Chamber and committees

Obviously, you are aware of the evidence that we took from organisations such as the Scottish Childminding Association. Over the past few years, since the policy started to come in, childminding has reduced significantly and there are now 26 per cent fewer childminders in Scotland. Some have obviously decided that they want to work in nurseries, but others have left for other reasons. Last week, the committee was advised that

“the main reason why childminders had been leaving or were planning to leave the workforce in the next five years was the significant increase in bureaucracy and paperwork and the duplicative quality assurance at national and local levels, which has quite simply become unsustainable.”

Graeme McAlister, who gave that evidence, went on to say:

“In my submission, I itemise 10 or 12 different frameworks and standards, each of which comes with different outcomes reporting”

and that, although quality assurance is obviously important,

“it has to be proportionate, joined up and light touch”.

To many people, including me, that duplication seems to be a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Mr McAlister went on to talk about local authorities planning

“twice-yearly inspections and twice-yearly self-evaluations.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 21 June 2022; c 28, 30.]

That is obviously putting off a lot of childminders; it also has policy implications. In addition, from a financial perspective, all that bureaucracy being imposed on childminders must cost a huge amount of resource. Are there any plans to have a one-stop shop, so that there is not that overlap and duplication of effort?

The figures show that there has been considerable overfunding, but COSLA has pointed out that, if 98 per cent of the anticipated number of children in an area take up the offer, you cannot, for obvious reasons, reduce staffing. You still need the same staff ratios and so on.

In any case, it looks like there has been, right from the start, an overestimation of the number of children requiring 1,140 hours of ELC. I understand that only 85 per cent of the 98 per cent who have taken up the offer of 1,140 hours have done so exclusively; that might be part of the reason, but surely, with nursery provision, you can look a couple of years ahead and see which children will require it, because they will be turning three. There is the exception of the vulnerable two-year-olds, but you will still have two or three years to plan ahead. However, there still seems to have been a significant overestimation of the number of children requiring the provision. Why is that the case?

Name and shame it!

Sorry, just to interject that no one considers that the Western Isles, with far-flung island communities, can possibly be the same as East Renfrewshire, which is a suburban authority. However, they both pay £5.31 an hour.

Ms Brumpton, do you want to comment on what has been said? I also want to ask you specifically about the hourly rates that are paid to partnership providers. I asked about that—as did my colleagues—in the previous session. We have found that there is great variance, from £5 in Orkney to £6.40 in West Lothian, and Daniel Johnson talked about the £5.31 standard that seems to have emerged. What is your view? We heard from COSLA that there are different settings and that things are not always comparable geographically and so on. COSLA said that the process is challenging, and I accept that it is, but do you believe, for example, that there should be a standard rate across Scotland?

I am sorry—Daniel Johnson and I were briefly discussing our own childminding experiences.

Michelle Thomson is next.

Yes.

Good morning, and welcome to the 20th meeting in 2022 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. Before we move to our first agenda item, I put on the record my thanks to members of the Senedd Finance Committee for attending the first interparliamentary finance committee forum here at Holyrood last Thursday. I also thank committee members for their contributions to that meeting. I look forward to continuing to share experiences and co-operate on common issues as the forum develops in the months and years to come.

Under agenda item 1, we will take evidence from two panels of witnesses as part of our post-legislative scrutiny of aspects of the financial memorandum for the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill. I welcome our first panel. Sarah Watters and Matthew Sweeney—Matthew is attending virtually—are from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, and David Robertson is chief financial officer at Scottish Borders Council. Good morning to you all. We will move straight to questions.

One of the interesting things in the vast number of documents that we were provided with for this meeting is the statement that

“On 25 June 2021 COSLA Leaders agreed that from 2022-23 a single standard formula should be used to distribute funding”

between local authorities. I am quite astonished that that has not happened before now. Is it going to happen in the current financial year?

That was to be my last question, but I have not really had a good answer to why there is such a variation in the hourly rates across local authorities.

Yes, but has there been an underspend or not? Has more money been allocated? We do not see anything to say that COSLA looked for X, that it got Y and that it should have had Z, Z being more than Y. In fact, from the figures that we have, it looks as if there have been underspends each year.

There were clearly overestimates of the number of children who would qualify. I find that bizarre given that you know how many three or four-year-olds you will have in the population from when they are born. A few might move around districts or the parents could emigrate, of course, so there will always be an element of flexibility in the figures. However, there seems to be a significant overestimate of the number of children, which has meant an overallocation of funds and more money being available than has been required. Is that the case?