Meeting of the Parliament 29 January 2026 [Draft]
::I am afraid that I have only six minutes, and I would also like to address the points that the committee made.
Essentially, what I am proposing is not new—the bill seeks to reinforce what should be existing practice. The obligation will be on local authorities and schools. Above all else, I would say that the use of physical intervention is a very serious matter, and it is vital that we have the most robust framework around it.
I will turn to the committee’s recommendations. I do not have time to go through all of them, but I think that the most important one was about definitions. It is important to be clear that the definitions primarily set the scope for guidance. However, I note the committee’s highlighting of concerns about potential ambiguity, particularly in relation to what should be reported and recorded, so I commit to lodging amendments at stage 2 to address those specific concerns about the definitions of recording and reporting.
I will close with this observation. All parents will be familiar with the slips of paper that come home with their child when they have done something such as grazing their knee after falling in the playground. If that is the level of recording, monitoring and reporting that is required when a child is injured accidentally, surely, if an injury occurs because of a deliberate physical intervention, we need just as robust a framework to sit around that.
I move,
That the Parliament agrees to the general principles of the Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill.