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Children’s Hearings (Scotland) Act 2011 (Consequential and Transitional Provisions and Savings) Order 2013

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, for his kind words of support. The noble Earl of course has much experience of working with children and young people. I am also grateful for the support from the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy. If I do not answer any specific questions of his, I will of course write, when appropriate. He asked first about the review of cases and the viewpoint of the child. I am not aware of any problems, but of course I will write if I have any useful information.

Many of these matters are of course the responsibility of the Scottish Government, but I am content to pursue the points raised by the noble Lord with the Scottish Government and write to him.

He asked an interesting question about publishing restrictions that were felt to be necessary in the age of social networking systems. The restriction is primarily aimed at journalists, to prevent them from publishing information that could identify a vulnerable child. With regard to social media, if the principal reporter is are made aware that a sibling has posted something on a Facebook or Twitter page about the whereabouts of their brother or sister, the police have been known to visit them and ask them to remove the post. This is generally complied with as they have not understood the consequences of that post. The Scottish Government do not expect any changes to be brought forward in these types of situations.

It might be helpful to the Committee if I gave a real-world example of the effect of the order. Suppose that a 15 year-old child is subject to a compulsory supervision order with a condition that he reside at home with his mother in the Scottish borders. The CSO also contains a direction regulating supervised contact once a week with his father. His father is estranged from the mother and resides in Newcastle. The father therefore travels once a week to a social services centre in the Scottish borders for supervised contact with his son.

One day the child is persuaded by his father to travel across the border and stay with him in Newcastle. The child tells his mother that he is off to play football with his friends the following Saturday morning, but instead travels to Newcastle. When the child does not return home as expected, the mother contacts his friends and learns that he has gone to see his father. She contacts social services and the police, who arrange to visit the father. The father denies that the child is with him and conceals the child from police and social services in England.

In this instance, the father would be guilty of an offence under Section 171 of the 2011 Act if he lived in Scotland, but without a Section 104 order—the one that we are debating today—he would not be guilty of the same offence in England. We therefore need the Section 104 order to protect Scottish children across the UK. I am grateful for the support of the Committee and I beg to move.