Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 25 August 2020
As I have done throughout the committee stages of the bill, I begin by declaring an interest in that my wife is a director of Relationships Scotland Orkney. That is perhaps less relevant to this set of amendments, but I thought that it would be helpful to have it on the record at the outset.
At stage 2, I was pleased to get support from the committee for my amendment to create a duty on the Scottish ministers to ensure the availability of child advocacy services in section 11 cases. That followed powerful evidence that was heard by the committee about the need to strengthen the so-called infrastructure for taking children’s views. In their written submission, Dr Morrison, Dr Friskney and Professor Tisdall argued:
“The strongest and most consistent request from children and young people in Scotland, who have been involved in contested contact proceedings, it to have a child support worker. Without addressing this now, children’s participation throughout the legal process risks being dealt with inconsistently, on an ad hoc basis and thus marginalised. We recommend provision be put into primary legislation, with the ability to then link developments to other advocacy roles.”
That amendment was passed, but I held off pressing another amendment relating to a proposed review of children’s ability to participate in the decision-making process. Of course, reviewing legislation to check that it actually does what it is intended to do is generally a good and sensible precaution. However, given the concerns that have been expressed about the resourcing of the provisions in the bill, I think that there is a particular need to provide some reassurance to stakeholders that such a review will take place and will look specifically at whether it has facilitated the participation of children in decisions that are made about their future.
As Scottish Women’s Aid said ahead of stage 2, monitoring and review of the bill’s implementation is required to ensure that children’s rights are realised in practice. There was support for that at stage 2, although some concerns were expressed by the minister about the proposed three-year period—as opposed to a five-year period—in my amendment. I have reflected further on that and, although I remain a little concerned that five years opens up the risk of an entire session of Parliament coming and going before any assessment is made, I believe that amendment 48 provides safeguards against that happening. It is perhaps not perfect, but I am confident that colleagues in the next parliamentary session can and will keep ministers’ feet to the fire. In the meantime, I am grateful to the minister and her officials for their engagement on that issue.