The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
Displaying 1751 contributions
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 30 September 2025
Ross Greer
That is not what I was planning to ask about, but I wanted to follow up on a previous comment. I will condense this question a bit.
The Fiscal Commission did an excellent piece of work on the cost of climate mitigation and adaptation. The Climate Ready Clyde group, which includes the greater Glasgow local authorities, Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and the University of Glasgow, did an excellent report a couple of years ago, which projected that the cost of climate breakdown—not the efforts that we are taking to reduce emissions but the impact that is already locked in—will be something in the region of £400 million a year by 2040 in the greater Glasgow area.
Does the Government have any figures? Have you come to any conclusion on what the cost of adaptation will be? That cost is entirely separate from the record amount of money that is going into mitigation—the £4.9 billion of climate-positive spending is excellent. Does the Government have a ballpark figure that it is planning around in relation to the locked-in damage that will already be done?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 30 September 2025
Ross Greer
Housing and energy being ideal for that, as the returns are very stable.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 30 September 2025
Ross Greer
Thank you.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 30 September 2025
Ross Greer
I accept the point about certainty, but the review is now three years old. We all agree on the importance of supporting small businesses in Scotland. The overwhelming majority of businesses in Scotland are small. However, if the primary concern is that businesses require certainty, surely the Government has had the opportunity over the past couple of years to enter into a discussion with the small business community about how it thinks that a quarter of a billion pounds would be best spent to support it, and to ensure that any change is brought in over a longer period of time so that there is certainty and businesses can plan around it.
I find such a striking juxtaposition between, on the one hand, your remarks about getting best value for money and what is said in the medium-term financial strategy and, on the other, reviews being commissioned, coming back with what I think are useful but challenging conclusions, and then just being discarded. It would be one thing for the Government to say, “We will deal with this over a longer period of time because any snap changes in tax regimes can cause disruption,” but that is not what happened. It was just discarded, because politically it was hard.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Ross Greer
I have no further supplementary questions. That covers it.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Ross Greer
Absolutely. That was really useful.
Perhaps I can press you just a bit further. I have sat on this and similar committees for nine years now and, in that time, really compelling cases have been made to us for all the things that teachers need to be trained in but which they are not being trained in. A couple of times in that period, the committee has done inquiries on initial teacher education, and it has, quite often, come to the same conclusion that, with the best will in the world, and even with a full four-year degree course rather than the one-year postgraduate diploma in education, teachers cannot be trained in absolutely everything.
We are coming to the point that half of all children in Scotland have some kind of additional support need. I am not saying that they are all complex needs—they can vary from their being exceptionally gifted or having English as a second language to the kind of complex needs that your daughter has. Some of the feedback that we get is that, realistically, not every teacher can be trained in everything, and what is really needed is more specialist staff in schools. In your view, what is the balance between trying to train every classroom teacher and every classroom assistant and having more specialist staff on hand in every school?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Ross Greer
That is really useful—thank you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Ross Greer
I would like to start with Kate Sanger. You mentioned that a lot of teachers and school staff end up using restraint and seclusion because they feel that they have no other option. If I picked you up right, in your view, that is because they have not been trained and supported to understand what the other options are.
Will you expand on that a bit and explain what other approaches could be taken that would mean that the instances in which restraint might be inevitable could be reduced to almost zero? What is it that teachers and other school support staff are not being supported and trained to do?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 24 September 2025
Ross Greer
That is great. I am conscious of the time. I ask Simon Webster to set out Enable’s position on the positive alternatives to restraint and seclusion. What can teachers and school staff be trained and supported to do that would avoid restraint and seclusion?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 17 September 2025
Ross Greer
Thank you, convener—I was almost going to say good afternoon; it feels like that, but it is still morning, so, good morning all.
I want to tease out some issues. There has been quite a lot of consensus this morning, but in the SCRA’s written submission there were definitely points of difference. In particular, a lot of other organisations have welcomed the enhanced role for the reporter, but the SCRA flagged up issues to do with power imbalance.
We have touched on that a little bit already, but perhaps Alistair Hogg could draw out some of those concerns for us.