Chamber and committees

On the basis of those comments from the cabinet secretary, I am happy to withdraw amendment 38 and to not move the other amendments in the group. We will look to reach some form of agreement ahead of stage 3.

Amendment 38, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendments 39 to 41 not moved.

Amendment 42 moved—[Ross Greer]—and agreed to.

Amendments 43 to 46 not moved.

Section 8, as amended, agreed to.

On the face of it, amendment 55 sounds positive to me. More research and more data collection are, of course, valuable. My question is about the necessity for the amendment. Is there currently a barrier to ministers’ being able to commission such research and collect such data, or is amendment 55 simply a clarifying amendment, in that nothing currently says that you cannot do that, but the amendment makes it absolutely clear that you can?

It always feels awkward to come in before the member who has lodged amendments. The Deputy First Minister says that she agrees with the principle of amendments 4 and 5. I welcome them because there might be a situation in which a local authority has done all the community engagement right and has community buy-in, but the Government then decides to modify the scheme, which puts that community buy-in at risk. Does the Government agree that, in principle, if the scheme is modified by Government, there should be direct community engagement before the decision is made?

Amendment 66 would place a duty on ministers to conduct a review of the status of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig in order to consider in particular whether it should be designated as a higher education institution and have the power to award degrees. Ministers would be required to publish a report on the review and to lay that before Parliament. The most important element of amendment 66 is that the review is required to take place within a year from the proposed new section coming into force. That acknowledges the wider discussions that we have been having about the urgency of the situation.

There is a consensus across the Parliament on the importance of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig as an institution operating through the medium of Gaelic. It is the national centre for Gaelic language, education and culture, and it plays a significant role for Gaelic nationally and internationally. It is right and proper that, as part of our consideration of the bill, we should be reviewing its status. It is my position and the position of my party that Sabhal Mòr Ostaig should have degree-awarding power.

I do not want to bounce the college into that before it is ready—to put it bluntly—and a review process would allow us to consider all the issues and potential barriers to it having that power and that status, which would ensure that it has time to put together an adequate business case and that it receives the support that it requires. That should be the aspiration, in any case.

That is the motivation behind amendment 66. I recognise that Willie Rennie is very much coming at the issue from a similar position, but I will let him speak to his own amendment.

I move amendment 66.

I appreciate not just the cabinet secretary’s remarks on amendment 77 but the constructive way in which we have engaged on amendments to this point. She is right to point out that the amendment does not relate to the Gaelic language strategy, because responsibility for that is moving to ministers. It is about the corporate plan of an NDPB. In that sense, the rationale behind the amendment has nothing to do with the Gaelic language—it is about my and my party’s view about the transparency of public bodies in Scotland.

The cabinet secretary is right to point out the iterative process that exists for the production of corporate plans by NDPBs. As I pointed out in my opening remarks, the provision in amendment 77 would come into place only at the end of that process. The iterative process is about drafting a corporate plan. It is an important point of transparency and public confidence that, if that process has taken place as normal but, at the end of it, an NDPB has produced a corporate plan that ministers believe is so deficient that they reject it, ministers should have to give a rationale for that.

I am being somewhat opportunistic in proposing such a provision in the bill, because the bill relates to a particular NDPB but, as a point of transparency in the public sector, I will press amendment 77.

Good morning, all.

Amendments 76 and 96 are about the definition of “official status” in the bill. The giving of “official status” to Gaelic and Scots is a significant part of the bill and one of the key motivators behind it, but the Law Society of Scotland posed the question of what “official status” means. At the moment, we do not have a definition of “official status”. Amendments 76 and 96 are the Law Society’s proposals for how we should define that term. They define it as meaning that those languages—Gaelic in the case of amendment 76, and Scots in the case of amendment 96—command equal respect to that of English.

Amendments 16, 35 and 50 in the group further thread the principle of equal respect through the bill in relation to Gaelic. The term “equal respect” is already used in part 1 of the bill. Section 2(2)(c) usefully sets out the principle of equal respect, which I think should be seen as the touchstone for Gaelic policy across the board. Section 2(2)(c) relates to the responsibilities of Bòrd na Gàidhlig in supporting other public authorities. It says:

“the Bòrd must seek to give effect, so far as is both appropriate in the circumstances and reasonably practicable, to the principle that the Gaelic and English languages should be accorded equal respect.”

I am simply taking language that is already used in section 2 of the bill and putting it elsewhere. Amendment 16 seeks to insert reference to the principle of equal respect in the section on preparation of the Gaelic language strategy. Amendment 35 seeks to do that in relation to the production of guidance by ministers, and amendment 50 seeks to do the same in relation to the preparation of Gaelic language plans. The amendments in this group simply take language that is already used in one section of the bill and thread it throughout the bill. I think that the principle of equal respect should underlie everything else that we do in relation to the bill.

I move amendment 76.

I think that Michael Marra and I have approached this part of the bill from the same place, which is our concern for the reality that Gaelic is on the edge, as a living language. My amendment 14 recognises the fact that, in the bill, ministers need to set out arrangements for monitoring progress towards objectives. My amendment adds that ministers need to define

“how such progress will be measured”.

That reflects the evidence that we took at stage 1 and the committee’s stage 1 report, in recognition that there is broad agreement about what we are trying to achieve and that it will probably not be difficult to get agreement on the high-level objectives for the strategy.

However, there is a gulf between the high-level objectives and the current reality. We need to be very clear, not just about what we are trying to do, but about whether or not it is working. We need to set out a very clear action plan, but we also need to know regularly whether we are making progress towards achieving it. There is a question about what we are measuring and what specifically we are trying to achieve in measurable terms. I have lodged amendment 14 to reflect the evidence that we took at stage 1. As I said, it comes from a very similar place to amendments 8, 13, 15, 37 and 41, which are in Michael Marra’s name.

I appreciate the cabinet secretary’s comments and I understand the Government’s position. At this stage, I am happy not to press amendment 76 and not to move amendment 96, but I would welcome further engagement with the cabinet secretary, if she is agreeable to that, ahead of stage 3 because I am conscious that, particularly with regard to Scots, the principle of equal respect is not particularly present throughout the bill. My amendments 16, 35 and 50 relate primarily to Gaelic, so, if we all agree on the principle of equal respect, there is perhaps more work that we can do ahead of stage 3 to ensure that that principle is also represented in the bill for Scots.

Amendment 76, by agreement, withdrawn.

Section 1 agreed to.

Section 2—Functions of Bòrd na Gàidhlig

On the basis of the cabinet secretary’s remarks, I am happy not to press amendment 61. I understand the legal point about Education Scotland’s status as an executive agency, which means that responsibility rests with ministers, but there is a governance point that the committee has encountered on lots of occasions in relation to Education Scotland, in that duties on ministers simply have not cascaded down effectively.

I understand the legal issue around drafting, so I am happy not to press amendment 61 and for us to work on the matter ahead of stage 3. We will need to take into account that duties that are placed on ministers are, quite frankly, often not fulfilled by the executive agencies that are accountable to ministers, so perhaps we need to tighten that up in this specific regard. Of course, there is a wider governance issue that is not for this committee to consider right now.

Amendments 38 to 40 and 44 to 46 require annual reporting with appropriate flexibility. For example, amendments 38 and 44 use the phrase

“as soon as reasonably practicable after each financial year”.

That is to reflect the urgency of the situation that we have already discussed. In the last set of census figures, beneath the Duolingo figure that boosted overall Gaelic language skills, the decline in Gaelic as a living, spoken or community language was obvious.

My intention with the amendments in the group is not to be overly prescriptive—they are not amendments about everything that should be included in the contents of the reports—but to clarify that there is a need for regular reporting for accountability and for us to be confident that progress is being made.

They are simple enough amendments. We have previously debated striking a balance between not placing too onerous a duty on bodies and the need for us to be regularly appraised of the situation. My hope is that we will be able to find agreement on that.