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My question follows on from what you said before. You said that although it does not happen all the time, the Law Society has to step in, or put a judicial factor in place, regrettably often. In the light of the McClure case and others, is there a conflict between the Law Society regulating the work of solicitors and it putting a factor in place to take over when something goes wrong? Was that considered in how the bill was drafted?

The bill seeks to consolidate the law, but there are still other pieces of legislation on the statute book that provide the power to appoint a judicial factor in specific circumstances. Was any thought given to bringing all that into this bill? Why did you not do that? As a result of that, are there still situations in which the responsibility for appointing a judicial factor is not as clear as it could be?

You could have modified them.

That is helpful. You felt that changing those provisions in other legislation was out of scope for this bill, as it would have widened it beyond your interest.

I think that the Faculty of Advocates was saying in its submission that, after someone is appointed, there could be a dispute about how they are carrying out their functions and that, in those circumstances, it might be helpful for that individual to be able to go back to the court and seek clarification that what they are doing is in order and consistent with the powers that they were appointed to use.

Thank you, convener. I want to place on the record that I remain strongly opposed to the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021. I think that the legislation undermines free speech and I believe that it should not be subject to commencement when serious concerns remain about how it will be policed in practice.

To be honest, I am appalled by that answer. I understand why the report was commissioned, but I do not think that it is consistent with what the then Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills said as the bill went through Parliament. I was on and off the Education and Skills Committee throughout that time. He acknowledged that it was unlikely that documentary evidence would be available in every circumstance. He did not talk about certainty; he talked about the balance of probabilities. He offered repeated reassurances that people would be believed and that the principle would be that, where survivors came forward and offered testimony, it would be taken as fact, not that it would be questioned.

The second thing that I find pretty hard to swallow, given that it was discussed during the passage of the bill, is the relationship between parents and the local authority that has been presented. It is not true; it was not factually correct then and it is still not correct to this day. Local authorities, through social work and education, wield a huge amount of authority over families. When they suggest things and direct things, vulnerable families feel under pressure to accept them. It is not a relationship of equals and it is wrong to categorise it in that way. Given what we hear from survivors, I had hoped that we would be looking to find a way to say yes rather than finding reasons to say no.

I am interested in what the Deputy First Minister has to say on the commitments that were given through the bill and on the relationship between parents and local authorities that she has set out. Even now in 2024, that is not my experience of what it is like for many families in my constituency.

Surely we should be responding to what did happen rather than what should have happened. It is another example of the system failing that people have come up against. The system has not been working as it should, so we would not expect you to dismiss that and say that it should have been done differently. That is what it sounds like.

There do not have to be records. I know that from my own constituents. What someone has to prove is that, on the balance of probability, something was more likely to have happened than not. I am aware of payments being made to people who have not been able to find records but who have been able to put together other circumstantial evidence to support an application. In this case, we have a great many people from various parts of Scotland, particularly in the Glasgow area, who are able to corroborate and confirm that the experiences that other people are talking about are the same as theirs.

That starts to look to me like something that would meet that test or certainly that should get far enough through the process to allow Redress Scotland to make an analysis of the evidence. However, because of the individual nature of the applications going forward, we are not looking at that collective picture. To me, that is not consistent with what your predecessor meant when he recognised that this is a grey area, that these issues are very difficult and that they would have to be looked at in detail. If they cannot even be looked at in detail, how do you work out whether they meet the balance of probabilities test?

Redress Scotland works for you. Redress Scotland works for the Government.

I agree, and I think that we would get a better quality of response if the petition came back in a different form. The reality is that, if we were to contact organisations or local authorities on the current premise, we would move into what would be quite a political space around funding rather than something constructive. From my limited experience of the committee, it works best when there is a defined goal or something that is achievable at the end of the petition.