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Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee 06 October 2010

06 Oct 2010 · S3 · Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee

Item of business

Children’s Hearings (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Macintosh, Ken Lab Eastwood Watch on SPTV

I welcome some of the minister’s comments. Some were very helpful and others less so—but I will come to that in a moment.Taking amendments 186 and 188 first, which I lodged with a view to introducing a procedure for terminating deemed relevant person status, I made it clear that the issue was raised in the committee’s stage 1 report. Given the raft of amendments that the minister has lodged to address the matter—which I, too, am sorry that we were unable to meet to discuss—I am more than happy to accept that they cover the issue and set out all the procedures in detail. In effect, they repeat the previous process. As a result, I will not move amendments 186 and 188.On amendments 184 and 185, which seek to address rights under the ECHR, I fully acknowledge that the minister will not accept that the bill as it stands breaches the ECHR. Indeed, if it did, it could not proceed any further. However, I do not accept that amendment 185 will introduce a whole raft of new people to children’s panels. As most members will be aware, many adults who have a relationship with their child use and abuse it at a children’s panel hearing and often seek legal representation and legal aid to enforce their own parental rights at the expense of the rights of the child. The issue, which has bedevilled many children’s panels for many years now, will not go away, because these adults will continue to insist on their parental legal rights—which, I must stress, they have, particularly under the ECHR. As anyone with any experience of a children’s panel will tell you, minister, the issue comes up time and again. Although the Supreme Court will deal with the matter soon, I lodged the amendment to ensure that the bill spells out criteria that the children’s panel can use to address it. I certainly think that it is better for us to do that than to wait for the Supreme Court judgment.That said, I accept that the area is very difficult and controversial and that the minister will not accept amendments 184 and 185. As a result, I will not move them today. However, we will need to return to the issue before stage 3, by which time we will, I hope, know the Supreme Court’s decision. It is certainly not an issue that we can ignore.I was particularly disappointed and totally unconvinced by the minister’s arguments with regard to the terms “deemed” and “treated as”. I have no difficulty with the procedure that is set out in the bill, the criteria that are to be used and, particularly, the fact that section 185 provides the legal basis on which someone is a deemed relevant person. The minister then agreed that section 80 introduces a different set of criteria relating to the panel’s decision on the relationship of a person with the child. We therefore agree that there are certain criteria that are matters of fact under which someone becomes a deemed relevant person. However, the question whether someone should share the same rights requires the panel to take another set of decisions. Those are two different sets of decisions, but the minister is arguing that the term “deemed a relevant person” should be used in both. I have to disagree. The key part of the term is “relevant person” and, instead of using that, he is using “deemed a relevant person”. The “deemed” element is not as important as the “relevant person” element, which relates to the legal relationship that we are talking about. The “deemed” element relates to section 185, which sets out the criteria for giving an individual deemed relevant person status, whereas section 80 says that the individual should be“treated as a relevant person”.That is not the same thing, and I believe that the distinction should be spelled out. The minister produced no arguments whatever against that. He simply tried to suggest that the term that matters is “deemed a relevant person” rather than “relevant person”. I disagree and I will press amendment 183.

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The Convener (Karen Whitefield) Lab

Good morning. I open the Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee’s 25th meeting in 2010. I remind all committee members and all in the public gall...

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Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee 06 October 2010

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