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To yourself?

You said earlier that you have managed to attract 60 extra full-time students.

That is good to hear. All colleges have good stories to tell and they need to shout about that, despite the challenges facing the sector. You are very lucky because the college is in Perth, which is a beautiful place—why would somebody not want to go there? It is a fantastic place. The college might be in an old building but it is in a great part of Scotland and your staff are clearly committed to turning things around.

I will ask finally about the sustainability of the college. Your college and others are in a serious position. I notice that Tiffany Ritchie is nodding her head so I know that the Scottish Funding Council is well aware of that. Catherine Etri, I will ask you first. We have a budget coming up next week. What does your college require to survive, to continue and then to build?

Mr MacColl flagged that there were problems.

Who is responsible for it, then?

Thank you—we will look out for that.

Catherine Etri, I want to ask you about the very helpful letter that you and Alistair Wylie sent to the committee. I will not go over it all, but you set out the background, which we have talked about already. You cover the problems in the finance team quite extensively, then mention your financial recovery plan and suggest that you could break even—well, you actually said earlier today that you think that the college could be in a surplus position, which is far more encouraging.

How have you turned things around? I also noticed that you had taken early retirement, and you have come out of retirement to save the organisation that you have worked in for 35 years.

What changes have been made? What changes have you made, and what further changes should be made in order to turn things around?

I noticed that in one of the many documents that the committee received ahead of this meeting, there was mention of courses being cut at the college. That is not unusual: all colleges are in that position. Will you be able to reintroduce some courses?

How have you done that?

Tiffany Ritchie, as you nodded, I will ask you. As I said, the budget is next week. You are not going to reveal what is in that budget—perhaps you do not even know, but I hope that you do know by now. Can colleges expect to hear some better news than they have had in recent years?

I am aware of the time, so I will try to be as brief as possible. I will cover waiting times, and then I will ask about accident and emergency performance. During that section, I will also ask about ambulances.

I will start with waiting times, of which the report paints quite a bleak picture. I will quote from parts of the report before I come to my question. At paragraph 53, you say:

“NHS boards are only meeting three of the eight key waiting times standards that are currently reported. Five of the eight key waiting times standards have also seen a drop in performance from June 2024 to June 2025”.

You go on to say, at paragraph 54, that

“No board met the planned care targets for the new outpatient standard that people referred for a new outpatient appointment should be seen within 12 weeks, or the Treatment Time Guarantee that people should begin inpatient/day-case treatment within 12 weeks of the decision to treat.”

That does not sound to me like much of a guarantee.

At paragraph 58, you say that the Government’s

“Operational Improvement Plan … published in March 2025 … committed to eliminating long waits and ensuring that no one is waiting longer than a year for their new outpatient appointment or inpatient/day-case procedure by March”

this year. You go on to say:

“Current figures show that long waits remain high. It is unclear whether the target can be achieved in the stated timeframe.”

Before I ask you about that, I invite you to look at exhibit 10 in the report, on “Commitments and progress on long waiting times”, which is very relevant. There are some quite alarming statistics there. If we look at the previous targets on “Length of wait to be eradicated”—those commitments were made in 2022—we see that only one of them has been met, which is a target for out-patient waits. For waits of more than two years, the commitment was to eliminate those by 31 August 2022, and that target was met. However, a whole series of other targets have not been met.

The targets appear to have been refreshed, so we have a new date of March 2026 by which they should be met. However, the figure for out-patients on the waiting list for more than 18 months in September last year was 17,561, and for waits of more than a year, the total was 56,439. In the in-patient sector, 5,000 people were waiting for more than two years; 13,000 for more than 18 months; and 29,417 for more than a year.

I come to my question. The Government wants

“to eliminate waits of over a year by March”.

How realistic is that?