Meeting of the Parliament 29 January 2026 [Draft]
::I, too, congratulate Daniel Johnson and thank him for bringing the bill to the Parliament. I also thank my colleagues on the Education, Children and Young People Committee, our clerks and those who gave evidence to us. As other members who have already spoken have said, our particular thanks should go to Beth Morrison and Kate Sanger, who have worked tirelessly on the issue of restraint and seclusion in Scotland’s schools.
This is a good bill. There is widespread recognition of the need to do more about restraint and seclusion in schools, and the bill is largely helpful on that. I fear that its timing might prevent the bill from being the best that it could be, but that does not mean that I am against it.
A few months before the bill was introduced, the Scottish Government published guidance on the use of physical intervention in schools, and there is a fairly substantial overlap between that guidance and the bill’s provisions. The guidance was introduced in November 2024 and its one-year review is currently under way, with the final report expected in March.
Clearly, the bill intends to go further than guidance would, but, in an ideal world, and given the overlap in the subject matter, we would want to see that report before proceeding with, or completing, our work on the bill. The bill would be stronger for it, and the results for young folk would be better, but our timelines will not allow for that before the Parliament dissolves for the election. If we were to wait, the bill would be pushed into the next session of Parliament to restart its progress, and so we would be pressing the pause button on much of the good that the bill seeks to achieve.
The idea of not letting the perfect become the enemy of the good probably sums up where I am on the issue of timing. The bill could be made better if the review had been completed by now, but it has not, and I cannot justify pausing the bill until that happens. I am pleased that the committee recommended that, if the bill should pass, its provisions should not commence until after the review is finished.
Thankfully, other reports are available to inform any changes to the bill, one of which is the stage 1 report from the Education, Children and Young People Committee. I will use my remaining time to highlight some of the changes that we are keen to see.
We would like to see the definitions of “restraint” and “seclusion” being tightened up and refined, because there is a fear that the bill’s current broad definitions of those terms could cause legal ambiguity and unintended consequences.
Some of our witnesses were keen to see examples being included. Such an approach cuts both ways, because examples can also make clear what is not included in a definition—for example, that giving someone a bosie is not restraint—but we maybe need to make that part of the bill clearer.
The other key change that I fully support is ensuring that parents and carers are informed on the same day—or within 24 hours—that restraint or seclusion has taken place. Ben Higgins from the Restraint Reduction Network summed that up pretty well:
“I think it is good practice that when a child falls over and gets a scratch, a mark, a bump or a bruise, the parents are informed. Why would that not apply in the case of restraint or seclusion?”—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 24 September 2025; c 44.]
There is broad agreement about the principles of this bill and the changes that we want to see, so let us get it moving forward and continue our efforts to make Scotland the best country in the world in which to grow up—for every child.