Meeting of the Parliament 14 January 2026
No—that is not progress. At the very latest, we will have to pass the bill by April. The Norrie review will not have fed back by then, and nor will the review of UK legislation that the minister spoke about be available in 2026. If the bill is not changed at stage 3, the Parliament will be passing legislation—on a key area that is important across the political spectrum—that is not compatible with the 2024 act. That is not acceptable to me, and nor is it acceptable to the witnesses who came to the committee. We were told that it would not be acceptable to the Government, but it turns out that it is.
On the point about the cluttered landscape, the minister has announced the new independent review, which will explore parts of the complex legislative framework that relates to care-experienced children, young people and adults and how they could be simplified in the future. In giving evidence on the bill, stakeholders told us clearly that the matter requires urgent attention. I look forward to hearing the conclusions of Professor Norrie and CELCIS in due course.
Although I would have liked to stick with the UNCRC, because we have not had answers today, there are other issues that I want to cover. I am sorry to move on to another negative issue, but it is one of the legitimate points that the committee raised in our report. We were struck by the fact that many key stakeholders felt that they had not been fully engaged in the development of the bill and that its provisions were, in their words, the poorer for it.
Representing the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers Scotland, Jim Savege told the committee that it was
“relatively unusual not to have had some joint working or collaboration on the development of a bill”.
John Trainer of Social Work Scotland suggested that the bill
“would have been vastly improved if that had happened”.
Fiona Whitelock of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities said:
“We offered support around the financial memorandum and working out some of the costings, but our offer was not taken up.”—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 8 October 2025; c 39, 45]
The committee recognises that the minister holds a different view about the engagement that took place on the bill, but we heard that point time and again. Given the scope of what is being proposed and the resourcing implications that arise from it, the committee would have expected stakeholders to have been much more involved at an earlier stage. However, we welcome the minister’s commitment to exploring how such engagement could be improved in the future.
I will speak about some other areas of the bill—particularly the provisions to extend aftercare eligibility to a wider group of care-experienced children and young people. The committee welcomed those provisions and recognised that they will address a long-standing inequality in the system whereby those who left care before their 16th birthday are excluded from accessing aftercare support. However, the committee heard concerns about how those new provisions will operate in practice and whether sufficient resources have been allocated to them. The committee therefore welcomes the minister’s undertaking to work with Social Work Scotland and COSLA to improve our understanding of the financial implications of the bill, with a view to revisiting the modelled costs.
In the committee’s stage 1 report, we called on the Scottish Government to provide clear guidance to local authorities on how eligibility for aftercare will be determined and to ensure that the process of proving care experience is straightforward and non-stigmatising.
I move to advocacy, which is essential in ensuring that care-experienced children, young people and adults have their voices heard and their rights upheld. The bill will introduce lifelong advocacy for care-experienced individuals for the first time. The committee heard strong support for that measure, with stakeholders emphasising the importance of relationships-based and trauma-informed advocacy. The committee also called for a clear definition of independent advocacy to be included in the bill. The committee sought clarity on the eligibility criteria for lifelong advocacy and it explored how consistent and high-quality advocacy provision could be delivered across Scotland.
The bill proposes significant changes to the children’s hearings system. The committee heard support from stakeholders for some of the bill’s proposals, including the introduction of paid chairs and the use of single-member panels in limited circumstances. However, Sheriff Mackie, who is the chair of the hearings system working group, suggested that the bill’s provisions relating to grounds hearings show
“a disappointing lack of ambition and resolve.”
Stakeholders told the committee that those provisions are significantly more complex than what is in place at present, with the potential to cause issues not only for the people who are tasked with delivering them but for children, young people and the people who support them. The committee was clear that the Scottish Government should revisit those provisions in light of the evidence that it heard.
Post-referral discussions were seen as problematic, too, with many stakeholders observing that a meeting with the principal reporter, focused on grounds, was a very different proposal from the familiarisation meeting with the chair of a hearing, as envisaged by the hearings system working group. That risks unintended consequences, should a child or young person not understand the purpose of the post-referral discussion or how the information that was gleaned from it would be used.
I understand that there are other speakers, so I will restrict my remarks, although I could say much more on the bill. The bill has the potential to take an important step forward towards fulfilling the Promise, and the committee has recommended to Parliament that we support the bill at stage 1. However, it is clear that the bill will need significant amendments to ensure that the provisions can be properly resourced and to secure the very best outcomes for care-experienced children, young people and adults across Scotland, which we all want to see.