Chamber and committees

Amendments 83 to 85 are prompted by a concern that I have had for a long time about a lack of consistency between local authorities on important issues of policy and, sometimes, of practice, such as the use of restraint, sibling separation and exclusion from school. Sometimes, the inconsistency even relates to the data that different local authorities gather. My amendments seek to resolve that, at least to an extent. They relate to the setting of national outcomes and priorities, reporting criteria and consultation in relation to children’s services planning.

Amendments 83 and 85 would significantly strengthen children’s services planning by providing the Scottish ministers with regulation-making powers to ensure greater national consistency and oversight in relation to the aims of children’s services plans while, of course, retaining the flexibility for local lead children’s services planning bodies to respond to their local priorities. The amendments would also enhance accountability in relation to reporting on the achievement and implementation of the plans.

The fact is that many, if not all, of the challenges facing children and families are shared across the country, and setting national outcomes, priorities and reporting criteria will help to focus effort on those challenges—or, at the very least, will mean that they cannot be ignored. That will help to develop a clearer and more consistent picture of how children’s services planning partnerships are performing across the country and, I hope, avoid a postcode lottery of care.

The benefits of the approach are twofold. First, it will strengthen accountability by providing a more consistent basis on which plans and progress can be assessed, and secondly, it will help to identify where support and improvement activity are most needed, allowing national and local partners to target resources more effectively. That said, including a duty to consult in relation to the new powers will ensure that stakeholders have a genuine chance to influence the national outcomes, priorities and reporting criteria and will help to ensure that they reflect local issues and priorities.

On amendment 84, Scottish ministers and other service providers currently have the ability to dispute elements of a children’s services plan by issuing a notice that sets out their reasons for disagreement, but currently the law does not require those preparing the plan to take any meaningful action in response to that notice. Amendment 84 seeks to address that gap by placing a clear requirement on those contributing to a plan to take concerns seriously and, crucially, to respond to them. That would strengthen accountability, support better collaboration and help to ensure that plans genuinely reflect the needs of children and families.

For those reasons, I strongly recommend that the committee support the amendments.

I move amendment 83.

In the light of the minister’s support, I have nothing to add. I press amendment 83.

Amendment 83 agreed to.

Amendments 84 and 85 moved—[Nicola Sturgeon]—and agreed to.

Amendment 121 not moved.

I will answer the question quite carefully and seriously, because people will have heard me during my time as First Minister readily apologise for things that I think merit an apology. I also think it is important not to reduce the value of an apology by saying these things simply to get out of a tight spot. I am sorry that we will not have dualled the A9 by 2025. I regret that, and I think that people in the Highlands have every right to feel the way that they do about it, not just because the target was set and not met, but because the nature of the project and the reasons for making the commitment to dualling the A9 were so serious and involved safety. The loss of life on the A9 is a matter of deep regret for everybody. I think that those feelings are justified.

I want to be clear, though, that I do not accept that we failed to meet that target because we just did not bother and we were not trying to meet it. The 2025 target was set for the right reasons and we were committed to it. I was Deputy First Minister at the time that the target was set by Government, so I am not trying to escape responsibility. Then, I had no direct involvement in the A9. However, when I look at it now, I would ask myself whether we were as candid as we should have been with ourselves, as well as with the public, about just how challenging it would always have been to meet the target, even with the fairest of winds.

My second point, which I have made already, is that a number of things happened subsequently that were not foreseen or even, in some cases, foreseeable, which meant that it was even more difficult to meet the target. I will be careful in what I say here: I am not sitting here saying that I am sorry that we messed up because we just did not bother trying to do this. I am sorry that a whole range of circumstances, many of which were beyond our control, meant that we were not able to deliver on that target.

I absolutely understand the feelings of people in the Highlands about that. I am no longer in government, but that is why I think it is now so important that the project is completed according to the revised timescales that have been set.

I will be very careful what I say there.

Again, I will be slightly light-hearted here—I sometimes hear descriptions of how Mr Salmond’s Cabinet operated, and I wonder whether I was part of the same one.

I think that that would be an unfair characterisation of his position. I do not recall a particular occasion when he came to me and said, “First Minister, we’ve got a big problem with the A9.” However, we were always looking at progress and at the issues that we were grappling with.

It is important that we are not overly binary about this. Of course, we had, by 2017-18, realised that there were significant hurdles to completion on target, but it was only by late 2022 or early 2023 that it was clear that there was no viable route to 2025. That was a funding issue.

Again, a lot of the necessary work to get sections of the project into construction was being and had been done, and things were progressing and moving along. It was not some binary matter of our finding ourselves one day with none of the work done and our not having enough years left to do it; it was an on-going process in which we were determined to try to find a route to 2025. It was a diminishing prospect as we got closer—obviously, that stands to reason—and we reached a point at which it became clear that there was no such viable route.

I might turn that question back and suggest that a criticism that could be made, perhaps, is that we were so determined to try to find a route that we did not tell ourselves quickly enough that it was not there. If that is a valid criticism, it arises not from a lack of priority or determination but perhaps from the opposite—that is, our desperately wanting to get to a position where we could deliver the target.

At the risk of being accused of trying to curry favour with the convener, I say that that suggestion is eminently more sensible than the one that you just asked me about. The A9 was always going to be a multisession project. You know the differences—the Queensferry crossing process was different because of the legislative requirements that were in place around it versus those in place around the A9. That is why there was a parliamentary committee in one process and not in the other.

The suggestion should be considered. I keep saying, “We should consider”—obviously, I am not in government any more, but it is for Parliament, too, to consider that built-in parliamentary oversight process, with MSPs who in effect become specialists. If a project covers multiple parliamentary sessions, that can be a way of carrying forward the institutional memory, as you put it. That should be given serious consideration.

That is a really good question, and I think that it is an important question when we are considering any roads projects. We could talk about this in a lot more detail but, in respect of the A9 generally, no, I do not think that it did. The A9 was effectively excluded from the Bute house agreement—I am using shorthand here—but the commitment to it continued because of the important reasons for the dualling of the A9. It is not about providing extra road capacity for more cars; it is fundamentally about safety, so it is a roads project that is important to complete.

More generally, the climate cannot be divorced from the consideration of road projects in this day and age; it is an important part of any deliberation. However, I would argue strongly that the reason why we are sitting here talking about delays to the dualling of the A9 is not about the Greens being in government or because we downgraded the priority of it for some consideration of climate and emissions targets.

I think that my reputation—it is for others to decide whether this is accurate—is that I was possibly more of a hands-on micromanager than my predecessor.

I have already made both the points that I would make in response to that question, so you will forgive me if I repeat myself.

First, until that point, the advice to Government was that there was a viable route to 2025. That was the advice, but that viable route depended on capital provision being made available, which was a significant challenge. It is not the case that we were, as you say, just being dishonest.

My second point is one that I made in my first answer to the convener. When I look back on that period, I think that we should perhaps have been airing this more publicly. I certainly think that that is a reasonable question to pose, but if we were guilty of anything at that point, it was of trying our hardest to find the route to 2025, and—I am happy to concede—perhaps taking too long to accept that that was not possible. If that is the case, it happened for the best of reasons.

My condolences and heart go out to every single person who has lost someone on the A9 or who knows someone in that position. The dualling of the A9 has been a priority for the Scottish Government. It has encountered significant challenges; it was always going to, but there were some additional ones. I do not believe that we are sitting here today because Government did not give the issue enough priority, but there is absolutely no doubt that priority must be attached to it until the commitment is met. To go back to Fergus Ewing’s question, I am absolutely of the view that the Government has an obligation to ensure that the revised timetable is now met—and met in full.