08/09/2016 Scotland 2016

The Scottish Government has pushed back implementation

of its named person scheme to August next year,

but is this a recognition by ministers

Following a ruling by the Supreme Court

over aspects of the named person scheme, John Swinney says it needs

months of further consultation and won t be rolled out

We'll ask what changes we're likely to see.

In the week the government said education was the "defining mission"

for ministers, we'll hear from a leading educational expert

on the time frame for closing the attainment gap.

And the prehistoric stone panel said to be the "most important in Europe"

being unearthed for the first time in 50 years,

next to a housing estate in Clydebank.

The idea of assigning a named person to every child in Scotland has been

The government hope it will reduce neglect. Those against say it is a

form of state intrusion into family life.

After they took their case to the Supreme Court John Swinney

has now announced a consultation and a fresh look at the scheme

which now wont be rolled out until August next year.

Named person, the scheme that appoints a health visitor or worker

to every child, to monitor their well-being, it has been the subject

of controversy and legal challenges. Earlier this year the Supreme Court

ruled some provisions of the system were unlawful, citing concerns over

information sharing provisions which could breach the European Convention

on Human Rights. Specifically Article eight on the right to

privacy and family life. But judges also said the scheme was legitimate

and benign. Today the Scottish Cup and announced a three-month public

consultation on changes to the scheme. -- the Scottish Government

announced. This does not pilot commitment but we will provide part

of the legislation to ensure it is compatible with the European

Convention on Human Rights. The Scottish Conservatives, the largest

opposition party at Holyrood, what the scheme -- what the scheme

scrapped. Do you believe the Scottish Government made a mistake

by making a move away from the term welfare, which can be defined in

statutory terms, to the term well-being, which has no clear

definition and which as a result has lowered the possible threshold of

intervention from at significant risk of harm to any minor concern

about the child? I don't take the view that it should just be about

welfare, I believe it should be well-being, at the heart of welfare,

providing for early intervention activity, but there has to be

appropriate threshold and that is the issue which now has to be

examined as part of the analysis that I have undertaken. Scottish

Labour meanwhile reiterated its support but called on the government

to remove 16 and 17-year-olds from the legislation. To include them was

a mistake. Too many people, it seems absurd, given a 16-year-old can

vote, marry, work, pay tax, all as an adult. I will give consideration

to the issue that Iain Gray has raised, because I have made clear in

my statement my determination is to proceed on this issue with the

objective of building consensus and building broad agreement around this

provision. The named person scheme due to be rolled out at the end of

last month, and discarded gum and now says it hopes to implemented by

August 20 17. -- be scuppered -- the Scottish command says it hopes to be

implemented by August 20 17. It stands by the scheme, will the

Parliament? Joining me now to discuss this,

from our Inverness studio is the Director of Care and Learning

at Highland Council, Bill Alexander. And in Newcastle, from the campaign

group No To Named Persons, Good evening to you both. Is this

welcome, Simon? Let's not gloss over the fact that the Supreme Court in

July ruled that this scheme is a breach of the human rights of

children, young persons and parents. That is a major condemnation of the

policy that the government wanted and that the Scottish parliament

voted for in 2014. What the Supreme Court has done is it has ripped the

heart out of the named person policy, the most important power

about the named person would have was the power to grab and share

private sensitive information about children and their families almost

at will. That has gone, it is history. And the other thing the

Supreme Court said was the insinuation that the parents had to

do what the named person said or else, that was also said to risk

breaching human rights. We know all of this, that is open to

interpretation in high people view this. And how people view the

Supreme Court ruling. But do you welcome this consultation?

Absolutely, of course, it is quite right that parents and the public

and professionals should be asked their opinions. It demonstrates the

initial government spin that the Supreme Court ruling was just a

minor blip was clearly wrong, they have to have major consultation.

They have a huge amount of work to do to try and correct the defect.

Let me bring in Bill Alexander. Is this the right way to proceed? This

announcement? I very much welcomed the

announcement, and I am sorry to hear Simon still repeating myths and

misconceptions. The Cabinet Secretary call for consensus and a

period of engagement to have an inclusive process. I am pleased the

government did not rush at this, that they took stock, certainly

listening to children's charities and public agencies across Scotland,

and the statement from John Swinney reflected that. We are not going to

have a desktop exercise. The rating up new legislation summit in office.

We will have an inclusive process engaging families, children and

practitioners, involving the Commissioners office and Children's

Commissioner. Simon, if you contribute to this consultation,

what would be the thrust of that? That the government has the job to

do, first of all looking retrospectively at data-sharing we

have encouraged across Scotland for the last two years, to see we have a

novel breaches of privacy have already taken place, and they have

got to do everything they can, having spent so long and encouraging

this kind of unlawful data-sharing, to stamp it out. They have to win

the confidence of parents and this statement today was schizophrenic.

On the one hand admitting some big changes needed in the late of the

Supreme Court ruling. On the other trying to pretend that it was

business as usual. That has really led to some local authorities

thinking that they can carry on as usual and to concern amongst

parents, parents were relieved when the Supreme Court issued their

ruling then made anxious about government spin. It is important the

government engages with parents. They have spoken to the same

government funded children's charities for years and should spend

more time engaging with parents. John Swinney made the point this

would be wide-ranging consultation. Bill Alexander, you have run a civil

scheme in the Highlands. John Swinney refer to it today. -- run a

similar scheme. Have you had to make changes since the Supreme Court

ruling? No, some things have not yet been commenced following the Supreme

Court ruling. As you have said, the Supreme Court ruling said that not

only was the aims of the named person service legitimate and benign

but an entirely reasonable measure to support early intervention to

support children and families. That is a process already in place across

most of Scotland. It is supported by... Any changes necessary, perhaps

taking 16 and 17-year-old is out of this legislation? The Cabinet

Secretary said he would consider that. That is helpful. They could be

pros and cons and the consultation will be welcome, what is also

welcome is that we have in Scotland practice that is considered to be

leading the way in Europe. Scotland is working with Scandinavia, with

Eastern Europe, to put practices within getting it right for every

child, developed in Scotland, into place in those countries and if we

have not got the information sharing provisions right in the children and

young people act we should work with consensus and have an inclusive

process to address that. Simon, you are also part of the Christian

Institute, which funded the legal action in the first place. Has your

organisation got the best interest of children at heart in opposition

or is it ideological? What kind of question is that? Of course we do! I

hope you ask the same question as Mr Alexander. Of course we do. One of

the main concerns about the named persons scheme is it distracts child

protection and instead of focusing on significant harm, it tries to

take that system and turn its attention to government funded

measures of happiness, this well-being test, which is dangerous,

risking diverting resources and attention away from vulnerable

children, which is very serious. I resent the question. We have worked

with a wide range of people across Scotland, 36,000 people signed our

petition, we have worked with people from all kinds of backgrounds, all

kinds of philosophies, who she have the same concern. The named person

scheme was badly drafted and counter-productive to child

protection. The Supreme Court has vindicated those concerns. Mr

Alexander developed this policy -- defended this policy to the help.

Almost two years ago he spoke about concerns about the European

Convention on Human Rights being misguided. He was wrong and was

those people an apology. Let's bring Bill back and he can apologise if he

wants. What about those concerns raised about not bringing parents

along with this whole proposition, and diverted resources from those

children that desperately need help? Firstly, as most people understand,

the named persons service was developed by parents for parents. We

introduced a range of reforms and Children's Services between 2006 and

2008 and parent said this is not about social workers and

psychologists, but about how we contact Children's Services to get

advice about children. But you have to acknowledge the point from Simon

that parents are genuinely concerned about this? And if they are, it is

because of myths and misconceptions we have had again tonight. We care

passionately about children's human rights and about the well-being of

children and families. I am very sorry to hear Simon deriding the

happiness of children. If he wasn't in Newcastle, perhaps he would have

heard the report today that ChildLine have had over 900 calls

from children in the last year who have had suicidal inclinations. This

absolutely, the well-being of children must be at the heart of

concerns, which is why families asked us to develop the named person

service which if they had a worry... And in person responsible to them,

but you back a policy where it was not for parents but about parents.

The government really needs to think really hard about whether it still

wants to press ahead with the named person who has a statutory

obligation to monitor the well-being of children according to government

targets. We know what they mean but because the mean things like, as

their leaflet said, named persons asking parents if their children get

a say on what they watch on TV and flow rooms are decorated? Those are

examples they have given. That is why parents don't want it. Time is

against us but thank you both for joining us.

This week, Nicola Sturgeon told Scotland that education

was the "defining mission" of the government.

She and Education Secretary, John Swinney, say they're determined

to close the attainment gap in our schools -

the difference in outcomes between those pupils from poorer

So is this the most pressing issue in education? I have been hearing

from Sue Ellis from Strathclyde University,

who is co-auth University, or of a report

At the moment it is. Closing the gap is really important because it's

about making sure that every child has a future. Given all the changes

we have seen in education, is that gap, which has been intractable for

a long time, is undermining the positives in education? There are

lots of positives in education but the most important thing is that

some of these children are not succeeding at school and could

succeed very well, they could be the engineers, the doctors, the

journalists and artists of the future. We need to focus on how we

can teach every child in Scotland really well. It matters for our

economy but also for health and well-being of the nation. The

Scottish Government says it will be the defining mission of this

particular government. Given that, what is a realistic time frame for

closing this gap? You don't know what you can do until you have done

it. You don't know how high you can jump until you jump. I think it's

good for every single child and teacher to actually work on this,

and to the best that they can. I think the difficulty is that it's a

cumulative effect you are looking for, so the toll primary one now

will bring any gains they bring to primary too, so they will be

starting primary to add a different point. As they work through the

education system, you will be getting game upon game and it will

take ten years perhaps before you see the full effect and the child is

what their way all the way through. Is there a danger, in the focus is

on raising the attainment of these children from poorer backgrounds,

that other children become disadvantaged, teachers become

spread too thin? Know because it's not just about the interaction

between children and teachers, it benefits every child in that class

where everyone is succeeding, everyone is trying things out, where

all the children are engaged and excited about learning. Our class

size is important, because this was a big talking .5 or six years ago?

It slipped off the critical radar because research shows that class

size doesn't have a big impact on how well children do. The way they

go about teaching matters, and having a curriculum that is working

towards the interests of the children and letting them have

enough opportunity to get deep into their learning, the study things but

not do them in a superficial way, to get opportunities to learn deeply,

is important. To that end, the philosophy of the Scottish

Government is to give cash directly to schools at the moment, is that

the right approach? In Scotland, I think one of the big problems you

have is 59% of the total and living in poverty don't attend a school

that serves an area in poverty, they attend mixed schools so if you

target all your cash on schools that serve poor areas committee will only

get 40% of the poor kids. So it does make sense to give some of that

money to headteachers who can decide how to intervene and what they will

do to help these children. Have we failed to empower those headteachers

in the past? There is knowledge mobilisation that we need to do, so

they can decide what will the biggest payoff in particular

circumstances. There are some things that will work on what is taught, so

the classroom pedagogy, some things will look at school systems and how

children are encouraged to use school systems to do really well and

some things that look at how the school links with the community,

parents and the extent to which they encourage children to move outside

their own personal experience and see art galleries, museums, sporting

events, engaged in a whole load of different activities. Why do you

think that some of the teachers are not on board were some of the plans

the government have brought forward recently? There have been complaints

about workload, still the threat of industrial action in Scotland? There

is an issue about workload, and I think there has been a huge issue

with assessment. My understanding is that they are trying to make things

simpler and more streamlined. But I think teachers, I haven't spoken to

a teacher yet it doesn't think it's important to do their best to every

single child in the class and to want to do that. The government

wants to measure how well children are doing and to that end of

bringing in these new assessments, initially called tests, now

assessments. What is your understanding of the difference

between those areas? Attest just gives a child attesting to get a

score for that child. An assessment could see the data around that that

can explain, so in England they found that the literary tests, some

of the children who weren't doing well were just some babies and what

they were doing was age-appropriate. Other kids were kids were in

property and needed to be helped so the assessment brings in other data

that helps you contextualise the tests. One of the things that has

been problematic for teachers is that there is a huge narrative

around testing that has come from America, and in America, you have no

checks and balances on the system. A school does a test and the score

they get the Thames the words of the school, the child and the teacher.

In Scotland is never going to be the case. Teacher judgment will always

trump tests. And the national improvement framework as testing is

one tiny part of their looking at other things like parental

engagement, teacher professionalism, school leadership, all the other

things that need to be in place that will help you to improve the school.

So the testing, there are many more to checks and balances that will

stop the testing from being the only thing that matters. Thank you.

It's been described as one of the most important Neolithic

But the Cochno Stone in a park near a housing scheme on Clydebank

was deliberately buried, in a kind of reverse

Now the giant slab, which is covered in dozens of 5,000-year-old

Experts hope it might be possible to create a full-size replica.

Normally the thrill of an after logical dig is not knowing what

you're going to find. -- arcade at big. This team know exactly what

they're looking for. It's a slab of rock covered in 5000 year old

carvings that was a tourist attraction in the early years of the

last century. It was deliberately buried after it started being

covered in modern graffiti. The decision was taken in the 1960s by

the Ministry of Works to bury the stone to protect it from that kind

of vandalism and when you look at the Rock now, you see we have the

names of individuals, maybe from the 19th century, not elastic and

evidence of damage caused by people walking on the site -- melted

plastic. The biggest being carried out by students from the University

of Glasgow. It's exciting because I have worked in the area before,

there has been a lot of bad news, and it's something for the local

community to be interested in. You ever find yourself thinking about

the people who made these marks? Without a doubt you start putting

yourself in the mind set of these people and are making these marks,

you have to remember, they were people just like us, up here but

about 5000 years ago. The Cochno Stone will be reburied after it is

dug up. I think it would be great to create a one-to-one scale replica of

the fin-macro, displayed in the local community. It is perfect for

engagement, it's in a local environment, to get people

interested in visiting the site and taking responsibility for the local

heritage and that's what archaeology is all about for us. No one knows

exactly why Bronze Age people made these marks. The symbols we see in

the rocks here, we think are symbols that were important to people in the

Neolithic times, concentric circular forms, we think people had them as

tattoos, they were maybe wearing them on their clothing, they were

perhaps painted on the sides of houses, they were symbols that would

be a familiar part of peoples identity. So people are marking bits

of the landscape with those important symbols. Perhaps the

neolithic cup and Ring marks and the more modern graffiti are closer than

we like to think, both defied human statements that, I was here, in the

landscape. But truth is, we don't really know. What's really exciting

about being here and having lots of people coming up is everyone has

their own theory, everyone is excited by it, everyone has a pet

idea about what they were for, so we had someone who grew up near here

and came and played on the stone, she thought it was about the stars,

other people thought it was about water, but to me, coming from an art

background, what I like is that it remains enigmatic despite all these

different theories. At the end of the day it's a mystery and that's

what excites us. Here with me now to discuss some

of the stories of the day at the University of

Stirling, Kirstein Rummery, and the Sunday Herald's

Investigation Editor Paul Hutcheon. Thanks for coming in. Let's start

with the named person's scheme, John Swinney had to make changes in the

wake of that Supreme Court ruling, what do you feel about whether he

got that right or not? I don't think there were any huge surprises in the

statement, he said he would come to Parliament and address the issues

head-on. Watching his statement, I think there are two key problems

with the scheme as it's currently drafted, one is the legal aspect

flagged up by the Supreme Court, information sharing provisions, and

I think that's probably a fault both of dodgy legislation and poor

Parliament restricting it. I do think that is the easiest bit to get

right. John Swinney has now focused on it, he has good lawyers and I

think he will bring back a scheme that is compliant with Article

eight, the biggest issue for me is pile communication. -- poor

communication. There has been a failure to communicate this to the

people of Scotland, even the basest critic would not accuse this as

being in bad faith, it's about child protection get some -- somehow it's

seen as a threat rather than an opportunity and that's a strange

situation, because the government got complacent, they didn't see this

could be maligned. Some also say it's about the strength of the

campaign mounted against it, how do you view this legislation, a welcome

move for helping children? I think so, and the irony, to bring up the

issue of communication is this legislation was in response to poke

a medication between the two Tory agencies. Every single child

protection Tribunal that has looked at, has said it is the failure of

the key agencies to communicate with each other. The individual agencies

might have known a child was a risk that hasn't passed on to education

or health or lease authorities. The whole pottable at the station was to

enable that and people pointed out that it was benign, it wasn't

actually about interfering with peoples liberties. It still take for

the government. It's relatively, technically an easy fix still, this

is information that is still in the public domain and already

scrutinised by a legislative capacity. We are less concerned

about the information we give out other social media to big companies

then we should be because this legislation is actually about

protecting children and predicament by sharing information on getting in

there early. Will it change radically to win over those

doubters? I think it'll be fairly simple to tweak this legislation to

make it compliant with the law. I don't think legality is the issue,

it's more a hearts and minds jobs, about salvaging this policy in the

minds of the public so it's a PR job for me rather than illegal job. I

think they have to recognise that there are concerns about this but if

they engage properly with people, they can be reassured. What about

the closure of the immigration detention centre, it has been

controversial since 2001, it will close and a new facility will be

built near Glasgow airport next year. Do you think this highlights

tensions between Westminster and Holyrood? I think so. The concerns

about the original site work well founded in terms of how people were

treated there, how long they were kept, particularly children. What it

is highlighted is how little power the Scottish Government had to do

anything about it because it was a reserved matter. It also highlights

the different approaches Scotland had towards welfare and move towards

the new system and the new centre will be much smaller and people will

be therefore a shorter period of time, means that the areas where

Scotland would like to intervene around welfare, legal rights,

capacity to challenge the system, is being removed, and that highlights

political tensions between the SNP government and a Tory government but

also tensions around who should have power.

A different view about being tough on immigration North and south of

the border? There is no doubt it has been a byword for inhumane practices

but I do think it's on the most difficult policies there is, how do

you deal with failed asylum seekers. I think it's not so much a failure

of the tension, it's more side issues associated with the tension,

such as locking up children and the incredible amount of time that some

people face there. The SNP government had power over this

matter and produce show, they would come to a similar solution as well.

This is no easy way of dealing with this. They allow every asylum seeker

to stay in ordinary communities? There is problems with that as well.

As far as the SNP government is concerned, they are good at talking

about reserved issues and matters on which they have little control but

when they have the power, they are less radical than they appear at

first glance. One of the point ministers were making was Facey

moving this facility to next to Glasgow airport as a signal of

intent on getting people out of the country quite quickly, that may be

another difficulty for the UK Government.

the tension between talking the talk and implementing action links to

earlier debates about attainment. And one of the most vertical thing

Scotland could do. It actually has control over its education policy

and they could address poverty issues which leads to gaps in

attainment. Similarly, it is easy to say we can't do anything about this

because it is a Westminster issue, but you are right, in areas where

they have had control, not just the SNP, but control since devolution

with the Labour coalition government, not being very radical

at all. Thank you both, time is up. That's it for tonight.

Thanks for watching. Shelly Jofre is here on Monday

night, usual time. Join her then.

Bye-bye.