Keeping the Promise Implementation Plan

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 30 March 2022.

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Photo of Michael Marra Michael Marra Labour

I thank the Government for bringing this debate to the chamber and I thank members throughout the chamber for their powerful contributions and strong words, which must be followed by robust action.

I reiterate Scottish Labour’s thanks to Fiona Duncan and her team at the independent care review, the countless volunteers who comprised the workstreams and the thousands of people who fed into the review. What it produced was, in reality, a review like no other. It set a renewed narrative and an aspiration for the children and young people who are in all our care.

There are elements in the plan that the Government has produced that can be welcomed. It is important to note that, today, we have heard the political consensus on the delivery of the Promise being maintained. I know that the Government will recognise that. The direction of travel is something that we all support.

Our amendment stresses the need to ensure that we are collectively accountable for our commitment, and the importance of that has been noted by members throughout the chamber. The Tory amendment touches on that as well, and we will support it at decision time. Meghan Gallacher spoke eloquently about the need to ensure that we focus on outcomes for young people. That is core to our concerns, especially given the lack of progress that Willie Rennie highlighted.

Willie Rennie mentioned in particular the imprisonment of children, and we are really heartened that concrete action on that issue will come forward in the coming months. The Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee has heard in recent weeks about the number of young people who have been incarcerated in Scotland throughout the pandemic. A lack of access to justice is bedevilling their lives, and we need to make sure that there is immediate action on that. Jamie Greene touched on some of those issues in his speech.

I was struck by Kaukab Stewart’s speech. She recognised the importance of education in the plan. However, I see nothing in it that will move the dial on the key numbers. Sixty per cent of young people with care backgrounds leave school without a national 5, while the figure for other children is 14 per cent. We need concrete actions to ensure that the education components of the plan, which we all agree are critical, will be delivered on. Jamie Greene also said that our mortality rate for under-18s is the worst in Europe.

What is the target and when will it be achieved? When will we see parity? We must surely expect that our outcomes will get better. At the very least, we must aspire in the short term for them to be equal. We need action and real, concrete targets for where we want to go.

As we meet today, we must reflect on the aspiration to keep the Promise and what it means. Despite the plan, we still have no real clarity from the Government on what the statement means and no concrete expression of what success will look like. There are lots of adjectives, but we need outcomes. The reality is that this is not just about statistics or figures; it is about a group of people who are in our care but have unimaginably bad outcomes. Years on from the announcement of the root-and-branch review, their outcomes are still worsening.

My colleague Martin Whitfield outlined some of the perilous education outcomes that exist. Care-experienced pupils are five times less likely than their peers to gain even one higher, and six times less likely to attend university. Again, we need to ensure that we focus on those solid outcomes. The lack of that foundational stability in life leads to incredibly poor life outcomes, which must be—and are—the solid focus of the efforts to reform the system. Those young people see higher interaction with the criminal justice system and higher rates of homelessness, and we do not even bother to measure health outcomes.

An investigation by

The Ferret showed that, in 2020, 24 young people died in our care, which is a record number, if that phrase can be used in such horrific circumstances. The number was 21 the year before, and it was 111 between 2014 and the end of September 2021—a tragic waste of life and potential. It is a failure that this country can ill afford as it sees through its duty to protect those who are in its care. We need to see robustly measured outcomes, with accountability of Government to Parliament and, crucially, to care-experienced young people.

I really hope that the Government will back the amendments, which I believe are constructive. They are about setting the targets and ensuring that we work together and continue our shared commitment to deliver better outcomes for young people in Scotland who are in care and are leaving care.