Seòmar agus comataidhean

I thank the “Hope instead of handcuffs” campaign, the minister and her officials for their help with amendment 212.

It was a bit of a revelation to all committee members when we realised that no standards are currently set for secure transportation in Scotland. There is a black hole in terms of data on what is going on. No one involved in the system, including accommodation providers and councils, is content with the current situation. Everybody believes that we need to develop standards.

We have no shortage of stories from young people about totally inappropriate use of restraint and deception to get them into vehicles, and about what I hope we would consider to be unacceptable behaviour by transport providers. However, they are all anecdotes—there is no systematic reporting of such incidents. Sometimes, accommodation providers are made aware of an incident and sometimes the council is made aware of it, but at other times, nobody is made aware of it.

Amendment 212 would create a new section that addresses standards and reporting requirements concerning secure transport. Proposed new section 90A of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 would place a duty on the Scottish ministers to create standards for service providers, and would require that those standards be developed in consultation with appropriate stakeholders.

The same approach is taken with care services, including with secure accommodation, so we will not be creating something new and unique; we will be filling a gap in the system.

Proposed new section 90A includes an initial minimum but non-exhaustive list of what to include in the standards. That is in order to give the greatest flexibility and to ensure that the process is, through consultation, led to the greatest extent possible by those whom it affects, rather than our being unduly restrictive through primary legislation at this point.

I highlight that proposed new section 90A(2)(a)(iv) requires that standards are set in relation to use of restraint. The provisions do not ban restraint—for the obvious reason that everyone in a car should, as a minimum, be restrained by their seat belt. Some restraint during transportation is not only reasonable; it is required by other legislation. Being in a moving vehicle creates obvious risks that might make further restraint necessary. However, committee members and the minister are all aware of evidence of totally unnecessary use of restraint. Therefore, clearly, standards should be set.

The approach of setting standards via secondary legislation also gives the opportunity for further direct parliamentary scrutiny of the standards once they have been developed and have come back to us.

Proposed new section 90B would create a corresponding duty on providers of a secure transportation service to meet the standards and on those who commission their services to ensure that the standards are being met.

I welcome the minister’s commitment to Miles Briggs to look more at data collection. Mr Briggs and the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland have surfaced some very important points, but apart from that we have covered the issue quite comprehensively, so I will press amendment 212.

Amendment 212 agreed to.

Section 22 agreed to.

Section 23—Secure accommodation services

That is useful. Finally, have you had such a conversation with all the organisations? I am sure that you have engaged with them throughout the bill process, but bodies such as RSPB Scotland, Nourish Scotland and the Landworkers Alliance have all given the committee incredibly similar submissions on exactly that point. Have you already started engaging them in discussion to explain your approach? In some cases, it sounds as though all that is needed is clarification; in others, there is disagreement over policy intention, which is fine. Have you engaged with them to clarify those points?

Apologies, convener. My bus valiantly attempted to ford some flooded roads this morning, but it took longer than the driver expected it to take.

I would like to get a bit of clarity on some of what the convener touched on in his original line of questioning on the balance of funding allocation between tier 1 and tier 2 and above. From the evidence that was submitted to the committee and the consultation responses, it is fair to say that a number of organisations have made an assumption about that allocation and have objected to it, while others have stated that they felt it to be ambiguous.

For clarity, I will paraphrase what the financial memorandum says—I think in paragraph 21. It states that, in broad terms, the Government intends to maintain underpinning support through base payments, under tier 1, and universally accessible support for land managers undertaking climate and nature actions through the enhanced mechanism, under tier 2, and to do so at similar levels to current direct support. The organisations that have submitted evidence to us have read that in two different ways. Some have read it as meaning that the individual payments will be roughly similar to the current level of payment, with new conditions, potential capping and so on. Others have taken it to mean that the overall balance of budget allocation between the amount of money given to tier 1 and the amount given to tier 2 and above will stay roughly as it is at the moment.

Could you clarify which of those readings is correct?

At the moment, there is no intention for tier 2 to become a larger share of the overall budget. As you have laid it out for the purposes of this conversation, tier 1 prevents things from getting worse. There are conditions in tier 1 to prevent further environmental degradation, but it is not about improvement as such. Tier 2 is about improvement, but what we have in front of us does not give any indication that tier 2 will become a larger share of the overall budget.

That is useful. However, going back to what the convener said, you can see the challenge for us, given that those decisions will all be made at a much later date; they are not what we are looking at now. We are being asked to scrutinise what is in front of us, but the challenge is that what is in front of me does not give me any confidence—because it leaves a blank space in that area—that the current bill and the Government’s financial assumptions around it will contribute towards the statutory climate targets that we already have, never mind the nature targets that we are likely to put into statute, the Government’s policy objectives and so on.

How have you gone about engaging with the Government team that is leading on the development of the climate plan, for example, to make sure that the bill is pointing in the same direction as the statutory climate targets in the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019 and the plan that is being produced for later this year?

Thank you very much. That was really useful.

That was useful—thank you. You have pointed out that tier 2 has more conditionality around climate, nature restoration and so on. Correct me if I am wrong but, at the moment, the vast majority of funding goes through tier 1, which is largely unconditioned. The tension that has come out in a lot of the evidence that has been submitted to us lies in how to square the circle between the ministerial commitment on no cliff edge, which you have mentioned, and other ministerial commitments for a transformation in agriculture, which is in the vision statement, the statutory targets for climate and emissions reduction and the statutory targets that we will soon have on nature. It is hard for me to square what is in the financial memorandum and the bill with other commitments that ministers have made and other legislative commitments that are already in place. There will not be a significant shift in funding in the short to medium term. Therefore, what is proposed in the bill will not result in a shift towards lower emissions, more restoration of nature and so on, to which the Government has already committed and which the Parliament has already put in law.

I am sorry to cut across you, but you must acknowledge that they do not improve the situation. At the moment, Scotland is a massively ecologically degraded country with a significant net contribution to global climate change. We recognise that something needs to change, so it is not good enough to say that, at the moment, the basic payments are conditioned on not making things much worse. We have all agreed—the Parliament, the Government and the sector—that the status quo is not good enough. The conditions for the basic payments really do not fly, do they?