Seòmar agus comataidhean

Let me explain what I mean. If you look at reform in the round, you will see that there is a huge amount of support for all of the measures, of which the bill is a component part. I understand the argument about whether this is our most pressing ask right now in the context of funding and how it is delivered. If you look at the evidence, you will see that all the organisations are looking for an immediate funding boost. During the 2024 consultation, 80 per cent of the people and organisations that responded were in favour of the proposal.

The bill is about delivering a coherent landscape that is sadly lacking at the moment, and I have no doubt that we will interrogate the detail of that in the next couple of hours. The legislation is absolutely necessary. It is not, by any means, the endgame, but it is important, because it would enable us to deliver many other aspects of reform that the whole sector and landscape will benefit from.

I saw the assertions from SDS but struggle to see where it got those numbers from.

Because we have to work through a process with the affected agencies.

It was sent after last week’s evidence session. To be honest and absolutely candid with you, I was not aware that there had been any drop-off in engagement. I was quite surprised to hear that. I have provided an explanation for it, but it came off the back of the evidence, which we reacted to.

No, but he did say what I have just said, and I would echo it. The SFC has a new chief executive, and we are about to have a new chair. We will transfer across the expertise of the senior staff in SDS who deal with apprentices, and we have an opportunity this year to enhance the board. There are a number of board appointments to be made and that, self-evidently, will involve people with expertise in employer engagement. We will start with some of the evidence that the committee has received, but there are other possibilities, too.

The organisation will be bolstered numbers-wise and expertise-wise, and I have absolutely no doubt that it is capable of dealing with these matters. Indeed, it is committed to doing so. It has been working with the Government over a period and is already looking at what that might look like in practice. Hopefully, the Parliament will pass the bill at stage 1, and we will have time between now and implementation to ramp things up at pace.

I understand the point that you are making, Mr Rennie, about some of the challenges in the college and university sectors and so on, and I am not going to pretend that this is not a challenging time all round, but I go back to what I said before. The bill was a good idea at the time—it was well supported, and the principles in the consultation were supported, too—and it remains a good idea. In fact, it is, in some regards, even more important now that we progress the bill.

I do not accept that it is a distraction. It is a necessary piece of work that needs to be carried out to knock the post-16 landscape into the kind of shape that we need it to be in for the future of the country, both for the benefit of our learners and for the needs of the economy. It is an essential piece of work that needs to take place, and we can and will do that while dealing with the day job.

We have covered the point about what the bill does and does not do. At all times in my engagement with all the affected agencies’ staff, I have made the point that I want to hear their thoughts. I have heard directly from them on how engagement works currently and what could be done differently.

There has been a mixed bag of responses, and I accept that some people have expressed concern. Overwhelmingly, the feedback has been constructive and their point of view has been to say, “Well, you know what? We could have done this, or you might want to look at that.”

I will give an example of that, if I may. One of the things that exercises me is that I am not sure that the current apprenticeship offering entirely captures the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises, which are the lifeblood of this country. There are two conflicting statistics—forgive me if I get them the wrong way round—but SDS says that 92 per cent of its apprenticeships are with SMEs, but the Federation of Small Businesses says that 83 per cent of its members have never had an apprentice. That statistic troubles me. There is a disconnect there.

One of the issues for small businesses that was brought home in a series of pilots in 2015, I think, is the hassle for small businesses and the grief that they say they would face around human resources and training and so on. It all becomes too much for them to take on apprentices even when their business needs it for succession planning. It was actually a staff member who came to us and suggested a possible solution, and we are looking at that.

I absolutely accept that there will be concerns, as has been expressed to the committee. I have been open with the convener about what we will do in response to that. I have been as open as I possibly can be. I have met staff members at a session who then met me at something else and said, “I did not feel that I could raise the issue on the day, but I just wanted to say.” That has all been taken on board.

Once that is done, we will be able to move at greater pace.

I apologise if I did not convey this well enough. For several months, the Government has been doing extensive work with stakeholder groups on skills shortages. As you know, there is a distinction between skills shortages and workforce shortages. We cannot magic up people, but we can ensure that people with the right skills are available.

We have been looking at drilling down into some of the assertions that are made. If I say to you—you will have heard this number—“We are short of 3,000 welders,” your question becomes, “What kind of welders, and where?” If we are short of engineers, the same question applies. We need that level of intelligence to help to shape the future. That applies not just to our apprenticeship offering but to our whole approach to tackling some of these issues.

We are going forward armed with that information, which is being developed through detailed work from particular sectors. That has proven to be really helpful, and it is driving an immediate response through our colleagues in the economy directorate. The skills and economy directorates are working closely together on things outwith the bill in order to deal with some of the short-term problems.

In the longer term, there are economic priorities, and we will have the opportunity, through the new arrangement, to feed that into our planning. An example is childcare, which is a critical sector. If we do not have enough childcare in the country, we are not accessing the entire workforce. Other sectors include planning and construction—all the obvious things. However, there are other critical elements to the economy that we need to protect, although they might not involve huge numbers.

I know that you have taken an interest in stonemasonry, and that is a good example of what I am talking about. We will always need stonemasons, so how do we ensure appropriate access to stonemasonry apprenticeships, in the interests of the economy and our young people? In relation to the careers work, how do we encourage young people into those pathways?

On the apprenticeship model, we need to ensure that the funding that is available for some of those disciplines reflects the cost. As you know, one of the reasons why there has been a reduction in the number of stonemasonry apprenticeships, for example, relates to the cost that has to be incurred by whoever provides the training. We therefore need a model that takes account of those elements of the costs, too. That is another piece of work that will inform what we do as we go forward.

That has been quite unhelpful, and it means that I have not seen the specifics of the issue that you raise. However, I figured that you would ask that question.

I understand the argument that is made around the principle of remuneration for senior staff, particularly in the university sector—I think that that has been the biggest challenge from the point of view of the University and College Union. However, it is difficult to legislate to address that issue.

It is a fact that some of our larger institutions are competing salary-wise with multimillion-pound businesses for the very brightest and best. However, I absolutely recognise the concerns that trade unions and others have raised about remuneration packages and the increases that have been offered.

Earlier, I referred to a meeting that I had a couple of months ago with the university chairs of court. I would be wrong to go into too much detail, but I took the opportunity to point out to them how the increases were viewed out there. You are absolutely right about institutions wanting more public money at a time when they were offering large remuneration increases, particularly to principals but also to others. I read some of the media stories, and I have made it clear to them that they are expected to exercise restraint and self-awareness going forward. That is probably as much as I can do currently, but we need to see that play out.