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Cabinet secretary, can you set out what the Scottish Government has done in this parliamentary session to reduce teachers’ workload, particularly in relation to bureaucracy?

I absolutely agree that the key to reducing teachers’ workload is the reduction of class contact. I welcome the proposals that you have set out—I think that they are pretty ambitious—but it is impossible to imagine that ambition being realised without substantial additional resource. What I am concerned about in the here and now is the unnecessary bureaucracy that teachers are still having to wade through, which it would not require additional recruitment or a significant amount of resource to reduce. As you have heard me say previously, the Scottish Government and local authorities could save money by tackling that bureaucracy. It has now been just over a decade since the tackling bureaucracy report was produced, but a substantial number of the recommendations in that report have not been implemented.

With respect, it sounds as though you are struggling to come up with an example of something that the Scottish Government has done during the current parliamentary session to reduce teachers’ bureaucracy workload.

As tempted as I am to get into a debate around education governance—I agree that having 32 different ways of doing it is not working—going down that path would be a huge piece of work that would take a number of years. Are there not things that can be done here and now?

To focus my question a bit more, my challenge to you is this: how confident are you that the work that you have commissioned will not go the same way as the 2014 tackling bureaucracy report and just sit on a shelf, and that, in 10 years, we will not all lament that it was never implemented and say, “Society has moved on, so we need another working group and another consultation”?

That is much appreciated. I recognise that you would not normally write to this committee about that, but I think that it would be valuable, given the increasing overlap with grooming gangs and child protection.

On the broader point, I mentioned yesterday the legal aid challenges and the fact that it is simply not available in large parts of the country because of the lack of solicitors. Does the Government still intend to bring something forward in that regard before the end of the current session of Parliament? I think that there are about 10 sitting weeks left.

As you say, legal aid is a demand-led service. I hope and expect that, as a result of the wider debate that we are now having, more survivors of grooming gangs and child sexual abuse may well come forward, and that will be one of many factors contributing to an increase in demand for legal aid.

I hope that what Siobhian Brown is bringing to the Parliament will provide some kind of interim relief. However, from what you are saying, it sounds as though there is a commitment—if I am overinterpreting, you can correct me—that, depending on the result of the election, you would intend to undertake wholesale or substantive reform of the system in the next session of Parliament. We are talking about a couple of small interim measures that Siobhian Brown will bring forward, but that is all that we should expect before the election.

This question might be for you, or it might be for the Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise. I am keen to understand how the new and on-going processes in relation to grooming gangs, data collection and wider efforts around institutional and organised child sexual abuse will overlap with the Government’s other existing commitments. In particular, I am seeking clarity on the commitment that the Government made in the “Keeping the Promise” implementation plan, which was published in early 2022, to review the legislative framework underpinning the care system. As far as The Promise Scotland is aware, that has not happened. Given the significant overlap here—I am sad to say that care-experienced children are disproportionately the victims and survivors of grooming gangs—will the Government offer an update on that review?

Very often, the core of the issue is that the system has failed those children because it is fragmented. My understanding was that the commitment to undertake that legislative review aimed to deal with that fragmentation and consolidate the legislation so that the system would be more coherent and cohesive.

I appreciate that. I recognise the capacity constraints that are involved in having quite a large, complex and important bill and then having this commitment on top of that, and I understand the sequencing point. Will you confirm that the intention is to take the first steps to begin the review of legislation underpinning the care system as soon as the bill is passed, which, all being well, will be before the end of this parliamentary session?

It would be good to get a handle on the timescale for that. I have picked up a lot of concern from those who are working in and around the child protection system and the wider care system who feel as though work on the bill has dropped off and that nobody is really sure where it is going.

I will press for clarity on that. Will you make a decision before the end of this parliamentary session—that is, before dissolution—on how to take forward the review?

Almost everybody else involved in the process agrees that an independent chair is probably the way forward at this stage. I recognise that you have not been in post for long and that you have had a bill that is unrelated to that question, so I am happy to follow up on that issue at a later point.