Seòmar agus comataidhean

Your question has answered itself, Mr Greer. Fitting it into our work plan would be a challenge, and there is also overlap. The children’s commissioner represents disabled children and children who are neurodivergent. She is responsible for advocating for all those people. Far too much overlap would cause conflict for young people. Who is their advocate? Who is best placed to serve them going forward? It would make scrutiny within the committee system and the education committee more complex.

Whether they have a vote is irrelevant. Young people deserve to have someone to act as their voice in here, regardless of that.

The role of the Children and Young People’s Commissioner is specifically to give voices to young people, which is something that the Government makes assumptions about. The other week, when the commissioner was giving evidence to us, some of our questions about the challenges were about what we presumed to be important, but she kept bringing us back to the point that she was there to make representations on what the young people had said. She was quite clear in reinforcing that argument. The assumptions that we make about the challenges that young people face today—and all these things—can be quite sweeping sometimes.

Going back to budgets and the spend, you may struggle to pinpoint the value added—it is a fine balance—but there is potentially the chance to be a little bit more critical about some of the more tangible things like spending on travel and ancillary items.

Part of the commissioner’s evidence—as a committee, we hear far too often about this—was about the massive implementation gap that exists between policy and what happens on the ground. The evidence outlines that the creation of another body or person to champion the needs of a specific group appears to be a reaction to ineffective policy implementation and a lack of access to justice.

We need to be mindful about how we proceed, with the potential for exponential growth in the number of commissioners or in their budgets.

I am here as the convener of the Education, Children and Young People Committee, and I am struggling not to give my party’s view—but thank you for your question. I will leave it there.

It is, clearly, public money—we need to be mindful of that. We are in a very challenging environment. When the public see spiralling costs and the Parliament carries on spending like that, they think that we are a little bit disconnected from reality. We need much more accountability. As I said, the SPCB has the governance procedures around that, and the Auditor General for Scotland has a role in inspecting the annual accounts, but we need a reality check in many of these offices about the tight financial envelope that we are all working within. That is my steer on that.

Martin Whitfield has alluded many times to the commissioners’ independence, and I think it would be difficult for us to pick some of the budget areas and the activities that the scrutiny body carries out and make judgments about the value those bring from the spend. You are looking quizzical, but I am trying to form my—

Indeed.

We already do. The Children and Young People’s Commissioner said that the fact that there are areas of overlap prevents them from carrying out investigations and inquiries, albeit that that is peripheral and around the edges. I cannot remember the specific detail. The fact that there is already overlap with the public bodies that are responsible for exercising specific functions prevents the Children and Young People’s Commissioner from carrying out investigations. Therefore, in my view, if we were to add more complexity, more commissioners and more areas of overlap, that would raise a big red flag.

Whatever it was, however that budget scrutiny was to lie and wherever the responsibility for it lands, Mr Greer, we have to make sure that it can be delivered, that it is done well and the time is given for us to do it. That is all I will say on that one.

You may be aware that the current Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland has newly come into post. We had her in front of us recently.

We have been quite thoughtful about how best to carry out the scrutiny role, given that she is new in the position. We also have to recognise that each commissioner is quite different. As convener, I was never given the opportunity to scrutinise the previous commissioner. I have only ever had Nicola Killean in front of the committee.

We heard evidence from her and her team about their strategic plan and that set the tone of what we will look for from her in the next year or so. We looked at what her priorities will be and we were glad to know that they are around poverty, education, mental health, climate change and discrimination. Nothing is unfamiliar or a surprise. Those priorities are all in the work plan that the commissioner is keen to focus on.

We were interested when she spoke at length about her accountability tracker, which, in the landscape that she works in, is designed to hold the Government and other bodies to account for how they are progressing their plans in relation to the promises that they have made to children and young people. We are keen to see how that develops and whether it gives us some oversight as a tool to track progress.

I do not know how long I have. I could talk for a while, Mr Gibson.

The only one that springs to mind right now is additional support for learning, but I am afraid I cannot talk an awful lot about that until tomorrow.