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I do not have questions in this session, convener.

On that last point, just to be clear, would you prefer it if, rather than Parliament proceeding right now with full legislation in its current form, a bit more time was taken to do some co-development work with those who are directly experiencing transition? The bill or something similar could come back to us at a later point, with a bit more work having been done.

I have one more question. Part of the premise of the bill is that we will improve transitions if we compel public bodies to take on these duties. Compulsion is the core premise there. I think that we can all understand the thinking behind that: if we simply mandate something, it should happen, and that would resolve some of the inconsistencies, because there are some good experiences of transition out there. However, the comparator would be the co-ordinated support plan, as the one statutory plan that currently exists in this broad space. There are two problems with those plans. First, almost no children and young people with an additional support need have such a plan, and secondly, for a lot of those who do, it still does not result in what is in the plan being delivered.

I am interested in hearing your thoughts on that question. Is compulsion for public bodies the solution here, bearing in mind our experience with CSPs, or is the problem with CSPs a different, unrelated issue?

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?

I am not moving a motion to annul the instrument, because the specifics of it are harmless enough. I just want to put on the record that the Scottish Greens do not believe that it is good value for the public purse to give £1 million a year to a private school when there are four state music schools in Scotland that would benefit greatly from that money.

I appreciate that it is not as simple as saying that the £30 million in the current financial year will achieve X per cent of the capacity increase that is required and that the £80 million will therefore achieve the remaining Y per cent. Nevertheless, is there a way of quantifying what has been achieved with that £30 million? I recognise that I am, in essence, doing post-budget scrutiny rather than the pre-budget scrutiny that we are here for this morning. However, if we are to be confident that we are going to get value for money out of the £80 million, it would be good to be able to quantify what has been, or is currently being, achieved with the £30 million.

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?