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That is really helpful. I will move on to some specific points of substance.

Part of the regulations give Scottish ministers the power to pursue the placing authority if it has breached various conditions. A reasonable question from the children’s commissioner was how ministers would become aware that there was an issue in the first place, and specifically how the young person might be able to notify ministers that there was a problem that would justify the Government’s pursual of the placing authority. Can you respond to that? How would someone be in a situation to actually make use of that power?

I understand that the proposed bill would provide us with a significant opportunity to make improvements in this area. I do not object to the regulations; it is better for us to agree to them than not to do so. However, I am still not clear on one point. Given that you have included a number of additional safeguards and conditions, why would this one not have worked? Before you published the regulations, had the children’s commissioner raised with you the proposal for there to have been at least an adequacy rating in the previous six months?

I echo the convener’s thanks for the minister’s letter, which was useful in preparation for the meeting. Once regulations are laid, they cannot be amended—Parliament can make a judgment on them or they can be withdrawn. That presents us with questions of process before we get into the substance.

The commissioner’s office has presented us with proposed alternatives. If the Government adopted them, they would require the withdrawal of the existing regulations and the laying of new regulations. That begs a question about process. Did the commissioner’s office have specific knowledge of the regulations that you intended to bring forward? Obviously, you had engaged with the office on the broad principles, but, before those regulations were laid and published, had the commissioner’s office been given a draft of the regulations or a summary of the specific policy intentions? If that was the case, did the commissioner’s office come back to you at that point with something equivalent to the list of alternatives that it provided to us?

I am trying to understand how we have ended up in a place where alternatives are coming forward from the commissioner’s office but regulations have already been published, so we cannot amend them in order to accept those alternatives, even if we were minded to.

Thank you. That is extremely helpful.

I am probably at risk of asking the minister to repeat herself; if so, I apologise in advance. I want to be absolutely clear about the policy intentions of the regulations compared to the aspirations for the bill.

Minister, you confirmed to Willie Rennie that the intention is not to incentivise placements, but to raise the standards of placements. You also confirmed to Graeme Dey that one of the Government’s longer-term objectives, which will be addressed through the bill, is to reduce the number of cross-border placements overall. For clarity, will you confirm whether one of the policy intentions or objectives of the regulations is to disincentivise cross-border placements and to temporarily try to limit the number of placements, or is that not a material consideration for the regulations but a longer-term aspiration to be tackled by the bill?

That is helpful. It might well be that the regulations disincentivise placements, but that is not their intention, which is purely about raising the standards of the current situation until legislation is introduced to make wider changes.

I have one final question. Your letter is useful in explaining why some of the specific proposals that the commissioner’s office has offered as alternatives either would not be appropriate or are not possible. There is one proposal that you said would not be appropriate, but I am not clear why—the proposal that one of the conditions be that the facilities that a young person might be placed into must have been rated at least “adequate” by the Care Inspectorate in the past six months. That sounds entirely reasonable to me, but the Government has taken a different position on it. Can you explain exactly why the Government thinks that that is either not appropriate or not possible?

I am keen to hear others’ reflections in relation to the example that Paul Bradley gave of experience of engaging with Scottish Government officials, civil servants and folk from various national agencies, and whether they are bringing the NPF to their discussions with you, and how that is shaping the requests that you make of them and your strategic decisions. Does anybody have a different experience—expecting to go to meetings with civil servants knowing that they will ask how you are contributing to NPF outcomes? Are others’ experiences broadly similar to what Paul outlined?

To clarify, where does responsibility for trying to reduce that variation lie nationally? Does it lie directly with Government or would Education Scotland take the lead on that?

The concerns in the Care Inspectorate report are widespread; I am certainly not disagreeing with you in principle. I am trying to figure out whether we are in danger of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, especially given that the measure will be temporary. There are a couple more specific points that you raised that I am interested in getting clarity on. You mentioned that

“There is a real risk that without sufficient legal restrictions, Scotland is opening the door to significant numbers of cross-border placements, and to the possibility that this will be exploited by private, profit-making providers.”

My understanding is that that is exactly what is happening now, and that the regulations do not go far enough—which I think the Scottish Government itself would admit. That is why proposals on a children’s justice bill are out for consultation at the moment. Surely what is proposed in the regulations would not incentivise further use of cross-border placements. It might not reduce them by as much as we want, but it would reduce them.

For example—I recognise that you have specific concerns on this point—the regulations will give the Scottish Government the ability, through the sheriff court, to take action against a placing authority. To me, that is a disincentive. If I was an English local authority seeking to place a young person with a private provider that is based in Scotland, the potential for the Scottish Government to pursue me through the sheriff court would be a disincentive rather than an incentive.

Do you recognise that although perhaps the regulations do not go far enough, they do not incentivise further cross-border placements, but instead disincentivise them?