Chamber and committees

A charity can apply on behalf of an individual—even if an individual was not in a position to apply for a dispensation or did not wish to, the charity could apply on their behalf. It is not just down to the individual. I hope that that reassures the member.

The amendment relates to specific concerns that OSCR raised about the impact of the discretion to grant dispensations of its own accord, because that would be a legal obligation.

Good morning. I will make a brief statement on the purpose of the SSI.

The SSI relates to our work to implement the Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2020, which introduced mixed-sex—that is, opposite-sex—civil partnerships in Scotland. Some 939 mixed-sex civil partnerships were entered into in Scotland in 2021 and 2022. We have been implementing the 2020 act in stages.

When the Scottish Government introduced the bill that became the 2020 act, we recognised that the introduction of mixed-sex civil partnerships could increase the risk of forced civil partnership. We do not consider that the risk of forced civil partnership is nearly as great as the risk of forced marriage. However, there is a range of protections against forced marriage, and we wanted to close any loophole that might allow those protections to be circumvented by forcing someone into a civil partnership instead. Therefore, section 13 of the 2020 act extends the forced marriage criminal offence to cover forced civil partnerships, too. I have just signed the Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2020 (Commencement No 5) Regulations 2023, which will commence section 13 of the 2020 act from 30 November 2023.

We noted in the policy memorandum accompanying the bill that part 1 of the Forced Marriage etc (Protection and Jurisdiction) (Scotland) Act 2011 contains civil measures on forced marriage, including forced marriage protection orders. We noted that we intended to introduce an SSI to extend forced marriage protection orders so that they can cover forced civil partnerships, too—that is the SSI that is before the committee. Those orders can contain prohibitions, restrictions, requirements or other provisions that are intended to protect someone from forced marriage. The provisions in the 2020 act to extend the forced marriage offence, and this SSI to extend the civil measure of forced marriage protection orders, provide a legislative package against forced civil partnership.

The SSI also makes two technical changes. First, it amends the definition of “marriage” in the 2011 act to include belief ceremonies. That is consequential to the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2014, which included provision for the solemnisation of marriage by authorised celebrants of belief bodies.

Secondly, the SSI provides for decrees of declarator of nullity of marriage, when they are granted by a sheriff, to be included in a register of divorces that is operated by National Records of Scotland. That reflects the fact that the 2011 act extended jurisdiction in proceedings for declarator of nullity of marriage to the sheriff court; previously, those proceedings could be heard only in the Court of Session. Declarators of nullity are declarations by the courts that, in the eyes of the law, the relationship never existed.

If the SSI is approved by Parliament, our intention is to bring it into force on 30 November, to coincide with the forced marriage criminal offence being extended to cover forced civil partnerships.

That outlines the purpose of the SSI that is before the committee.

Teachers are only one part—but an exceptionally important part—of reducing the poverty-related attainment gap. As I said earlier, we have seen an increase of 2,000 teachers on pre-pandemic levels and, as in other countries, the overall attainment levels have been impacted by Covid. However, in large part because of the exceptionally hard work of teachers and support staff, we have seen improvements in the attainment gap, such as the biggest single-year decrease in the attainment gap in primary numeracy and literacy since levels began. We absolutely still have more work to do on that but we have seen recovery in place and, as I said, that would in large part be down to the teachers.

There are a number of ways in which that work can be done; I pointed to some of those earlier. It is not just done by one teacher in front of a class, but involves specialist work by teachers for small groups of pupils and support for those with additional support needs. There are a number of ways that that can be done.

The quality of teaching and learning is also important. It is not possible to say that there is one thing that will improve attainment. There are different aspects to that, but I hope we can agree that teachers are an integral part of that. That is why the Government has placed such importance on increasing teacher numbers and why I have taken decisions to ensure that we do not see decreases in teacher numbers, which should be maintained throughout the year.

I am looking at the evidence of what has happened in the past, which shows that that has not happened in any council in any year in the past. That shows that the approach works and has been demonstrated to work in the past.

I had a number of discussions in the chamber on the issue of temporary and permanent staff, particularly with, I think, Mr Rennie. One point that local authorities continually raised with me was the difficulty in moving staff from temporary to permanent positions, because the money was not permanent—it was not baselined. That is why we moved from using Covid money to providing permanent funding.

We looked at the teacher census to see what had happened in that regard. It was clear that there had not been the movement that we had wanted to see. I would have hoped and expected to see an increase in the number of permanent contracts. Very understandably, because the money was temporary and because of the urgent need to get people in, the number of temporary contracts was high during Covid. I had hoped and expected that that would change, but that has not happened. However, I am keen to work with local government to see what can be done on that issue.

There is a myriad of ways of using a teaching workforce—it could be for supporting pupils with additional support needs or for smaller group work that assists with numeracy and literacy. I do not see those teachers as surplus but as a teaching workforce that can be used by a local authority to assist children in a variety of ways as it sees fit, particularly to try to improve attainment.

As we go through the year, we work with local authorities to put monitoring arrangements in place. One challenge for us was that the figures that showed the problem came out in December but, because our agreement with local authorities did not include additional monitoring, we did not have in-year monitoring last year. We want to improve on that. We are still looking at how that will be done, but it will probably be done quarterly and will flag up in-year issues with local authorities. Our discussions with COSLA are on-going. We do not want an overly onerous or a continuous monitoring process. We also recognise that numbers will go up and down because of recruitment and retention at different times of the year.

If there is an in-year issue, that will begin with concerns being raised at council officer or official level. They will look at the reasons for that and at the challenges in the area. If the issue has to be escalated to me and we have to have discussions with that particular council, that will happen. If we reach a point where the situation still has not improved by the end of the year, the last tranche of money can be withheld from a council at that point. That is absolutely a worst-case scenario and is one that we do not want to get to. We want to work with local authorities in-year to understand their specific circumstances. There is no blanket approach.

I will challenge something that you said in your question, if I may. We have not been taking the 2022-23 approach for years. We tried that one year. Actually, until 2018-19, we had exactly the system that we are now putting back in place. During that time, no council got to the stage of having a financial penalty. That proves that that approach worked and I anticipate that to happen again.

What we did for years is what we are just about to reintroduce. I hasten to add that I do not want it to be in place for years—I want to get to a different situation for the next financial year—but, when you look at what happened historically, not a single council in any of those years got to the point of having a financial penalty.

Yes, I think that we are agreeing with each other.

As the Deputy First Minister tried to explain to you yesterday in the chamber, Mr Kerr, £33 million of that comes from the 2022-23 budget. That has been done with exceptional difficulty and not without consequences, to ensure that we can improve the offer for 2022-23.