Continued Petitions

Agenda item 2 is consideration of five continued petitions. The first petition for consideration is PE1551, on mandatory reporting of child abuse, which was lodged by Scott Pattinson.

Members will recall that, following our previous consideration of the issue, we wrote to the Scottish Government to establish why it was waiting for the outcome of the UK Government’s consultation on the issue, and whether it had a cut-off point at which it would develop its own approach. We have received a response from the Minister for Childcare and Early Years in which he refers to submissions provided to the session 4 committee, which included views that if the Scottish Government was to develop its own approach, it would require a public consultation.

The minister clarifies the scope of the UK Government consultation on the matter and appears to suggest that the Scottish Government would simply be duplicating that consultation if it explored options for its own approach. The minister states that the Scottish Government will consider the findings of the UK Government consultation as soon as the results are published and that those results will be considered within

“the wider context of the ... child protection landscape in Scotland”,

taking account of existing legislation. However, there remains a lack of certainty about when the UK Government will publish the results of its consultation.

The minister also states that mandatory reporting will be considered in the context of the child protection improvement programme and identifies that the issue may be considered as part of the review of all

“current legislation on abuse and harm”.

The petitioner’s submission indicates that he does not consider that the Scottish Government has answered the question of why it will not establish its own approach to mandatory reporting.

I was struck by what came out in the submissions that people have provided from a range of organisations. People understand the motivation for the petition but believe that it would have an unintended consequence. It seems to me that people are quite happy to participate in the argument and the debate around mandatory reporting so I genuinely do not understand why we are waiting for the results of the UK Government consultation, which is presumably just for England and Wales. In their evidence, people also say that the landscape in Scotland is different, in particular because of the children’s hearings system.

I think that it is not about deciding whether mandatory reporting is the right approach. It is about saying that mandatory reporting should be looked at and arguments should be made one way or another so that a conclusion can be reached for Scotland.

It feels to me as though we should have the debate and come to a conclusion on whether we agree with mandatory reporting. There are some compelling arguments in both directions. I do not think that the idea that it would be duplication makes much sense. The logic of that is that we would not do anything on anything that a UK Government might consult on.

I think that there are two separate things. The arguments are really interesting around how mandatory reporting might inhibit a young person from disclosing. On the other hand, there is the view that there should be mandatory reporting because of cases where hierarchies within systems moved the problem on rather than confronting it, even though child abuse was reported to them. Sarah Nelson’s submission talks about the culpability of people at the top of an organisation who do not listen when child abuse is reported. If there are abusers operating within a system, it is in their interests for an investigation to be closed down.

I think that the petition is in some part trying to deal with that. It is saying that if someone does not report child abuse, there is an issue and maybe one of the reasons why people are not reporting is because they are party to the abuse. That is a difficult thing to deal with but I think that it is part of the issue.

How should we take the petition forward?

Would it be reasonable to say that we do not accept the point about waiting for the UK consultation because it is not a UK consultation, it is a consultation by the UK Government that only covers part of the United Kingdom?

Would it be reasonable for us to highlight the following points? We do not accept the argument for not consulting. We accept that there is clearly a very challenging debate on the consequences of mandatory reporting, and we are not taking a view on that, but we think that the matter should be decided in the context of the child protection system in Scotland. It is legitimate for the petitioner to argue the case, and the Scottish Government should deal with that aspect.

We will write to the Scottish Government to say that we recognise that there is a debate on mandatory reporting, which includes the benefits and consequences that some of the children’s organisations have highlighted, but that consideration of the matter should not be determined by the timetable for a consultation that covers the rest of the United Kingdom. From our evidence, it appears that there are plenty of people in Scotland who want to engage in the discussion.

Members indicated agreement.

We are grateful for the response that we got from the consultees—

That may be something that it is looking at.

Okay—that is very useful.