Seòmar agus comataidhean

That was a really useful answer from Tracey Francis. I want to see whether Scott Richardson-Read and Rebecca Williams have any thoughts on the matter.

Without wanting to put words in your mouth, Tracey—you can cut me off if this representation is unfair—I think that you essentially said that we could prioritise non-legislative approaches first and then, if they do not work, a legislative approach similar to the one that is taken in the bill might be appropriate.

Scott and Rebecca, would that be your view, or would you like to see legislation at this point?

[Inaudible.]—identifies a line of questioning on that point in our committee process.

I would like to take a step back from the issue of transitions specifically, because a lot of the evidence that we have taken has been about the wider landscape for young people with additional support needs and how their experience feeds into the points of transition. It has been two years since the Morgan review. I think that we would all recognise the challenges with the bill, but the core motivation for it is that there is a significant problem right now. Although there is good practice elsewhere and improvements have been made, it will not feel to a young person who is having a very poor experience at the moment that there has been much of an improvement.

What can the Government point towards as having been done in the two years since the Morgan review that represents significant progress off the back of that review? I am asking not only about the situation with regard to transitions, but about the wider context that feeds into the transition experience.

That is evident from the revisions that have been made to the ASL plan in that two-year period, which have gradually been getting more ambitious. That said, a lot of that plan involves objectives such as, “Meet stakeholder X, bring together Y group of stakeholders, start a discussion about Z.” Those are not actions that we can clearly measure the impact of. You can tick a box and say, as you have done, that 24 of the actions have been completed. It is easy to convene a meeting and say, “Objective met,” because everybody has got together round the table and talked about it. That is not the outcome that we are looking for. The outcome that we want to achieve is a more positive experience for the young person with the additional need, for their school, for their family and so on.

Do you think that the ASL action plan, even with the most recent revisions, is as ambitious as the Government’s overall ambitions for young people with additional needs? Are your ambitions reflected in the plan as it currently stands?

Great—thank you.

That is useful.

My question is primarily for Mike Corbett, because he mentioned the Morgan review. Since then, there have been two revisions to the additional support for learning action plan, which includes at least half a dozen references to transition and improving transition. Have the repeated updates to that national strategy filtered through to schools? From your work, are you aware of them filtering through at local authority level?

The point about variation between children and adult services within a local authority and variation between local authorities has been mentioned a couple of times. There are two schools of thought about what the bill could achieve. One is that it would force a level of consistency. The alternative point of view, however, is that the bill could result in more tension, because it is not about creating a consistent approach among children’s services in general across every local authority or among adult social care services—that is a different debate that we are having in relation to the national care service. There is a potential danger that the bill will add more tension, because the approach that a local authority takes to its children’s services will still be different from its approach to its adult social care services, but the bill will create a third element in relation to what is expected nationally. Do you have any concerns that, rather than create more consistency, the bill will just add a third approach, which the other two approaches—the local authority’s pre-existing practice—will have to wrestle with?

Cabinet secretary, I am interested in hearing some more detail about the delivery plan for the expansion of the provision of free school meals to those in primary 6 and primary 7. In the current financial year, £30 million has been allocated to that, and £80 million is allocated to it for the next financial year. Between those two amounts, do you think that that is sufficient funding to achieve the required capacity? How is the Scottish Government monitoring the deployment of the £30 million in the current year? Has the deployment of that funding and the capacity expansion that has been achieved so far indicated to you whether the £80 million might be sufficient?

You mentioned the interim expansion to P6 and P7 on the basis of SCP eligibility, which would apply to 20,000 children. That is fantastic news. Will that apply from the start of the next school year, in August, or do you expect councils to implement that closer to the start of the financial year?

Finally, how do we make sure that as many of those 20,000 eligible children as possible take up the free school meals? I recognise that there has always been a significant difference between eligibility and uptake. I presume that the most effective way of doing that will be to work with Social Security Scotland and those who are delivering the SCP, to make sure that those bodies notify eligible families, as well as working through the councils and schools. How will you make sure that all the eligible families are aware that that opportunity is available to them?