Seòmar agus comataidhean

I want to pick up on what Judith Turbyne said about the Christie commission and the wider question of policy ambition versus delivery. It feels as though there is a tension there. If we are to improve policy delivery and review an analysis of that it will require additional capacity. Civil service capacity will not get any bigger, certainly for the remainder of the current parliamentary session. The civil service in Scotland is bigger than it has ever been. We know roughly what our finances will be until 2026, and the civil service head count will probably go down.

At the same time as rightly advocating for improvements in policy delivery, your organisations all also legitimately advocate for lots of new policies. There are lots of really good ideas for policies that would improve people’s lives if we delivered them. However, there is a clear tension there. If we are to put more resources into improving the quality of how we do what we have already committed to doing, the resources will not be there for the new policy ideas.

Instead of adopting new policies and putting constant pressure on Government to come up with something new and flashy for every budget and every programme for government, should we be doing less better? Have we hit the point in devolution at which the capacity will not increase? We recognise that, as the Auditor General has pointed out, there is a gap between policy ambition and delivery. Should we focus on doing what we have already committed to doing at a much higher level of quality, instead of adopting new policies, regardless of what the merits of those new policies might be?

Thank you very much. I have one more question. Is there time, convener?

If it was to take that on, would it require a change in primary legislation or could it be done through secondary legislation?

Thank you, convener—not at all; those questions and answers were all important and useful for our evidence.

My line of questioning relates primarily to transport provision for secure accommodation. The questions will be mostly for Tony Buchanan, in the first instance.

You are probably aware of the evidence that we heard in previous sessions from secure accommodation providers, who laid out the complete absence, essentially, of transportation provision based in Scotland. They cited some examples, including worst-case scenarios whereby young people needed to be transported from one side of Glasgow to the other, or from Montrose to Ninewells hospital, and the transport provision had to come from Portsmouth or at least from somewhere in the midlands or somewhere else far south of here.

I presume that the local authority has to deal with the matter and find transportation provision. Why do you think that the situation is happening? Is it a case of market failure in Scotland, or is it something else that means that nobody is providing the service here?

Thank you. If anybody else on the panel wants to come in, they should feel free to indicate.

On the point about the centres themselves providing transport, what is currently blocking that? One way or another, transport needs to be paid for; at present, separate private providers are being paid to do it. Presumably, in an ideal world, the money that is being used for that could simply be reallocated and go straight to the centres, which would provide the service. It is obviously not as simple as that, so what is currently preventing the centres from putting on transport provision themselves?

I am keen to move on to talk about the COSLA-led working group and how we get to those solutions, but, first, given that evidence of such experiences is coming up monthly, as Ben Farrugia said, we face the issue of how to report it. My question is for Tony Buchanan initially. Are local authorities confident that, when a secure transport provider has had to physically restrain a child for whatever reason and by whatever method, the local authority responsible for that child is being informed of that? Are you confident that there is a consistent reporting mechanism for those instances? Does that vary by local authority? Are individual authorities making policy about what that reporting should look like, or is there something national?

I have a potential daft-laddie question about the funding. If a young person injures himself or has some kind of medical issue that means that they need to go from secure accommodation to a hospital, who pays for that? Someone needs to procure the transport provider. Does the secure accommodation centre pay for that from the block grant of funding that they are given for the child, or does it invoice the local authority for individual journeys? How does the funding work?

Might it delay the journey if negotiation about who is going to pay for the trip needs to take place before the young person is actually placed in a vehicle and taken to wherever they need to go for whatever it might be?

Tony Buchanan, the COSLA submission says that you believe that secure transport should be included in the regulations. Do you support the inclusion of a power in the bill for ministers to make regulations in this area? Is it correct to say that you are not looking for anything specific, such as the criteria and standards for secure transport, to be included in primary legislation and that you would be content with ministers having that regulation-making power?

I welcome your reading that out and putting it on the record. Bearing in mind the evidence that has been submitted to all of us in various guises at various points, how confident are you that the present reality reflects that?