Chamber and committees

It is a community effort. It is usually done by more than one person in a particular way. I think that, by and large, community land is used rather than individual land. However, I am not sure—I am no expert on it.

There are those who are under 16 who are cut out of the system, and there are those who need care after they are 26, which is an arbitrary age.

I think that I am correct in saying—I have just looked, but I could not find the relevant part of the oral evidence—that there is a lack of clarity about the legal responsibility for ensuring the safety of people who visit cemeteries and for dealing with the risk of headstones falling over. If there is such a lack, I think that we could invite the Scottish Government to indicate whether it believes that it should provide clarity by allocating specific legal responsibility for safety in cemeteries, quite possibly to local authorities, as they would appear to be the only public bodies that could be endowed with or given that responsibility.

If there is some lack of clarity, in the event of any further ghastly incident or accident, the victim or their family could be left in the virtually legally impossible situation of having no clarity and no redress against anyone. Therefore, I think that it behoves the committee at least to ask the Scottish Government to consider whether that could be done and, if not, why not.

In a modern, civilised society, there needs to be clarity on such matters. Of course, property owners have very clear responsibilities in law, but if you do not know who the property owner is, you face a very difficult task indeed. Fortunately, we are talking about something that probably happens only rarely, but we should at least ask about the issue, as the Scottish Government could provide clarification.

I must apologise for being unable to come last night, but I am so pleased that my colleagues were able to be there.

I want to pursue some points that Laura Pasternak made in response to earlier questions about what she would like to see the committee do or recommend being done.

Laura, you said that legislation may require to be changed and you referred to supervision orders. Will you expand on that? Obviously, we want to try to help to identify precisely what needs to be done in terms of changes to both the law and practice. I appreciate that care is, by its nature, a general, nebulous concept that can involve all sorts of things. We have heard that it can involve access to finance, housing, arranging things, physical care and mental health provision. It covers a wide spectrum, which makes it quite difficult to have clarity, but we need clarity in order to be of whatever help we can be in recommending that necessary changes are made.

I suppose I have two questions. First, will you expand on the legislative change that you believe is required? Is it a matter of definitions? I think that, to some extent, what is set out in the Promise aims to avoid cliff edges and to remove anomalies resulting from certain care ending abruptly at the age of 21 or 26. Is that the definition that you want changed? Secondly, will you expand on what you believe should be done in relation to supervision orders?

I am sorry to be long winded. I used to be a lawyer, and in that work you get paid by the word. [Laughter.] It is hard to kick the habit. However, we are here to help and we want to get as much clarity as we can.

Do you mean that the system does not have the powers in law?

Indeed.

We should encourage the minister to set out in a letter Callum Isted’s proposal as a potential option. The question is whether local authorities would like that to be done and whether they would like the Scottish Government to take on the responsibility of looking into procurement. As I pointed out to the minister, somewhat in vain, if a national procurement scheme is better able to get the best price possible in such an exercise and can do so in a way that improves provision, we owe it to Callum—as does the minister—to ensure that that is done.

I have a couple of questions, the first of which is about the 2014 act, which Joanne McMeeking said a moment ago has not been fully implemented. Just for my benefit—I am sorry to say that I do not have detailed knowledge of this—do you mean that parts of the act have not been commenced, or that everything is in force and in operation but has not yet been brought into practice?

I see. It is not really the children’s hearings system itself that is failing, but implementation or follow through.

I will ask one more question.

Clearly, availability of sufficient funding is one of the major issues. Local authorities are under financial pressures and one feels, perhaps, that the third sector is very often the port of call when it comes to making funding reductions, either in total or in part.

Is it a serious issue that, very often, voluntary organisations that provide aspects of care in this area get funding on a hand-to-mouth, year-to-year basis? My experience of working with many such organisations in Inverness and the Highlands is that they often spend as much time trying to raise the money that they need in order to function as they do actually functioning. Therefore, the problem is funding being year to year, and for even less than a year, in some cases.

Is that a serious issue? If so, is the answer to move to three-year or five-year funding, which would provide more security for organisations and would enable them to hire people more readily? People would also be more ready to be hired, rather than their not taking a position because it gives them only 12 months’ security of tenure.

—to which I expect we will come, but, in the interests of equity, we should say that many parts of rural Scotland have roads that are not up to scratch or not fit for purpose. Emma Harper has made the point that one reason for keeping the petition open is that we do not have timescales for the implementation of the proposed works, which is an issue that we could perhaps press.

On a wider note, I am struck by the substantial costs of upgrading or doing anything to roads, especially dualling them. We are certainly talking about hundreds of millions of pounds for relatively short sections. However, I am also conscious of the safety issues, particularly the number of deaths, on roads in the Highlands and on many trunk roads around the country.

We should keep the petition open. We need to ask more questions; I have identified only one, but colleagues might well have others.