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I would be grateful if I could continue with my speaking note, because there is a lot of technical information in here. I am happy to answer any questions at the end.

Automatic provision of legal aid has been targeted to circumstances where hearings are convened in certain circumstances or proceed before a sheriff. Otherwise, a type of legal aid known as assistance by way of representation—ABWOR—is available for every child subject to a children’s hearing, subject to an application to SLAB that addresses a means and merits test.

As a child is unlikely to have any financial resources, the means test is nearly always met. Likewise, the merits test, which is one of “effective participation”, is also nearly always met. SLAB reports a high grant rate for ABWOR applications on behalf of children, at 99 per cent over the past 12 months. A child’s social worker or advocacy worker can assist the child with securing contact with a solicitor to make an application for ABWOR, and every child who is subject has a right to advocacy support.

It should be borne in mind that children’s hearings adopt a welfarist approach that aims to be non-adversarial in nature. Although a children’s panel takes legally binding decisions, it is not an appropriate forum for detailed legal argument and instead is centred around the needs of the child who has been referred to the hearing. It is therefore not expected or desirable that publicly funded legal representation be automatically available in every hearing, and nor would it necessarily be required.

Amendment 185 also seeks to extend the availability of automatic children’s legal aid to any occasion when a referral ground includes an offence allegedly being committed. Although I accept that it is narrower in scope than amendment 186, I am again concerned about the need for such a blanket provision when there is adequate scope under the current rules for children to have access to legal aid when required.

As I mentioned, ABWOR is already available for all hearings to the subject child, by way of application to SLAB, with a very high grant rate. Moreover, paragraph 28C(1)(d) of the Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 1986 already allows for automatic children’s legal aid to be provided for children’s hearings to which subsection 69(3) of the 2011 act applies. That is where a hearing is arranged by the children’s reporter in relation to a child who is being kept in a place of safety having allegedly committed a criminal offence.

The amendment would also result in automatic children’s legal aid for any hearing in which there was a minor offence as a ground of referral—there may be a number of grounds. It is understood that, last year, 2,637 children were referred to the reporter on offence grounds, although not all of those referrals will have resulted in hearings.

Operationally, the amendment would also result in a significant number of duty appointments being required to be put in place by SLAB, along with a knock-on effect for the solicitors currently on the duty list.

Absolutely. Obviously, I hope that it does not get to that stage. As I said, we have already had positive feedback from local authorities that have already implemented the new system, and I hope that, by the end of the financial year, we will have positive feedback that shows that it has been implemented across the board. However, I am happy to share information with the committee if required.

We are very switched on to cost of living pressures, and work is on-going to consider the funding implications for 2024-25 and future years in the context of inflation, our fixed budget and the significant financial challenges that the Scottish Government currently faces, as I am sure all members are aware.

I will probably be able to say more about that after the Scottish budget has been set out in December. Discussions with COSLA on uprating will be picked up in due course, but, as I said in my opening statement, the Scottish Government made a commitment to maintaining the 2023-24 levels of support and to reviewing the funding implications in the future.

As I said, I will probably be able to say more after the budget process.

Of course.

Absolutely. My officials are in regular contact with their counterparts in the UK Government. As I understand it, although paid leave has been introduced by some organisations, such as Tesco, the matter is still being considered by the UK Government. I am very happy to write to my counterpart, the Secretary of State for Education, to request an update on that.

Of course.

Based on what I have said, I do not believe so, because, if it was simply down to a housing situation, removing the child would not be in line with ensuring what was best for the child. Obviously, it is for local authorities to deal with their housing stock, but I imagine that best efforts would be made to ensure that that family could stay together. I do not think that that would be an acceptable reason for a child to be removed.

As I said, it would be down to the local authority, but I am sure that efforts would be made to ensure that children could stay with their family.

Absolutely. Best efforts would be made to ensure that the child faced as little disruption as possible. I will bring in my officials to elaborate on that.

Yes, absolutely. I agree that the kinship care collaborative, alongside others—including stakeholders that we have touched on this morning, such as the kinship carers advisory group, the Fostering Network and Social Work Scotland—could have a key role to play in feeding back about the allowance. As I have mentioned, its engagement to date has been extremely valuable and has helped to inform the development of the recommended allowance information page, which was published on the Scottish Government website this week.

The next meeting of the collaborative is on 27 November, and I have asked officials to discuss with its members how they might inform work on the allowance going forward, and how that might feed into the next steps for the collaborative. That will be vital. As I have said, we are committed to formally reviewing the allowance, so taking organisations and stakeholders with us will be vital.