that the Government’s use of sweeping emergency powers must be on the basis of broad public support or extreme threat.

At decision time tonight, we will be in the position of handing a wide range of powers to the Government for an unlimited period. In no sense does that carry broad public support. We have heard from multiple speakers about the very stark feedback that the committee got during the consultation stage, and no evidence has been marshalled about the extremity of that threat. There are other worrying signs, and we have heard the Deputy First Minister talk to those at several points, but at no point have we heard an explanation of why it is possible for the Parliament to pass an enabling vote but not to pass legislation in draft form, or why we should be willing to lower the bar for allowing those powers to be used. A gateway vote is an improvement, but it is not the same thing as passing primary legislation. It is a different test.

My worry, particularly given the many things that we see happen and how this Government operates—and how all Governments operate, for that matter—is that a Government that has a majority in the Parliament might be willing to hand such a blank cheque to ministers and allow them to grab hold of powers that would be best exercised by the Parliament. I cannot vote for that in good faith.

Why does the Deputy First Minister believe that the Government knows better than those people on the front line who teach and look after our young people and who have to make difficult practical decisions?

That debate ended up being a bit more heated than I expected. Maybe some of the poking and prodding touched a raw nerve.

I do not need to come to the chamber and run down Scottish education; the cabinet secretary has been doing that, along with his colleagues, for 15 years. When they get started on that, they try to suggest that Opposition parties are criticising teachers and young people.

I want to be very clear: I am criticising the Scottish National Party Government, its poor policy approach, the damage that that has done to young people, and the very difficult job that it makes for teachers trying to deliver good-quality education in every part of the country. The amendments in my name are important because the SNP Government cannot be fully trusted to deliver on those things in a future pandemic—it looks at the actions that it took during the Covid pandemic and pats itself on the back. That does not match up with the experience of young people and their families, who found that the support offered was often just not good enough.

That is true, although there are some lessons that we definitely learned. There is the fact that we were so slow, in so many parts of the country, to get the appropriate electronic devices. The amendments change that—expanding the appropriate electronic devices to laptops, which addresses one of the Government’s concerns.

Most young people and families whom I speak to would be happy with any device, frankly. A laptop would be an improvement on nothing. In other parts of the country, it has been possible to get devices out very quickly. My amendments put into the bill a challenge to ministers to get on with it and make available the resources to deliver those laptops before they consider shutting schools in the future.

Amendment 38 makes a similar point about consulting local authorities, rather than ministers just taking decisions all by themselves. There is also amendment 49, which it should not be hard for the Government to support, as it encourages a greater role for the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland in ensuring that the wider rights of children are explored when the powers are used.

There are also balancing provisions that ask Government ministers and key decision makers to look beyond the narrow health focus. One of the mistakes that we made is that, certainly in the early stages of the pandemic, we focused narrowly on one aspect of health and did not fully understand—or, in the Government’s case, recognise even when told—the considerable strain that was being put on our children or the long-term consequences of that. We must be more balanced in future.

I am interested to hear what the Government has to say on the amendments and whether it feels able to support any of them.

I move amendment 30.

The majority of the amendments in this group were debated during stage 2. I have brought back my amendments not to debate them again in full or to reheat the arguments that were had at committee, but to give the Government an opportunity to change its mind. There have been only two areas in which I have been able to work with the Government to bring back amendments that we agree on. It is welcome that I have been able to do that, but the amendments are very small, given the scale of the challenges that arose in education during the pandemic, and they provide quite modest protection for our young people in the future.

There are three key things behind the amendments in my name in this group. First, the bar should be very high when it comes to closing schools. Denying our children the right to in-person education is not something that should be done lightly. We therefore have to balance the power that ministers want to take on by putting in place additional protections. The same is true in other areas of our education system beyond schools. It is right that, with that power come criteria that have to be met, and it is important that some of those are put in the bill.

Secondly, during the committee debates, we heard a lot about what I termed the John Mason principle, which is that the people who are in government now might not be in government in the future. That cuts both ways, of course. There is a chance that we could have something better, but there is a fear among those of us on these benches that it could be the same people making the same mistakes.

That takes me to the third point behind many of my amendments: they address some of the lessons that we learned during the pandemic. They seek to push the Government a bit harder to get on with meeting some of the promises that it made to young people. That particularly applies to amendment 41—which, I have to admit, is a redrafted version of a stage 2 amendment by Stephen Kerr. It makes an important change.

How does the cabinet secretary possibly think that he will build consensus on the measures or secure widespread public support when he makes such political remarks about something that is so important? It is bizarre.

The member is absolutely right. As we have seen, the response, the resource and the general commitment from the Government towards education do not match the scale of the challenges that are faced by our young people. This is obviously not something for this debate, but the past 15 years have not been Scotland’s greatest in terms of education. In the past period, the Scottish National Party Scottish Government has been found wanting. At times, it has treated teachers and young people themselves with disdain, dismissing their concerns and saying that existing resources are enough. It has told us how fantastic it is that it has brought in new teachers, but, every time it restates that, it fails to mention that they are just replacing the teachers that it cut—the teachers who were missing during the pandemic, which put our schools under such pressure.

It is important that the bill speaks to those challenges. The very least that our young people deserve is a commitment in the bill, which will be enshrined in law, that they will not be treated badly or disadvantaged by the use of the powers.

I am not expecting an awful lot here. There is one amendment in the group on which I have been able to work with the Government. Amendment 12 proposes a very modest reporting mechanism whereby we will at least know in 12 months’ time how the Government is getting on with delivering electronic devices. I am hopeful that it will be well ahead of target on that. There are many parts of the country where local authorities and others have managed to get devices out to young people, but the fact that we are now two years on from the start of the pandemic and there are young people who still cannot properly access remote learning is a disgrace.

I move amendment 44.

Did Westminster have the final say on 18 September 2014?