Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will just jump back in for a moment. The bill’s provisions will commence six months after the bill receives royal assent. Is that sufficient time for duty bearers and rights holders to prepare for the amended approach before the legislation comes into force? I will ask Councillor Buchanan and then Derek Frew to respond to that.

I understand that there needs to be a balance between doing things quickly and doing them correctly and that the two are not necessarily the same thing, but I am mindful that we are taking evidence from duty bearers and rights holders about their views on implementation so that we can get an idea of what a realistic timescale might be. The committee can then take a view on that.

Derek Frew, do you have anything to add?

I will go to Derek Frew first, to be followed by Andrew Tickell and Tony Buchanan.

We move on to questions from Fulton MacGregor, who joins us online.

Good morning, and welcome to the 21st meeting in 2023 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee in session 6. We have received no apologies.

Our first agenda item is to decide whether to take in private agenda item 3, which is consideration of today’s evidence. Do members agree to do so?

Members indicated agreement.

If no one else wants to come in, I just want to say on behalf of the committee that we have found this to be a very useful session. I think that we have managed to get under the skin of some of the areas of contention to ensure that we move on at pace while also providing a very thorough scrutiny process.

We all appreciated the way in which Juliet Harris brought alive the children’s voices in such a practical way through the image of the spider’s web. From our point of view, we want to ensure that that web is robust so that in the future, when we add on all the bits that will strengthen children’s rights, we have a framework—a web—that is robust enough to carry them.

I agree that children are well able to understand complicated concepts regarding their own needs, wants and rights. When I was a teacher prior to being elected and we were doing rights-respecting schools, the articles in the UNCRC and so on, I could see that children were well able to express—not only orally but through pictures and multisensory play—their knowledge of all the different articles. In one sense, it appears that they were well ahead of us adults and that the legislative process is just catching up with them.

In that spirit, then, I thank you very much for your contributions this morning. Your evidence will certainly add to our scrutiny.

I suspend the meeting very briefly to allow for a change of panels.

I bring in Fulton MacGregor, who is online.

Thank you for that. I will bring in my colleague Paul O’Kane.

Does Fulton MacGregor have any supplementary questions, or is he satisfied with those answers? I see a thumbs up.

Before we close, I point out that this will be the main evidence-taking session on this subject. We had the earlier panel, and we will also be hearing from the cabinet secretary. Do you think that that represents sufficient scrutiny of the amendments? If not, what advice would you give us and what thoughts would you share with us in that respect? Should we hear from any other witnesses? Any comments on that would be really helpful to the committee.

That might be a good question for Fiona Menzies to come in on.