Hansard

I have made clear in the chamber before how much the Executive values the rich contribution that Scotland's young people make to our national life. We value the selfless contributions that they make as carers and volunteers and as active participants in a range of activities, benefiting their own development and enriching local and national life. We must continue to celebrate the contribution that our young people make.

However, many of our young people encounter barriers to their full participation in our society and face many challenges and risks through the early years of their lives. Today, I want to focus on how we can deliver a better deal for those young people. In particular, I want to set out the plans that we are putting in place to review our children's hearings system.

Before moving on, I will deal with the amendments, so that I can give myself space to talk more fully about matters relating to the children's hearings system. We will not accept the Tory amendment, because we think that what it proposes would do more harm than good to our young people.

The Scottish National Party amendment relates to adult justice, which is not the subject of today's debate. The amendment rather presupposes that ministers did not give full and careful consideration to what we knew would be a controversial decision on the Airborne Initiative. Such decisions are never taken lightly; they are only ever taken after careful and detailed consideration of the issues.

Sometimes, difficult decisions have to be taken and in this case the decision has been taken not to continue funding for that project at the end of the current three-year funding period in March. That has been done partly on value-for-money grounds, but also in order to achieve greater throughput of offenders to other appropriate programmes and to strengthen provision for drug-misusing offenders in particular. Let me make it clear that the money released because of that decision will not be used as a saving to the taxpayer; it will be available for investment in other programmes and projects that will deliver the range of services that we need to help to cope with a particularly challenging group in our society.

We are already active in finding non-custodial routes to dealing with offenders, both youth and adult. We have made record investment in community disposals and we are investing a further £10 million in diversionary activities in the community through the antisocial behaviour measures. In addition to that, we are investing £3 million to double the restorative justice programmes that we have in place and £13 million in intensive community-based support programmes to support and help people on antisocial behaviour orders and tagging orders to stay out of custody.

In the adult sector, funding will increase by 100 per cent in the five years to 2005-06. We are committed to the national roll-out of drug treatment and testing orders by 2005 and to national coverage of restriction-of-liberty orders. The Executive is extremely active in finding alternatives in the community to custodial sentences. The Airborne Initiative is one project that was doing that, but for the reasons that I have set out we will not be continuing its funding, so we shall not support the SNP amendment.

More than half our young people are going on to further and higher education; youth unemployment in new deal groups has fallen by 63 per cent in the past four years; absolute levels of child poverty have halved in recent years; the number of teenage pregnancies is falling; the number of permanent exclusions from schools are also falling; and exam results and literacy skills are improving. However, there is still much to be done to deliver a better deal for all our young people.

Sometimes young people need extra help to cope with barriers and difficulties in life. Sometimes the behaviour of some young people is challenging and needs managed or is simply unacceptable and needs dealt with. We are determined to ensure that children and young people get the help and protection that they need when they need it. For those who need that support, we are already investing in the provision of a wide range of services. Sure start's support for vulnerable families with young children, the youth justice system, which diverts young people away from crime and tackles the offending behaviours of those who get involved in offending, and support for those with barriers to learning are but a few examples of where we are making a difference for our young people.

However, as I said, we need to do more. That is why we have established a Cabinet delivery group of senior ministers to look at the delivery of improvements in children's services. That group, which I chair, will identify and tackle issues on which, across the Executive, we need to work together more effectively. We need to link our work to that of the many agencies that are our partners in service delivery in the community.

First, the Cabinet group is in the process of refreshing our vision for children and young people. Secondly, we are working to make our delivery systems more effective, by exploring how we can simplify and make more transparent our systems for funding, planning and decision making. Thirdly, we are working to give greater prominence to the central importance of information sharing. There are clear circumstances in which information needs to be shared with other professionals to ensure that the best possible support or interventions are available for individual children, which is particularly crucial when there are anxieties about a child's safety.