This has been a fulsome debate on the importance of advocacy and understanding the scaffolding and ancillary services that are required to support care-experienced people. I acknowledge much of what the minister said regarding her willingness to engage with other colleagues ahead of stage 3. It is important that we explore the issue of the wider role of advocacy, particularly for parents and families. I recognise what the minister said about provisions that already exist to support advocacy and the differences that exist in how people access and require advocacy.

Given the minister’s undertaking to engage ahead of stage 3, and also the undertaking that she gave to Mr Whitfield in relation to his amendments, I am happy to withdraw amendment 145 and re-engage ahead of stage 3.

Amendment 145, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendment 146 not moved.

Amendment 147 moved—[Ross Greer]—and agreed to.

Amendments 148 and 8 not moved.

Amendment 9 moved—[Jeremy Balfour].

I recognise Ross Greer’s point and some of the concern about renaming the bill. I have heard the flip side of that, too. I have met many care-experienced people—for example, through the cross-party group on care leavers—who have referred to the bill in shorthand as “the Promise bill”.

We need to strike a balance. We could perhaps refer to the “Promise 1 bill” and the “Promise 2 bill”. I do not want to get into the weeds of all that, but to focus minds and attention, we should call the bill what it is, because it is an opportunity. There is still mileage in the bill being an opportunity to begin to fix some of the challenges that Mr Greer referred to. However, I fully accept—as he knows, I said this at stage 1—that the bill will not do everything that we need it to, and it needs to go further and faster. I maintain that renaming the bill would be helpful, but I acknowledge the caveats that Mr Greer pointed out, which are very fair.

The challenge to the Government and to everyone here today is that, if we are serious about keeping the Promise and want the legislation to be part of that, we should, although recognising that the bill is not the full solution, call a spade a spade. If we are unwilling to do that and to call it “the Promise bill” because we simply accept that, as drafted, it will be another missed opportunity, it will set us back and we will not be able to meet the aspiration that we all share.

That is interesting.

I will widen out the discussion and ask what we can learn from the Dundee example. I think that when she was at committee, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills referred to Dundee as a fairly isolated case, or was trying to present it that way. Is your view that this could happen in other institutions? What is your key takeaway? What must be learned from the Dundee example in order to fix things?

Okay. You said that there was a mixture of financial and governance issues and that those two things were interlinked. Are the solutions to that interlinked? This morning, we have had a lot of discussion about how those with oversight are appointed or elected, but the sense is that there is no clarity on whether amending that would fix the problem. The view, I think, is that anyone who is dealing with billion-pound budgets must have some financial training or expertise.

It would not be fair to ask you for the one thing that would make the difference, so instead I will ask what the principal governance change would be that could make the difference at your institution.

Even taking into account this morning’s discussion about whether having an elected chair worked or made the difference—or generally makes the difference—your view is still that having a more democratic structure would fix some of the problems.

We have heard quite a lot of back and forth this morning. I will try to pull things back to one of the principal issues that we have discussed, which is the situation at the University of Dundee, the Gillies review and the learning that came out of that. What are the key lessons learned, and have they been taken cognisance of? First, I will ask the question about Dundee in particular to Melissa, then I am interested in the wider lessons for the sector.

That is interesting.

I am referring to commentary from other people, particularly those who—

I recognise what the cabinet secretary said about the origin and trying to avoid a political debate. We heard some of that rehearsed earlier when the convener asked his questions. However, does the cabinet secretary recognise that her party has been the governing party for 19 years and that there has been a substantial increase to the Scottish budget, particularly in the last two budget cycles at the UK level? Does she recognise that the forecast of the resource that will be allocated to education is deeply concerning? Does that forthcoming spend not suggest that this Government, in the last months of the current session of Parliament, is deprioritising education?

In response to a topical question last week or the week before, the cabinet secretary told me that PEF should not be used to plug existing gaps. We heard from Mr Watson about trying to future proof and mainline some of that preventative spend. Does she recognise that those SFC projections for council budgets will inevitably lead to issues such as PEF being used to plug gaps?