Hansard

I draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which says that I am the chair of the Hibernian Community Foundation.

In our stage 1 debate on the Disclosure (Scotland) Bill, I spoke a little bit about it being the latest stage of a road on a map of protection legislation that goes all the way back to the start of the Scottish Parliament and the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000, which was the first such legislation that we passed. The road on that map has passed through things such as the protection of vulnerable adults legislation, and this evening brings us to the end of this bit of the road. Although it was a bit bumpy at stage 2, we have reached a pretty good place. The minister and her officials have tried carefully to respond to the concerns of the committee and the witnesses, and that has been good to see.

I have made a point about how wide-ranging such bills are. Early on in the committee’s evidence taking, it was revealed to us that there are 1.5 million members of the protecting vulnerable groups scheme, so it is certainly legislation that affects many of our citizens. That was, of course, one of the reasons why there was a move in the legislation to having membership renewable every five years. The committee considered practical issues around that—for example, repeat fees and people having to remember that they have to renew their membership of the scheme—but the important thing is that the approach enables Disclosure Scotland to work more efficiently and effectively to monitor members of the scheme by enabling it to not have to monitor a significant number of members who are not using their PVG scheme membership. That is quite important and effective.

The early acts are all good examples of how having our own Parliament allowed us much more readily to catch our legislation up with other legislation, the modern world and other changes. We should not be surprised that, having set the disclosure scheme in place, we have come to a point at which it is necessary to clarify, simplify and modernise it. It had to take account of other legislation that we have passed, such as the Age of Criminal Responsibility (Scotland) Act 2019 and the Management of Offenders (Scotland) Act 2019. At stage 2, a great deal of work went into trying to ensure that that happened, and we have got there now.

That will not, of course, be the end of the process. For example, the Government recently recommitted itself to the incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which may well mean a legislative change that will come back to some of the measures on children and childhood offences. That would in turn mean that we would have to come up with another iteration of the scheme.

There is more immediate and quite important work—and not only the setting up of the group that was promised to Alex Cole-Hamilton earlier on. In the discussions, there were concerns—Jamie Greene mentioned this—about the fact that anyone under 16 could not be a member of the scheme, as that might make it difficult for people under 16 to volunteer at all. I think that the Government has committed to monitor that and ensure that that is not the case.

Similarly, the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland expressed concerns about the impact of the legislation on care-experienced young people. I think that the Government has also committed to monitor that; I hope that it will be able to do so, perhaps as part of the care review implementation.

There is some immediate work to be done there, but the biggest piece of immediate work is for Disclosure Scotland. As colleagues will remember, when the original scheme was introduced, there was a period when it took quite a long time for disclosure checks to come through, which caused great difficulty for many voluntary organisations and workplaces. Disclosure Scotland made us promises that it could make the legislation work. Let us hope that it is right. I think the legislation in now a place where Disclosure Scotland should be able to make it work. We will certainly support the bill at decision time.