Chamber and committees

I will come to child protection in a moment, but I first want to ask about Education Scotland and the new national agency, because that is the next meaty part of the report. The report talks about a “cluttered landscape”, “patchy” delivery in schools and teachers feeling “bombarded” with the material that is provided. You have also talked about a teacher-responsive approach. To be honest, I am not sure what that means. I get the idea, but what difference would a teacher notice with the new national agency in comparison with what they currently receive?

The Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland was quite forceful this week about the particular issue of restraint. We still have problems with members of the profession using inappropriate restraint methods. How important is it that the inspector makes that a significant area of work and that we look at how employers are dealing with such issues? How do we address issues to do with restraint?

You talk about the hierarchy and the top-down approach. Are you saying that the national agency will have a filtering or gatekeeping role to make sure that the teachers and education providers are put first, and that it will have a role in filtering any interference that contradicts that? You talk in the report about co-ordination and coherence; is that what you mean?

How do the proposed powers impact on the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005?

Are there any barriers in principle to the data sharing, or is it just a matter of working through the technicalities? Why is it taking so long?

That is fine.

I am sorry, but the commissioner’s office is not making such an argument. It is arguing that we should use this time to work up emergency powers at a reasonable pace for implementation in an emergency rather than put them in place now, when there is no emergency. The commissioner’s office argues that we should take our time now to get this right because, as we will discuss later, there are serious questions about the prescriptive model that you are adopting.

Why are we not taking our time to produce something now for implementation later? I know that there is more time now to consider the bill than there would be in an emergency—I am not arguing about that, and that is not what the commissioner’s office is talking about. It says that we should prepare draft emergency legislation now so that it can be implemented when an emergency arises.

We have explored the take-up issue before. I have no issue with the technical changes to the amounts, but I feel that the take-up for two-year-olds still seems to be lagging way behind where it should be. It was 11 per cent in 2019, 9 per cent in 2020 and 13 per cent in 2021. Although there has been an increase in take-up, which is good, the figure is still nowhere near the 40 per cent that is the estimated percentage of two-year-olds who would be entitled to the offer. I know that there were issues with regard to identifying the right young people and getting them into the system. Can you update us on any progress that has been made in that respect?

You have a majority, so you will get the bill through.

Convener, could I ask a few questions about the issue of prisons, which was raised at last week’s evidence session?