Meeting of the Parliament 17 September 2024 [Draft]
No, I do not accept that. The bill does represent a step in the right direction, but not if we simply homogenise everything under one indivisible term. Both the committee and the witnesses made that point. I say to John Mason that we cannot simply deem everything to be Scots and thereby make dialects such as Doric unrecognisable.
To clarify my point, I highlight that when teachers and authorities are performing their new duties under section 31 of the bill, which are to
“promote, facilitate and support Scots language education”,
they might very well ask which Scots they are to promote. Is it Lallans, Doric or Orcadian? James Wylie of Orkney Islands Council told the committee that Orcadian and Shetlandic are not Scots dialects but separate languages. However, that will not be recognised if they are all to be grouped under the term “Scots”.
Such ambiguity is replicated by the conveying of official status on Gaelic and Scots by sections 1 and 26 respectively. Nowhere is it defined what “official status” actually means. Members might feel that such a lack of clarity is not so important, but the committee found itself very concerned as to what obligations the strategies, standards and guidance that will be developed pursuant to the bill will place on public bodies. That is not clear, and neither are the associated costs.
The financial memorandum sets out additional costs that will arise from the bill—that is, the whole bill, as it applies to both Gaelic and Scots—at £700,000 over five years. It is apparent, though, that that figure represents an estimate of the cost to develop the strategies and the like—in other words, additional costs for existing people. It is not the cost of delivering those strategies or the extra duties that are imposed when an area of linguistic significance is designated.
In Ireland, additional resources are put in place to ensure better support for the use of Irish in Gaeltacht areas. In contrast, the bill does not anticipate any additional spend for designating such an area here, which is bizarre. The committee found that some of the activities that would take place in an ALS are already there; that it is not clear that legislation is required; and that stakeholders are unclear as to what an ALS practically means, what it will look like or the duties that are imposed. Therefore if it is accepted—as I think the cabinet secretary did in her opening remarks—that, once a local authority has designated an ALS, that will create additional duties, then, without commensurate additional funding for tools, mechanisms or employees, our cash-strapped local councils might be reluctant so to designate.
The committee has asked the Scottish Government to revisit the costs set out in the financial memorandum and to provide, prior to stage 2, further detail on the full financial costs associated with the bill’s provisions. I find that approach, and the idea that new and significant duties might be brought in at stage 2, a pretty unsatisfactory way of making law, but we are where we are, and it is to be hoped that the Government will comply.
I will conclude where I started. The bill’s principles are so general that people really cannot argue with them, but they are arguing that the bill is symbolic and will not ultimately achieve its laudable aims even if it does not do much damage, either.
I believe that it is preferable for the Parliament to legislate for outcomes, rather than optics—and that leads me to my final thought. A significant number of people have asked me whether—given that the attainment gap is widening, free meals for primary school kids have gone the way of laptops and push-bikes, violence is endemic in our schools, teacher numbers are plummeting and child poverty remains where it was in 2007—part 2 of the Scottish Languages Bill, in particular, represents the best use of the limited, perhaps very limited, time left in this session. I wonder if, in closing, the Deputy First Minister might give them an answer.
14:50