Meeting of the Parliament 16 December 2025 [Draft]
I follow Martin Whitfield in paying tribute to Liz Smith. At the risk of potentially giving members of my party a bit of buyer’s remorse in relation to their recent leadership vote, I can say without hesitation that I will miss her contributions in the Parliament when she takes her well-earned retirement.
Liz Smith and I have served on the same committees for almost all of the decade that I have been a member of the Parliament. We served on the Education and Skills Committee and the Finance and Public Administration Committee. We agreed on far more than people outside of this building and maybe even some of our own colleagues might have expected. That is probably more true in the education portfolio than finance, but it was a bit of both.
More than that, though, what I really respect about Liz Smith is where we disagree. In this place, it is not always the case that, when we hear a member making a contribution, we believe without a shadow of a doubt that they believe what they are saying. Sometimes members are saying what they have been told to say. Every time that I have profoundly disagreed with Liz Smith, I know that she is coming at the issue from a place of absolute conviction and I can understand why she believes what she does. We need far more of that quality of debate and far more of that kind of principled position in all parties in this place. I believe that the Conservative Party and the Parliament as a whole will be poorer next session as a result of Liz Smith no longer being here.
In starting my contribution at stage 1, I mentioned my experience of the classic primary 7 residential trip, and I bring it up now because some of the amendments that we have made to the bill are relevant to that experience. My class went to Castle Toward in Dunoon, which, for those of my generation, was famous for being the setting for the CBBC show “Raven”. We were all incredibly excited to be using the set of that show when we were there for that trip. However, we almost did not get to go because, the day before we were due to go, back in 2006, we had one of the heaviest snowstorms that Scotland had experienced for years and possibly decades, and the trip was almost cancelled.
I therefore reflect on the fact that some practical and sensible amendments were made to the bill at stage 2 to recognise potentially exceptional circumstances, whereby it might well be that the obligation to provide the opportunity is not possible to fulfil in some circumstances. Schools and local authorities should not be held liable for circumstances that are outwith their control.
The Greens will, of course, support the bill at stage 3. We have supported it throughout the process because it fulfils our manifesto commitments to guarantee every pupil at least a week of residential outdoor experience, to remove the financial barriers to that and to expand outdoor play and learning provision across the board.
The benefits of outdoor education are undisputed, certainly across the Parliament and even among those who might be sceptical about the specific proposals in the bill. We all recognise that the physical and mental health benefits are undisputed, as is the ability to develop skills such as team working and the transformational impact that outdoor learning can have on the social development of individual young people, and in particular on their confidence.
I said at stage 1 that we cannot see outdoor education as just being that one-off week of residential education, often in primary 7. I know that that is certainly not the bill’s intention, but we should also probably recognise that that week has a particular place in the popular imagination of people across the country. We need to make it clear that outdoor education is about so much more than that. We now have a fantastic resource in learning for sustainability in Scotland, where we can push the on-going experience of outdoor education not only in our natural environment but in the built environment, although there is a particular benefit in learning about our natural environment in the natural environment.
Such is the nature of these curtailed debates that I will finish here, not because I am closing but because, in a few minutes, I will get up again to deliver my closing speech. I will deliver concluding remarks at that point and so will end abruptly now.
17:18