Education and Skills Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Official Report 461KB pdf

Review of Responses

The final item of business is consideration of responses to the committee’s report on school infrastructure, which was published in October 2017. The responses to our report are included in paper 3.

Before I ask for any comments from colleagues, I would like to say that our inquiry built on the work of Professor Cole and his inquiry into the school closures in Edinburgh. I believe that our work added value including by raising the profile of Professor Cole’s important findings. It is vital that education authorities undertook work to reassure us that the school estate is safe and ensure that new schools are built to an appropriate standard.

We have received responses from a number of organisations, including the Scottish Government.

I have one suggested follow-up action. Members may have seen in their press cuttings over the weekend that a number of schools in Fife lack adequate sprinkler systems. One of the themes in the Cole report was inadequate fire-stopping. It might be worth while writing to the Scottish Government and asking for its response to the media reports. In addition, members will be aware that the committee agreed to revisit all of its report recommendations annually, so work on the issue will be monitored on an on-going basis.

Apart from keeping a watching brief in that way, do members have any specific comments or suggestions for further action?

We should copy that letter to the Scottish Government to David Stewart, who has proposed a member’s bill on the question of sprinklers.

That is a sensible suggestion.

I would like to raise a point now because I am not quite sure where else it fits in. It is to do with the process of dealing with witnesses. I think that we had very good witnesses in this regard.

I am sure that people share my concern about the freedom of information request that was published on 10 January, which shows that the Scottish Government has been actively seeking meetings with witnesses on the named person legislation, often in the week before the witnesses are due to come in to give evidence. There is a whole series of emails to a whole range of organisations that were due to give evidence to this committee, seeking meetings in the week before their attendance at the committee explicitly to discuss their evidence to the committee, which I think is quite different from the Scottish Government routinely looking to meet stakeholders.

Would it be worth writing to John Swinney, asking him to respond to the suggestion that arises from the information that the FOI request has obtained, which is that the Scottish Government has actively tried to engage with those giving evidence ahead of their evidence to this committee, in the gap between their written evidence being received and their giving oral evidence? I know that Oliver Mundell has pursued this issue before. I think that it is very serious, but I am prepared to ask John Swinney for an initial response to what is being done in his name.

We are just about to discuss our work programme. If we think that that is an item to be discussed, we could do so in the work programme in the private session. However, you have got your point out there.

That brings us to the end of the public part of the meeting.