Meeting of the Parliament 14 January 2026
As convener of the Education, Children and Young People Committee, I am pleased to speak about the committee’s scrutiny of the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill at stage 1. I place on record my thanks, and the committee’s thanks, to everyone who contributed their views and shared their experiences with us. In particular, I make special mention of the care-experienced children, young people and adults from Who Cares? Scotland who took the time to meet the committee in October last year. My thanks also go to colleagues on the Finance and Public Administration Committee and the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee for their consideration of the bill.
As we have heard, the bill introduces a wide range of changes that relate to aftercare, advocacy, corporate parenting, profit in residential care, foster care, children’s services planning and the children’s hearings system. Given the limited time, I will not be able to look at all those areas in detail, but I am sure that many of them will be covered in the debate.
I begin with an issue that came up repeatedly in our evidence sessions. I challenged the minister on this point when we scrutinised the bill at stage 1, I challenged the minister and the cabinet secretary last week and I tried to intervene on the minister earlier. I feel that we are in “Groundhog Day”, because we are no further forward. We need to address the issue of compatibility with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The committee heard concerns from stakeholders that the provisions in the bill on aftercare and the register of foster carers fall outside the scope of the UNCRC duty. That is because the bill amends the Children (Scotland) Act 1995, which predates devolution and is therefore not covered by the compatibility duty under the 2024 act.
Stakeholders including the Law Society of Scotland, the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland and The Promise Scotland have all raised concerns that the current drafting of the bill means that children and young people do not have justiciable rights under those provisions. That runs completely contrary to the commitment that the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills gave in November 2023 to ensure that future legislation would fall within the scope of what became the 2024 act. Given that legislation is still coming forward that is incompatible, where is that commitment and that promise?