Seòmar agus comataidhean

First and foremost, I thank the committee for permitting me to speak to amendment 124.

At the outset, let me take head-on the perception of incongruity between the intent of my amendment and the bill’s aims and scope. The committee is deliberating the means by which our constituents could legally recall a member of this Parliament if the conduct of that member fell below a threshold meaning that it was no longer fit and proper for that member to serve in this Parliament. I believe that, should a member of this Parliament be barred from working with children or vulnerable adults, they do not meet the standards that should be required of our democratic representatives and that that, in itself, should meet the threshold for recall.

The only means that we have of verifying that someone is not barred from working with children or vulnerable adults is subjecting them to the disclosure regime that operates under the auspices of the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007.

The act is very clear. It is an offence to require a PVG—protecting vulnerable groups—check of someone who is not deemed to hold a regulated position. MSPs were excluded from the scheme at the time that the act was first designed and implemented. They are not deemed to hold a regulated position, so there is no voluntary route to give effect to this.

I have had discussions with members who ask why we cannot take this on ourselves and undertake a check voluntarily. The act simply does not allow that—in fact, it makes an offence to do so. Similarly, the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body could not just build it into the induction of new MSPs—it would still be an offence. We will need to change the attendant laws that govern this if we are to give effect to it, and my amendment seeks to begin that process.

Before politics, I worked for more than 19 years in youth work, children’s rights and youth policy. In that context, I was invited to join the voluntary sector issues unit of the protection of vulnerable groups implementation board of the Scottish Government. I was closely involved in the development of the legislation prior to its introduction in 2007 and in its subsequent implementation. Since then, the PVG scheme has, through disclosure, provided some level of protection and assurance in relation to people who hold a regulated position through their work or volunteering responsibilities and, as such, have unsupervised contact with either children or vulnerable adults, or both.

As the act makes it an offence to require a check of someone who does not hold particular responsibilities, the professional roles and volunteering activities that do require a check to be carried out are explicitly listed in it. Although the reasoning for that is clear, it leads to an inflexibility in the application of the scheme when it comes to those who hold elected office. To my knowledge, PVG checks are only required of local councillors who are involved in particular functions around the role of corporate parent of looked-after children and other education-related activities.

However, discussions in the early days of the implementation of the act should have considered the issue more broadly, including as it related to politicians. We know from bitter experience that those who would harm children or vulnerable adults will seek out positions in our society that confer power, influence and opportunity. It is my contention that in our role as MSPs we have all of those. Consider the times that we offer work experience to high school students. On more than one occasion, pressure of time and circumstance has seen me ferry a work experience volunteer from the constituency office to this Parliament or to a visit in the constituency. I have never regarded that as inappropriate, as I have disclosure checks for other roles that I have held, but even if I did not, nobody in Parliament—the corporate body or staff—has ever advised me against doing it.

Many times in my 10 years as an MSP, a vulnerable adult who has come to my constituency surgery has asked for my time in private and has asked me to ask the caseworker to leave the room because of the intimacy of what they want to discuss. It is very difficult to refuse such a request. Obviously, we take steps to protect ourselves and our constituents by keeping doors open and such things, but the fact is that those circumstances remain.

Yes, I do. Ruth Maguire’s intervention speaks to a mantra that we had in the early days of PVG, when I was in the voluntary sector issues unit. That was that PVG and disclosure are not a substitute for appropriate and safe measures in the normal course of recruiting applicants to positions. This should not be an either/or; my proposal should be complementary to the steps that I hope that all political parties take in vetting, approving and training their candidates. However, it is an important step that would give reassurance.

I believe that Emma Roddick also wants to come in.

I had a helpful discussion with the member in charge of the bill yesterday, in which he raised the point that vulnerable constituents will often be met in our absence by our casework staff, and sometimes in isolation. Similarly, people on work experience, who cannot be shadowing us every moment of every day, will sometimes be left unsupervised with our constituency staff. I had not considered that factor before yesterday, but I absolutely agree that we should think about other people in the Parliament.

I will finish with this. The PVG and disclosure process is not foolproof, but it is all that we have for verifying the evidence or relevant information that the police hold about people. When I first raised the issue in the previous session of Parliament, members of the press and general public were astonished to learn that such checks did not apply to us already. I contend that the case for our inclusion and the inclusion of our staff in such a scheme is fast becoming unanswerable.

I move amendment 124.

11:15

I put on record my thanks to the minister for giving me time to explore the issue with him and his officials, and to the member in charge of the bill.

I am content with the minister’s proposal. I look forward to working further with the Government on producing a stage 3 amendment, so I seek permission to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 124, by agreement, withdrawn.

Section 29 agreed to.

Section 30—Regulation-making powers

I was just coming to that. Graham Simpson makes a good point. I raised this issue in the previous session of Parliament, when we were making minor amendments to the 2007 act and, by extension, the disclosure scheme. It was a leviathan then, and it is a leviathan now. I recognise that this committee has not taken evidence on the matter, nor have I undertaken a public consultation around it, nor does the scope of the bill lend itself to the not insubstantial level of amendment to the act and its attendant ecosystem that would be required.

Instead, that is why I have taken the very light-touch approach of proposing that a review be instructed to begin the process of consultation. I believe that that would signal our intent as a Parliament to get this right, with the goal of introducing a checking regime. It might not be an amendment of the existing PVG scheme; it may be a new bespoke scheme, depending on legislation on human rights and access to democracy.

However, we need to signal to the public and to our watching constituents that we take the issue seriously and that we are not waiting for something terrible to happen before we act. We can reassure our constituents that, by the election of 2031—goodness, that feels a long way away but it will come on us very soon—members who are elected to the Parliament will be subject, perhaps prior to the election, to scrutiny through such a scheme. That will reassure people that every member of the Parliament is fit and proper—in respect of information that is held by the police, which is what these checks discern—to work with children and vulnerable adults.

Goodness. Yes.

I think that I heard Emma Roddick first and then Ruth Maguire. Sorry—it is up to you, convener.

I am very pleased to be here today and to speak to amendment 40, in my name, which seeks to rename the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill as the “Care and Carers (Scotland) Bill”.

As the committee will know, from the very start, the Scottish Liberal Democrats stood against the bill in its original form and its principles. We did so because it sought to centralise social care services and remove power from communities and care professionals, who are best placed to exercise that power for the good of both those who provide care and those who receive it.

In the light of opposition from all other parties, I am pleased that the Government has finally decided to change course and abandon the centralising ministerial takeover of social care. However, it is unfortunate that it has taken four years and £30 million of taxpayers’ money being wasted on that premise to get to this point. It is now only right that the bill with which we are proceeding is named in a way that reflects what it intends to do.

Even in its original form, the bill would not have created a national care service. Giving it a similar name to one of our most beloved national treasures, the national health service, was a cynical attempt to make it appear to be something that it was not. The NHS answered a need from the rubble and poverty of war in which it was forged, whereas that was not the case for this takeover of social care. The NHS offers care that is free at the point of delivery, whereas nothing about the national care service was intended to do that.

We need a bill that seeks to support those who work in the care sector and those who rely on it. I note that two other amendments, rightly, seek to change the bill’s name, but I believe that it is appropriate to rename it as the “Care and Carers (Scotland) Bill”, so that the Parliament can send a clear message to care workers, care users and the legions of unpaid carers that they are what really matters.

Having listened to the remarks of Gillian Mackay and the minister, I will not move amendment 1.

Amendment 1 not moved.

Amendment 2 not moved.

Section 7, as amended, agreed to.

Section 8—Reduction of safe access zones

Amendment 32 moved—[Jenni Minto]—and agreed to.

Amendment 33 moved—[Gillian Mackay]—and agreed to.

Amendment 48 moved—[Emma Harper]—and agreed to.

Amendments 3 and 4 not moved.

Section 8, as amended, agreed to.

After section 8

Amendment 5 not moved.

Section 9—Cessation of safe access zones

Amendment 49 moved—[Emma Harper]—and agreed to.

Section 9, as amended, agreed to.

After section 9

Amendment 34 moved—[Gillian Mackay]—and agreed to.

Section 10—Power to modify meaning of “protected premises”

Amendment 35 not moved.

Amendment 36 moved—[Jenni Minto]—and agreed to.

Amendment 37 not moved.

Amendment 38 moved—[Sandesh Gulhane].

Thank you for allowing me to join you today, convener. I will say at the start that I am grateful for the engagement that I have had with both Gillian Mackay MSP and the minister on the topics that my amendments seek to cover.

We are not the first jurisdiction in the United Kingdom to bring forward legislation around safe access zones and abortion services. Both the United Kingdom Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly have used different legislative vehicles to bring about the effect that we are seeking to achieve. In the UK Parliament, there was a simple amendment, in the name of Stella Creasy, to a piece of legislation. The framing of legislation in Northern Ireland was very different, given its political context. Neither of those legislative vehicles contained provision to allow ministers unfettered power to moderate or change the exclusion zones.

My particular concern—and the reason for lodging my amendments, a couple of which are more in the way of probing amendments than anything else—is that we, as legislators, need to govern for the political consensus as it might become in the future, rather than as it is now or as we would wish it to be. My anxiety is that, without having proper scrutiny from Parliament, ministers of a less progressive Administration in the future may simply reduce the reach or distance of a buffer zone to zero, without any recourse to Parliament. That is why I have lodged amendments 1 and 3. I will wait to hear the minister’s remarks, but I intend to press them.

In relation to amendments 2 and 4, I am not entirely sure that any reference to expansion or reduction is needed. It does not seem to be needed in the other jurisdictions that I talked about. Those amendments are more about getting the points on the record and exploring solutions with Gillian Mackay and the Scottish Government.