Chamber and committees

Thank you, convener—not at all; those questions and answers were all important and useful for our evidence.

My line of questioning relates primarily to transport provision for secure accommodation. The questions will be mostly for Tony Buchanan, in the first instance.

You are probably aware of the evidence that we heard in previous sessions from secure accommodation providers, who laid out the complete absence, essentially, of transportation provision based in Scotland. They cited some examples, including worst-case scenarios whereby young people needed to be transported from one side of Glasgow to the other, or from Montrose to Ninewells hospital, and the transport provision had to come from Portsmouth or at least from somewhere in the midlands or somewhere else far south of here.

I presume that the local authority has to deal with the matter and find transportation provision. Why do you think that the situation is happening? Is it a case of market failure in Scotland, or is it something else that means that nobody is providing the service here?

Thank you. If anybody else on the panel wants to come in, they should feel free to indicate.

On the point about the centres themselves providing transport, what is currently blocking that? One way or another, transport needs to be paid for; at present, separate private providers are being paid to do it. Presumably, in an ideal world, the money that is being used for that could simply be reallocated and go straight to the centres, which would provide the service. It is obviously not as simple as that, so what is currently preventing the centres from putting on transport provision themselves?

I am keen to move on to talk about the COSLA-led working group and how we get to those solutions, but, first, given that evidence of such experiences is coming up monthly, as Ben Farrugia said, we face the issue of how to report it. My question is for Tony Buchanan initially. Are local authorities confident that, when a secure transport provider has had to physically restrain a child for whatever reason and by whatever method, the local authority responsible for that child is being informed of that? Are you confident that there is a consistent reporting mechanism for those instances? Does that vary by local authority? Are individual authorities making policy about what that reporting should look like, or is there something national?

I have a potential daft-laddie question about the funding. If a young person injures himself or has some kind of medical issue that means that they need to go from secure accommodation to a hospital, who pays for that? Someone needs to procure the transport provider. Does the secure accommodation centre pay for that from the block grant of funding that they are given for the child, or does it invoice the local authority for individual journeys? How does the funding work?

Might it delay the journey if negotiation about who is going to pay for the trip needs to take place before the young person is actually placed in a vehicle and taken to wherever they need to go for whatever it might be?

Tony Buchanan, the COSLA submission says that you believe that secure transport should be included in the regulations. Do you support the inclusion of a power in the bill for ministers to make regulations in this area? Is it correct to say that you are not looking for anything specific, such as the criteria and standards for secure transport, to be included in primary legislation and that you would be content with ministers having that regulation-making power?

If it was to take that on, would it require a change in primary legislation or could it be done through secondary legislation?

Alex Thomas, I am particularly interested in the suggestion by the Institute for Government of a new statutory duty for the civil service to serve the public interest as well as the Government of the time.

That goes back to the exact point that you just made about countering the anti-democratic, deep-state argument in that regard. You said that the key would be parliamentary accountability. It sounds like you are essentially saying that the civil service should serve both the Government and the public through the Parliament. That leads to the question of what the civil service would be doing for and at the behest of the Parliament that the Government would not be asking of it.

Thank you very much. That is all from me, convener.

I again go back to one of John Mason’s earlier points. Dr Foster, in your written evidence you said that the Scottish Parliament is generally well regarded on public engagement. The flip side of that—and a point of criticism that is often levied both at members here and at the Scottish Government—is the length of time that it takes to make any particular decision or to deliver any particular policy in Scotland. Any piece of legislation will go through multiple consultations at Government level. It will then go through parliamentary consultation before it is considered by committees. That is not to mention co-design processes, which, for very good reason, are becoming more popular. However, in all sorts of areas of public policy those approaches are cumulatively leading to a lot of frustration about the length of time that it takes to deliver on issues that are not even vaguely politically contentious. There might be complete consensus in the Parliament on them, but it still takes us years longer to deliver on than either the public or we ourselves would want. That is in part—although not entirely—because of what has been referred to as “consultationitis”.

How do we wrestle with the tension between having thorough public engagement, which, by necessity, takes time, and delivering policies in the timescales that the public would expect of us and within which we would want to deliver?