S2M-4999 Young People and Families

Scottish Parliament

Thursday 26 October 2006

[THE PRESIDING OFFICER opened the meeting at 09:15]

Young People and Families

The Presiding Officer (Mr George Reid): Good morning. The first item of business is a debate on motion S2M-4999, in the name of Patrick Harvie, on young people and families.

09:15

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09:48

Stewart Stevenson (Banff and Buchan) (SNP): Today's debate is an opportunity to examine the chasm between Executive rhetoric and delivery. It allows us to focus on young people as guardians of our nation's future and not as the cause of our present problems. It suits too many on the Executive benches to characterise young people as dark creatures of the night. Mike Rumbles may gesticulate, but that serves only to confirm the correctness of the reference.

I turn to the motion and the amendments and the intention behind them. The Executive amendment retains but four words from the Green party's substantive motion. It seeks to delete

"acknowledges that families and young people need support from time to time"

and insert

"reiterates the determination of this Parliament to stand up to antisocial behaviour".

It seems that every time we discuss our youth, the Executive seeks to insert negative references to antisocial behaviour. It is as if youth and antisocial behaviour are partners in the same dance. As long as that continues to happen, we are sending unhelpful messages to our youth: we are telling them that they should be disconnected from the mainstream of Scottish society and life.

I respect Robert Brown's championing of youth issues, but he does our youth a disservice and reveals his inner convictions about the merits of youth by the words that he gets sucked into using, perhaps by his Labour partners or, more simply, as the result of drafting by civil servants who are not sufficiently sensitive to what needs to be done.

The way we deal with antisocial behaviour is ambiguous. At the heart of the ambiguity is the sense that we view the whole issue as essentially a criminal justice issue but, by virtue of the way in which charges relating to antisocial behaviour have been incorporated into law, in essence antisocial behaviour is dealt with by the civil and not the criminal law. If people commit crimes, we should use the criminal law to address that. Our use of the civil law fudges the whole issue.

What has been missing from the debate so far is the issue of children as victims. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of actions that come under the charge of antisocial behaviour are perpetrated by adults, not children. I refer to antisocial behaviour that results from drinking, drug taking, deprivation and violence. The BBC has on its website a helpful discussion under the unhelpful heading "Are Scotland's young people demonised?" Dave from Glasgow comments:

"In some areas we are into the 3rd generation without +ve family role models. As a voluntary youth worker in inner city Glasgow I have known and worked with kids whose parents (& grandparents) set an awful example ... If this is the environment for people in their 'impressionable years' then what hope is there."

The answer to parliamentary question S2W-28897, which I received yesterday, reinforces the real difficulties that kids experience. My question was

"how many people have been found guilty of committing an offence specifically involving child victims in each year since 1999",

which is the year the Executive came to power. It may surprise members to hear that the latest figure was 545, which is 50 per cent higher than the figure for 1999, which was 368. There has been a steady increase year on year. We do ourselves no justice—and we do youth no justice—if we do not accept that children as victims should be at the core of the debate. Children should not be demonised as the cause of the antisocial behaviour difficulties in society.

Robert Brown said that the debate

"is based on a fallacy."

Of course, many of the things that the Executive does to invest in and support young people have the support of the SNP, but I say to the minister that we have to judge the Executive not by what it does but by what it achieves. On the measure of the answer to my parliamentary question, we are not achieving nearly enough.

The present relationship between the Executive and youth can be characterised as one that is based on trust and understanding: the Executive does not understand youth and youth do not trust the Executive.

09:53