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A number of issues have been raised this morning that we might want to pursue. I am open to members' guidance as to how we continue but I suggest that we pursue a few points in particular. The first relates to discussion and consultation with young people, which we should deal with soon. Fiona had some suggestions on how we could improve the methodology on that. The second issue relates to elections to and membership of school boards. The third issue is teacher development and professionalism. The fourth is how the inspectorate should be resourced and developed.
I agree with your choice of areas for discussion, Mary. I am sorry to come back to an issue that I raised earlier, but I would like to take you up on an offer that you made. I think that the negotiations on teachers' pay and conditions are central to the education debate and I suggest that we invite Mr Galbraith back—possibly to our next meeting—to question him for half an hour on the state of the negotiations and on what can be done to break the deadlock.
I am not sure that we should invite the minister to deal with that subject; it would be more useful to invite representatives of the two negotiating parties. It would be meaningless to put the minister on the spot at this stage. The deadlock will be broken by the result of the teachers' ballot.
Mr Galbraith holds the purse strings.
With all due respect, do you want the minister to throw a pot of gold at an unresolved situation?
I remind members to speak through the chair.
As has been pointed out, the Scottish Joint Negotiating Committee for Teaching Staff in School Education is tripartite. We could ask representatives from all three sides to come; we may want to talk about different things to each of them. We might ask the minister what he can do to bring the sides together and we could find out from the others what we can do to bring them closer together.
Are there any other views before I comment on that?
I am happy to defer to you.
The tripartite negotiations are important but, as has been said, Hampden needs an immediate answer. We will want the minister here next Tuesday to answer questions on that.
Why do we need an immediate answer on Hampden? I missed that.
It was raised earlier in the meeting.
Why is an immediate answer needed?
Fiona, why do you think that we need an immediate answer on Hampden?
I have asked questions in every conceivable forum since July and have not received answers. The committee will want to know whether the National Stadium is paying its bills and can operate as a national stadium.
It is obviously up to the minister to deal with Hampden, but I take on board Fiona's point that this committee may have concerns about it. If the committee has concerns about Hampden, I am happy to invite the minister to discuss it. Is that the feeling of the committee?
No, it is not. We have just had a discussion with the minister, which dominated the whole meeting. There are many things which I would like us to move on to, within and outwith the bill. Although Hampden is important, it is not a priority for the committee, and it can be pursed through other avenues.
I have explored every other avenue that is open to me and have not got answers. It may not be a priority but it is an urgent issue. We need to know whether the bills for which McAlpine issued a writ against the National Stadium were paid last month.
What is our locus in this? Is it because the Government is a minority funder?
The Government is not a minority funder; £40 million of the £63 million is public money.
You are talking about lottery funding, which is separate from our powers. There are other funders, including Glasgow City Council. We need to get this into perspective. Nobody is more interested than I am in ensuring that the blessed Hampden is financially stable. I wish that it had never been bloody built. It is not a pressing issue for this committee.
I suggest that we leave the question of Hampden until the committee considers its priorities.
Did we get agreement on the previous issue?
No, we will return to it. We have left Hampden on the table so that we can discuss it under the priorities that this committee will have for future meetings.
I think that we need the minister here next week to give an answer. I have gone down every possible route and have not got an answer. This committee has the power to ask not just the minister but the board members to explain what is going on. If that is the only way in which to get an answer on £40 million of public funding, we have to do it.
I understand your concern that you have not had an answer to the questions that you have rightly been putting, but I wonder whether that is for the committee to pursue, or whether you should pursue it as a member of this Parliament.
It could be put to a vote of the committee.
May I finish? It is up to the committee to decide whether it wants to deal with this matter. I suggest that we leave it on the table to be discussed along with the other issues that the committee needs to deal with. It may be that members will agree that we put Hampden at the top of the agenda, but we must consider that alongside other issues.
I do not know when the result of the ballot will be known, but the involvement of this committee will serve no purpose until then.
On the contrary, I think that it is important that negotiations continue. The danger at the moment is that both sides are taking increasingly fixed positions. If we can investigate ways in which the deadlock can be broken, we should go ahead and do it.
The ballot might break the deadlock.
In that case, everything will be fine, but if it does not, I would like to think that this committee had in the meantime done everything in its power to bring about a speedy solution.
Brian has been trying to get in.
It is quite apparent to many of us, both in this committee and elsewhere in the Parliament, that this Parliament has a great job to do in winning back the confidence of the people. One of the committee's tasks—as well as bringing the Hampden issue to light and exploring what, if anything, has gone wrong—is to take up issues such as the teachers' pay dispute. We should not allow ourselves to be governed by the time scale of the parties involved; it is for us to take the issue by the scruff of the neck and find out information that might be helpful.
Whenever industrial discussions are in progress, it is not necessarily for politicians to get involved as immediately as Brian suggests. People do not want politicians to start playing party politics with an issue, as—unfortunately—sometimes happens.
I agree that if we are not seen to be asking questions, people will be surprised; I really feel that. However, I would be upset if we appeared to be trying to do the negotiation.
Nobody is suggesting that.
Well, there has been some suggestion along those lines. That is the agenda that seems to be being pursued. It would be fine for us to have exploratory questions sessions, but I do not think that we can try to solve the problem.
Is it possible to broker a compromise on this?
I hope so.
We got off to a very bad start with what happened first thing this morning—that is not a party political point—but let us see whether we can make better progress. There is sense in saying that the ballot is a process in which we should not interfere, but as soon as all the ballots are over we should endeavour to speak to the parties involved. Perhaps we should advise the minister that we will also need to speak to him if he is going to be one of the parties. Brian is absolutely right—we have to play a role in this process.
Does Michael Russell agree with me then?
In the spirit of the new politics, a compromise should be possible in this committee. I hope that that would be welcomed by Labour members, too. However, we can do things the other way; we can take entrenched positions—as committee members did this morning—and create difficulties. Alternatively, we can make the sort of compromise that we are working on. It is up to the members around this table.
Can I suggest that that was what I said, although perhaps not as well as Michael Russell? I said that we should invite the parties to appear before us, but discuss the timetable for doing that. From the muttering around the table, it seems that people know when the ballot will be completed. Does the clerk have any information on that?
That is a sensible compromise. In response to Ian's point, there is no suggestion that this committee should do the negotiation. That is what the SJNC is for and will, I hope, continue to be for. However, it would be useful if this committee could play a role.
I do not have a diary on me, but I believe that 15 September is next Wednesday.
We should take the following Wednesday.
Can we agree that we will invite all parties on the following Wednesday—22 September—if that is acceptable to those who are negotiating?
I will not be here.
That is the next Wednesday meeting.
If it cannot be 22 September, in view of the fact that we need to get everybody's diaries together, we should find the nearest date thereafter.
Let me assure you that I am as keen as everybody here that we make some progress on this. What I do not want to do is interfere in a haphazard way that could damage any negotiations that are going on. Do we agree on that?
As I forewarned you twice today, I will come at this as a structural issue. School performance and teacher morale and performance are linked to the structure of schools. As I said, schools in my area—and Thurso and Wick high schools in particular—are in bad nick. Thurso High School is in a disgraceful condition, and that is affecting the delivery of the service to pupils. We are boxed in by section 94. Sam has rightly moved in a good direction with the comprehensive spending review, but we know that that is not enough.
My first point—about the inspectorate—relates to the four points that you raised, convener.
Are we agreed on the four points that we will discuss further?
Yes.
Does that mean that those four points will be on the agenda next time?
We will progress those points, and any others that anyone wants to add.
East Renfrewshire is one of the authorities that have been inspected. I recommend that we learn from that inspection and invite the director of education here or go to East Renfrewshire.
We will come to that if we have time.
My second point is the one that Nicola raised—the broader context of the bill. The bill talks about the structure of education, but it will operate in a wider context, particularly in relation to the sustainable education that Nicola alluded to. It is important that we have that on the agenda and talk about the overall philosophy of our approach to education.
I have quite a list of points. I thought that we were listing points and then deciding on some priorities. We must not forget that we are a cultural committee, too, but on the education side I have raised the issue of rural schooling. We need to look closely at the criteria for closures, as well as finding a positive way of encouraging rural education, particularly rural primary education. We must get to grips with the fact that, although we want rural primary education to continue, there are lots of questions about how it is resourced.
We should invite representatives from St Mary's Episcopal Primary School to give evidence on the education bill. Its publication is a significant event for that school, whose views it would be important to hear. On the national cultural strategy, I raised in the chamber the issue of the national theatre for Scotland. There are a number of players whom we could ask about that. I shall return to the development at Hampden later, as I have already given notice that I was concerned about it. I should also mention—I bring this up under any other business—that there should be separate sub-committees.
On a point of order. I move to extend the time for this committee. We are obviously up against it, and I do not think that we will be chucked out immediately if we want to continue.
I think that there is another meeting in this room, so I would be reluctant to extend our time, even though there are a number of issues that members want to raise. If members want to put on the agenda items that the committee can consider over the coming months rather than immediately, I shall ask Gillian, the committee clerk, to speak to them and write down the ideas that they want us to consider. Members can e-mail those ideas, if that is considered more suitable. We will try to put together a programme that will include everything.
I would like some clarification of the process. All the issues that we have raised and more—if we e-mail you others—will go into a paper that the committee will confirm as its work programme for this session. Is that what will happen?
Yes.
So we are not reaching any decisions today; we are just throwing ideas into the melting pot.
I hope to leave it as open as possible, so that committee members can include as many items as they are interested in.
When we discuss what the committee might consider, can we have on the agenda the notion of sub-committees investigating culture and sport separately?
Yes. There is a paper on sub-committees and travel, but we do not have time to deal with that just now. I suggest that we put that on the agenda for Tuesday's meeting. I take it that the committee is in agreement that we should have a meeting next Tuesday, as we will need the time.
If we are to have a sports presentation, could we try to have it when no other committees are meeting? I know that that might be difficult but I, for one, would like to attend that debate.
That is extremely difficult. We are having problems with members' availability, because most of them are on more than one committee.
I understand why you say that. I hope that the briefing from sportscotland is agreed and that we can go ahead and organise it without waiting until the next meeting. One thing that I would like us to do as a matter of urgency—this links in with travel—is to visit some community schools. If we do not do that, we are talking blind.
Before we leave, I want us to decide, as a committee, whether we are inviting Hampden and all those associated with it to come to us by—I would suggest—28 September to give us a clear picture of what is going on. I would like to find out whether the committee wants to do that.
I suggest that we write to the minister and ask questions along the lines of those that you have been putting, Fiona. We might get an answer before 28 September. If we do not get a suitable answer by that date, we can give a commitment to invite Hampden back.
That process can be truncated. If we ask the minister Fiona's questions and there is no reply by next Tuesday, we should be in a position to say that we must treat the issue as a priority. That gives the minister a week's grace.
Are we saying that we will decide whether this is a priority issue when we decide the rest of the agenda?
No, the proposal is that a letter is written on behalf of the committee asking these questions and, in the light of the answers—or lack of answers—we will decide what to do next Tuesday.
That sounds fine.
I am at one with Fiona on the need for us to understand what is going on. I am sure, however, that it will be a question of resolving the funding issues—whatever they might be—and that the partners will be trying to do that. I am no more party to this than anyone else here, although I have some information from the Scottish Football Association side which I will not throw into the pot here. In principle, the scenario is no different from the balloting issue. The partners must resolve things and I do not want us to go clodhopping in and disturb that. On the other hand, it would be helpful to have, at least, a holding position to clarify the issues. I am saying that, but it would be nice if the funding partners said it, too.
I am not asking the committee to clodhop. I am asking exactly what Ian has just asked. We must have the issues clarified.
We will write as a committee to the minister.
And in the light of the response we will consider our next move. We want a response by next Tuesday. I am sure that the minister can provide that.
We must conclude now. Thank you for your attendance, and thank you to those in the public gallery who have sat it out.
Meeting closed at 12:33.