Hansard

I am afraid that my speech will be a little lengthy, but not quite as lengthy as the cabinet secretary’s speech, I hope.In the event of a school closure proposal being rejected, my amendment 406 would ensure that the decision would not be revisited for a period of five years. I have listened carefully to the debate about the appropriate length of time for a moratorium following the rejection of a school closure, and I am grateful to Councillor Douglas Chapman and his colleagues at COSLA for the letter that they wrote to the committee on 17 January—specifically paragraph 7—in which he set out his reasons for the rejection of the amendment. I have considered Councillor Chapman’s points carefully, especially his concern about the Scottish Government’s decision not to implement the commission’s recommendation 20. I have also considered how to balance educational benefit—to which the cabinet secretary referred, quite rightly, as the prime motive—with the challenges that local authorities face as they seek to rationalise their education services. It is not an easy issue, but I have come down on the side of favouring a five-year moratorium with some flexibility. I shall explain why.A moratorium would prevent a multiple review from occurring over a short period of time, and it would give parents, pupils and teachers the necessary confidence to commit to the school and develop it beyond just the short term. Although it has been a rare occurrence, there have been instances of a school going through three or four closure proposals in under a decade. Such uncertainty benefits no one and can create a vicious circle whereby parents opt against sending their child to the school, which in turn calls into question its long-term viability.A five-year moratorium would ensure that communities are not put through what Leslie Manson of the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland described as “a constant merry-go-round”. Indeed, it might well encourage parents to send their children to rural schools safe in the knowledge that the school has a medium-term future and the opportunity to address any shortcomings.A further upshot of the five-year period concerns the fact that any second proposal would therefore fall after council elections and, as such, would be considered by some fresh faces. That would ensure that the arguments were deliberated anew and that different voices would participate in the process.Although there are arguments for having a three-year or seven-year moratorium, the need to provide the balance that we seek between safeguarding the school’s immediate future and monitoring its progress has persuaded me to come down on the side of having a five-year moratorium.I thank the cabinet secretary for his comments on amendment 408A. When our predecessor committee met on 30 September 2009, the then cabinet secretary Fiona Hyslop said:“The intention of the bill is to create a robust, fair and transparent process that addresses such concerns.”—Official Report, Education, Culture and Lifelong Learning Committee; 30 September 2009; c 2770.That was very much the spirit of the bill at that time. Section 5 of the 2010 act was supposed to be absolutely watertight when it came to ensuring that the decision-making process is based on accurate and relevant information and that there is absolutely no scope for misinterpretation. That has turned out not to be the case, which is largely why we are here to amend the legislation. In the interim period, we have been furnished with very detailed evidence from several key witnesses who have been able to demonstrate just how extensive has been the misuse of information and, in a few cases, the failure to present accurate information in decision making. That evidence included examples of situations in which information had been incomplete, other situations in which the information had been inaccurate and—perhaps worst of all—situations in which it was alleged that information had been withheld or misrepresented to suit a specific viewpoint. The committee has been presented with very detailed evidence in the area. I will not go over it all again; suffice it to say that, whatever the reason for misinformation happens to be, it is completely unacceptable. It is important that, under the current bill, there is no scope for that practice in the future.10:15 Amendment 408A is an attempt to ensure that any local authority has to demonstrate how it has arrived at its decision, rather than just being called on to claim that it is satisfied that it has met the correct criteria. Simply having one stakeholder saying that it is satisfied is absolutely no guarantee of that or of any appropriate, objectively drawn conclusions having been made.It is my understanding that the cabinet secretary is sympathetic to the spirit of amendment 408A, but I understand what he has said: that it will be necessary to be more specific when it comes to demonstrating that a proposal is appropriate. I will take him up on his offer of meeting before stage 3, so that we can lodge a tighter amendment. The last thing that we want to do is to create any further confusion. I thank the cabinet secretary for his offer.On the other amendments in the cabinet secretary’s name and amendment 409A in Liam McArthur’s name, I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for noting that the Scottish Conservatives have a long-standing interest in the issue, given the efforts by my colleague Murdo Fraser in 2007, when he made his own proposal for a member’s bill. I thank the cabinet secretary for referring to that. The cabinet secretary is absolutely correct when he says that the essential principles that ought to underpin all school closures, irrespective of whether they are rural or urban, must revolve around the maximum educational, economic and social benefit that can be achieved. A completely level playing field must be provided; there must be full transparency when it comes to the actual decision-making process; and there needs to be an opportunity for engagement with and participation by the interested parties.I believe that those principles have been at the basis of the deliberations on the issue since before 2010, but for one reason or another—mainly to do with the interpretation of language in the bill—it has not been possible for many of the recent decisions regarding school closure proposals to adhere to the principles.The six areas of concern that were set out by the Sutherland commission are absolutely correct, and it is appropriate that we are examining each of them with regard to the amendments.We had an interesting debate at committee about the concept of presumption: what it really means and whether it needs to be set in stone in the bill. It was pointed out by some witnesses that, if it was fully written into the bill, it would raise too many expectations among parents and that all schools would stay open even where that is not the correct decision. In one witness’s words, that would set the bar too high. Although I understand the logic behind that statement, I have been persuaded by other evidence that, in too many cases, the intended presumption against closure would in some circumstances be interpreted by local authorities as a presumption to close. I note what the cabinet secretary said in response to a question from Joan McAlpine at committee on 3 December 2013.The ruling by the Court of Session clearly said that it is not sufficiently tight to rely on provisions involving matters “to have regard to” and that doing so had allowed misunderstanding and evasion. Anything that we can do to tighten up the provisions is crucial.I will support the Government’s amendments in this area. Although I understand the spirit with which Mr McArthur presents his amendment 409A, I accept what the cabinet secretary has said about the wording, so I am interested to hear what Mr McArthur has to say.