 Good morning, and welcome to the 15th meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in 2022. The first item on our agenda today is a one-off evidence session on the implementation of the 1140 hours of early learning and childcare policy. I'd like to welcome Matthew Sweeney, who is policy manager, children and young people of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, Jane Brompton, chief executive of early years Scotland, Adam Hall, program manager, recovery and delivery program, improvement service. Jonathan Broadbury, who is head of policy and communications at the national day nurses association, and Graham McAllister, who is chief executive of Scottish child minding association. All of our panellists are joining us remotely this morning for various reasons, most of which have to do with transport. Because we have five panellists, clearly as we get into the questions, you do not all need to feel that you have got to answer every question. If you want to say something, we want to hear from you. If you indicate in the chat function that you want to come in, it will make sure that you get in. Do not feel obliged to answer every single question. I hope that is helpful. My colleagues will direct their questions to one of you in the first instance, so that we can keep things moving smoothly. It is not the same as being in the room, of course, but we will try to replicate it as far as possible. My first question to Matthew Sweeney is what has worked well in the expansion of these childcare hours? I think that there are a number of things that have worked quite well. From the numbers that we have created in our submission, we have managed to scale up quite rapidly. That is despite the challenges of the pandemic. Having it making us have to delay a year between August 2020 to August 21. There has been a wide number of things. From some of the evidence in the submission pact this morning, some parents seem to be reflecting on that over 80 per cent feel that the childcare hours are working with them. That is with some of the on-going impacts of the pandemic. We have had to make interim changes to guidance, which perhaps makes things less flexible than we would like them to be. There is still building projects going on that have been delayed from the pandemic. We are not quite there in terms of making sure that our full options are available for parents and families, but despite that, it seems to be that it is broadly being welcomed by parents on the ground. Similarly, it has shown good partnership working between a range of organisations, not just between the Scottish Government and local government, where, for the vast majority of this programme, it has been a real example of good partnership working across the two spheres of government in Scotland, but also between local authorities and their partners. I think that there will be some areas of tension in that, some of which I am sure will come on to this morning. However, we are generally feeling across the sector that we need to work together to support Scotland's children as much as we can. Similarly, the people on the panel that I work with regularly consider them to have a very close and strong working relationship with them, which we have benefited from as we have gone through the pandemic and the delivery of 1140. That beds down and we start to expand the offer to its fullest ambitions over the coming years and months. Johnathan, let us hear your take on that, please. I would definitely agree that, from my member's point of view and from the parents' experience, there have been real positives in terms of more children that exist in the high quality early learning and childcare through the policy. There have definitely been challenges, including the pandemic, but in terms of the positives, our members have consistently said that they support the aims of the policy, that availability of accessible, affordable ELC for parents. The aims of the policy in getting the best for Scotland's children have been really good and it has expanded that availability, but there have been real practical challenges in the delivery, which, as Matthew said, will have time to come on to. Generally, in terms of the experience for children and the experience for parents, it has probably been really positive. It has created a lot of hard work for our members. One of the positives that I would expand on is that, when the policy started building up to the full roll-out, private voluntary and independent providers were expected to provide about a quarter of those places. The latest figures suggest that that is now over 30 per cent. Scotland's nurseries and other types of providers have really stepped up to make sure that they have had the capacity to be able to offer the funded policy to families and children. Graham, we need to hear from you. I think that the first thing that I would like to say is that we are supportive of ELC as a policy. It is intent to enclose the attainment gap and also to deliver free or funded childcare to families, particularly those on low incomes. Unfortunately— We have not got a good line with you, Graham. Is that better now? That is much better. Can you pick up from the point that you were talking about? You used the word unfortunately and then you disappeared. Yes, sorry. I will just very briefly say that we are supportive of ELC as a policy of intent to close the attainment gap and provide free childcare, but, unfortunately, for childmining, the experience has been very negative. ELC expansion over the last five years has had what I can only call a devastating effect on our workforce, which has declined by 26 per cent. We have lost 1,457 childminders, or put that in real terms, over 8,700 childmining spaces during ELC expansion, and that trend is accelerating. I did not quite catch that. You were quoting some numbers there, Graham. Can you revisit the numbers and then what your conclusion was? Yes, unfortunately, during the last five years of ELC expansion, our workforce has declined by 26 per cent, but 1,457 childmining businesses have been lost, or, in practical terms, over 8,000 childmining spaces have gone during the last five years. Unfortunately, that is an accelerating trend, the situation is currently getting worse. What we have experienced, unfortunately, are a series of weaknesses or failings in policy implementation at a national and local level. I just want to make sure that you stop speaking, because we have some intermittent disruption of your line there, but that was very useful to hear. I think that, at this point, I am going to pass to the deputy convener, and she will be followed by Michael Marra. Thank you very much, convener. We talked a little bit about the benefits of ELC. That has been mentioned, and we have had an acknowledgement of the roll-out. Obviously, the hours that have been offered have tripled, I think, since 2002, which is great. However, in the submissions, I did notice that, obviously, there is a gap. Not all parents are taking up the places, so I am just interested in what suggestions can be made in order to increase that expansion. Can I put that to Matthew Sweeney first, please, and then I would be interested to hear from Jane Brampton? Thank you. I think that it is an important question and one that we have discussed at length. There is obviously a question around the hours, and 1140 has always very clearly been an entitlement and not a requirement. It was never expected that absolutely every family would want the full 1140. There was always an understanding that perhaps that might not work for specific family circumstances, working patterns, etc. I think that that is probably the sort of the gap between what we need to work out is how much worth going on just now is because that is just not what families need. They do not perhaps need the full entitlement, they do not want the full entitlement, and what more we can do to drive uptake, and what more we can do to fully bed in the flexibility, the choice that we are braving to do once the full pandemic is sort of out of the way, and we can move towards where we are getting to finally with the intentions and aims that were set out in the original application of the policy. It is kind of difficult to know because of the pandemic. Obviously, there are still disruptions to work on patterns, etc. It is difficult to see what we are seeing just now. Is that going to reflect when perhaps we may be in a world where everyone is back to offices far more frequently? We may stay in a world of hybrid working, but what is not clear just now is what are the long-term trends in terms of Covid and will that change the number of hours that families will want to take up? That is something that local authorities are very live to. They are consulting with parents regularly, they have a duty to do that, and that will be some of the factors that they will be taking into account as they plan their services in the years ahead. I agree with what Matthew is saying in terms of that it is an option for parents, and not all parents may wish to take up the opportunity of the full amount, but I think that there are also challenges around the fact that, while we know, for example, in the PVI sector, there is more flexibility offered there and that is something that has been inherent over the years. For some parents, they might not quite get the pattern or availability that they are looking for, so that can be an issue in terms of some of our more rural settings, where we rely on the widest availability of the sector and some of the challenges that were mentioned earlier about what the PVI sector is experiencing. Therefore, it is so critical that we ensure that the sector is fully supported and sustainable, so that parents get the full opportunity to access where they need that entitlement to be and for the length of hours that they require. We know that the PVI sector has the flexibility to offer that extension, because, often, parents are needing more than just the 1140 hours over the pattern of the year, depending on their working arrangements, so it is critical that we get that right for parents. That is really useful to get that. If I could come back to Matthew, how does the ELC provision in Scotland compare with the rest of the UK? Any sort of view on that? I have an expert in that and my understanding, obviously, is that there have been changes in terms of the offer that was made, in terms of the offer that Scotland had, obviously, been that there were no perhaps employment requirements. For example, to access your full 30 hours, I believe, in England at the time, there was a commitment that sort of parents had to be in work to receive the sort of the additionality of the policy, and I am afraid that I am not sure around the rest of the country that there was an important issue to flag up, which is something that we may come to later. The rates that are paid to private and voluntary nurses and child managers are significantly higher in Scotland compared to our colleagues across the rest of the UK, I believe. In the Scottish Government's submission this morning, it is almost £1 more per hour per child that is provided in Scotland in the figures for 2021-22, but I am afraid that it probably does not have much more detail around the offers across the rest of the UK. That is fair enough. If there are any other panellists that would like to come in on any of the bits, Jonathan, I just wanted to come in, because we operate across the UK, so we have members in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, to say that there are some real differences between the policies, so Matthew referenced the difference in funding, but there are also the extra requirements on the policy in Scotland that benefit parents but make it even more difficult for providers, and that is things like that. The funded places are completely funded by the Government through the local authorities, whereas in England and Wales providers have the ability to cover costs such as consumables directly with parents and where costs rise quite quickly, that can put real pressure on providers, because obviously there is a slower process of addressing funding through local authority processes and through government budget setting processes. At the same time, we see in Scotland and Wales the take-up of a spot outside the funded hours is lower, so things like tax-free childcare and probably universal credit as well. The take-up is a little bit lower than the eligible population, so there is a piece of work. We know that in the build-up to the original date of August 2020, there were campaigns in place to encourage parents to take up the AALC and see the value of it, and I would echo what Jane has said about the flexibility available in previous providers to meet the needs of parents and adapt to changing work patterns, changing the flexibility as well. Why is it so bad at getting the entitled two-year-olds into the provision? I don't know whether Adam could maybe start off with that. We've reported since the beginning of the expansion on the number of children who are accessing funded childcare across Scotland. We have reflected in those reports that, while there has been an increase, particularly in recent years, a year-in-year increase in the number of two-year-olds who have been accessing the expansion, the proportion of those children who access the full entitlement to the 1140 hours is lower than the wider universal eligibility population of the three to five-year-olds. Our reports don't ask questions on the reasons behind that. For us, we track the numbers of children who are accessing, but don't dig into the details of why that is, in terms of questioning the parental choice that might be the case for why it is lower. Surely the clue is in the title of your organisation. If we are going to improve things, we should understand why. Is there no attempt to be made to understand that? I think that that is the work that is on-going across organisations, not just with us at improvement service, but with the Scottish Government as well. I have noted the work that they are doing in terms of working with local authorities and partners to try to understand those trends and make improvements where possible. Anybody else have any ideas? I think that that is a very important question. It is one of the key benefits of the Eels expansion that you mentioned before, how it tackles the attainment gap. I think that for those children who are eligible for the two-year-olds, those who will benefit most. I think that there are a couple of things around that. One is that it is a targeted offer, and I think that there are always things around stigma about how you take that up, and that is something that is hard to quantify and hard to overcome. Local authorities have tried to take some approaches when it comes to how you can link in with family nurse partnerships, how you can look around community engagement, linking in with local social setting voluntary groups, and trying to see if you can push the uptake in that way. The fundamental challenge for local authorities primarily is that they do not know who is eligible and who is not eligible because of some of the data-sharing issues that they have to date. There is some really positive progress on that. The consultation that was launched by the UK Government earlier this year was allowing us to hopefully set up the data gateway that is currently available in England and Wales, and that would be available to local authorities in Scotland. We are really hopeful that, once that happens, that will allow us to put rocket boosters back. I would echo what Adam had said. We have seen a 26 per cent increase year on year, a further increase in January, and I think that we will be continuing to push it, because, as I said, local authorities really appreciate how important that is and are trying their best to push uptake. Do you think that there is any effect from the lack of universal as in across the country in every community of this offer? From what I have observed, the two-year-old provision is not available in every community. Some have to travel to get to it. Do you think that that is an effect? That is not something that I am familiar with. I would not be confident about doing that. I do think that there is an issue around how we make sure that provision is available everywhere, and that is part of what I touched on earlier, that we are still in a process of bedding and not just the delivery of the core hours but the broader flexibility and choice in making sure that that is possible. However, that has been challenged by the Scottish Government's recent cuts to funding local authorities to provide ELC. I think that there will be attempts to continue to make sure that that is available as wide as possible to push uptake. I suppose that there is a broader question about whether there is a question about policy design and around that. It is always a place for 30 hours a week the best for some of these families, as there are other ways that we can look at providing support. There is some really interesting work that goes off across the country where ELC settings are not just provided as a childcare, but they do much more about linking in families with other key services, money advice, social work and so on. Perhaps that is something that we need to roll up and expand more of. One final question on that. Why is it that some councils do not provide a higher rate for the provision of the service for the two-year-olds when clearly the ratios require more staff and the demands on additional support will be more than those for the mainstream three- and four-year-old offer? Why are some councils not providing a higher rate? I would not be able to comment on rates set by every single local authority. Obviously, there is a process that they go through and I think that it will probably come on later about how we are trying to strengthen that process through a national cost collection exercise. I would say that we need to be a bit cautious about the support that comes from a local authority to a provider that is not purely in the form of rates itself. There is also a range of in-kind benefits that are also provided, whether that be staff development and training, support for quality improvement, rates, renting, rents and so on. Although I cannot comment on everything, I think that it is important that we look at the package of support that goes from local authority to providers in the round as opposed to just the fewer numbers that are known. I can ask you to look at Edinburgh Council. Edinburgh Council provides a flattery across all the different age ranges when the demands from two-year-olds would be higher. So, could you have a look at that and perhaps follow-up with any correspondence that you receive on it? I am happy to do so. Willie, you are staying with you. Jane, you wanted to come in and then after Jane Jonathan. Thank you. Yes, just picking up on Matthew's point. In earlier Scotland, we were a membership organisation as well as supporting direct service delivery, so we work very closely with parents predominantly with the eligible twos, and we offer the service that Matthew was talking about around working with parents and children together. We know that many of our members offer similar supportive approaches. We believe that it is not necessarily in the best interests of all families that they have that greater time of separation, but the key thing for us and what we have been discovering from parents is definitely around the stigma, as I mentioned. There are a lot of hoops and challenges to go through in terms of proving your eligibility, and some parents who are really struggling and quite disadvantaged in a number of ways have possibly found that they are not eligible. It may well be because there is a small proportion of money over the threshold, but we do appreciate that local authorities are able to have some flexibility in that, but that would be good if that were utilised more. When the programme for government is looking at the aspiration to extend the funded entitlement and not to be such a targeted offer, there is a lot of learning there. We have been having discussions with the Government on how we can make it more streamlined and easier for parents who need that service in terms of eligible tools and how we can overcome a lot of the barriers there. We are happy to provide more evidence around that, if necessary. Can you hear me clearly at this time? We can indeed, yes. First, I will go back to Matthew's point and agree with him that, in our experience, I think that stigma is still a challenge around increasing eligible tools uptake, where we have a little bit more traction as an organisation as we have what we call integrated services in Glasgow and Aberdeen, where we deliver what are called community child-winning services, which are supported family interventions for vulnerable families. What we have successfully done is to link those community child-winning services into eligible tools uptake so that, once they have received initial placement from us, it acts as a feeder and takes them in. We are starting to see some good data around that, but I think that what I would also add is that many child-minds around Scotland are involved in providing childcare to two-year-olds, but we are still encountering a number of challenges in terms of the number of child-minders who are involved in delivery. Our last ELC audit that we undertook for the Scottish Government last year found that 29 per cent of child-minders have been approved for eligible tools, but only four per cent are involved in delivery. We continue to find feedback from child-minders from parents that too many local authorities are still not actually presenting child-mining as an option for receipt of the ELC entitlement to parents. That barrier is inhibiting increased uptake and eligible tools provision as well. I agree with Graham's point that there are providers available and with space to deliver those places, but it is not always possible for them to work in partnership with local authorities. That could come back to Willie's question in terms of the rates that are being set, because some local authorities do not engage partner providers to deliver the two-year-olds supported places. I would also echo what Jane has said in terms of looking at expansion in this area and doing that incrementally. Some of the issues need to be got to grips with so that parents do not feel that stigma, but that it is recognising the expertise and the current provision within the private voluntary and child-mining sectors that already exist. Willie Rennie, do you want to come back in? Yes, I am fine. I am fine. Thank you. Michael Marra. The evidence so far has prompted some questions in my mind. I think that there is broad support clearly across the Parliament for increasing options, particularly for people from more economically defined backgrounds. That is a big positive. I have found probably from outside that it is quite difficult to understand whether the big investment of pub taxpayers' money is about childcare or education. That is probably expressed by the Scottish Government saying that the benefits are increasing family resilience and closing the poverty related to the attainment gap and supporting parents into work. Some of those things might be in conflict—I necessarily agree—but some people would. Is it childcare or education? I suppose I would start with Adam, if that is okay, from the improvement service. In terms of our involvement in this, we classified, obviously, as early learning and childcare. The access and the way that we collect information on that is across the board. It does not specify whether the provision being in any way specific to an education background or if it is provided in schools or in stand-law nurseries. There is no distinction in that definition for us. The way that we collect the information on the number of children access is in that holistic early learning and childcare. The two go hand in hand. It is not an easy distinction. It is part of what your question is asking. The numbers that we collect together are early learning and childcare. I understand what you are saying, Adam, but I have to say that it is worrying. In essence, we have become a numbers game in terms of inputs, so we know that the X number of families and children are accessing that. As a Parliament, how are we meant to evaluate whether it is increasing family resilience? It is closing the poverty-related attainment gap and supporting parents into work. Maybe you would claim that that is not your job as the improvement service. Maybe we need to find other people to do that job. I am not sure, but it would feel to me if those are the policy intentions. We need to be able to draw the causality between the investment and the outcomes, rather than just the input. You are confirming—I think that you did, in answers to Willie Rennie's questions, that you do not really collect that information or assess the policy in that way. You just look at the numbers. Is that correct? That is correct. The scope of our delivery progress report is on-going through this academic year, but it is specifically related to the delivery of the expansion programme. It is looking to ensure that what workforce is in place within local authorities and the number of children accessing to be able to confirm delivery of the programme. However, we would look to feed into the wider, longer-term monitoring and evaluation strategy that will necessarily come off the back to, as you say, to prove and give evidence towards the outcomes that the holistic policy is looking to achieve. Are you saying that you would not know whether or not the policy is achieving its outcomes? Did you just say that? Do you want to check? That is the scope of the delivery progress report that we have been asked to put together to date as part of the tracking of the expansion. The scope of those reports and the information collecting was to, through our expansion activities over the past few years, to understand and flag to the joint delivery board where there may be any risks to delivery, where any action might need to be escalated through that governance process. When you say delivery, you do not mean outcomes, you mean inputs. Yes. In that sense, we do not report on the outcomes in terms of poverty-related attainment gap or the subset of outcomes when it comes to flexibility, parental accessibility choice. In that sense, it would be the inputs to show the number of children who are accessing the workforce that is in place in local authorities to deliver on that to ensure that there is the development capacity to be able to deliver on the statutory duty for 1140 hours. It says on the 10 improvement service, and I would have thought that improvement had to do with outcomes, but there we go. I'll learn something new every day. Can I come to Matthew Sweeney from COSLA, then, please? Thanks, Adam. Matthew, roughly the same question, I suppose, is in the COSLA's view this about childcare or is it about education? I think it's about both. I think it's an important issue that you've highlighted there, because I think there's always going to be an element of how we do both well. But I think that's part of why the policy is ambitious and why it's about how do we create a culture across the whole sector about how we're looking to support children and families at the same time. That's not to say that that's easy. There is an important point that comes through from the last instruction there about how we move away from the measuring of inputs and outputs into measuring of outcomes, but that is a challenging thing to do in the same way. How do you collect information? How do you work out the causality of some of those things? Are they difficult? There's work that's on going through the Scottish Government, which is how you do it, but I think that there is an important thing. The last point that I want to make is to be fair, Matthew, to mention the level of investment. I think that the key thing I'd like is that we're also seeing disinvestment just now from this policy, both in terms of the funding from the Scottish Government's ability for the ring-friend scan and through the co-level government funding at the same time. What I'd be absolutely clear on is that meeting this bold ambition is being made harder, I think, with the changes to ERC funding over the last year. You wouldn't find any disagreement with me on that basis in terms of the underfunding and the issues in funding local government services, Matthew. It doesn't strike me that this should be too difficult in terms of designing a research programme that actually followed the investment, whether that be in the longitudinal study, whether we're looking at case studies of people who are understanding labour market dynamics. This is all information that's available. Are you saying that that has been your job as COSLA because we've been told by the improvement services that it's probably not their job? In terms of evaluating against the Government's outcomes, is it COSLA's job to do that? I would say that it's the job of the Scottish Government. I do think that through the ERC, the Scottish study of other language healthcare, that's some of the work that they are doing. I'm afraid that I'm not totally involved in all the details of that, but that work is on-going. It's quite a different task, I think, from the measuring the outputs and the things that are easy to collect. We're aware of that broadly in public policy. Obviously, it's the things that are easy often, the ones that get measured, and I think that it's the challenge about how do we do that and how do we change the understanding? I think that, so often, some of the conversation around ELC is mostly about where are the spaces, have we met targets, how can we ensure that we work for our parents? Some of those things about how we deliver for children themselves is crucially important, harder to do, and how we get that both the data, but also that understanding is a challenge that we all need to move up to. I'm interrupting Michael to bring Willie back in. I'm just—we're not really getting to the nub of this, but in 2010, there were 1500 nursery teachers. There's now only 700. Doesn't that give an indication that we've moved from education to just childcare? Matthew? Well, I think that there's a couple of things within that. I think that—I repeat the point that I just made to Michael Marra about the disinvestment in local government services, and I think that there's always going to be impacts when those happen. The other thing I think I would flag is obviously that there are different ways that we might look at a graduate workforce within ELC, and obviously some of the newer qualifications that the BHO did in practice may not be officially titled as nursery teachers, but they are providing that graduate level of support and pedagogy and leading pedagogy in settings, whether that be necessarily the right way. I think that it would be undeniably able to say that the impact of reductions in local government funding hasn't impacted on some of the ways in which— Can I just push a wee bit back on that? I'm not a defender of the Government, but COSLA has accepted that the settlement for the early learning childcare offer was going to meet the needs. Therefore, I find it difficult. I know there's been a reduction in the last year with some rejigging of funds, but the policy has been funded, so I'm puzzled as to why there's been such a reduction in nursery teachers over that period when apparently there's been enough money. One is that the figures that you mentioned were over a much longer period than the three years in which the multi-year funding package was agreed to. That multi-year funding package was phased in over those years. It existed for one year at the level that it was agreed to, and it's been reduced since that year. Secondly, the point is that there are different graduate ways of happening. It's not just teachers, but there are the new qualifications that are coming in at the same time. I suppose that part of that is about thinking about the unintended consequences. If we're not setting a clear parameter on what we hope to achieve—it's a broad range of things to achieve—we're not measuring what the things are that we are supposedly achieving within that other than the input targets. I was very interested in the evidence that we've added in written form and the Child Minders Association described as devastation of that service. 1,400 businesses have gone, 8,000 places have gone. I'm probably reflecting this on some of my constituents who come to me and say that they recognise the policies, but they still can't access wraparound childcare in order to allow them to access work. The flexibility isn't available through local authority services or other forms, and the Child Minders would normally be part of that. Do you see the implementation of Graham McAllister's policy? The collapse in your sector is a direct consequence of that. Is that what you were alluding to earlier? Yes. I think that there are a number of challenges with the implementation of the check. Can you hear me clearly still? Did you hear me? I think that there have been. No, I'm afraid not. You can turn up your camera, as it was suggested, and see if we can get him on audio. Graham, do you want to try again now that we've turned your camera off? He's not there, unfortunately. Is he coming back? Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Let's see how we can hear you now that we've turned your camera off. If problems continue, I can try to connect them via another network in a few minutes. There have been a number of challenges in implementation. One of the problems for Child Minders has been that they found it very difficult to get involved in actually being included in ELC delivery. One of the founding principles with ELC is what is called provider neutrality, where parents should be able to choose or prefer choice of childcare, but local authorities should also be promoting it equitably to parents, all providers. We have been commissioned by the Scottish Government over the past five years to undertake annual independent audits of local authority progress of including child minders delivery. We found that some local authorities who understand child minding, the unique benefits, the value to parents, have been really inclusive and have involved child minders, but too many have not. We have found that there have been recurring instances where child minding has simply not been promoted as an option to parents. That has come back through audit returns and surveys with child minders and parents. That is one of the problems that child minding potentially could play a very significant role in ELC delivery. It is a very flexible form of childcare supporting parents from early in the day quite often until later in the evening. It can be combined with other forms of childcare, but in too many cases local authorities have been conflicted because, on one hand, they are responsible for overseeing local expansion plans, but they are also a direct service pride in their own right. There is recurring evidence that local authority nurseries are prioritising their own provision and child minders are simply getting the remainder of hours, and the level of hours that they are receiving are simply not sustainable for their business viability. Does that make sense? I appreciate that. I would also say that it seems to me that there is some level of conflict between these different outcomes in terms of the sheer push to increase numbers of hours and then also whether this is education or child minding. I also had a question about the impact of the pandemic. Actually, there is a queue of people, thankfully, who want to say something to you about your line of questioning, starting with Jane. Thank you. I just wanted to pick up on the points around talking about the reduction in teachers and so on. I think that it is really important that we stress the fact that the ELC sector is a graduate led sector and highly qualified, highly experienced and highly trained. I think that when we focus on things like recent OECD reports and some of the recommendations for that, there is a big focus on the support for extending time for teachers to have more access to planning. We often forget about the importance of the ELC sector needing that as well. That further compounds the perceived lack of value for the ELC sector, so I think that it is important that we recognise the high quality that is in the sector in general across the PBI sector and child minders and recognise the evidence that is available for that with regard to inspections and looking at quality improvement. It is really important to recognise the value of the sector because we want to ensure that we encourage more people to come into the sector to make it sustainable and that the sector can obtain and retain high quality staff. It was just a felt that it was important to state that. I would like to come in again on the question of the dichotomy between childcare and education. A lot of our members have talked to us about the frustration that it is either seen as one or the other. When you are caring for and working with those very young children, everything that they are doing is learning. Even if it is just learning to scratch on the other side of their face and cross the midline and do all the things that are absolutely foundational to what they will go on to learn, it is not that you provide an hour of care first off and then you say, right, we are going to do an hour of education now. Everything that they are doing is helping to build a really positive learning environment for those children. I did want to touch on the qualifications aspect, because, as Jane said, we have a really skilled, committed and qualified workforce. However, one of the real challenges for private voluntary providers—this might read across to childminding as well—is the level of recruitment that is being happening for local authority-run nurseries. The rates of pay that has been offered for practitioners and managers in those sectors has really hollowed out and made it very challenging for some of those other partner providers to work and be involved in delivery. We have had examples of member nurseries that have closed because they have lost their graduate and qualified staff into public nurseries, but the sector has an issue of people leaving to take higher-paid work in lower-responsibility sectors such as retail and leisure. We have seen that across the UK, but, in Scotland, our members have a double whammy of that, leaving from the sector. Their more highly qualified staff are quite often recruited into the publicly funded nurseries for much higher pay. Within the submission that we have provided, there is very clear growth throughout the past two and a half, three years, in the workforce in the public sector. During the pandemic and in between, there have been dips at different levels within private voluntary providers because some nurseries have told us that entire management teams have been recruited away from them. That makes it more difficult for them to recruit and train up the DELC leaders of tomorrow, because they are really a pipeline, but they need those qualified and experienced staff at the highest level to be saying in so that they can support better some of the others. John, how big is the gap? How large is the difference between what is being offered, paying conditions-wise, in the local authority setting as opposed to the PVI setting? We have learned this talk about staff leaving for pay that can be thousands, if not between £5,000 and £10,000 a year more. Basically, up until about a year ago, private providers were allowed a platform to recruit alongside, on my job Scotland, alongside the publicly funded nurseries. To begin with, that was seen as a real positive because it was a chance to reach a much wider audience with job adverts, but then it threw in to start contrast some of the differences. We even had people tell us that people who were on that leadership stream and maybe working towards being a deputy manager or a manager of a setting actually even to become a practitioner because it had a lower level of responsibility within a council industry, because it could get the same or better pay for less responsibility in more sense of the word. Thank you for that. We better hear from Graham McAllister. Just following on to Johnathan's point, there is now a range of evidence to show that, unfortunately, the large-scale recruitment that was required to deliver expansion of ELC has had a destabilising effect across the wider childcare and social care sector. What had been hoped is that we would bring in 12,000 new staff to nurseries with qualifications from outside the sector, but instead the recruitment drive took staff from PVI from child mining. It has created a destabilising effect, which the Scottish Government has acknowledged has been an unattended consequence of ELC expansion. That has been one of the main drivers. Certainly, with the research that we have done with child miners, the inability to keep up with the pace of local authority nursery expansion has been a direct contributor to the decline in our workforce, but also the duplicative quality assurance on levels bureaucracy that are enduring ELC expansion. Is that something that we have to take questions on later? What are you offering as a solution to that? If that is an unattended consequence, what is the solution? Back in 2019, when we published our ELC audit at that stage, the challenge in workforce between 2014 and 2019 had declined by 14.5 per cent, and we had recommended to the Scottish Government that there was an urgent need for a national recruitment campaign targeted to the child miners to bring them into the sector. The Scottish Government did not accept that recommendation. We passed forward two years, our last audit that we did in 2021, and you look at the five-year period, 2016-21, where our workforce declined by 26 per cent. That is worsening as we go on. My point of view is that there is a critical need to undertake targeted recruitment around Scotland where child miners are needed. That is something that we are leading on in the most and rural areas where those challenges are more pronounced. We have recently launched a pilot in collaboration with Highlands and Islands Enterprise, South of Scotland Enterprise, Fills Development Scotland and the Scottish Government to try to recruit 100 new child miners in those areas. However, that is just a small start. What we need is to ramp this up nationally. As I said, we have lost 1,457 child miners in the past five years. There is a lot of work to be done to offset the unintended consequence of the rapid upscaling of ELC. What about the difference in paying conditions? That has to be addressed as well, doesn't it? Very much so. Child mining is not a high-income profession. It is a very much location for people to come into it to make a difference for children. It is very difficult for child miners or PVIs to keep up with local authority rates of pay. That brings us on to sustainable rates for ELC, where a number of child miners have said to us that the sustainable rates are simply not high enough to make ELC attractive to them. We are very much recognising at the moment that there is pressing demand from parents for child mining. They want to access it, but there are not enough child miners on the ground. We are very much needing to bring them in, but what we are needing to do is have a longer-term strategy looking at how we can change the value of childcare and how we can increase rates of pay, whether there is a need for more Government support in those areas. It is going to be very difficult for child miners or private providers to compete with local authority rates of pay. I am sure that we want to come back to that. Matthew Sweeney, you have indicated a couple of times that you would like to come back in on this, and then we will go to Graeme Dey. There are a few things that I am really keen to chat through. I think that it is a really important discussion for having this morning. The first one was about provider neutrality. I think that there was something getting lost a little bit in terms of the complexity of provider neutrality. It has never been uncaviative provider neutrality. In fact, when funding falls on the child and the key principles that are set out in our submission, it is always clear that it is in line with local delivery plans, and those local delivery plans are based on consultation with parents. I think that we need to make sure that that principle of us commissioning and delivering services that are in line with what parents ask us for needs to be key. There is no other alternative. We cannot set a national thing that says that every local authority needs to have x per cent delivered by local authorities, x per cent by childminders, x per cent by the PVI sector. That is not a recipe to match the needs of parents and families across this country, and that is why the system has been set up in the way it is. The second thing that I wanted to touch on—I think that Graeme touched on that a bit, and I also think that I probably should have mentioned it before when we were talking about is it early learning or child care, and I think that it is both, is the fact that the inspection regimes are not being aligned to support that being considered all at once. We have had a commitment, a long-standing commitment, from the Scottish Government that there would be the creation of a shared inspection framework between the Care Inspectorate and Education Scotland. I think that it came through quite strongly in Professor Ken Muir's report. We have not seen the progress that we need to on that. I think that hopefully there is a consultation forthcoming as part of the creation of new education bodies, but that needs to be addressed about whether we are creating quite a burden on the system by making sure that they are being assessed against child care and education at once. Lastly, I want to touch on some of the points on workforce. I think that there have been attempts by local authorities to make sure that they are not purely recruiting from other providers of child care. However, it is quite hard. I know that there are a number of attempts that a couple of local authorities came together to form, and the ELC academy tried to grow their own to look at staff who were perhaps being posts for being transformed within councils as a result of cuts to council budgets, and they were being moved into the child care sector. Similarly, there were attempts to try and stagger some of the recruitment across the piece in the three-year phasing up. Fundamentally, there are challenges when local authorities will continue to be committed to national bargaining in the setting of periods nationally with our trade union colleagues and the very clear policy intention from the Scottish Government that we are to pay sustainable rates to allow the real living wage, and that the funding and the guidance is around the payment of the real living wage for our partners when they provide it. Lastly, it is an important point that we do not just look at this within the sector but also without it. There are movement across the sector, just now particularly in the labour market, as is. The other thing that I point to is, obviously, that in social care, there are now moving beyond the real living wage with the Scottish Government, providing funding for £10.50 an hour for adult care workers, which we are still saying is currently unfunded for the real living wage for early learning and childcare at this stage. Thank you, convener, and in the interests of time, my opening question can be answered by a nod of the head or a shake of the head or a simple yes or no. A few moments ago, Willie Rennie advanced a theory, if you like, that under two-year-old Rallaf should attract an enhanced rate because of the ratios that would be required to supervise them. Do we accept that as the case? Yes or no? I am saying nod ahead, so we accept that as the case. In which case, Matthew Stweeney, why are so many councils not paying an enhanced rate for two-year-olds set against what is available for three and above? I make the same point that I made to Willie Rennie earlier. I do not have the information on individual processes that they went through to set rates in every single area. What would be absolutely clear is that it is not looking at rates alone. Indeed, the report, I imagine, where I think that this has been taken from, also set out the range of in-kind support that has provided the councils, whether that is quality insurance, training and development, lets. There is a range of other support that is provided, so it is very difficult to purely look at rates on their own and not understand the full context of what has gone on between a local authority and their partners in a certain area. I do not necessarily accept that at all. There are a number of councils that are doing that. If you take Angus Council, my local council has got the fourth-highest rate for two-year-olds in the whole of the country, and it is paying considerably more for them than for three-year-olds in above. There are some councils who are walking the walk here, which takes me on to the question about the process for the set and rates. Forgive me, but this is a bit of a layman's question, perhaps. What is the process? What are councils meant to take account of? Is it issues such as the costs of rent in an area, economies of scale and so on? What do they take account of in setting the rate? What is the involvement in the private sector in that process? Do they have discussions? Is there an input? Is there any appeals procedure if the rates that are being offered are deemed to be completely unsatisfactory? Matthew Sweeney again, perhaps the start. Thank you. I think that it is all of those things, and there was very detailed guidance that was created in 2019 for local authorities, which was developed by the Scotland Excel, commissioned by the Scottish Government and agreed by the Scottish Government and ourselves. Absolutely, it sets out the ways in which local authorities work with the partners. Indeed, across the country, there is a range of forums that exist between local authorities and their partners to discuss the setting of sustainable rates. What we would flag is that it is not just around what local authorities do, it is what partners bring to the table. One of the challenges that we have found so far and what local authorities report back is that it was difficult to get consistent, high-quality information from partner providers to make sure that we were setting those states in an informed way, because it is very clear from that guidance that the Scottish Government drafted that those need to be as evidence-based as possible. Indeed, that was one of the challenges that local authorities were facing, repeatedly. That is why, through the process that we have been just going through over the last few months, we have created a national cost collection exercise, repeating a process that existed in 2016 by the Scottish Government, and pulling together some of the core information on provider costs across the country and in providing them as output to local authorities to inform their rates setting. However, we have been absolutely clear throughout that process that that is not a replacement of the on-going engagement that they have with their partners already and their understanding of local ELC market conditions. Lastly, what I would flag is that there has been a significant increase in rates moving from, I think, 378 in 2017 to an average of now 544. As I mentioned earlier, that is by far the reading rate across the UK and almost a pound more in Wales for the year 2021-22. Indeed, that reflects very positively on the Scottish Government, but can I ask Jonathan Brodbury perhaps for his view on how the process works in practice? Yes, in practice it is a very mixed view. As Matthew said, there are a number of different ways that local authorities will go about this, and not all of them are open and consultative with partner providers. We have supported the national cost collecting exercise because there has been such a mix across Scotland. However, we feel that it has been a large exercise that has been drawn in a lot of time from the people on this panel, but also from providers to give that information to this exercise. It is quite clear that this could not be done or would be very demanding to do this year on year when we know what inflation levels are, we know what changes to the real living wage are and when we asked local authorities last year about their plans to change rates. Even though everybody had the real living wage figures, the national living wage figures and minimum wage figures, nine out of the 32 were holding at least one of their funding rates at the same level. We do not understand how that can be put across as a sustainable rate when everybody knows the costs going up for those delivering the fund of the LC places. There needs to be an annual mechanism, either at a national or local authority level, that is quite clear and transparent for providers and parents that says that this is how we are going to make sure that the funding follows the child all the way to the setting where they take place and that it will rise in line with the rising costs. Otherwise, childminders will leave, nurseries will close and parents will not have access to local services in the way that they need or the choice that they might want locally in terms of that flexibility that might be left with one or two options and none of them what they want. There is a real challenge there about how we make sure that those rates reflect actual delivery costs. Over three quarters of our members said that they do not currently refer the rates from four or five years ago. It is true that they have been increased and that is really important, but those were coming from historically low levels and really, at a time, undercutting what providers were doing. At that point—I just need to make this point very quickly—if there were in partnership to deliver in 600 hours, there were other streams of income from parental fees that could make up for that shortfall. In that scenario, where we go up to 1140, that meets the needs for the vast majority of parents, so there are not other income streams coming in to partner providers in the same way that they would have been when those rates were chronically underfunded. It is one final question. Are there any particularly bad examples that you can offer or furnish us with where the relationship between individual local authorities and your members has been particularly challenging? We have worked in a number of areas. I do not particularly want to name names at this point because we have done a lot of work. I will resist the encouragement there. We have done a lot of work with a lot of different area networks with COSLA to address some of those issues, but I think that the committee has been provided with a list of local authorities who have not increased their rates. We have published and named those in releases in the past. What we are really wanting to see is that that is the position where people are now. We have local authorities setting their rates now, so we want to encourage all those local authorities to look at different sources of data, including the national cost exercise, and to talk to providers about the challenges that they are facing. Well over half an hour, the members say that the real living wage, the biggest barrier to implementing that fully, is the sustainable rate that is being paid. A lot of things that local authorities could be talking to their partners about to really understand what that sustainable rate needs to look like. The policy suggestion is at a national level, and I can come on to those nights if I am conscious of what other people want. I appreciate that. Matthew and then Jane, so let's have Matthew first then Jane. I think that Jonathan's contribution should be helpful. One of the things that I would flag in the first instance is that some local authorities took a decision two years ago to set the multi-year rate, and therefore that is why I would not have increased that certainty to providers in advance, and therefore that is why it will not increase year on year. I think that there is an interesting debate that we can have whether that is worthwhile, whether the certainty versus the annual increase should happen, but I think that that is something that I think just to note. The second one that I point out is again that there is a gap that local authorities are having to meet because of the reduction of funding from the Scottish Government. I mentioned in my answers earlier that, before the £25 million was removed from the ring-fen settlement, that was only increased inflation with, I think, somewhere between 1 and 2 per cent, whereas inflation was last summer. We are now facing inflation around 9 per cent, and how are local authorities meant to meet those large inflationary increases and perhaps quite large increases to the real living wage when the funding available to them has actually decreased, and it was set at a time before that inflation was at the levels that they were at just now. The last point that I come on to is that I do not think that it is just around the local authorities and how they work together with their partners. During the cost collection exercise, we saw that some partners were encouraging others not to take part in our survey and perhaps to give incorrect information to try to artificially inflate some of the results that they have. I think that it made it clear that it is about how colleagues work together to do this in an open, honest and transparent way. That is what we have done through the survey, and that is what we are trying to support as the process goes forward. There does seem to be a pressing need for genuine partnership working on this, which is a bit lacking at the moment. Thank you, Graham. The Jane, I think, wants to come in on your line of questions as well, so you may wish to come back after you have heard what Jane has to say. Thank you. I echo a lot of the comments that Jonathan has raised as well. It is in terms of good practice and good engagement. It can be quite patchy across local authorities. We have heard from members of really good practice, and it works well. They have that genuine partnership between the local authority and the wider ALC sector, and that is really heartening to hear. We hear of other very challenging ways of engagement or lack of engagement. You mentioned routes of appeal. There are several of our members actively investigating that at the moment, and it can be very difficult to do that in isolation. It is very hard to separate all the issues that we are raising today that are affecting the sector and really challenging, because it stems from the importance of that partnership. If we get that right between the local authority and the wider sector, that can help towards this journey. The main thing is that there is a sense of apathy across the sector that they are continually asked to provide information in a range of ways, and they are very keen to do that, but that can be quite burdensome. When they have all the other challenges—post-pandemic, staffing, inspection regimes—they are doing all that, as well as opening their books and showing that willing. Then there is that sense of not feeling that the local authority is required to do the same thing. Overall, I would say that it is so important that there is that emphasis, as Jonathan said, around will there be this annual review of the rate and annual uplift, a recognition that the real living wage is not aspirational, and it will never help the sector to narrow the gap between the salaries, terms and conditions and the attractiveness of leaving this sector and going into the public sector or the staff that they work with. It is very hard to separate all that, because the ongoing pressures of inspections and the lack of the fact that we have not got the shared inspection and that they are continuing within ELC at the moment when it is not happening in the primary and secondary settings. That can be quite difficult for the sector, as well. Sustainability is at the heart of this, and we need to get it right. We need to talk together and we need to work in partnership and have a way that the sector does not feel that they will give all this information, and then there is this perception that nothing will change, because authorities may or may not engage with that information that they have. Jenny, is it your view that the local authorities have a conflict of interest in all this? It is hard to not say that they do not, because they are having to be the guarantors of quality as well for the sector, so there will naturally be that tension. I thank every financials. It seems that the progress that has been made is all the more remarkable, based on some of the things that we have heard this morning. Thank you, convener. Good morning, everyone. I was really interested in exchanges. I was looking at a submission from the National Daner's Association who welcomes the financial sustainability health check of childcare sectors published in August last year, because it acknowledges some of the challenges around the setting of sustainable rates. There is a call for that to go further and for those rates to be reviewed. I dug out that document. It says that we should strengthen the process for local authorities to set sustainable rates for providers in the private third and sector to deliver funded ALC. It says that that should be done with COSLA in time for setting rates for August 2022. We just heard that rates are imminently about to be set, so maybe I could ask Jonathan Broadbury in the first instance and then go to Matthew Hussain. Jonathan, has that happened or what has the engagement been to make sure that that does happen? That was the recommendation from August last year. Part of that has happened. Part of that has been the national exercise that has been going on by COSLA and the Improvement Service. That has been an exercise in trying to support local authorities in gathering that data locally so that they have not been the ones necessarily going out and doing that. We were aware prior to that of some local authorities working together in regional improvement collaboratives to collect data on a regional basis. Generally, the feedback that we get from our members is that there is not the level of engagement that they might expect at a local level. Again, there are different practices around the country and some local authorities will set a multi-year rate. I would say that that is really difficult for providers because their costs go up year on year. It is not like the rates that they are getting at the start of that period. I cover all their costs in the way that they need them to. To get that to the end of that period is not that they are falling well behind. The other thing that I would say is that, within the guidance on sustainable rates, there is a recognition that partner providers do not just need to cover the basics of their cost, but if they are going to invest in improving their environment, they are going to invest in their staff's development and training of the staff. As I have said earlier, we have a lot of not untrained, but a lot of people who are being trained up in the private and voluntary sector at the moment need to come from a sustainable rate as well. I would say that there is some work being progressed in that area, but our members are saying that it is very patchy and the levels of engagement are not always great. I am concerned about the word patchy, because that was the point about the recommendation in August last year that it was patchy and that Government and COSLA and the Improvement Service would stop it being patchy. I get that having a strong process by which local authorities engage with the third and private sectors does not mean that they will necessarily get the rates that they wish to see, but there still has to be a strong, robust and engaging set of practices across 32 local authorities. We hope that output will be good news for the sector, but we get the financial pressures that everyone is under, but that is not an excuse not for a strong process. Can I ask Matthew Sweeney? Has the process been strengthened and how can we measure that across 32 local authorities, rather than a dig at COSLA in the slightest, rather than just asserting that we have engaged? How can we measure that there has been a robust process put in place for that engagement? Thank you for the question. I think that it is an important one. I think that it goes back to some of the answers that we have given previously, that it was not simply about strengthening processes in a way because of the work of local authorities. It was also that they felt that they weren't able to access good information, quality information from their partners. I think that it was important that you mentioned the health check earlier, because I think that some of the other recommendations within that health check were saying that actually the private voluntary providers have the same ability to share some of their costs in a detailed and useful way so that we can do that in the evidence-based process that we need to do. Just to provide a brief overview of the cost collection exercise, as you quickly identified, the Scottish Government asked COSLA and we worked with the improvement service to develop this national cost collection exercise that was based on previous good practice. It was work that had happened in 2016 nationally. There was work, as Jonathan had mentioned, across a number of multi-authority exercises that were taken place first in the west partnership in Aberdeach and Murray, and we built on what had been the best practice through those processes. We then commissioned external support to undertake that research. It went out to around 1,000 providers in February this year, and we then was open for about six weeks, although Adam may have more detail on the bits that I'm forgetting now. The outputs of that were sort of cleaned and were provided to local authorities just in the last two weeks or so. Now they are currently in a process of looking at the data that they've been given, looking at it in the context of other information that they've got, so that would be what are the conversations that they've had with their local providers today, what is their knowledge of the local ELC market, and then they'll be going through a process to set sustainable rates in the coming weeks and months. Okay, and that all sounds great, but there's a disconnect between all of that and then what happens on the ground locally. Is there a best practice template that each local authority should be using? And if there are not local flexibility, absolutely, but surely there's certain key things every local authority should just be doing in relation to this. And from what we're hearing is that other witnesses don't think that the local authority is doing that, but they didn't take Mr Day's offer up to name and shame or put on the record the local authorities that maybe haven't stepped up to the plate. It's not about naming and shaming, it's about improving practice across 32 local authorities and having that open, transparent and structured approach to engagement, so maybe Matthew Sweeney will briefly come in and then maybe the improvement service because I want to know how we can go tick that local authority doing what we anticipate. That one's got a better work to go because unless we actually know what's happening on the ground thing, we won't drive up that improvement. So it's not about naming and shaming, it's about just who's got a lot better to do. I think that's the exact right spare of the work that we've been trying to do over the past year. First was about getting the evidence base and then there was a process which I think Adam will be better pleased to talk about around the workshops and support that's been going on, the sharing of best practice, the forum for local authorities to provide peer support and how they go around those processes. One thing that I would mention is that first with the NDNA, because the NDNA agreed a series of partnership principles back in 2018, which were around the agreement that we both made in terms of how they would engage with each other in terms of doing that. We were pleased to revisit them and then get agreement across a number of the private bodies, many of them here today, in terms of how those principles work. I think that sort of late on last year we refreshed those principles and got agreement across COSLA and all the representative bodies for the private nursery and voluntary and child managers as well. We're continuing to help hold up them as the best practice that we're all striving on, but crucially that's about the actions of all partners on all sides. I'll let Adam come in because he'll probably knows more about the workshops, so I'm able to bring in more detail. I'm happy to come in on that. As Matthew said, we've been involved in the cost collection exercise approached by COSLA and the Scottish Government to be the commission organisation. At that stage, we were working with national organisations, including the Association of Doctors of Education with Doctors of Finance, the Scottish Government and COSLA to design the cost collection survey. We commissioned Ipsos Moray to undertake that. In advance of that exercise being completed, we were trying as much as possible to work with colleagues around the table here from NDNA, earlier Scotland and SCMA as well in getting their feedback on the design. They were really helpful in trying to encourage their members to increase the uptake as well. In that sense, we were trying to exhibit the best practice there in partnership working between local authorities and the national membership organisations to encourage uptake. As a national exercise, we are trying to exemplify the way to work together to encourage and build a strong evidence base. That felt like a positive process to go through. As I mentioned earlier, the process is outlined by COSLA and the health check in August last year. It all sounds very good. 1,000 partners have fed in what those cost pressures are and everything else is very positive. Rates have been set just now, so that engagement has taken place. If we fast forward a few months, will the improvement service report on where improvements have been made? Just as importantly, will the flag up local authority areas when more work still needs to be done? Later in the year, when the committee goes, how did that go? We will know how it went rather than just some reflective general comments about how there was a process of engagement. How can we measure success in a few months' time after those rates have been set? How can we do that? We have not been asked to evaluate that at this stage. We have been trying to work on a continuous improvement basis. As Matthew said, we are trying to open up the forums between local authorities so that they can share practice on certain rates in support of that transparency, but we do not have any evaluation methodology in place at this stage. We have not been asked to do so in terms of evaluating the extent to which that has changed. Of course, for me to speak for the committee, we have our own deliberations, but if that was something that the committee thought would be useful for the improvement service to do, is it something that you would be very interested in doing in the months ahead? I am sure that we could absolutely consider it. I would like to work with COSLAW on that in our partnership work and agreement. Part of that is everything that we have presented this year in our delivery progress report, which is evidence-based. Obviously, in terms of strength of relationship, there is always an element of subjectivity. I would like to take advice on exactly the form that that evaluation would take to make sure that it is strongly evidence-based and objective rather than subjective. In that sense, I would be happy to consider that. Okay, thank you. I am looking at the convener now. I did have another question on diversity in the workforce. I do not know if I have got time to ask about it just now. Well, before you go on to that, we do have Graham McAllister, who wants to take up the line of questions you are in. Graham, if you would like to come on. Thank you. It was just a quick comment to say that the situation is complicated further for childminders in the sense that some local authorities have simply applied nursery models, sustainable rates to childmining. Others have wanted to try and understand childmining a bit more because it is a different business model. In simple terms, the vast—sorry, childminders are all private businesses. The vast majority are sole workers, and they are practicing entirely during the day. There is a lot of hidden costs in childmining in the sense that all of their business activity, their quality assurance, their paperwork has to be done unpaid in the evenings and at weekends. That has been increasing quite significantly during the ALC expansion to the extent that childmining is now estimating that it is taking about an additional day a week unpaid just to keep up with the paperwork. We have been working with Matthew and Adam. There has still been a separate cost collection exercise for childminders to undertake shortly, but the clock is ticking and we are getting closer to August. We are aware that some local authorities are starting to implement the new rates. What we have asked COSLA from is an assurance that if this exercise indicates that the rates should be higher, it should advise local authorities that they might need to revise the rates as we go beyond August. We are going to move on, but we will come back. I have a note of a number of people who want to come back if we have time on secondary lines of questions. Let us go first to Ruth Maguire. Good morning, panel. We have covered quite a fair bit of what I was going to look at. I am interested in childmining. Graham McAllister, in answer to Michael Marra, you said that some of the reasons for the decline in numbers of childmining were that the local authorities were not promoting childmining. You also spoke to the recruitment into the local authority in the early years settings. On the flip side of that, if you could just say a bit more about the unique contribution of childminders to the provision of childcare. I am interested in hearing in terms of both the childminders themselves what that is, as a business or a role offers people who wish to do it and also from the perspective of parents and children. I think that what I would say in general terms is that childmining is a unique form of childcare. Its poverty at home setting has very low adult's child ratios, so there is more one-to-one support for children. It is also in companies pre-school and school-age childcare, so it is quite common for childminders to provide childcare to children from birth through to 12, or indeed to 16-year-olds for children with additional sport needs. What you have is unparallel continuity of care through a series of transitions, going to nursery, going to primary, going to high school. There was some research that was undertaken by Epsos and Moray last year on behalf of the Scottish Government that found that parents very much view childmining as more than a form of childcare. It is a family support where they get professional objective advice that they do not get from other sources. From every part of your childmining is unique, we should not think that all forms of childcare are the same. That is what makes the situation all the more tragic for parents, in the sense that, as I said, we have lost over 8,700 childmining spaces during ELC expansion. That cannot continue, it is not sustainable, we really need to turn that around. That is why, particularly when you look at all the quality reasons, all childcare providers in Scotland will follow the same standards, the same frameworks and the same curricula. We are all inspected by the care inspectorate. Childmining consistently, year on year, achieves higher quality ratings across all quality criteria to independent inspection by the care inspectorate than day care of children services, and that encompasses local authority nurseries and private nurseries. It is a very high quality form of childcare. That is why we are deeply concerned by the losses that we have experienced as a result of ELC expansion. One of the challenges for childminders is that, because they are sole workers, they do not have the support of managers, finance teams, other practitioners and administrators. They have to do everything on their own. They are practicing during the day, everything else done is in the evenings and weekends. What we have found with ELC expansion is that we have had a whole series of framework standards that have created a layering effect, where the quality assurance requirements are now becoming disproportionate to childmining. They are becoming excessive. It is the main reason that we are losing childminders from our workforce. I wonder whether you could say a bit about how the Scottish Government is working with the childmining association in terms of trying to ease that administrative burden and the business support that is needed that you spoke about. Do local authorities provide additional support to childminders to become partner providers, given that it is a different setup and, as you say, a lone worker often? The problem that we have had is the tension between a national policy and it being dependent on local implementation. What we have is variation around the country. There are some local authorities who put in place support. If simplified tendering processes may be easier for childminders to get involved, but too many have not. Too many, as I said earlier, have been prioritising their own provision. That has been one of the challenges for us during the ELC expansion. We work closely and collaboratively with colleagues in the Scottish Government. We are commissioned, as I said, independently to undertake on the annual audit of where local authorities are at. For the past five years, we have been reporting back consistently, finding that, too many local authorities are not promoting childmining equitably to parents. It is difficult for the Scottish Government, because they have to respect the local autonomy. They do not want to tell local authorities what to do. The Scottish Government does not want to tell local authorities what to do. However, if the Scottish Government and the Scottish Government are both standing back, it creates a bit of a vacuum. That is very difficult for childminders, as a sole business is operating. We have put in place as much support as we can to help them, but the situation has just become unsustainable. Partly about the paperwork, but we have mentioned earlier a few of us talking about shared inspection. What we now have under ELC was never intended. We have duplicative systems of quality assurance at a national and local level, which, again, are completely disproportionate to childmining. On the one hand, we have the care inspectorate, who has a quality framework that undertakes inspection and childminders are self-evaluated. We have Education Scotland, who has its framework on learning. How good is ELC, which childminders involved in ELC are expected to self-evaluate against? At the end of local authorities, at a local level, some of whom we do not recognise are all of the care inspectorate. Both the care inspectorate and local authorities see themselves as garden powers of quality, but we have some local authorities now going out planning to undertake twice-yearly inspection and twice-yearly self-evaliation. It is quite messy, to be frank. We have duplicative quality assurance that just was not intended. Seven years ago, we had an independent advisory group that recommended that there was a need for a shared inspection or a single inspection. The Scottish Government accepted that, charged the care inspectorate and Education Scotland with delivering that. Seven years on, that is not being delivered. We have these separate frameworks and separate inspections. Again, we made representations of education reform work because there are really serious implications for childminders in the sense that, if we are going to keep layering on quality assurance requirements, we are going to make it more and more challenging for these businesses to be sustainable. Let me go back to Michael Marra, then. You had a question that you wanted to do as a secondary line. I would give it a reasonable brief. I think that most people have touched on this in slighting terms of their observations over the last couple of years on some of the work that has been done around this policy. I have had reports in my own constituency and, beyond reports, actual closures of nurseries. It seems to be, I am being told, a change in behaviour patterns from parents, perhaps accessing childcare in different ways, making different decisions given their own work-in patterns have changed. I know that there was some work undertaken about the financial health of the sector over a year ago. Do we feel that that work needs to be refreshed? Do we have concerns regarding the general health of the sector across Scotland? I want to be reasonably specific around that, as it is coming out on the other side of the pandemic. I think that we have explored in some depth, convener, the various issues relating to the unexpected consequences and others of the policies that we have been talking about today. Generally, I am looking at the health of the sector. Jane, perhaps, first of all? Thank you. As we have mentioned in our evidence in our paper, the sector is struggling with numerous challenges and it was touched on earlier with regard to the importance of the funded rate being more equitable and not postcode lottery. However, the other issue that was briefly mentioned is the fact that the PVI sector and childminders are businesses and they need to reinvest in their settings to be sustainable. If it is a constant issue of trying to negotiate for a rate that is equitable, that is suitably what the setting needs to thrive, not just survive, because that is what is happening at the moment. In terms of the health of the sector coming out of a pandemic, all the increased costs, the issues that we have raised around, you cannot separate all of those in terms of staffing challenges and all the issues that are linked to that as we talked about the ever-increasing gap between local authorities salaries and the PVI sector in general. Those are real key issues that we need to address, so there are a number of factors below. If you talk about the health of the sector, it is what part do you focus in on. There needs to be critical structured action now because that health of the sector will only continue to decline, so we need to invest properly in the sector. We need to look at an equitable rate that listens to what the sector is saying in terms of its needs and is then acted upon rather than this on-going feeling of lack of action. It is great that we have all those discussions today, but what does that mean for the sector in terms of action? What critical things could happen now that really supports the sector to thrive? It should not be the case that it depends on what setting a child in Scotland participates in and engages with. It should be an equitable picture for parents to choose from in terms of provider neutral. We should value the quality across the whole sector, but at the moment that sense of value is not there. It is important that we have some concrete action from today for us to support our members. Johnathan, if you would, I think that Johnathan has given a good overview of some of the challenges there and we have covered that at length. Specific to the pandemic exacerbation of existing problems? I can be very brief, yes, absolutely. To expand on that brief answer that we have been highlighting issues with the roll-out of the expansion, both in terms of workforce, the sustainable rates, as we built up to August 2020—obviously, the pandemic hit and that has made things a lot worse. We have a mixed picture for our members, depending on where they are. Their occupancy has been hollowed out and they have not seen the same recovery for others. They are seeing almost demand for places outstripping what they can provide, and they are looking for support to expand what they are delivering. There is a real mixed picture, but fundamentally those issues underline the whole thing in terms of turnover of staff, which is amongst the highest in the UK for the sector, and the issues that we have talked about. In terms of addressing those, there are phrases in the blueprint in terms of providing neutrality and funding following the child. We think that there is a solution here, which puts choice back in the hands of parents. We have proposed on numerous occasions a childcare passport so that funding for the child is in the possession of the parents. As long as they are working with a registered provider, whether that is a council nursery, a childminder or a private or voluntary setting, they choose where they want their child to take up the funded provision. That will start to address the transparency of how the service is funded. It will start to address how we are looking at outcomes. Looking ahead to the implementation of the UNCRC, it will address the question of how we are making sure that every child has the equal support and equal opportunities, regardless of where they take up that provision. We think that there are solutions out there, but the health of the sector is very worrying. Does any other witnesses have anything specific to the pandemic or the actions that they have done? Yes, Graham does. Just briefly, at the moment, we have new programme for government commitments coming through to extend ELC down to one-year-olds to develop a new wraparound system for school-age childcare. There is a real risk to those policy ambitions that if child-mining businesses and PDI businesses go, we will not have the providers there to deliver those. There is also a risk that we will think that 1140 has been delivered. What comes through this morning is that there have been a lot of these things that need to be addressed. When we look at financial health check, what that found was that during a pandemic there had been a sustained reduction in demand for childcare due to the requirement for parents to work from home or being unfurlo. The providers who were most vulnerable after the pandemic were school-age childcare and child-mining. When we look at the original attempt of ELC, if that is about closing the attainment gap, as well as free childcare, there is a real need to go out and to drive demand for childcare to bring that back. It is starting to come back, but with changes in hybrid working, nobody knows quite what that future demand is going to be, but we need to drive it. It was just on the back of the questions on the impact of Covid. During the Omicron, I believe that the Scottish Government did release funding of £9.8 million on the childcare sector Omicron impacts fund. I was just curious to see how that had helped and how useful that was. I think probably the best person would be Jonathan, sorry, and then possibly Graham. Thanks for the question, yes. We asked our members about the level of support that they received through funds such as this and a couple of earlier funds and, for the majority of people, they were able to access it. It did help and it came at a useful and helpful time for them, but the vast majority of feedback that we got was that it did not, in no way, replace what had been lost. It was really vital support. Again, with my UK-wide hat-on, the Scottish Government responded in a way of providing indirect support to providers that others did not. That level of support did not make up for the kind of losses that we had seen. Just on that, when we asked providers how they expected to perform last year, just under three quarters said that they expected to operate just at a break-even point or making a loss. Their financial health is really struggling and the pandemic has eaten into reserves of both human capacity and financial capacity within the sector, so that is the final point that I would make. Would Graham like to comment on that? Graham, do you want to comment? Yes, just very briefly and in similar terms to Jonathan, I think that the Omicron Grant was very welcome. For childminders, we had a slightly different experience in the sense that, consistently throughout the two years of the pandemic, childminders disproportionately received less financial support both at a UK and Scottish level than other providers. There have been real issues around the sustainability. Childminders were not able to access a hard trip grant for self-isolation and were hit by that regularly. They had to close their settings on a number of occasions. Yes, the Omicron grant was very welcome, but childminders still are in the worst place than they were certainly earlier on. Thank you, Willie Rennie. Just returning to the money. The funding is supposed to follow the pupil. Why is there not just a straight formula that divides the total amount of money by the number of young people or places and then allocates the funding accordingly? Why is it not just what it is supposed to be that the money follows the young person? I think that it is complex and there is no way to get around that. I think that we tried to, in the back of our submission, set out some of the ways in which we tried to do it quite visually, to try to explain some of the different costs that local authorities have. The fundamental driver of ever—one of the big drivers of them—is pay. We are being asked by the Scottish Government about their investment. The level of funding that they have given us is to provide funding for private and partner providers to pay the real living wage. At the same time, funding for local authorities must be able to meet the nationality sector through collective bargaining rates for our workforce. I have heard that it has been made clear again that the sector has the interest in the conversation of pay equity. If that is an interest to happen, that will take a significant amount of additional investment from the Scottish Government if that is the subspace that we are looking to move towards. I am not sure when we are looking at what funding follows the child mean. I think that if you looked at a document, I do not think that there was any sort of that it was ever said that there would be equitable funding to all settings. There has always been an understanding of the clear parameters that the Scottish Government asks local authorities to provide when they are setting up funding rates for private and voluntary provision. I am just staggered by the submission that somehow those who work in the PVI sector are worthless even though they are doing, supposedly, exactly the same job. The pay rates—I have some examples here. In Falkirk, a local authority head of centre, he has paid 71 per cent more than his private nursery manager equivalent. Despite working less hours, in Glasgow, a deputy head of nursery has paid 87 per cent more than a deputy nursery manager in the PVI sector. Are we surprised that there is an exodus of staff from the PVI sector? Are you surprised by that? You have got the tough job today. You have not to defend this. I would say fundamentally that this was a policy intention that was set by the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government asks us to say that it is very clear that it is written in the guidance that it very clearly says that stable rates must be set at a level that enables national policy priorities such as the payment of the real living wage. I think that if there is a conversation to be had and there is interest from our colleagues across the bread and bread bodies about ensuring that there is a greater level of equity between local authority and private provision, that is fine. I am happy to have that, but that is going to require a significant amount of public investment at a time when he will see funding to local authorities and the core budget for local authorities being cut. The impact of the policy in terms of what the effect is having on the PVI sector was already factored into the policy, is that what you are saying? I do not know. I mean, I have a question to the Scottish Government fundamentally about the way that it is. In terms of that decision about the real living wage, that was something that we were happy to support. As far as I said, it is important for us for provision to be as high-quality as possible and the real living wage is a part of that. As I have mentioned already, there are other areas where they have gone further than the real living wage. In that social care and out-providing 10.50 at present, they are still providing the real living wage for ELC and the funding that has come to local authorities. It is not only being cut, but it is predicated on the idea that we are paying the real living wage to private and voluntary providers. Real living wage is not going to stop in excess. We have known that they are reducing the number of rooms that are available for providing the service. We know that many of them are closing. We know that lots of staff are moving over, so they are really struggling to provide the service. That is important. That is not private good or public bad. That is not what that is about. That is about private nurseries and voluntary nurseries that can provide a much more flexible service, which is what the First Minister said was important. All of us will remember this debate what four or five years ago, because there was a lot of parents speaking out at the time saying that we need flexibility to fit around our work patterns. We are in danger of undermining the objective that the First Minister said all those years ago by cutting out the private sector and treating it in the second-class citizens. I find it staggering that we have got to this stage. You are the first person that I have heard to provide—I commend you for it—by providing a very open explanation, because it has been a very opaque up until now. We have got a very open and transparent admission now that there is a design in the system to pay those in the council sector much more than those in the private and voluntary sector. It is not sustainable. We are going to undermine the policy if we carry on as we are. I am not blaming you for all this, Matthew. You have been sent out to defend this, but it is just not sustainable. As I said before, very clearly we are saying that if there is further funding to come to this, we can enable it, but the funding that we have been providing just now was calculated and predicated on paying the real living wage. I understand that you are concerned about that, but I am just being very clear that this is not a policy decision that local authorities are taking. It is that this was about the design of the boss in the first instance. Fundamentally, what we are saying is that funding for local authority delivery is being reduced, so it is very difficult for us to even—I think that there are conversations that will be had about whether local authorities can meet our commitments to provide a level that is the expectation of the thing. I mentioned before about inflation rising at the same rate. If there is further investment in the ELC, that will need to happen if there is to meet some of the ambitions that have been expressed today. You have set the cat amongst the pigeons, Matthew, so I commend you for that. However, this is not the end of the debate. We need to return to this. I think that Jonathan Gray and I want to make some short comments, Jonathan. It is possible, but I feel like Willys hit the nail on the head in terms of the frustrations and the experiences of Armin. There has been very much that—there has been a—not to be even a perception, a real fact on the ground that people have been able to earn much more and potentially for the fewer hours. I gave an example earlier where people have taken actually stepped down in responsibilities and still been able to secure higher pay by making that move across. One of the things that jumps out is if you look at the data, the number of managers in publicly funded nurseries from March 2019 to March 2022 almost doubles, whereas it was previously higher in the private voluntary sector. We have suffered a dip and we are just trying to recover back to that level. What is the real world consequence? The real world consequence is private voluntary settings closing because they cannot hire the managers that they need to stay open within the requirements of the rules and the regulations. This is an area that needs urgent action. We have asked for local authorities to do more of and to grow their own schemes. We have asked for local authorities to restrict and to limit the recruitment that they do from partner providers, because in the end everybody suffers on that front. Finally, there was some progress being made on that in the lead-up to the pandemic. It was not ideal, but it was getting a little bit better. The pandemic has just kind of exacerbated that growth over the last few months. Jonathan, the extraordinary thing about this morning's evidence session is that we have learned that this was a deliberate design of the policy. I think that that is something that we ought to contemplate. Ruth, please. I see the difficulty for the sector, but I think that we want the deliberate part of the policy to ensure that providers are paying a living wage. Presumably they were paying less than that on occasion before, so I think that there is that side of it to consider as well. I am just going on what Matthew has said was a great deal of transparency this morning about what everyone knew was going to happen, and that is exactly what is happening. At this point, Bob Doris is going to ask one last question. I am going to go on and ask about diversity of workforce, but I think that the recent exchange with Mr Venn was really helpful, because it flushes quite a few things out. We need to see the bigger picture. We have had a revolution in the provision of early years learning in childcare. Local authority staff has went from 10,000 in the sector to 18,000 in the sector, and there is now a requirement to pay the real living wage across all providers. That is just the right thing to do. My earlier line of questioning was about the financial challenges on the sector irrespective of that. I think that we have to look at things in the round. There is something called a stability index, which is very important, and that is about the retention of early-year staff in the sector. Are you now giving evidence or asking a question? That is important, convener. Others are allowed to give a context on the committee. That is that 78.9 per cent of staff in the sector are there at the start of the following year. You retain them for a year, and that is up 2.5 per cent. That is called the stability index. The reason I put that on the record, convener, is that that is exactly the same level of retention across the wider social services sector. It might be that there is an issue across the wider social services sector. Are you going to ask a question? I am now going to ask a question. I want to look at those people who are in the sector, because recruitment and retention remains a challenge. They tend to be female, they tend to be lower paid. We are not doing very attractive men into the sector. That is a real opportunity for recruitment and retention. That is the context to it, convener. Would any of the witnesses like to pick up the cudgels? I know that there was a previous men in early years challenge for under £50,000 to get men into the sector. What work is on going to do that, and what success is there being? Clearly, if we are ignoring 48 per cent of the population for taking careers in early learning and childcare, we are letting down 100 per cent of the children, because we need a diverse workforce, not just men, but also black and minority ethnic individuals as well. We have got to take her. Jane, I think, wants to comment. Thank you. It is a very good question. I think that, yes, long-term, we do want to diversify the sector. We absolutely want to have that wide diversity. I was part of the gender commission recently as a commissioner, and we talked at length about that. The factors around that have been mentioned today as well. How attractive is it to other more diverse groups and men, as you specifically say? Some of the anecdotal evidence through the commission was that, speaking to young secondary pupils, male pupils particularly, they were saying, why would I want to go into the sector—it is perceived as a female sector and it is perceived as low-pay. Unless we address all the issues that, as membership bodies we have raised here today, it is that continual, on-going challenge. When Jonathan mentioned the gaps in the job roles, that will just keep widening. The aspiration to pay the real living wage, which we have heard today, is not enough to be sustainable for the sector. Yes, wholeheartedly, I have been involved in earlier Scotland in many ways of trying to diversify the sector. We would love that to happen, but we need to look at the critical needs of the sector at the moment or we will not have a sector to diversify if that makes sense. We would be keen in the sport of doing work to increase diversification within a workforce, but the reality is that we need to tackle the underlying causes, which at the moment do not make recruitment into childcare attractive, regardless of gender. I also want to go back to Willie's question about living wage. Childmenting, as I said, is not a high-income profession. Many child managers have fed back to us who have struggled to pay themselves the real living wage. They could be disadvantaged further by ELC, because there is a requirement as a national standard for staff to have paid the real living wage. When we look at the data coming through from improvement service, 70 per cent of children receiving funded ELC or local authority nurseries, 28 in PVI and only 2 per cent in childmenting. What is the impact that has been on the PVI sector of ELC expansion? There has been a lot of data shared with us today, but if there is only one statistic that you take away from today, please let it be this. In our last audit last year, we found out that only four local authorities out of 32 in Scotland had undertaken impact assessments of their local expansion plans on childmenting. That tells you all you need to know where the main emphasis has been on local authority nurseries, and we need to change that. I have one last question, and this is really for the last minute. I am always concerned about outcomes. That has to be what we are focused on at the end of the day—what improves, what changes, how do we do in relation to the objectives that we set ourselves? What I am not clear about from this morning is who is actually doing the measuring of the outcomes over time. Who is doing that? Let me go round very quickly and very short answers, please. Who is going to do the vital work of measuring these outcomes? Let me start with Matthew. A local level local authorities will be measuring outcomes as part of their existing processes, whether that be specific plans for childcare, for their integrated children's services plans or for their local outcomes improvement plans. At a national level, there is obviously work that is on going through the Scottish study of early learning and childcare, which is being led by the Government, which is looking at outcomes. I agree in that way, because it is such an important question. Are we getting it right for the children, ultimately? We obviously have inspection data. We have the quality assurance evidence from the settings as well. They do very robust ways of collating evidence on whether we are getting things right for children. It is a partnership approach looking at an audit of how we get that information and who is currently collating it and have we got enough? Who is doing the work on the outcomes? My question is, who is doing it? We have inspection information coming through in terms of outcomes. Is that what you mean in terms of addressing whether things are improving for children? Which body is going to do it? Not how we are going to do it, but who is going to do the work of collating this information to measure these outcomes? I am not sure of that in that way, but I am just aware of the different ways that are happening. Someone needs to pick this up, obviously. Matthew is offering local authorities and the Government. Adam Hall, it is not the improvement service. You said that earlier. No, we have fed into the long-term monitoring evaluation strategy that the Scottish Government is looking to collate as well. We are prepared to feed into that and support that in any way that we can. Your answer is to the Government. Yes. In terms of the national measure of the outcomes of the policy, yes. Johnathan. I think that there is a role for Education Scotland in its reform state in terms of children's learning outcomes and the potential to look better. As a representative body, we will continue working with our members on providing feedback on their experiences. Finally, in terms of the amount of public funding that has gone into this policy, there is follow-up work from Audit Scotland in terms of how effective it is and what value money is being provided. I go back to first and foremost the outcomes for children and what they are achieving. Education Scotland, Audit Scotland. Graham McAllister, your last word, please. I should say that I sat at the national level on the monitoring and evaluation group for the Scottish study of ELC, which is under way. That had already started to undertake research on some of the earlier stages of ELC, but you can be assured that in terms of outcomes, they are undertaking independent research, looking at a whole range of outcomes across family wellbeing, employability and closing the attainment gap. That involves independent epidemiologists from Public Health Scotland, so that work was very much under way in parallel to what is happening at a national and local level around auditing implementation. Well, thank you to Matthew Sweeney, to Jane Brompton, Adam Hall, Jonathan Broadbury and Graham McAllister, who have been our panellists this morning. We appreciate you giving us your time and also the evidence, which has been very interesting. As you can tell, it has stimulated a lot of response from the members of the Scottish Parliament on this committee. We will now have a short suspension of five minutes to allow for a change of witnesses and to those leaving us. Thank you very much and have a good day. The next item on our agenda is an evidence session on the cross-border placement's effect of deprivation of liberty order Scotland regulations 2022. This morning, we will take evidence from Claire Hawkey, MSP, the Minister for Children and Young People, and Scottish Government officials Hannah Graham, team leader improving lives for care experience unit, Tom McNamara, the head of youth justice and children's hearings, and Claire Montgomery, who is a solicitor. Good morning to each of you. Minister, can you please give us your opening statement up to five minutes? Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to the committee. Scottish ministers have committed to keeping the promise by reducing and ultimately ending cross-border placements, whether children's liberty is to be deprived or restricted. We have also a responsibility to uphold children's rights and ensure that their wellbeing is their paramount consideration. That applies to all children in Scotland, not just children from Scotland. Last week, you heard evidence from the Office of the Children and Young People's Commissioner. I want to record my thanks for their careful and thorough analysis of the issues involved. We have engaged with the Children's Commissioner's Office and with other key actors throughout the development of these regulations. We all agree that cross-border placements should only occur in exceptional circumstances, and we want to see them reduced to the minimum numbers possible. Last year, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the use of the inherent jurisdiction to authorise deprivations of liberty in non-secure accommodation is lawful and is not incompatible with article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights. There needs to be an appropriate legal mechanism for recognition of those orders. Currently, that involves petitions to the Court of Session to recognise the deprivation of liberty orders made by the High Court and other parts of the UK. The Supreme Court noted that it is the chronic lack of capacity in England and will secure and high-intensity residential childcare accommodation that is driving those placements. Members can be assured that I have pressed and will continue to press the UK Government to address urgently those shameful capacity issues. The Scottish Government is not the author of those circumstances, but we find ourselves in the invidious position of having to mitigate their impact. Those impacts follow the children themselves on their families and on Scottish services. We cannot delay in taking action to better protect those children, and the options before us are stark. The current process of petitioning the Court of Session in respect of dozens of exceptional individual applications is not sustainable. It is imperative that we provide improved safeguards to better protect children and young people on those placements, and the only way that we can achieve full parity of treatment with Scottish children as advocated by the commissioner's office would be to accept wholesale responsibility for those cross-border placements into our Scottish care and legal systems. If we were to take that approach, we would be complicit in severing the links between the children and their home community and support networks. We would be absolving the placing authorities elsewhere in the UK of the responsibilities that properly lie with them. The likely consequence is that we would firstly see a marked increase in placements. There would be a knock-on, unplanned and unfair resourcing impact on Scottish authorities and services as the placements multiply. What the regulations before you do is provide for recognition of the doll orders in Scots law, but conditions that bring greater accountability to placing authorities and greater protections for the children in those placements currently exist. They do not transplant responsibility to Scotland, but they offer better notification mechanisms and carefully constructed fail-saves. That includes the requirement for the placing authority to notify key Scottish authorities about the placement details, as well as provide an undertaking that they will provide or secure and cover the costs of all services required to support the child. That is not happening in practice currently and will become a legal requirement. The regulations also provide for Scottish ministers to apply to the relevant sheriff for an order to enforce the implementation authorities duties in relation to the child if they are not being fulfilled. We have listened and responded to the views of stakeholders when developing these regulations. Our original proposal included an advisory role for the children's hearings to facilitate information to the High Court with regard to the child's progress and placement and, more importantly, consider the child's access to local rights protections. We had also proposed that it would be open to the children's hearings to appoint a safeguarder to consider legal representation and to ensure advocacy profession had been offered to the child. That earlier stronger proposal was not supported by the children's commissioner and other stakeholders. In particular, the Children's Commissioner raised several issues relating to the ability of a child to challenge the basis of deprivation of liberty. Challenging, varying or overturning the High Court's order is not in scope here. The scope of available powers cannot influence the decisions of a superior court in another jurisdiction. The regulations improve the status quo and represent an interim step to allow us to get to longer-term solutions as part of the Children's Care and Justice Bill. The bill is the space where we can consider more fully and fundamentally how to address these cross-border placements. That is why we are already seeking views in the consultation for the bill on regulation, scrutiny and monitoring. The role of the care inspector in relation to cross-border placements and all were issues highlighted by the commissioner's response. My view is that the improvements to existing cross-border doll processes and the protection of Scottish local services, which those regulations afford, must be implemented as soon as possible, and I therefore commend the regulations to the committee. Thank you very much minister. Further, on behalf of the committee, thank you for your correspondence in the days leading up to this meeting of the committee. It has been very, very helpful. Ross Greer. Can I echo the convener's thanks for the letter? I think that it was really useful as preparation for this meeting. Minister, obviously once regulations are laid, they can't be amended, they can either, the Parliament can either make a judgment on them or they can be withdrawn. This has presented us with some questions of process before we get into the issues of substance for the regulation because the commissioner's office has presented us with proposed alternatives, which, if the Government were to adopt them, would require withdrawal and then the laying of new regulations. To me, that begs a question of process. Did the commissioner's office have specific knowledge of the regulations that you were intending on bringing forward? Obviously you would engage with them on the broad principles of this, but was there a point before those regulations were laid and were published that the commissioner's office knew that either they had been given a draft of the regulations or a summary of the specific policy intentions? If that was the case, had they, at that point, come back to you with something equivalent to the information that they provided us, the list of alternatives? I am trying to understand how we have ended up in a place where there are alternatives coming forward from the commissioner's office, but regulations have already been published, so we cannot amend this to accept any of those, even if we were reminded to. We initially put out a call for views and engagement with stakeholders in January this year, which the commissioner's office contributed to. Summary of the stakeholders' views in March this year was also published. It was not appropriate for us to share drafts before sharing with Parliament of the regulations, but I am happy to pass to Hannah to explain what the actual process would be in terms of regulations of this type. I think that with regard to your question, Mr Greer, we have had a long and constructive dialogue with officials from the office of the commissioner. I think that we are looking back around 10 meetings to discuss the proposed regulations, what they should contain. As the minister highlighted, we published a policy paper in January. The commissioner came back on that with some suggestions around how we could strengthen our proposals, which we built in, and one of which was the requirement to have a notification sent to appropriate Scottish agencies and the commissioner's office. We took that feedback and we built that into the regulations. We also took on board the commissioner's concerns around the role of the children's hearing system. They had some concerns that the child would not be able to challenge the basis for their deprivation of liberty, which is correct. That sits with the High Court, so we accordingly removed that aspect of the proposal. We did not receive, and in our second policy paper that we published in March, we set out the key features on the basis of the stakeholder feedback that he has received of what the regulations would say. They will require a suite of notifications to go to Scottish agencies to address information deficits. They will set the placing authority as the implementation authority. They will provide Scottish advocacy. We did not get anything further from the commissioner's office in respect of those proposals specifically. To take a specific example, the commissioner's evidence to committees stated that they consider that a child's order be recognised in Scotland's law for 22 days. That is not a suggestion that we had prior to the regulations being laid. We had set out at a high level what the key features were. I do not think that we received anything back in terms of more specific detail around that from stakeholders. On that 22-day proposal that you mentioned, I am keen to get into some other points of substance, but given that you raised it, I asked the commissioner's office about this last week of interest and your perspective. My understanding was that the proposal that they laid out would not be something that we could do through regulation. The specifics of what they have asked for would have to be through primary legislation or, indeed, entirely outwith the scope of the Scottish Parliament, given that it is about an English High Court order. Yes, absolutely. It is probably important to be clear what they had asked for in their evidence is for the court order to last to be restricted for 22 days. We do not have any power over a high court in terms of how long it is able to grant its orders for. That is not a decision that we can influence. What we are proposing instead is to set a timeframe for how long the orders are recognised in Scotland's law, which is different to us presenting a date for limiting the court orders. We had chosen three months as that is analogous in terms of what happens for secure care approvals, but I thought that it was just helpful to make that point because, in their subsequent evidence to committee, they had questioned how we had the power to make that order. We are not making an order, we are purely recognising it in Scotland's law. That is really helpful. I could move on to just a couple of specific points of substance then. Part of the regulations give Scottish ministers the power to pursue the policing authority if they have breached various conditions here. I think that a reasonable point that the Children's Commissioner made was to question how ministers would become aware that there was an issue in the first place and specifically how the young person might be able to notify ministers that there was a problem that would justify your pursuit of the policing authority. Could you give a response to that? How would you be in a situation to make use of that power? The regulations give Scottish ministers the power to apply to the share of court for an enforcement order if a policing authority does not comply with its obligations as per regulations. The process that would be followed broadly mirrors what would apply where a Scottish local authority in breach of its obligation to a Scottish child, but a children's hearing had made an order. Scottish ministers would give the authority a notice of intended application by them to enforce the authority's duty, and the matter would only escalate to the share of court where the authority did not fulfil its duty within 21 days, as per the previous order that I referenced. If ministers brought the matter to court, the sheriff could make an enforcement order if it was found that the policing authority were in breach of their duties under the regulations, and that order would be final. That process, if required, would be undertaken by ministers who retain oversight through engagement by way of the child's advocate, Scottish local authorities and the care inspector at all of whom would be able to report concerns or worries. On the role of the advocates, I presumed that that was part of the discussion that I had with the Children's Commissioner's Office. My presumption was that the advocate would be the most likely route through which ministers would become aware of a concern, but you will be aware that the commissioner's office has asked the question about why an advocate, rather than specifically legal representation—I am assuming that in a number of cases the advocate may well be someone with relevant legal qualifications anyway, but that is not guaranteed. Could you expand a little bit on why the regulations don't give the young people guaranteed legal representation? It could be alongside the advocate, because the commissioner's office acknowledged that there is a really powerful role that can be played there. Given that those are young people who are unlikely to be entirely familiar with their rights under English law and, never mind, Scottish law, there is a need for a clear understanding of what their rights are under the Scottish system. Under the legal restrictions on that person's or that young person's liberty are governed under English law, and they have the right to legal representation and advocacy within that legal system that is running. We are putting in place advocates to support that child and to avail them of the rights under Scottish law, but also to help for their voices to be heard in terms of do they feel that their children's plan is being followed? Are they, in the case of the service provider, do they feel that their needs are being met? They would be able to interact with the advocates in the legal process because they are not part of that legal process to pass on concerns or whatever the child wished to be conveyed to the English legal advocates, but they would primarily be looking at the child's welfare and their needs here in Scotland, not their legal needs. Those advocates have access to a legal support service through clan law, so there will be advocates who would have legal background, but they are able to access a clan law, which I think we all accept to our experts in their field in terms of child rights and welfare. One final question if there is time, convener. Your letter is really useful in explaining why some of the specific proposals that the commissioner's office has offered as alternatives either would not be appropriate or are not possible, but there is one that you mentioned that it would not be appropriate, but I am not clear why. That is in relation to their proposal that one of the conditions be the facilities that a young person might be placed into have to have been rated as at least adequate by the caring spectrum within the last six months. That sounds entirely reasonable to me, but the Government has taken a different position on that. Could you explain exactly why the Government thinks that that is either not appropriate or not possible? Those regulations are about the recognition of doll's orders in Scots law without having to go through a superior court route to have them recognised. They are quite narrow in their intent, but what we have done is added on to that some additional safeguards and some additional services such as advocacy for children. We are consulting on the Children's Care and Justice Bill at the moment, and part of that consultation looks at regulation and the role of the care inspector in secure care placements. I think that that would be where those issues would be looked at. It is not within the scope of the current regulations as we have placed them. I understand that the Children's Care and Justice Bill provides a significant opportunity to make improvements here, and I do not object to those regulations. I think that we are better off passing them than not. However, I am still not clear on that. Given that you have added a number of other additional safeguards and conditions, why would not this one have worked? Is that something that the Children's Commissioner had raised with you before you published the regulations, that specific proposal of at least inadequacy rating in the past six months? It would be useful to come in on the practical point about more detailed engagement with the Children's Commissioner's Officers people. What we have observed—you will have seen the thematic review that the Care Inspectorate produced in January and February that focused specifically on doll placements, rather than the broader cross-border cohort. What was clear there was that the Care Inspectorate themselves were very responsive to the extent of concern that ministers and their councils had expressed to them across the summer and autumn time last year, and they prioritised going and satisfying themselves about the conditions that the Children's Endalls placements found themselves in. They have been able to, to a useful degree, flex their current responsibilities in order to supply the evidence and support of the regulations themselves in that limited locus that I was talking about, but the broader shape of registration, approval and continually satisfying themselves as to the continuing suitability for particular facilities, that discussion is something that is live with the Care Inspectorate just now and we would look to be exploring that as part of the Care and Justice Bill broadly across the summer and towards the end of the year. I would be keen to come back in if there is time, but I am happy to leave it for now, because I know that other members would like to ask a few questions. Thank you, Ross Greer. That was very helpful. You are taking the lead there. Deputy convener. Thank you, convener. Good morning, everyone, minister. The number of children is relatively low. It is 35, however. I think that we all know that there are complex and multiple needs that those children will have. I am deliberately not going to list any of the needs that they may have, because there are fewer in number and protecting their right to privacy in that sense. Can you give me some assurances? How do the regulations ensure that the additional support needs of the child are going to be met? As I outlined in my opening statement, the policing authority and the High Court outside Scotland are responsible for determining that the placement is necessary, that it is proportionate and that it is in the best interest of the child. That includes considering the suitability of the placement for the child in light of any protected characteristics or particular needs that they might have, including any disability or additional support needs. The undertaking that the policing authority has to give under the regulations for the doll to be recognised in Scots law will clarify that it is the placing authority that must provide or procure services to support that child, and that includes services that are required to support particular needs. It might be helpful for the committee to know that the UK Government tells us that the care planning placement and case review England regulations of 2010 and the guidance are clear that they set out placing authorities responsibilities, particularly when making out of area placements. Placing authorities should draw up other plans such as education, health and care plans in respect of any child who has special educational needs or disabilities, and a care plan must form part of that. The care plan must include a record of the education and training proposed for that child. There are additional layers to that. The responsibility is very firmly with the placing local authority, but there are safeguards within making that placement. That is great. I agree. I think that the letter that you sent in advance was really helpful in clarifying a lot of the issues. I am interested in what is motivating this change. Is it because we have excessive court pressures that is the driving force for this? There certainly are pressures on the court in that the mechanism for approving dolls or recognising dolls under Scotslaw, as it currently stands, is a mechanism that was not designed for routine use. It would be for exceptional use. I am not putting that in legal language and I have passed the rule to the lawyer to put that in more legalese. We know that these cross-border transfers are happening. We know, after the Supreme Court judgment, that they are legal and that they do not breach the child's ECHR rights. Therefore, we made an undertaking with the court that we would look at placing a legal mechanism to recognise dolls, but we have then taken that opportunity to try and better protect children's rights. It is better than the status quo. There was quite a bit of debate last week, as you probably saw, about whether the new arrangement makes it easier or more difficult. I can understand the motivation for the change, but could that potentially encourage more cross-border placements? We are aware that there are cross-border placements currently. I do not think that it will incentivise cross-border placements. The current Scottish process provides legal recognition of the order, but the High Court does not scrutinise that order. It does not challenge why the order was made or extended. The High Court fully owns that order and they review the placements, and that will continue. Placing authorities will still need to apply for doll orders and any extension of that under the jurisdiction of the High Court. The regulation provides for the recognition of those orders only for a renewable period of up to three months at a time. There will have to be a regular review of the child's placement, whether that is still appropriate and whether it is still in their best interests. What those regulations and administrative arrangements do is seek to better regulate those cross-border placements through those information sharing requirements that they have spoken about through making it very clear that the placing authority is responsible for that child and for the care that they get in their placement. I think that what it will do is that it will incentivise placing authorities to remain fully engaged with that child's placement and to actively safeguard that child's welfare. The Children's Commissioner was making the point last week that there would be a disparity between the rights of children coming from England compared with those who come from Scotland. I can understand why you would have to create—you could potentially have to double up the process, probably not legal language either—in order to overcome that and that might create some difficulties for those who come from England. Are you concerned about the difference in the rights between children who come here from England and those who are already here from Scotland? The only way that we could have absolute parity is if we take those children into the Scottish system. I said in my opening speech that that would have implications for that child. We are talking about children who are very vulnerable and have already been through very traumatic experiences in the most case. They are going through one legal system that the placement, adult placements, are temporary in their nature. I think that Cogab Stewart referred to the small number of children who have been transferred—significant but small. Most of those children have now returned back to England. They come to Scotland for a very specific reason for their safety and their welfare, but the ultimate aim is for them to be back in their own communities, and that may put quite a legal barrier to doing that. Good morning, minister, and, as other colleagues have done, I thank you for your helpful letter in advance of this session. Whatever else those regulations have done, they have shone a light on this whole issue, particularly given the commissioner's response to the regulations. I want to touch upon something if I may convene it. There is a report in The Times this morning on problems down south. That report asserts that there are scores of inexperienced owners opening children's homes. The inference is that this is clearly not good for vulnerable children who have been taken into care for very serious reasons. I am just wondering how we in Scotland ensure that the settings that any children are put into are of a tide that we would deem appropriate. Are there any plans in the forthcoming primary legislation to further strengthen those safeguards? I think that Mr Dave raises a very important point. I do not think that this is an issue that sits comfortably with any of us. None of us feel comfortable about children being deprived of their liberty in insecure or non-secure settings. However, for some of those children, that is in their best interests at that particular moment in time. The difference between the system in England, as I understand it, and the system in Scotland, is that any place where a child is placed in residential or secure care is regulated by the care inspectorate. Not all accommodation from my understanding in England is regulated currently. I know from my conversations with my counterpart in the UK Government and I reference him in my opening speech that they are very alive to that issue. Obviously, I am not here to speak for the UK Government, but I know that they are very alive to that issue. They assure me that they have put substantial investment into trying to address some of the issues of the lack of appropriate accommodation for children and young people in England. However, I will pass over to Clare about the plans for the care injustice bill. We have seen some really concerning placements through legal cases down south. For example, children being placed in caravans, airbnbs and completely unregulated settings. We are clear that that just absolutely would not happen in Scotland. Indeed, the regulations make it very clear that any setting that a child is placed in, where they are subject to a doll order, has to be registered. The service that is running that setting has to be registered with the care inspectorate, so there would be that regulatory oversight of the care inspectorate. Of course, if there were any concerns that were coming through the channels that the minister has described, follow-up action would be taken around that. That seems to be an issue that is peculiar to down south, but we are clear in those regulations and we are broadly that that is not a situation that we would accept for children in Scotland. Clare said very briefly and at least she asked the minister about the care injustice bill consultation specifically. We are certainly exploring as part of that whether or not we need to explore doing a little bit more around the specificity of the service setting and what that attracts in terms of the shape of inspection, registration and approval along the lines that Mr Greer was exploring, whether or not we need to do something prior to the service operating and then the frequency and the intervals through which the care inspectorate would interact with new and existing settings, particularly when they were moving from one use to another. For example, we are aware that some of the placements that the children are subjected to are all placements and are seeking a registration for a childcare setting, for example, but then very shortly thereafter they are offering this deprivation of liberty service, so it is around the book whether or not the precision of the definition, whether it is between deprivation and restriction of liberty, for example. We have that balance right, so we are certainly exploring that through the bill. Ofsted's response to the Times article has indicated that there may be shortcomings in the legislation in England around oversight of those places. It is probably not unreasonable to suggest that there may be a push to clamp down south in the short to medium term. If that leads to an absurd of applications for those placements from England, whilst the primary legislation is going through due process, are we geared up to cope with that if it were to happen? I am not quite sure what you mean by geared up, Mr Greer. Do we have the capacity? Obviously, Scotland has a limited capacity in terms of the premises that are registered. I think that what we have to remember at the centre of this is a very vulnerable child. That is one of the reasons why, although our ambition is to reduce cross-border placements to the absolute minimum, it is a recognition that there will always be exceptional cases, say a child who is leaving a situation, whether they are involved in county lines, or that they have the risk of trafficking. However, we want to absolutely minimise the number of cross-border placements—that is something that we are seeking to do over—as an iterative exercise over an iterative period of time. The promise recognises that there will always be exceptions to having cross-border transfers. I think that what this legislation is attempting to do is a very narrow scope of the regulations, which is about the recognition of dolls' orders in Scots law. That is essentially what the regulations propose to do. There are lots of other issues around secure residential care that are quite rightly being explored in primary legislation, and the consultation on that. I am sure that the committee will have lots of input and lots to contribute to developing that legislation. I am simply trying to make the point that the reason that we find ourselves in this situation is a lack of suitable accommodation down south—and Wales, of course. If there is action taking there, which we used to further reduction in capacity, despite the best of intentions here, we may all see an increase in applications to house those children. I am simply wanting to be clear that we believe that if we have to in order to assist, there is the capacity. The regulations, as the minister said, are drawn to deliver a specific set of legal and procedural objectives around the conditional recognition, but they do not exist in a vacuum. We are absolutely right, so what we are conscious there of not to kind of in order to kind of solve our own kind of positions or to make ourselves clearer on these things is to just displace demand elsewhere. For example, you will know that there is a statutory route in the secure care world in a cross-border way, but we are similarly uncomfortable about those places, even though they are taking place in settings that are suitably designed and serviced and staffed for that purpose. At the ministerial level working through those entire UK capacity issues to make sure that we are kind of clearing the decks in one particular sector, but only just moving the problem over here and just trying to maintain an aggregate sense of what is the demand and the capacity in Scotland to make sure that in order to kind of clarify matters in a very purist way, we are not having a situation where individual children who are in a really great degree of need and risk who could be helped in Scotland are not just left in limbo, is it well? Michael Marr Thanks, convener. I thought the answers to those questions were very useful. I think that we are all concerned as to the impact on individual children, but we need to make sure that the sector as a whole has the ability to provide the care that we all want to see. I suppose that the answers to Willie Rennie's questions earlier, minister, was I was wondering whether there was any modelling that had been done as to whether you thought that the recognition of deprivation of liberty orders in Scotland's law may result for any reason in a decrease or an increase in the number of cross-border placements. Is there any analysis being done of that? No, there hasn't been an analysis and modelling done on that specific issue. I appreciate that. I also recognise that that may be challenging in and of itself. It is not a question about whether that may be practical for them to do or not. Sorry to interrupt. We need to be really clear that this is a position that the Scottish Government does not want to be in. We are in this position because of a lack of capacity, a lack of availability of a service in other parts of the UK. I think that, as I said earlier, I have pushed my UK Government counterpart to be addressing the issue so that it has addressed its source. It is not a problem that Scotland is able to fix that the UK Government has recognised that and they assure me that they are working at pace on trying to alleviate the situation. Let's hope that they do so. Some of the reports that Mr Bair refers to in the times this morning have been horrifying in reality. It has been described to me by senior policy figures in Scotland that those cross-border placements are essentially at the moment allowing institutions in Scotland to keep the lights on and that the funding that comes in attached to those young people. I recognise that they are individual children and that it is not about the monetisation at all. We are talking about making sure that those facilities are well inspected and well run. Is that the case? It certainly is a concern in the Scottish Government about the monetisation of placements of children. As part of the care and justice bill consultation, we are looking at what our secure care provision is, what secure care provision we would need for a Scottish population and how that can be sustained and how we can assist that service to be economically viable. We are alive to that and we are certainly working through officials to look at how we can sustain that because we will need secure care for Scottish children. In your letter to us, you said that you are clear that funding models based on the acceptance of cross-border children cannot be sustained and that Scotland must do all that it can to prevent the monetisation of care for our children. I am just keen to confirm that. That is a question both for the UK Government in terms of its actions to provide appropriate care in England but also for the Scottish Government to ensure that we provide security of the facilities and the viability of those facilities in Scotland based on whether it is on Scottish children alone or a reduced number of other ones. I really appreciate that confirmation. I found the minister's letter very helpful. I think that the areas that I wanted to explore have been clarified by the minister particularly in terms of exactly how additional support needs are going to be met, so I do not have further questions. I am probably at risk of asking the minister to repeat herself. I apologise in advance for that but I really want to be absolutely clear on one particular point around the policy intentions of those regulations versus the aspirations for the bill and minister you confirmed to earlier any that the intention here is not to incentivise placements but to raise the standards of placements. You also confirmed to Graham Day that it is one of the Government's longer term objectives and that will be addressed through the bill is reducing the number of cross-border placements overall. Can I just confirm for clarity that one of the policy intentions of those regulations is to disincentivise cross-border placements? Is an objective here through the regulations to temporarily try to limit the number of placements or is that not a material consideration for the regulations? That is a longer term aspiration for the bill. For those regulations, Scope is very narrow and so it is about the recognition of doll orders in Scots law. That is essentially the nub of those regulations. The issues that you raised, Mr Greer, are extremely important and I think are certainly issues that we would wish to explore through the Care and Justice Bill. We have committed to reducing cross-border placements. Again, as I have said, it is absolutely necessary, unless there are two places that are absolutely necessary in the essential for that child's welfare, but the scope of those regulations is quite tight with the addition of notifications by the police and authority, advocacy and so on, the additional layers to the regulations. That is helpful, thanks. I was just looking for clarity. It may well be that those regulations disincentivise placements, but that is not the intention of them. The intention is purely about raising the standards of the current situation until legislation makes wider changes. It is about ensuring that, in addition to the recognition of the doll order in Scots law, it is also about ensuring that the policing authority remains engaged with that child and also that it has the overall responsibility within law of making sure that that child has all the services and the support that they need with their place in Scotland. Thank you very much. That was extremely helpful. Thank you, Rose Greer. I do not think that any other colleagues want to say anything, so it falls to me just to thank you, minister, for appearing before the committee this morning. Again, I repeat the helpfulness of your correspondence prior to this session, and also to thank Hannah Gordon, Tom McNamara and Claire Montgomery also for being with us this morning. The public part of today's meeting is now at an end, and we will now consider our final agenda item in private. I do not have any members to ask to be on Microsoft Teams, which we have become accustomed to asking, so it just remains for me to thank you for watching, if you're watching, and to wish you a good day.