Chamber and committees

On that last point, just to be clear, would you prefer it if, rather than Parliament proceeding right now with full legislation in its current form, a bit more time was taken to do some co-development work with those who are directly experiencing transition? The bill or something similar could come back to us at a later point, with a bit more work having been done.

I have one more question. Part of the premise of the bill is that we will improve transitions if we compel public bodies to take on these duties. Compulsion is the core premise there. I think that we can all understand the thinking behind that: if we simply mandate something, it should happen, and that would resolve some of the inconsistencies, because there are some good experiences of transition out there. However, the comparator would be the co-ordinated support plan, as the one statutory plan that currently exists in this broad space. There are two problems with those plans. First, almost no children and young people with an additional support need have such a plan, and secondly, for a lot of those who do, it still does not result in what is in the plan being delivered.

I am interested in hearing your thoughts on that question. Is compulsion for public bodies the solution here, bearing in mind our experience with CSPs, or is the problem with CSPs a different, unrelated issue?

Before I move on to my main line of questioning, I want to follow up on the issue of the financial memorandum, which is an important one. Obviously, we will take evidence from Ms Duncan-Glancy on the bill, but what engagement has the Government had so far on the financial memorandum and getting the additional information that you have identified as being needed?

Taking on board your point that the ASL action plan is only part of a wider landscape—we have already discussed how cluttered that landscape might be—once the ARC pilots are completed, that will provide a valuable data set, and other data sets are being gathered. Should we expect more quantifiable actions in the next revision of the action plan, with stuff that we can measure? The difficulty for the Parliament at the moment is that it is hard to quantify the action plan and the progress between each set of revisions.

I accept that not everything that we are talking about is easily quantifiable—people’s lives are not that simple—but, at the same time, we have a duty to scrutinise the progress that the Government is making. At the moment, the action plan is quite hard to scrutinise in that respect. If you were to commit that the next revision of the action plan will include some more measurable outcomes, that would make Parliament’s role a lot easier.

I do not have questions in this session, convener.

That was a really useful answer from Tracey Francis. I want to see whether Scott Richardson-Read and Rebecca Williams have any thoughts on the matter.

Without wanting to put words in your mouth, Tracey—you can cut me off if this representation is unfair—I think that you essentially said that we could prioritise non-legislative approaches first and then, if they do not work, a legislative approach similar to the one that is taken in the bill might be appropriate.

Scott and Rebecca, would that be your view, or would you like to see legislation at this point?

[Inaudible.]—identifies a line of questioning on that point in our committee process.

I would like to take a step back from the issue of transitions specifically, because a lot of the evidence that we have taken has been about the wider landscape for young people with additional support needs and how their experience feeds into the points of transition. It has been two years since the Morgan review. I think that we would all recognise the challenges with the bill, but the core motivation for it is that there is a significant problem right now. Although there is good practice elsewhere and improvements have been made, it will not feel to a young person who is having a very poor experience at the moment that there has been much of an improvement.

What can the Government point towards as having been done in the two years since the Morgan review that represents significant progress off the back of that review? I am asking not only about the situation with regard to transitions, but about the wider context that feeds into the transition experience.

That is evident from the revisions that have been made to the ASL plan in that two-year period, which have gradually been getting more ambitious. That said, a lot of that plan involves objectives such as, “Meet stakeholder X, bring together Y group of stakeholders, start a discussion about Z.” Those are not actions that we can clearly measure the impact of. You can tick a box and say, as you have done, that 24 of the actions have been completed. It is easy to convene a meeting and say, “Objective met,” because everybody has got together round the table and talked about it. That is not the outcome that we are looking for. The outcome that we want to achieve is a more positive experience for the young person with the additional need, for their school, for their family and so on.

Do you think that the ASL action plan, even with the most recent revisions, is as ambitious as the Government’s overall ambitions for young people with additional needs? Are your ambitions reflected in the plan as it currently stands?

Great—thank you.

That is useful.