Hansard

The words good and Tory are not ones that I would naturally put together, but let us move on.

Sir Walter Scott stated:

"Children know—instinctive taught, the friend or foe".

What our bill will do is to create a friend—a powerful friend—for all of Scotland's children and young people.

The bill provides us with a once-in-a-generation opportunity: it gives us the chance to make a real difference by creating an independent, high-profile and influential post. The Commissioner for Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill will, I believe, prove the most significant legacy that we, the members of the first Scottish Parliament in 300 years, can leave our children and our children's children.

Children form one fifth of our population; they are the future on which Scotland will be built. Henry James said:

"To believe in a child is to believe in the future".

We will establish a commissioner who believes in children. In return, the commissioner will, I hope, come to justify the trust and respect that are placed in them. Our bill will put in place a commissioner armed not only with statutory powers, but with what my colleague Ian Jenkins called a "moral authority".

The very ethos of our bill is that the commissioner will be answerable to children and young people. The post of children's commissioner will be significant: it will give children and young people a voice and a power that have previously been denied to them. It is intended that the commissioner will make a difference to them and to them alone.

At stage 2, I recall that one member of the ad hoc committee queried the title of the bill and asked whether something more child-friendly might not be preferable. Drafting convention does not allow us to call the commissioner post a "children's friend", but I assure the chamber that our bill will not create a mere ombudsman or faceless functionary. If that were the case, I for one would not have supported the bill that is before us today. I believe that we are putting in place an advocate, a campaigner, a champion—even a tsar. We are putting in place someone who will take the views of children and young people seriously and will put them at the top of his or her agenda.

To reiterate our position, I want to address briefly two other issues that were raised at stage 2. The first comes under the heading of co-operation. The job of the commissioner will be to promote rights—encouraging change rather than imposing it. In other words, we are talking about mainstreaming. To do that job well, the commissioner will need to develop working relationships with others to avoid duplication, minimise overlap and enable their post to perform effectively.

The second issue concerns investigations, which were the subject that generated most external comment on our bill. Given the onus on mainstreaming, we expect investigations to be a small but important part of the commissioner's work. The commissioner will not be able to investigate matters that are covered by the functions of other organisations; that is explicit in the bill. In doing so, the commissioner could allow other organisations to renege on their responsibility to take the views of children and young people seriously. However, there is nothing to prevent the commissioner from providing an input into an investigation by another body. That point brings me back to the importance of co-operation in the development of the children's commissioner post.

I want to convey some much-deserved thanks. First and foremost, I thank all the children and young people who contributed to our inquiry, some of whom are in the public gallery today. They deserve our particular thanks for the perspective and consideration that they brought to the bill. I hope that those children and young people will be happy with the work that the Parliament has done for them.

I also thank the agencies who gave evidence to the Education, Culture and Sport Committee under the Scotland for Children banner and others who have campaigned on the issue for more than a decade. Some of them are present in the public gallery today and their input and support were crucial.

Strangely, I thank members of the Scottish media who have raised awareness of the issue in many different quarters over the past number of years. Members of the Scottish media took the issue seriously and analysed it in some detail. They may not always have agreed with everything that was proposed, but they gave us the opportunity to have the debate in public. I thank them for that.

I also thank all members of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee, past and present, who made my life as convener a lot easier. I pay particular thanks to Jackie Baillie and Irene McGugan, who did such a great job as reporters to refine our policy and prepare the detailed amendments. I thank our wonderful clerks, past and present, who kept us right throughout the inquiry. I assure members that that was not an easy job.

I never thought that I would find myself thanking Kay Ullrich, but I do so for her capable stewardship of the ad hoc committee at stage 2. I also thank all members of the Commissioner for Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill Committee for their time and detailed scrutiny of the issues.

I thank the Minister for Education and Young People, whose support and enthusiasm we have very much appreciated, and I thank the Deputy Minister for Education and Young People for the work that he has done. I also thank the former minister, Sam Galbraith, whose input originally led us to consider our inquiry. I thank Alison Cleland, the adviser who saw us though most of the inquiry and our first report. Alison had a clear grasp of the subject and helped the committee to develop the arguments that we are making today. I thank our draftsman, whose excellent work produced such a clear and concise bill. Last, but not least, I thank the non-Executive bills unit, whose tremendous work rate and commitment to seeing the bill through enabled us to get to this point although many either hoped or believed that we would not make it. Our thanks go to all those without whom we would not have made it to this point.

Let me provide a brief reminder of how we arrived here. The Education, Culture and Sport Committee began its inquiry into the need for a children's commissioner in the spring of 2001. It reported in early 2002, produced a further report in the summer of 2002 and introduced the bill at the end of 2002. Should we agree to pass the bill this afternoon—and I guess that we will—a commissioner could be in place early in 2004.

The committee has always striven to make the process as accessible as possible. A press release at stage 1 from Scotland for Children said that the committee should be congratulated on its approach. It said:

"All of those involved have been impressed with the level of transparency, openness and consultation that has accompanied the progress of this Bill ... the Committee has clearly listened to the wide range of evidence presented by children and young people themselves, along with a wide range of agencies".

I have also been told that the manner in which we produced the bill is exactly what was hoped for from the new Parliament—and that comes from those in the voluntary sector, who have such high expectations of us. I think that we can take some pride in that.

I underline the fact that this is a committee bill and emphasise the benefits of the Parliament's ability to initiate legislation. It gives the committees the power, and the responsibility, not only to identify problems, but to come up with solutions and, rather than just talk about them, put them into practice. It gives those who are not members of the Scottish Executive the power to make positive changes, and it encourages members of committees to work constructively together, as it is only in that way that a committee can hope to produce its own legislation.

The Education, Culture and Sport Committee's approach to the bill has been one of consensus and co-operation. It takes more than rhetoric to develop policy and produce something useful and workable. I believe that we have done just that, and that we have shown that the new politics can work if we let it—something that will perhaps be forgotten in the coming month.

I will do a bit more name dropping, although I would not try to outdo Mike Russell's column in The Herald. Oscar Wilde said:

"I am not young enough to know everything."

How true. He also wrote:

"Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out".

We would be foolish not to accept the fact that children and young people have a superior knowledge of their world. Life has changed a lot since even I was a teenager, 16 years ago, and we must acknowledge and try to understand that change. Children and young people need to know that their knowledge is valued and that their opinions are worthwhile. We want a commissioner who will listen to their views, so that something can be done about their views instead of their being sprayed on a wall. In return, we should be able to expect children and young people to take their responsibility in the process seriously and to engage with the new post.

So, what does the bill do? I do not intend to dwell on the detail; we have been going over it for a long time. In short, the bill establishes a commissioner who will be independent; publicly funded; remitted to promote the rights of children and young people; obliged to encourage the involvement of children and young people in his or her work; and under a duty to report to the Parliament with any recommendations. To whom will the work of the commissioner be most relevant? Naturally, it will relate to schoolchildren, teenagers, young people in care, toddlers, everyone up to the age of 18 and those up to the age of 21 who have been looked after by a local authority. Of course, the bill will be of interest to parents, teachers, child care workers, social workers, community education workers, health professionals and anyone who works or deals with children. Undoubtedly, the bill will also concern us, as politicians, and our officials, service providers and the media—in other words, all of us who make and shape policy.

Children are not only our future, they are our present, and we must start to take their views seriously. We must give them every opportunity to speak and we must listen carefully to what they have to say. We must encourage them to participate in the decision-making processes that affect their lives. The principles of consultation, participation and accessibility underpin the bill.

Of course, we can always learn from the experience of others. We took evidence from children's commissioners throughout Europe, including Wales, and we have kept an eye on developments in Ireland. Recently, I met Trond Vaage, the Norwegian ombudsman for children. He highlighted several approaches that our commissioner might follow: flexibility, creativity, innovation, agenda setting and having children rather than professionals in the driving seat. He also emphasised the fact that there should be no hidden agenda if the commissioner is to have credibility, which is crucial for earning children's trust.

As I have said in previous debates, I was originally in the sceptics' camp on the need for a children's commissioner. I did not believe that we should create another talking shop. The evidence that I heard during the committee's inquiry changed that view. Becoming a mother perhaps also played its part. I want us all to consider the bigger picture and to take a cultural perspective because, as a society, we have a rather contradictory view of children and young people. We regard them either as angels or as devils, who are to be protected or punished.

The unhappy reality is that children tend to be treated in the adult world as if they were invisible beings and not even seen, never mind heard. That is true for all children and young people, but particularly for those who are marginalised and vulnerable. We believe that the commissioner, in speaking for all children, must ensure that all voices are heard. The fantastic Dr Seuss once suggested that adults are obsolete children. I hope that we will stop treating our children as incomplete adults.

I have a final quote. According to Robert Louis Stevenson, "Youth is wholly experimental." If that is the case, let us do everything possible to make it a safe, happy and successful experiment for clann na h-Alba, which, for Mike Russell's information, is Gaelic for children in Scotland.

It gives this obsolete child great pleasure to move the motion. I move,

That the Parliament agrees that the Commissioner for Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill be passed.