Chamber and committees

I do not think that I am being overly gloomy by referring to the Government’s own statistics on what is happening in quintile 1. We have learned that 16.8 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds across Scotland are not in employment, education or training. We can congratulate ourselves on minuscule levels of improvement or we can look at the hard facts, which should be uncomfortable for us all. By the way, in Glasgow, that figure is 20 per cent, and in Inverclyde—the member for Inverclyde is in the chamber—it is 17 per cent. We should be filled with an inspirational form of dissatisfaction and be saying that that is not good enough for Scotland in the 21st century.

From one graduate of the University of Stirling to another, I ask Pam Duncan-Glancy whether she agrees that equality of opportunity will be elusive in our country for as long as there are caps on the number of young people who can go to university or college. Does she also agree that the way to create a more qualitative equality of opportunity would be to have no caps at all?

On the same subject, a cohort of qualified midwives are not getting jobs. Yesterday, I hosted a round-table meeting in the Parliament on maternity services, and the issue that came up time and again was the lack of workforce planning. My question to the minister is simple: why has the number of apprenticeship starts in key health roles fallen in some areas in recent years? When will the Government finally produce a joined-up piece of work that gives a clear plan to show how apprenticeships will close those gaps?

I am grateful for the opportunity to follow Martin Whitfield, who gave an excellent speech. In fact, there have been quite a few really good speeches in the debate. As is the norm on a Thursday afternoon, there has been a lot of common ground among members of different parties—if only that would serve as the bedrock for action, as Martin Whitfield said. He was right to focus on the need for a unique learner number.

The report that we are debating is an excellent cross-party report by an award-winning committee with an award-winning convener, and it is right that we are spending time considering it.

I was disappointed that George Adam described the alternative views and the critique that some members were offering as “dystopian”. That is a very strong word, and it is wholly inappropriate. Frankly, we should look at what the real world looks like, rather than looking at it through the starry eyes that George Adam chose to look at it through. We must look at the reality of what the Government’s own statistics say about the nature of what is happening, particularly among the SIMD20 cohort.

I am grateful to Miles Briggs for going down that path, shocked as I am that he quoted Keir Starmer. The reason for that is that one of my long-standing concerns—I wonder if he shares it—is about the quality of the careers advice that is available to our young people. Most of our young people are lucky to get a few minutes with a careers adviser in their entire secondary school experience, and the range of possibilities that exists is not always clear to them—hence, they often get grouped together and are almost predestined to end up in a place that they did not choose to be in.

Willie Rennie is right. He has been going on about the private and voluntary sector providers for years and years—and quite right, too.

The minister has disclosed that she is about to receive data, so I think that members will want to hear what the timeline is. When will the data be delivered to the minister, and when will the minister come to the chamber with that information? Will we hear anything in this session of Parliament about this burning issue?

Will the member take an intervention?

Briefly, Jamie Hepburn will remember that, when he was minister, he and I exchanged words in the committee about the paucity of data—for example, we could not tell how many had commenced a course versus how many had completed it. That is still the situation now, some years after Jamie Hepburn was the minister. As a former minister, what is his analysis now of why the information is so hard to collect?

Reducing the welfare budget is a noble objective of any Government that is worth its salt, because that means that we will beat the problem that we all want to beat, which is ingrained intergenerational poverty. If we are serious about doing that, we will see not burgeoning, climbing or exponentially increasing welfare budgets but resources being switched to solving the root causes of the problems, rather than just dealing with symptoms.

The Government’s short-termism is one of the most shocking aspects of its performance. Child poverty cannot be dealt with simply by increasing welfare payments. It is tackled by enabling people to live the life of dignity that they want for themselves—the famous hand up, not handout. That is the direction of travel that we should be taking, and Brian Whittle is right to point that out.

The fundamental problem across all the different aspects of public policy in Scotland is the lack of data. It astonishes me that, time after time, I come to the chamber to listen to ministers telling us that they do not really know the nature of the problem because they do not have the data, and that is absolutely true in this area.

I am absolutely clear that my whole reason for wanting to be in politics is rooted in a belief in fairness and the principle of equality of opportunity. That is what defines my conservatism. People can make of their lives what they like, and I do not buy into the idea that the end product—the outcome—needs to be based on equality, because that does not represent a free society. However, I absolutely believe that we should promote the idea of equality of opportunity at every turn of the wheel. I am a product of parents who believed in hard work, taking opportunities and making the most of them. I do not know whether I pleased or disappointed my parents—I am sure that I will find out one day when I meet them again.

The point is that we live in a country where that fairness and equality of opportunity is not what it should be. I grew up on a council estate. My dad was a butcher who worked for the Co-op, and my mum worked in a paper shop and wrote the papers in the morning for the paper boys. My mum and dad expected things of my sister and me, and we were the first members of my dad’s family to go to university. I bet that many other members can tell a similar story. That was about opportunity, and my politics and the politics of those of us on this side of the chamber are about maximising and widening access to those opportunities.

When I look at the Government’s record, I think that it provides the very opposite of fairness. The Government often hides behind phoney statistics, and one of the most phoney statistics of them all relates to the concept of the so-called positive destination. It is totally bogus to trade in that statistic. It does not mean anything. It tracks people three months after they leave school, and it covers casual work as well as education, training and employment. For heaven’s sake, it also covers zero-hours contracts, which must be anathema to members on the Government side of the chamber. A positive destination includes an occasional hour or two of work in a charity shop. That is not what we want for Scotland’s young people. Those are not fully explored positive destination.

That brings me back to the unique learner number. We do not know what we do not know. If we are to be able to craft public policy that responds to the situations that we are dealing with in Scotland, we need to have that data.

I see that my time is up. I hope that we can come together on these issues at least. I think that the minister is sincere, but does he really believe that the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill is the answer to any of this? It is not, and no number of amendments will make the bill useful—I am sorry, but it is not possible.

I say to Ben Macpherson that we judge the SNP by Nicola Sturgeon’s famous declaration to judge her on education. We judge the SNP on education. The SNP has failed Scotland.

Or not answering it.