Rights of the Child UK (ROCK) Conference: Minister for Children, Young People and the Promise speech

It’s my pleasure to be here this afternoon – I am so happy to see so many of you in sunny Edinburgh to take part in the Rights of the Child UK Coalition Conference. It’s my understanding that this is the first in-person conference to be held by the coalition since the pandemic, and so a huge thank you to Together for organising this significant event.

It’s so important to be here and discus, at both a devolved and UK-wide level, how we can continue to work together to improve the lives of infants, children and young people right across the country.

I’m especially glad you chose Scotland for this event so that we can share some very important milestones with you, most notably the commencement of the UNCRC Act.

I am immensely proud to be part of a government that has made UNCRC incorporation a reality, and I am so proud of the collective work that has taken place to get us here. I am especially proud of our children and young people; their unwavering determination and powerful articulation of the value of the legislation was absolutely instrumental in making this happen.

If you haven’t already heard about their spider’s web analogy, I’m sure Together can explain. It really helped to make the case for the amended Bill that was presented to the Scottish Parliament last year.

Scotland is the first country in the UK where it is unlawful for public authorities to act incompatibility with the UNCRC requirements. I also understand that Scotland is the first devolved country in the world to directly incorporate the UNCRC into its domestic law.

As many of you know, the Supreme Court judgment on the UNCRC Bill resulted in a disappointing loss of coverage for children’s rights, compared with what we had originally hoped to achieve. Through the reconsideration process, we reached the conclusion that the maximum effective coverage for children’s rights, in the present devolved context, is for the compatibility duty to apply only when a public authority is delivering devolved functions conferred under Acts of the Scottish Parliament or common law powers.

This means that the compatibility duty and the courts’ remedial powers cannot apply to statutory provision in an Act of the Westminster Parliament, even in devolved areas.

I’m going to explain in a few minutes why, even with this more limited coverage, the UNCRC Act still provides new and extremely important protections for children’s rights. But first I’d like to explain how the Supreme Court judgment has influenced our approach to extending human rights protections a little more generally.

This year’s Programme for Government reaffirms our commitment to equality and human rights, including strengthening the implementation of human rights and advancing proposals around extended rights protection.

However, the constraints on the devolution settlement – highlighted by the UK Supreme Court judgment– present a really significant challenge to our ambitions.

As attendees may know - and as explained at the Human Rights Consortium’s conference last week -  the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice has written to UK Government Ministers setting out our desire to engage constructively on a shared ambition to advance human rights.

To this end, the Scottish Government will also convene an event, before the end of the year, to bring together key stakeholders to look at the challenges for rights incorporation and devolution following the UNCRC Bill judgment. We want to see if, together, there is a practical way these challenges can be addressed that allows us to deliver even more ambitious human rights law.

If a way forward can be found, this would benefit not only our future Human Rights Bill, but would also strengthen the scope of the provisions in the UNCRC Act.

In the meantime, we should remember that there are other important provisions in the Act, beside the compatibility duty and the judicial remedies, which will mean that children’s rights are respected.

The Act requires Scottish Ministers to set out and to report on how they are giving further and better effect to children’s rights, regardless of whether the compatibility duty applies, and for listed authorities to prepare and publish similar reports.

It requires the Scottish Government, when bringing forward any new Scottish legislation, to make a statement about its compatibility with the UNCRC requirements. It also requires Scottish Ministers to carry out a child rights and wellbeing impact assessment for most legislation and for decisions of a strategic nature.

In addition to the protections provided through the UNCRC Act, there’ is a range of work underway to embed and mainstream a children’s rights approach. Through this work, we aim to ensure that children, young people and their representatives have effective means of raising concerns without having to resort to the courts.

For example, we have published guidance to support public authorities and other organisations to take a children’s human rights approach. The Scottish Public Service Ombudsman has also developed a child-friendly model complaints process for public bodies under its jurisdiction.

And I’d also like to mention the success of the Scottish Government’s 3 year grant to the UNICEF UK’s Rights Respecting School Award. With over 80% of schools in Scotland now signed up, this programme is helping children and young people better understand and realise their rights, and I look forward to seeing how local authorities will continue to take forward this programme in the coming years.

I also look forward to sharing our first Children’s Rights Scheme with you all in due course. This will set out arrangements that Scottish Ministers are putting in place to fulfil our duties under the UNCRC Act and to further strengthen children’s rights in Scotland.

This will include, along with many other measures, an account of arrangements to consider the rights of children in the Scottish Government’s budget process and to ensure that children are able to participate in decisions which affect them.

The full realisation of children’s rights, will of course mean taking steps to ensure that no child in Scotland lives in poverty – and that every child has the opportunity to reach their full potential and thrive.

This is why lifting children out of poverty is the top priority of the Scottish Government - as the First Minister made clear when we published our Programme for Government just under two weeks ago.

And I know that Nicola Killean - the Children and Young People’s Commissioner in Scotland - set out a really powerful presentation on this earlier today. 

On a personal basis, tackling poverty is extremely important to me. I grew up in poverty and I understand the impact. I think families should thrive not just survive.

So, despite facing the most severe financial challenges in the history of devolution, we have continued to prioritise spending for wide-ranging action to tackle poverty and mitigate the impacts of the cost of living crisis – allocating around £3 billion per year to these efforts.

Building on the foundation of successful policies such as the Scottish Child Payment, which is giving essential support to families on low incomes in Scotland, this year’s Programme for Government sets out further action to drive progress on reducing child poverty. This includes expanding our place-based partnerships to join up services, maximise incomes, and help parents into work into five new areas - North Ayrshire, East Ayrshire, Perth & Kinross, Inverclyde and Aberdeen City.

Through actions like these, we hope that ultimately - in partnership with local government, third sector organisations and businesses – we can work collectively to make child poverty a thing of the past.

I also really welcome the opportunity to learn from work underway across the UK. We’ve already taken inspiration from the Children’s Rights Scheme that was developed by the Welsh Government. We’re all here at this event today because we believe in the importance of children’s human rights so we will all have something to share and learn on this journey together.

I’d like to thank you for you very much for your time, and for giving me the opportunity to join you here today – I now look forward to taking your questions.