Seòmar agus comataidhean

I am sorry, minister, for putting you on the spot. I just saw the announcement flash up on my screen. I am a sad individual who has alerts about anything to do with my committees, and I thought that, while you are here, I should ask you a question about it. Surely Scottish pupils will also have difficulty as a result of the cut, because it will reduce their opportunities.

I thank Mr Adam for his question. We are taking a range of different actions to reduce the cost of the school day, not least of which is reducing the cost of school trips by providing funding to local authorities to that end. There is also the work on free school meal provision, which I think Mr Adam was alluding to.

As we know, and as I said to Jackie Dunbar earlier, pupil equity funding is being used in many different schools to help to reduce the cost of the school day. The substantive part of Mr Adam’s question leans back to the point that I was making to Ms Dunbar earlier, which is that schools are now filling a gap that did not use to exist. Because of the erosion of the welfare state in certain areas, schools have stepped up to the mark, where arguably they should not have had to. That has impacted on how they engage with PEF and with the wider school community. They have done that because they care about their children and young people, but my argument would be that they should not have to do that.

We are taking a range of different measures to reduce the cost of the school day. We know that the funding that is being provided for free school meals is saving families up to £450 per child per year, which is making a real difference. There is also funding in the budget for the roll-out of the bright start breakfast funding, which has been welcomed. Across Scotland, about half of all schools have some delivery of breakfast provision and many schools use PEF to meet that need.

There is not a universal structure for meeting that need across the country, as we have explored with Mr Rennie and other members. How local authorities deliver that varies, but the Government is providing funding to reduce the cost of the school day in many different ways—free school meals, school trips and, more broadly, pupil equity funding.

It is quite interesting that—I think that we have discussed this before, cabinet secretary—in all my time on the committee, we have seen PEF being used in schools that have leadership, where they can see the issue and they start to deal with it. It is not what PEF was originally meant for, but it is filling that gap. It just shows the situation that many schools find themselves in, because of the decisions of the UK Government.

Surely we should be asking the UK Government to look at some of the issues that it has, so that we can use PEF in the way that it is meant to be used instead of to paper over the cracks caused by a failing UK Government?

As we know, minister, all roads lead to Paisley. Last Friday, the Government announced extra funding that will expand the Scottish Football Association’s extra time programme. I mention that mainly because the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice made the announcement while visiting a project run by St Mirren FC Charitable Foundation, which you will know does great work in both our constituencies. Can you say a bit about the programme, what the extra funding will do and how it will make a difference?

How will it directly affect you, minister, and people here in Scotland?

I move to questions for the Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise. The minister and I were at a recent Promise oversight board event about keeping the Promise, which I hosted in Parliament. One big issue that was discussed was the need for a cross-Government approach, which is interesting after what the cabinet secretary just said. Can the minister say a bit more about progress on that? Where are we at on working together with the UK Government to make a difference?

Just so that I get my head around it, because I am not an Edinburgh MSP, currently you have the supercomputer and the infrastructure and everything else, but with the advances in technology and AI—we all use it now in various forms—being apparent, you need to go to the next generation. That is what you explained earlier, more or less, it seems to me. You have not heard this today much, Sir Peter, but I am quite happy to back you in your endeavours and support you in any way I can to ensure that that goes to Edinburgh.

Good morning. I understand the work that Professor Rigby and Professor Miller do with regard to nursing in particular. I have a daughter who was waiting for a place at UWS but decided to have two more children instead. She may be back at a later date.

Professor Miller, I usually talk about the virtues of UWS, all the great work that you do in the area and how important the institution is to Paisley in particular, but also to the areas that are served by your other campuses. However, I have to ask this question. Like Miles Briggs, I have had constituents and people who are employed by you coming to me and saying that you are looking at 75 full-time equivalent reductions with a cut of, I think, £6.2 million. You are going through a 45-day consultation and you have not ruled out compulsory redundancies. There has been, almost, a perfect storm since you came in the door at UWS.

How has UWS got to this position? What are the main things that have contributed to it? How do we go forward from here? Many people, including the unions and people who work for you, have a lot of concern about what is going on.

I am not getting into the politics of it, because it was used as a big stick to hit me with in 2014, but we still seem to be in a difficult situation with the UK Government.

Finally, I want to ask a question of Sir Peter. I will not ask you about your salary, because that has been done to death today. I was going to, but we have talked about that quite a bit.

I have been on this committee—people are fed up with hearing me saying this—on and off since I first entered the Parliament in 2011. During the independence referendum campaign, I kept getting told that, if we got independence, universities such as Edinburgh might lose a whole stack of investment in research, because you are one of the universities in the world that excel in research. The UK Government has cut one of your programmes: the £800 million supercomputer programme. What effect has that had on your university? I assume that that programme would have generated quite a bit of work for those in your establishment.