Seòmar agus comataidhean

This might take a bit of time, convener, but I hope that you will indulge me.

I entirely understand the stress and frustration that has been felt by the staff and others at how long this has taken and how long the situation has dragged on. I can speak for the cab sec as well and say that we have certainly been frustrated by the time that it has taken. We have had to, at various points, recognise that the role of ministers in the context of legislation and our relationship with universities is at play here, as is the need to protect the Office for National Statistics classification. The situation with the finances of the university is a complex one, and understanding how it got into that situation also took a bit of time and contributed to the delays.

As we moved through that, there has also, to be candid, been an element of everybody involved wanting to be absolutely sure of the numbers in front of them, with regard to the asks, in particular, but also the robustness of two iterations of a financial recovery plan. More recently, the university has rightly been expected by the SFC to bring forward a certain level of detail to underpin what has been placed in front of it. That, in turn, has rightly seen the court of the university take a keen interest, and that has contributed to the delays, too. The plan now goes to the SFC, and the SFC’s board is involved. That is the background to why it has taken this long.

Just to bring this more up to date, I think that people are aware that, on 28 May, the SFC received a further financial ask that had gone through the university’s processes; that has been going through the processes of the SFC and its board, which have been interrogating the nature of the ask. The Scottish Government formally received a notification of the request on 6 June, and we are working on that at pace.

This is an on-going situation within the Government; indeed, the cross-ministerial group will be meeting this afternoon—we meet regularly on this matter. I should also say that the cab sec has led a lot of the direct engagement with the trade unions, which have been an important part of all of this.

The additional ask to the £22 million that has been brought forward has two elements to it. The first is to avoid the scale of disruption proposed, particularly in respect of employment, in the first iteration of the financial recovery plan. That would have been quite destructive to employment levels and nobody was in any way comfortable with that.

The second element is liquidity. It is self-evident that the institution got itself into difficulty, because it was essentially living beyond its means, and that position will not be recovered overnight. While the financial recovery plan is being implemented and taken forward, the institution will gain a degree of further support, whether from commercial sources, the Government or a combination of the two.

As I have said, those elements are being progressed at pace. We ought now—famous last words—to be capable of moving into a phase in which a greater pace will be injected into taking the issue forward. Clearly, we now have an ask that we can assist the university with in whatever form. The voluntary severance scheme has finally been launched, which will allow that element to be progressed.

I commend Sir Alan Langlands and his team for their patience and commitment. The task force is conducting specific workstreams to assist the university, and its members have had no shortage of appetite for that, for which I commend them. However, they have needed information and encouragement in order to deliver in the way that they would hope to, and they are now taking that work forward.

With regard to progressing the matter and bringing things to a head—if that is the correct term—there is the Gillies report, which is due to be published next week. Primarily, it will be for the SFC, which commissioned the report, to respond to it, but the university will also have to respond to the findings. As I understand it, at lunchtime on the day of the report’s publication, the university will hold a town hall meeting with its staff to give them an insight into what the review has found and, I would hope, any actions that the university feels that it is necessary to take in the immediate term.

As I have said previously at committee, it is also for the Government to reflect on the report’s findings. If there are any clear issues related to governance and oversight which will have repercussions and ramifications beyond the University of Dundee, the Government will consider them. As I have said before, the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill will provide a vehicle for us to consider introducing further powers for the SFC, or whatever, in legislation. We await the report.

No, I have not. I had some correspondence from one trade union, and I made it very clear that this was a matter for the trade unions themselves. Essentially, what we are talking about is an internal mechanism that lies behind the national bargaining and, frankly, I think that they need to sort this out between themselves.

One of the wider challenges that Glasgow Kelvin College faces is the increase in employer national insurance contributions that was brought in by your Government at Westminster. We received insufficient consequentials to allow us to negate the effects of that. A lot of the pressures that the college faces are outwith our control.

On the nature of the families that colleges were put in as part of the process, that was something that the SFC implemented, and I am happy to ask the SFC to provide a rationale for why Kelvin sits where it does. The colleges in and around Glasgow had a legitimate concern about the way in which they were funded, compared with other colleges, and the exercise in question has begun to address that.

We are talking purely about the college sector now. It is an interesting question, because the work that is being done between the SFC and the sector has three phases and the third phase will look at credit allocation.

That is a thorny subject, Mr Briggs. While you are advocating for NESCol, I am sure that Ms Dunbar and other members would advocate for the colleges in their areas getting more credits, but I am not sure that some of your fellow MSPs would be altogether happy if they were taken off another institution. We need to be alive to that.

We have done a bit of work in the context of universities and the allocation of places. It has not been without its controversy. For example, Glasgow Caledonian University has attracted additional credits because it requires them due to the level that it is performing to.

It is a thorny subject, because there is a parallel with something that we discussed earlier in the meeting about the rebaselining of college funding. It was sought and delivered with the warning that there would be winners and losers, and those who have lost out have been far from happy. In fact, some of those who have benefited have been far from happy.

We need to be alive to the pitfalls of doing that, but I absolutely understand the argument that you make.

There is a difference between a gap in the workforce and a skills shortage. If we can train people, there will still be issues with recruiting numbers, not least because of Brexit. We have to be careful about our language around that.

I am acutely aware of the willingness of employers to make a contribution in some of those areas, and I am very much open to that. We are encouraging our institutions to develop their thinking in that regard. There are opportunities here. Governments of all colours have perhaps been guilty of coming up with initiatives such as free ports and city deals, without necessarily allocating funds to build extra capacity for training in the system. We cannot just magic up places, as you explained to me when you spoke about NESCol. Governments of all colours need to get better at recognising that.

On your point about businesses, yes, there is an appetite to support such an opportunity, and we are keen to see what we can do to tap into that.

On and off, it has been there. It certainly predated my time as minister, too. However, we are increasing our focus on potentially using such a number, not least because our university colleagues believe that there would be some merit in it. That said, that work is not without its challenges—it is not straightforward.

I was very actively involved in that for a period, but we are now in a phase in which things are happening, or not, behind the scenes, in order to progress the situation. You have reminded me to get back on top of it quite quickly.

To be clear, the work that we did jointly to progress that was on the basis that it would be the Corseford model or something that was based on the learning from the evaluation. The evaluation commenced in March and I am pleased to say that it is a timely question from Mr Rennie, because we have received the initial feedback on the evaluation in the past few days. I am not going to commit absolutely to the way forward yet. However, I can say that the report has reached what we would describe as broadly positive conclusions about the Corseford model, with some suggestions for improvements in relation to staffing, processes and approach. We are now going to look at what that means in practice. I am optimistic that we will have something positive to say fairly quickly. It needs to happen fairly quickly, because there is a lot of uncertainty around it.

The exercise that we have carried out, which I accept should have happened previously, is a proper assessment of the outcomes—what worked well, what did not work so well and what we can learn from it. I hope that I will be able to say something more definitive shortly.

My understanding is that, notwithstanding the cut, the UK Government wants to retain a focus on the disadvantaged, although we have yet to see what that will mean in reality.

One of the worries that the funding cut will create, particularly for the university sector, is what it says about any commitment to returning to Erasmus+. A couple of weeks ago, there were very welcome indications from the UK Government that it would actively explore that option with the European Union. I know that there is an appetite within the EU to welcome the UK back into Erasmus+ but my understanding is that, currently, we are only at the stage where we are having talks about what those talks would look like. I think that the announcement will cause concern for those who were excited at the prospect of a return to Erasmus+ in some form.

One might argue that Erasmus+ was a costly scheme—certainly, some people held that view—and I recall that, around the time that the UK withdrew from the EU, its budget was doubled. Obviously, there will be a financial aspect to the negotiations that will take place about the UK’s potential return to the scheme. The UK Government’s announcement will not encourage the view that things are looking hopeful in that regard, but I hope that I am proved wrong.

The reliance on international students that might be baked into the financial recovery plan is a matter for the SFC to look at—and it has been doing so, because it is a valid point. However, you are right to point to the factors that are outwith what we might have reasonably expected to be factored into the FRP, such as fresh pronouncements on the direction of travel in relation to inward migration. As universities will tell you, it is a fact that even conversations instigated by Government around international students have a detrimental effect. Universities pick that up in their numbers; people say, “We’re not wanted there, so we’ll go elsewhere.” There is no doubt that the pronouncements in the white paper fall into that space and, if enacted, certainly have the potential to deliver further detriment to the sector.

So, you are absolutely right. Making that sort of assessment might take a bit longer as we look at the projections underpinning some of this and interrogate whether they will hold up under the stressors that are potentially coming down the track in the next six months to a year. That level of interrogation is going on.