Meeting of the Parliament 06 September 2023
I am pleased to have the chance to contribute briefly to this afternoon’s debate on the programme for government. Its title—“Equality, Opportunity, Community”—throws up issues that I want to reflect on further, specifically from an island perspective, but I start by saying that there is much in the programme and in the motion that Scottish Liberal Democrats warmly welcome. Indeed, there are quite a few things that we have been calling for. I might gently point out that there are a few initiatives—such as those on heat in buildings, free school meals and the fair fares review—that could charitably be described as frequent flyers in programme for government statements. However, in the spirit of consensus, I declare an obvious interest in those initiatives and confirm my willingness to work with ministers in the hope that they can deliver in those areas for communities such as Orkney, where there is particularly acute need.
Of course, the centrepiece of the First Minister’s statement yesterday, which features prominently again in today’s motion, is the commitment to further expand childcare provision. That is certainly welcome and it has been welcomed around the chamber. It is a good example of an issue on which Scottish Liberal Democrats have pressed successive SNP Governments to be more ambitious. My colleague Willie Rennie frequently raised it with Alex Salmond when he was First Minister, before he was airbrushed out of SNP history. Indeed, I remember Willie Rennie and the Parliament being told repeatedly that expanding the provision of childcare to 1,140 hours could be done only with the powers of independence. I was a member of the education committee at the time, and that assertion was repeated to us regularly by the then cabinet secretary, Aileen Campbell. It was nonsense, of course, and when Mr Salmond realised that it just made it look like the needs of Scottish children and their parents were being held hostage in the interests of the SNP, he relented and brought forward an amendment to the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill.
That experience also showed, however, that the issue is not just about the quantum of early learning and childcare that is offered. Quality, flexibility and availability matter every bit as much, if not more. We know that, as funding for childcare has increased, availability has often contracted. More than 300 private and voluntary childcare services have stopped operating since 2021. There has been a 47 per cent fall in nursery teacher numbers over the past decade. Half of private nurseries say that their business is unsustainable, and a third of childminders have quit since 2016—a figure that the Scottish Childminding Association expects will double by 2026.