Seòmar agus comataidhean

I am interested in the point that you made at the start about the Welsh Government’s relatively systematic approach to external evidence gathering and the perception that the approach is perhaps not as systematic here. I am trying to reconcile that with some of the criticism that has been put the Scottish Government’s way about its externalising too much of the policy development process. The most recent high-profile example was the criticism that the national care service came under for being, to a significant extent, a production of KPMG, because the contract for that bit of policy formulation was awarded to KPMG.

Is it simultaneously true that the Scottish Government does not gather enough external evidence when it is doing internal policy formulation and that it outsources too much policy formulation, or is the picture a bit more muddled and there is not really a neat distinction because both can be true?

Pam, I will pick up on what you said about legislation driving policy and policy driving practice. At the core of what you propose is the premise that we need to mandate such action if we want transformational change. I am interested in the comparison between that and the experience with co-ordinated support plans, which, I think, both you and Bill Scott have mentioned. They are not the same thing but, if we are looking at the same space, they are currently the only kind of plan that has statutory underpinning, which should result in a compulsion on relevant authorities to improve support for a young person.

However, as Bill Scott pointed out, that does not happen for the 99.5 per cent of young people who do not have a co-ordinated support plan. Even for the 0.5 per cent who have one, we have plenty of examples in which, despite the fact that it is a statutory plan that should give them the ability to pursue recourse if they do not get support, it does not happen.

I am interested in your thoughts on why that statutory approach has not worked for CSPs and why, if it has not worked, the bill would provide a solution and result in a different outcome—the compulsion on authorities that you are looking for.

I appreciate that, and you do not need me to tell you that there is absolute logical consistency in what you say. The conclusion is still that the bill will result in better practice. However, co-ordinated support plans are the result of another bit of legislation, and those statutory requirements have not resulted in the change in practice that we want. I accept what you say, in that they are not exactly the same as transition plans. However, the premise of my question remains: why will legislation result in the change in practice that we are all looking for on transitions when other bits of legislation in education that were intended for exactly the same thing—not specifically intended to address transitions, but intended to force a change in practice—have not forced a change? What is different with the bill?

That is great. Thank you very much.

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.

Taking on board your point that the ASL action plan is only part of a wider landscape—we have already discussed how cluttered that landscape might be—once the ARC pilots are completed, that will provide a valuable data set, and other data sets are being gathered. Should we expect more quantifiable actions in the next revision of the action plan, with stuff that we can measure? The difficulty for the Parliament at the moment is that it is hard to quantify the action plan and the progress between each set of revisions.

I accept that not everything that we are talking about is easily quantifiable—people’s lives are not that simple—but, at the same time, we have a duty to scrutinise the progress that the Government is making. At the moment, the action plan is quite hard to scrutinise in that respect. If you were to commit that the next revision of the action plan will include some more measurable outcomes, that would make Parliament’s role a lot easier.

Before I move on to my main line of questioning, I want to follow up on the issue of the financial memorandum, which is an important one. Obviously, we will take evidence from Ms Duncan-Glancy on the bill, but what engagement has the Government had so far on the financial memorandum and getting the additional information that you have identified as being needed?