Meeting of the Parliament 20 November 2019
Today is the 30th anniversary of the UN General Assembly’s adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in the world. Across the world, events are taking place to celebrate the progress that has been made in furthering the rights of children and young people. I am pleased that this Government stands among those nations that are pledging to go further, and I believe that that commitment is shared across this chamber.
The convention was a landmark treaty, recognising the importance of childhood and the unique needs of children across the globe. It sets out the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights that all children, everywhere, are entitled to and it remains, to this day, truly world leading. It is unique in setting out how adults and Governments must work together to make sure that all children can enjoy all their rights. For many children across the globe, realisation of even their most basic rights is still blighted by war, famine or political instability. That that is so in the 21st century is truly shameful.
Our starting point is that of the United Nations itself, as set out in the preamble to the convention:
“the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
From that starting point flows a commitment that we must each shoulder to promote, secure and respect children’s rights in Scotland and across the world. The Government is committed to doing all that we can to meet the UN’s gold standard on children’s rights.
I can, therefore, reaffirm today that, with Parliament’s agreement, we will incorporate the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law by the end of this parliamentary session. That commitment builds on a proud tradition of respecting children’s rights in Scotland that predates even the creation of the UNCRC in 1989, such as our pioneering and unique children’s hearings system, which became operational in 1971.
As a Government, we have made respect for children’s rights a priority. We have set out in statute our ambition to eradicate child poverty in Scotland and published our first child poverty delivery plan and first-year progress report; through the attainment Scotland fund, we are investing £750 million during this parliamentary session to tackle the poverty related attainment gap; we are almost doubling the funded early learning and childcare provision from 600 to 1,140 hours per year from August 2020, meaning that children and parents will benefit from 30 hours a week of high quality early learning; and we are the first national Government in the world to introduce access to free period products for up to 395,000 students attending schools, colleges and universities in Scotland.
Those are transformational changes that this Government is delivering for children and young people and their families today, and we continue to do more. This year will also see progress towards the implementation of changes to the age of criminal responsibility, raising that from eight to 12 years, and the Children (Equal Protection from Assault) (Scotland) Act 2019 will remove the defence of reasonable chastisement, making it an offence for anyone to smack a child in Scotland.
In Government, we have sought to put our ideals and values into practice. The Government will always speak up without fear or favour for democracy, human rights and the rule of law. We have placed human rights and the sustainable development goals at the centre of the Government’s purpose and our refreshed national performance framework. Indeed, our national outcome for children and young people to
“grow up loved, safe and respected so that we realise our full potential”
is aligned with the preamble to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
We have established a national task force for human rights leadership, which, coincidentally, is holding its second plenary meeting today. Our vision is for a new statutory human rights framework for Scotland that ensures that the rights of every member of Scottish society are respected, protected and fulfilled and that we can all live with fundamental human dignity.
Incorporation of the convention, and ensuring that children’s rights are fully embedded in domestic law, is a first step in achieving that larger ambition. Doing so is a necessary process, and practical action is overdue. Although we live in a country that ratified the convention in 1991, international treaties such as this are not automatically part of the law in Scotland. The rights that are set out in the convention would become part of the law that is enforceable in the Scottish courts only if they were implemented by legislation.
Over the summer, we held a consultation to ask what the people of Scotland thought was the best way to incorporate the convention into domestic law. In the consultation, we set out two approaches to incorporation. We said that we planned to either directly incorporate those rights as closely as is achievable in the Scottish context or transpose them by enacting a suite of Scottish children’s rights. Today, I have published the analysis of the consultation responses. I am delighted that more than 160 individuals and organisations responded to the consultation, including through seven events that were attended by more than 180 children and young people.
To complement the public consultation, we convened a short-life working group that was made up of stakeholders from public authorities, the third sector, the Scottish Youth Parliament, academia and the legal profession. Its work has assisted policy considerations to date and will continue to do so. I look forward to receiving its report in due course.
It is clear from the consultation that there is wide recognition that incorporating the convention will significantly advance the protection and realisation of children’s rights in Scotland. Let me be clear: our children deserve no less. Through the responses to the consultation, it is evident that there is wide support for directly and fully incorporating all the rights that are set out in the convention. Children here in Scotland have said that they want the same rights that children have all around the world.
Although there was some limited support for the approach of having a suite of Scottish rights, we have heard that such an approach would carry a risk of diluting or changing rights, even if that were unintended. We will, therefore, not take that path.
The bill that I will introduce next year will instead take a maximalist approach. In every case possible, we will seek to incorporate the convention’s articles in full and directly, using the language of the convention. Our only limitation will be the limit of the powers of this Parliament, to which many of us obviously object. As a result, sadly, some parts of the convention—for example the provision on military recruitment—are reserved issues and cannot be incorporated by this Parliament.
The Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland and Together—the Scottish Alliance for Children’s Rights—have proposed a model that would see the whole convention included in the bill, subject to a restriction that the bill operates only within our devolved powers. Although we support the ambition, it is clear to the Government that that approach would not reflect the inability of the Scottish Parliament to make provision in relation to reserved matters. Nevertheless, my expectation is that a vast majority of the convention’s provisions can be incorporated by this Parliament. That will ensure that the rights that are contained in the convention are afforded the highest protection and respect possible within our constitutional settlement.
For those areas that are currently beyond our powers, I offer two points. First, I hope that the example of Scotland incorporating the convention will spur the United Kingdom and other states to follow suit. Secondly, in the expectation that we are on a clear journey to independence, the bill will make provision to allow incorporation of the articles of the convention that are currently beyond our powers into Scotland’s domestic law if and when the powers of the Scottish Parliament change in the future. That approach will, for the first time, mean that the convention will be directly built into Scots law. That represents a huge step forward for the protection of child rights in Scotland. Every devolved body, health board and council, as well as the Scottish Government itself, will be legally obliged to respect children’s rights; if they do not, children and young people will be able to use the courts to enforce their rights.
The bill will aim to ensure that there is a proactive culture of everyday accountability for children’s rights across public services in Scotland. In turn, that will mean that children, young people and their families will experience public bodies consistently acting to uphold the rights of all children in Scotland.
That is not all that we are doing. Today, I am also publishing an annual update on the progress that the Scottish Government has made in taking forward our “Progressing the Human Rights of Children in Scotland: An Action Plan 2018-2021”, which was published in December 2018. The plan sets out our aims for taking forward children’s rights until 2021.
We know that, in addition to making children’s rights enforceable through the forthcoming bill, we need to do more to support children’s participation in policy making and in the decisions that affect them. We need to raise awareness and understanding of children’s rights, including in relation to how authorities can make children’s rights real in practice. That is why we are developing a strategic approach to participation and progressing, through co-production, a three-year programme to raise awareness of children’s rights across all sectors of Scottish society, including among children and young people themselves.
Children and young people are our future. They are Scotland’s future and the future of the world. On the 30th anniversary of the convention, we can all be proud of the progress that Scotland has made in furthering child rights. The Government will continue to do everything within its powers to promote, secure and respect those rights, now and for the future.