Seòmar agus comataidhean

Carrying on with that theme of community-level funding, we move to questions from Willie Rennie.

Is that the answer to both questions?

Are you saying that the language plans from the public bodies should remain part of the policy landscape alongside all the proposed national strategies, the guidance and the standards?

Yes—super.

Now we can move to questions from Ross Greer.

That is all we have time for, so the public part of the meeting is at an end. I thank everyone for their time. We will consider our final items in private.

Getting the sound a bit louder in the committee room would be helpful.

I thank the witnesses for participating. I would like to put on record that, several times, we have invited the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers to attend, but it has been unable to do so. Following that, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities was invited to participate, but, due to the last-minute nature of the invitation, it was unable to field a representative.

We will go straight to questions. Members should direct questions to a specific witness. It would be helpful if anyone else who wishes to respond could put an R in the chat bar, which the clerks are monitoring. I will do my best to bring you in when I can. Pam Duncan-Glancy will kick us off this morning.

James Wylie is keen to come in before you move on, Pam.

The information gives us a sense that the services are failing. I am thinking of the evidence that we took for our scrutiny of the Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill and the evidence on secure accommodation that we took recently from the commissioner for our scutiny of the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill. What is happening on the ground does not match the intention of the policy—the mismatch is quite vast and seems to be growing—and the commissioner highlighted that.

I am talking about the new commissioner, but, looking back, the previous or outgoing commissioner was critical of many of the Government’s policies when he was in post, and he shone a spotlight on, and was very critical of, their development and implementation. We are transitioning to a new commissioner, so I am trying to figure out how best to respond to your question. In the past, the previous commissioner very much challenged the implementation.

I alluded to the massive gap that people see between the policy and how it feels to the young people on the ground. There is a massive disparity there, and the commissioner plays an advocacy role in championing the rights of those children.