Chamber and committees

You referred to “modest investment”. I am just looking for a figure. Bearing in mind that that was not a licence requirement, how much has been spent on it?

Ofcom has been pointing out these trends over a decade of its reporting, so the situation cannot have caught STV by surprise. It also committed to substantial investment in the Glasgow and Aberdeen facilities. I just wonder how it can go from that to this situation. I come back to the point about whether it negotiated the licence in bad faith, cordoning it off from any other people coming in and bidding for it. STV gets the licence and then it suddenly reveals a few months later the dramatic changes and huge cuts that are being talked about.

On the job losses and the loss of output from the north-east, I wonder whether it seems to you that STV has a unique selling point, given that nobody else provides what STV provides in the north of Scotland. If it gets rid of that USP, no one else will provide that. It is giving up its USP, in what seems a bit of knee-jerk reaction to a share price drop. Are there other areas that it could look at to try to make sure that it gets through the process without cutting jobs and giving up the USP of the regionalised reporting that it does?

This will be my last question, convener.

I have only two other questions; lots of members want to come in.

I go back to the points that were made about the licence commitment. Do you understand that the licensing process is there to protect the public interest? People looking at what is happening here will have seen you agreeing to a licence that started this year and then trying to dramatically reduce the licensing commitments while making commitments that are not licence requirements. That just makes a mockery of the licensing process. Will you comment on that?

Sorry—I have a further question on gallery production and the facility in Aberdeen, which is to become what is called, I think, a reserve facility. Half a million pounds was spent on that. Are you honestly saying that it is a reasonable to have that as a reserve facility, and that you will ship people up to Aberdeen at short notice if there is a problem in Glasgow? Is that a sham to cover for the fact that you should not have invested that money if you were not going to use that facility?

As we have heard, this week, the Scottish Government published “A Fresh Start with Independence”. At a time when many of my constituents are struggling to heat their homes and pay for their food shopping due to Westminster inaction—and bearing in mind that the promise to reduce energy bills by £300 has turned into an increase of £200—will the First Minister outline his Government’s findings on the impact that independence would have on living standards and energy bills?

I apologise if I am pre-empting the minister’s next remark. I commend the Scottish Government for approving the drug Enhertu, which is not approved elsewhere in the UK. There are campaigns to make it available elsewhere.

The minister mentioned the wear it pink campaign, and Stephen Kerr did as well. I let the select band of members in the chamber know that next year, on 4 April, there will be a wear it pink event for Christina McKelvie, which will continue from the 10 to 15 years for which Christina hosted the wear it pink campaign in the Parliament. It will not be a Scottish National Party event; it will be open to everyone, if you can get a ticket. The money raised from that will go, in part, to Breast Cancer Now. I bring that to the attention of the minister and members.

I have only a couple of questions. Looking at the data that you provided for the validation that you might get from media reach—I think that that might be the way to describe it—do you see dangers in that? Some people say that there is a formulaic approach whereby reports are produced that are relatively straightforward and discuss the pros and cons of an issue, but contain a soundbite quote at the end that, if you publish it on the right day, is guaranteed to stir up a good amount of parliamentary discussion and media coverage. Is there a danger that you might be seen to be chasing headlines and adding to a preponderance of negative stories, given that the media will always prefer those to positive ones? Do you recognise that danger if you are looking to that metric for validation?

Another one for which I was responsible—thank you for that.

From a layperson’s point of view, though, an unqualified opinion would give a level of reassurance that would be completely unjustified in this instance. They failed to set a budget; they failed to show why they had not set a budget; they were not able to provide evidence of any discussion as to why they had not set a budget, which is a breach of the financial regulations; and they were also making substantial errors in what they were doing. An unqualified opinion is surprising to me, as a layperson.

Deloitte was the auditor for the college.