 Good morning and welcome to the eighth meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in 2023. Our first item on our agenda today is to take evidence from the Minister for Children and Young People, Claire Hohie MSP and her officials, on the provision of early learning and childcare, specified children, Scotland amendment order 2023. I would like to welcome the minister to the committee again this morning, along with her officials, Peter Grant, head of zero to five early learning and childcare and support, and Kirsty McCarren, Solister, legal director at Scottish Government. Ms Hohie, can I invite you to speak to the draft instrument and you have up to three minutes. Thank you. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to the committee. This amending order will increase the income thresholds from the first of April for families with the two-year-old who is eligible for funded early learning and childcare or ELC, where the parent receives a joint working tax credit and child tax credit claim or universal credit award. The relevant order currently specifies that a two-year-old is eligible for funded ELC if their parent is in receipt of child tax credit and working tax credits with an annual income that does not exceed £7,920 or their parent is in receipt of universal credit with a monthly income that does not exceed £660 per month. The amending order increases the income threshold from the first of April to £8,717 per year for households in receipt of child tax credit and working tax credits, and the universal credit income threshold will increase to £726 per month, the equivalent of £8,717 per year. We are making this change to reflect changes at a UK level. From April 2023, the UK Government will increase the national living wage from £9.50 to £10.42 per hour, meaning household income would exceed the current thresholds if they remained the same. The purpose of this order is to protect eligibility for two-year-olds who we would expect to be eligible for funded ELC as a result of their parents or carers being in receipt of those affected qualifying benefits. If we choose not to make any changes to the income thresholds, we estimate that around 1,000 eligible two-year-olds would no longer be eligible despite there being no significant difference in their household circumstances of their families. However, it is important to be clear that no two-year-old who is currently receiving funded ELC will be affected by those changes. Once a child has met the eligibility criteria, they remain eligible despite any subsequent change in circumstances. As the purpose of the amendment is to maintain eligibility, we do not anticipate a significant increase in the number of two-year-olds becoming newly eligible for the provision. We do not expect a significant impact on local authorities' ability to fund the provision within the current financial settlement. As such, there is no evidence that additional funding is required to support implementation of the amendment. The impact and uptake will, however, be closely monitored by both Scottish Government and COSLA through the appropriate mechanism, the ELC finance working group, and appropriate arrangements will be made if uptake is significantly above the level expected and local authorities' costs increase as a result. As mentioned on my previous visits to the committee to amend those thresholds, we will continue to monitor future increases to the national living wage and we will update thresholds when required in order to keep pace with those changes. Lastly, I would say that COSLA agree with this approach and that it is necessary to maintain a similar profile of eligible children. I am happy to respond to any specific questions that the committee has. Thank you, minister. I ask members to have any questions or comments on the draft instrument. Willie Rennie, first, please. Thanks very much. I have no issue with the statutory instrument, but I want to take a cheeky opportunity to ask about the uptake for two-year-olds. I know that we have made changes with the relationship with the DWP so that we can access the information. However, the gap between Scotland and England is still quite significant. It is in 2022, according to the Scottish statistics, that was 14 per cent of the total population that had access to the two-year-old provision, and in England it was 21 per cent. So, how quickly do you envisage us closing that gap? Have you seen any early evidence that we are closing the gap? The data sharing arrangements are not yet in place so we will not have seen any change in terms of the impact that those data sharing arrangements would make. We are still anticipating that that data sharing arrangement will be in place for the end of this financial year, so we are still on track for that. We have been progressing work in terms of the data sharing arrangements between DWP and HMRC and between local authorities and so on. As soon as we have all those data sharing agreements in place, the information will then be able to be shared with local authorities so that they can then access that information and write to the parents of those eligible children. Obviously, with COSLA and local authorities, we will be looking at how that uptake goes. On current figures, we anticipated that there would be something around about 25 per cent of children in Scotland that would be eligible. We have to remember that England already has those data sharing arrangements. England and Wales had those, but Scotland did not. We will be looking at that. We will be monitoring that. I am sure that the committee will be very interested in those figures and I can write to the committee to let you know when those data sharing arrangements are in place and how many families we are anticipating are eligible. We need to also remember that families have choice and not every eligible child, their parent, will decide that they want to access that uptake. Can I just take the other opportunity to ask about the provision for the deferals for four-year-olds going to primary school? We are supposed to be having from 1 August an evaluation of the pilot is due this month. Is that still the plan to have that evaluation report this month in time for August? Yes. The deferal working group, would it be possible for you to share the details of the membership of that group and how often it is made? Is that possible? I can certainly do that yet. I can write to the committee with that information if that would be helpful and then all the committee would be able to access that. I hope that I am on the right one, minister. You will keep me right. Can I ask a technical question as much as I always welcome the appearance of ministers before our committee? Is there a technical reason why we couldn't automate this process by which this automatically happens rather than having to go through this process? I think that we all agree and have always always agreed that we should engage with. School dinners are covered by this as well, right? No. No, that's the next one. I'll come back to that one then. I'll ask my question about the technical aspect. I'll pass over to Kirsty, the lawyer, who's hopefully able to answer that question. Thank you very much for your question. The order is made under the Affirmative Procedure by virtue of the 2014 act. I'll pull up the full title of that. I'll keep you right there. Under section 47 of the Children and Young People's Scotland Act 2014, the order can be made. Under section 992 of that act, this order is subject to the Affirmative Procedure. The reason why it is subject to this procedure is because there is a change in the national living wage and that is made by virtue of UK regulations. The exact amount of that is not always set out, so I think that's the reason why this is subject to the Affirmative Procedure to go ahead, so the exact amount can be taken into consideration and then the exact amount put in this order. So it isn't possible to amend that legislation so that it automatically happens? There would be a change to the legislation for that to happen. That's correct, yes. Minister, you've responded to the issues raised by the members of the committee, so thank you very much for that. We will now move on to agenda item 2. I'd like to invite the minister to move the motion in her name, S6M-07658, that the Education, Children and Young People Committee recommend that the provision of learning and childcare-specified children's Scotland amendment order 2023 draft be approved. Thank you. Does the minister have anything else that she wishes to add? Nothing more to add. Do the members have any comments? No. The question is that the motion S6M-07658, in the name of Clare Haughey, be approved. Are we all agreed? The committee must now produce its report on this draft instrument. Is the committee content to delegate the responsibility to the deputy convener and myself to agree this report on behalf of the committee? Agree. I would like to thank the minister and her officials for their participation today. We will now have a short suspension to allow for the minister and officials to leave the meeting. Our next item of business is the consideration of two pieces of subordinate legislation which are subject to the negative procedure. The first is the human trafficking and exploitation independent child trafficking guardians Scotland regulations 2023, which is SSI 2023 stroke 18. Do members have any comments on the instrument? Is the committee agreed that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to this instrument? Agree. Our next negative instrument is the Education Scotland Act 1980 modification regulations 2023, SSI 2023 stroke 37. Do members have any comments on this instrument? Unfortunately, the minister is not here, because it was a comment directed not at the measure itself, but in the same spirit as Willie Rennie offered his questions to the minister. My concern is that the take-up of these school meals is not what it should be, that even though the provision exists, we know that from the reports that we have that we can do better in terms of encouraging children at school to use these school meals. I wondered what the minister's thoughts were that we could do with the partners in COSLA to deal with that, but she is not here. I put it on the record that it is something that we should be concerned about. I think that there are a number of grants and provisions, including for school uniforms, that are not taken up to anything like the level that we should be in. We need to do a lot better at making people aware of what exists in terms of support for families than we currently do. I have Michael Marra first in Bob Doris. I suppose that this adjustment is about the threshold for obtaining free school meals. I wondered why we were not making a more substantial adjustment in line with inflation about the income thresholds and whether the Government had given consideration to whether that might be given the challenges that families are facing at the moment. I suppose that one thing to put that on the record is the concern about the threshold for accessibility and to say to the committee whether it might make representation or consider making representation to the Government on that basis. I think that these comments have been helpful. I think that as a committee we all are not directly related to the statutory system, of course, convener, but I think that it is helpful because we are hiding to the committee in relation to the fantastic work that has been done by the Scottish Government on free school meals and the approach to universality and the substantial increase to the school clothing that has made a real difference to constituents across the country. Massive difference, but, of course, Mr Kerr is quite right. We need to make sure that we maximise the uptake of that, so that any correspondence to Government that draws attention to the successes that those policies have been about what we can do to enhance take-up would be really, really welcome. Obviously, the way that qualification criteria that Mr Marr refers to is something that we would always welcome and kept under review, budgetary considerations to one side, of course, but we would always wish that to be under review, so I would be happy for us to write on that basis to the relevant minister, convener. Thank you, Mr Kerr. Enough of that, please. I think that in terms of the statutory instrument, I do not think that we have any comments specifically relating to that, but we do have a desire to certainly write to the relevant minister to ensure that all of these opportunities for families to support their young people through their education are maximised in terms of whether it be school meals or clothing grants. I think that we do need to find a way to cut through to make sure that everyone eligible can access that. As aware of that, are we all in agreement that we have agreed? Thank you, convener. I was just going to say that we might want to mention things like automatic enrolment. That might be helpful. We might come back in response and stuff as well, so thank you very much for those brief discussions. I apologise for cutting across, convener. I would never normally do that, but Ms Callaghan made an important point about automatic enrolment. We might want to draw to the attention of the Social Security Committee. I do not think that it is called that any more, convener, but I know that it has looked up over the years when I sat on it and chaired it at automation of benefits. Given the connection between our interests and the Social Security Committee, it might just be worth making it aware of any correspondence that we have. I apologise again, convener. Yes, your apologies are noted. Has the committee agreed that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to the statutory instrument? Agreed, thank you. That is the public part of today's meeting at an end, and we will now consider our final agenda item in private. Thank you and good morning.