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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.

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.

Yes, I can, if you will give me a moment. Progress has been made on it, because it is quite an important piece of work and was an important ask of the Withers review.

That work is under way. The initial stage of the project has included wide stakeholder engagement to inform and refine its scope, and we have identified data collection requirements and are working in partnership with relevant agencies and other stakeholders to ensure a solid evidence base. Data gathering is under way.

That initial stage, which I have just outlined, is due to be completed in the coming weeks, and it will be followed by data collation and analysis and further stakeholder engagement—and I mean meaningful engagement—in that space. There is no doubt that there is an appetite to tackle the issue, and it is imperative that we do so. James Withers was absolutely right about that.

Once we get through that, the final stage of the audit will focus on ensuring that insights are available to inform policy development, and advice on that will be coming to ministers. However, we absolutely recognise the need to move in this space and to get this knocked into shape, because we hear loud and clear the concerns of stakeholders.

I am more than happy to do so.

I will say, to be blunt, that I am not going to get dragged into trying to micromanage internal and cross-trade union relationships. We both know that that is what is at play here. I will do everything within my power and authority to encourage people, as best I can, to approach the process of resolving the long-standing issues in the sector, but I am not going to attempt to micromanage those issues.

That topic has come up at committee previously. An extensive effort has been made to tackle that thorny issue, which has dogged the college sector for the best part of a decade.

As a positive, I think that everybody who is involved recognises that continuing as they have is not, in any way, to be welcomed, to put it mildly. There is a commitment to try to move things on. We have made considerable progress on what that might look like, and we have progressed things to the point at which trade unions have been working in conjunction with the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, and there has been a session on behaviours across the national bargaining process. That work is on-going.

Work has also been undertaken with College Employers Scotland to review the national recognition and procedure agreement and to consider how that could be strengthened to support improvements in national bargaining. However, two trade unions have served notice that they intend to resign from the current NRPA, as they no longer feel that it is fit for purpose, which leaves two unions that are aligned with it and two that are moving away from it. Unfortunately, we have an internal issue with the trade unions’ commitment to the processes. I would be deeply disappointed if we could not get into a better space. I still see that as an imperative, and the recognition is there from all parties.

Touch wood, things have quietened down in the sector. We have a long-term agreement with the lecturers and the employers, and I know that negotiations between support staff and employers have been on-going for some time. I am afraid that that is not much of an update, Mr Kidd, but that is where we are at.

On the topic of recovery—which is the word that is used rather than “clawback”, Mr Briggs—the SFC has done a lot of work on that with the college sector, particularly through the tripartite alignment group. That work has been extremely successful.

However, there is a point at which leaving public money that recirculates in the education system in institutions that have underperformed—I will come back to that point—cannot be justified without evidence that they are seeking not to underperform. There have been some instances in which that has been the case and some flexibility has been provided.

I am sure that the topic will be explored in greater detail in the tripartite group. There are limitations to what can be done, given the financial pressures that we are all aware of. Nevertheless, where universities are doing innovative things in the areas that you have referred to, and in others, there is an argument for a bit of understanding. I am sure that that will be explored further through the tripartite group.

Forgive me if I am being presumptuous, but I do not think that anyone in this room thinks that Withers was just an opinion—a point of view. It was an extensive piece of work that was carried out by a highly credible and respected individual. I do not know about other members but, at the end of my reading of the Withers report, I realised that I had sat nodding in agreement with pretty much everything. The work that I have done in the period since then, engaging with business and various stakeholders, has reinforced that.

To come back to your point, Mr Adam, about some of the evidence from SDS, the chief executive was, clearly, proud of the fact that 76 per cent of apprentices complete their apprenticeships, and I recognise that that is a better performance than elsewhere on these islands. However, I am not proud of the fact that almost one in four apprentices does not complete. I do not think that that is success. Some of the retention rates in a number of our colleges are not good enough. We have to aspire to do better.

There are lots of factors with regard to young people not completing college or apprenticeships. Often, those are outwith the control of those who are charged with delivering the programmes. Members of the committee know that the way in which we measure college retention is a bit unfair on the colleges. Nevertheless, we need to improve completion rates.

That is where the read-across to other areas of reform comes in. Getting that careers offering right is important because, at the moment, we have too many square pegs in round holes. That is what is happening in reality. It is one of the major contributory factors to the rate of lack of completion.

I do not want to focus entirely on SDS and apprenticeship delivery, because Withers set a challenge for everyone—and we have all been challenged, particularly Government. I have held up my hands and said that I think that his criticism is justified and that we can do better. We need to see that level of self-awareness across the landscape.

I was struck by something that the committee might be interested in. Construction is a remarkably important sector for the country and its economy. The Construction Industry Training Board tells me that around 18,000 young people go to college in Scotland every year to study construction but that only 15 per cent of those go on to work in construction. That is an example of some of the ideas that have arisen from the reform work and it challenges us to ask ourselves why that is the case and what lies behind it. If people are going to do courses, they should surely be ones that they are interested in and that will deliver to meet their needs and those of the economy. We must ensure that we have the workforce that we need, not for tomorrow but for now.

We must be honest with ourselves, because the numbers show that we are not getting it right and we must all ask what we should do to tackle that. I absolutely agree with Mr Rennie’s point about immediate challenges, but if we do not take the opportunity that Withers has presented to us and that the bill presents, and if we do not recognise the concerns that have been articulated, what will we do then? Are we saying that we are not going to respond to the places where we are coming up short? Are we going to let this slide because we are in challenging times and it is too difficult? That is not where I am. We must address some of the immediate challenges, but we absolutely must take a strategic view of the post-16 landscape and get to the point where the young people who are best suited to go to university are doing that—perhaps by doing graduate apprenticeships—and the young people who should be going into apprenticeships if that is the right thing for them are in the right apprenticeships. That is what the overarching reform is about.

I said earlier that we have strong foundations to build on. We do, and we should recognise that. Some of the very people who have established those strong foundations in apprenticeships will move across to the SFC. Thanks to Frank Mitchell, the SDS chairman, I have had direct conversations with those people and have set them two immediate challenges. The first is to look at what they would do differently if they were not working within their current framework and if we let them run free. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but you know what I am getting at. We asked what they would do differently.

The second challenge is a question about what impediments or perceived impediments there are to being able to deliver the vision that they believe would be better. We are awaiting feedback from them on that.

Some of what the OECD report suggested featured in Withers. There are elements that we have taken on board. However, we cannot sit back and say, “Well, the OECD said we are doing well, and we are doing better than England. That is good enough.” I do not think that it is. I do not think that a one-in-four dropout rate is good enough. I am not apportioning blame to anybody in particular in relation to that, but we should all aspire to better.

I will pick up on that point. I fully accept the financial challenges that universities have, for a wide range of reasons. A narrative has developed that suggests that financial sustainability is achieved only through the provision of more public money, but institutions also need to look at custom and practice issues in how they operate. I do not say that to deflect in any way; I just offer that observation.

There is an operating model, certainly in some of our universities, whereby, when a new market and a new source of income is identified, the university recruits quite heavily in order to deal with that. If that market and that source of income is subsequently diminished, for whatever reason, the same number of people face losing their jobs. We have seen that in a number of universities, where there have been significant job losses.

Some of that is down to how universities operate. Collectively, the UK and Scottish Governments need to look at the financing of our universities, and I take on board all the things that have been said in that regard. However, to be frank, it is also for universities to do some work on the way in which they go about their business. I think that they know that.