Chamber and committees

Under the technical detail in the bill, a lot of that will be down to regulation and guidance, so that local authorities can decide the model that best suits them.

On your point about legislating for relationships, you cannot legislate for relationships but you can legislate to put people in the room and build those relationships, which is what the bill seeks to do. I have been looking at the action plan that the Scottish Government has published, and I know that much work has been done on co-ordinated support plans and the ASL review. From the evidence that the ministers Clare Haughey and Christina McKelvie gave to the committee last week, it seems that the national transitions strategy might, indeed, address some of these questions. That is all really valuable. In fact, work is on-going on the creation of qualifications for teaching support and additional support teachers in schools.

All of that will add to the approach and will be helpful and important, but none of it involves legislating to ensure that people get in the room and that somebody takes control of what is happening. That is the benefit that the bill will bring.

I think that Bill Scott was going to comment.

Thank you, convener, and good morning to the committee. It is a pleasure to be back in front of you. I want to thank you for all the evidence that you have taken on the bill. It is an incredibly important bill, as I am sure you all agree, so the people that this matters to will be hugely appreciative of the work that you have done.

I also put on record my thanks to Johann Lamont for lodging the previous bill, in session 5. I want to thank her for all the work that she did on her bill then, which has allowed me to bring it back.

In session 5, Johann identified what my own transition has taught me, which is that there is a problem and that thousands of young people are being failed every year. We know that disabled people are three times more likely to not be in education, employment or training—incidentally, that has not changed since 2008. A briefing was prepared by Inclusion Scotland in 2008, which I have with me today, and it says that the figure has not changed since then.

There is a five-point gap in the number of disabled people who are getting grades A to C at higher. Disabled people’s economic inactivity rate is three times higher than the inactivity rate of non-disabled people. Disabled people are half as likely to be employed as non-disabled people, and the situation is worse in certain groups, such as people with a learning disability.

Perhaps the hardest thing to hear is that, at 16, young disabled people have the same aspirations as everyone else but, by the age of 26, they believe that nothing they can do will change their lives. At a time when they should be excited about their future and thinking about what and who they want to be, we are stripping them of hope. At that point in their life, it is hardly any wonder that they feel like project managers. They are not focused on their dreams or ambitions; they are project managing their own life and the future that it brings. That cannot continue. I remember my own transitions, when we finally got a plan in place and my mum said to me, “I can now be your mum again.” That has never really left me, and I think that it is one of the reasons why we have to take this forward.

As I said a moment ago, this is not a new issue. Inclusion Scotland said in its 2008 briefing that,

“if the correct support is not delivered during this crucial phase, it is likely that disabled people will not enter college to obtain qualifications crucial to prospective employers. If this occurs, they will end up NEET and remain in limbo, it becomes increasingly difficult to escape it”.

That was right in 2008 and it remains right now. We know that progress has been too slow, and we cannot leave this to chance. If we are serious about addressing these issues among young disabled people, their move to adulthood cannot be left to chance. It is a matter of equality, human rights and justice.

It also should not rest on a manifesto commitment and ministers acting in good faith, because we have seen what can happen when they come and go. When the bill was lodged the first time round, it was noted in committee that the Scottish National Party manifesto committed to a national transitions strategy, but, at that point, it had been five years since that commitment had been made and there was still no strategy.

We also know that things can be deprioritised depending on leadership, such as could happen with the deposit return scheme. I do not say that to be provocative, convener, but to highlight the transient nature of strategies that are plans and not laws.

Much action is taking place already—I recognise that, and I am sure that we will cover a lot of that today—but we really need a bill to address this issue. You might ask why it should be my bill. To that, I say this. It does not undo current work; it adds to it. It creates a legislative structure for the one child, one plan approach that the additional support for learning review and the co-ordinated support plan review recommend. It requires a transition strategy in law to be laid before Parliament, protecting it against changes of Government or leadership. It provides an opportunity for scrutiny that the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 does not, and it addresses issues in the Morgan review, which says that

“the implementation of Additional Support for Learning legislation is over-dependent on committed individuals, is fragmented, inconsistent and is not ensuring that all children and young people who need additional support are being supported to flourish and fulfil their potential.”

It also says that additional support for learning is always somebody else’s problem, and my bill seeks to address that.

A lot of people agree with me. We will talk about this later, but a number of organisations—including the Law Society of Scotland, the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland, Enable Scotland and the National Autistic Society—believe that the bill will make the change that we need to see.

Members may ask why we simply do not wait to see whether the current strategy works. In response, I would say this: we have heard that before. This year, I will be 42. I graduated in 2004, two years after I should have done, because my transition was not planned properly. Despite the blood, sweat and tears, I got there in the end. I think that we can all agree that, if it takes the tenacity of a future parliamentarian, one good worker—I know that we have all heard of the worker from Falkirk, who did some great work—and a fighter mum to get there, something needs to change.

Yes, absolutely. I thank Stephen Kerr for that question.

The definition that we have chosen in the bill is the definition of a disabled person in the Equality Act 2010. The reason that we have chosen that definition is that I was content that that definition is broad. It includes people on the autistic spectrum and those with learning disabilities and with mental ill health, because it is about how an impairment impacts on their social interaction and the way that they interact with society. If a person’s impairment has a long-term impact on those things, they are considered to be a disabled person.

The Scottish Government’s guidance on definitions of people who can get support at transitions, which I think is provided through a service called Enquire, includes that definition of disabled people. To be honest, that shows a little bit of inconsistency, because, on the one hand, the current legislation talks about people with additional support needs, but, on the other hand, the Government is giving out information that uses the definition that is in the Equality Act 2010. I think that it is correct for the Government to do that, because it is about specifically addressing the needs of this group of people. The other groups of people who are included in the statistics for, and those who have, additional support needs are care leavers and young people who are gifted, which is why that definition is broader.

I am not suggesting for a second that those children do not have additional support needs—they do—or that they do not need support—they do. I am suggesting that there is a cohort of people who are deliberately categorised as having a protected characteristic in the Equality Act 2010, because it recognises the fundamental oppression and discrimination that they face, and the bill is for that group of people. People worry that that means that it does not include certain impairment categories. However, the Equality Act 2010 is drawn broadly for that specific purpose. If we look back at Hansard from the time when the act was being developed, there was a lot of discussion in Parliament about how you would define disabled people, which looked at shifting the narrative from a medical model focus to a social model focus. That is why I think the definition of a disabled person in the Equality Act 2010 is the right one for this piece of legislation.

I would also like to put on record my thanks to the petitioner for drawing this really important issue to the attention of not just this committee but other committees and, indeed, the Parliament.

I am particularly concerned about the issues that have been raised about people who have been victims of, or witnesses to, crime and who felt unable to present what they had seen or experienced because of a lack of support to communicate in the way that they needed. It is really important that we do a bit of extra work before we close the petition.

I am keen that we explore what the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service is doing, what Police Scotland’s understanding is and what local authorities are doing around the use of an appropriate adult in situations where a person needs support to communicate with the police.

Once we have established those lines of communication and enabled that work to continue, we will be in a position to say that we can close the petition. I feel that we need to do that little bit extra work and then we will get there.

Again, I would like to say thanks very much to the petitioner.

That is okay.

Thank you. I will stop there for now.

I appreciate that answer. The question, though, is not so much about adult disability payment and benefits that are currently being delivered. It is about why, if the Scottish Government believes in paying a one-off payment in times of hardship, as you have just described in relation to clause 7 of the UK bill, it has not done that.

I am struggling a bit, if I am honest, because the child payment was announced a few years back and eligibility for that payment was clearly to be from 0 to 16. I appreciate that it was rolled out initially to under-sixes and then to over-sixes on 14 November last year, but that is something that the Government should have been planning for. I am not sure that I accept that it is fair to say that Social Security Scotland was overstretched because of a surprise payment. It was not really a surprise. It surely would have been in the making.

I take the point about this year not having that same pressure but, again, there are other benefits that are not rolled out yet in Social Security Scotland. Are we just going to keep seeing pressure on timescales? It feels as though there was not much planning for that. I suppose those were questions about the planning.

My final question is, when did you ask the DWP for the data? When the minister appeared at committee before Christmas, my understanding was that, if the data had been shared by 31 January, the payments would have been rolled out in a timely fashion as preferred. When did the Scottish Government ask the DWP to provide the data at the beginning of January?

Sorry, I am confused. How does it not relate?