Chamber and committees

I have to ask the question whether the target is a worthwhile one to have, aside from the fact that you can do a lot of good in trying to achieve it. Given what you have said, do we have the right target?

I would be interested to hear about your own experience, and not only from the year that you have spent in this job. I am new to the committee and it would help me to understand the historical context and where we are in closing the attainment gap. I remember that when I went to university, very few people from my background were at university. I would like to get an idea of the historical context but also of whether it is the right target to have.

I appreciate Mr Dunphy’s point about targets being for ministers and politicians. However, we are moving into a pre-election period when politicians will start to think about throwing around targets and commitments and they will try to make them as simple as possible, for very good reasons. We have heard a lot of evidence today about the need to review or refine the current target. My issue with that is as much to do with the fact that targets like that do not allow for extraneous influences. Government should really stop proposing targets that can easily be affected by things that are outwith their control, because it makes them meaningless.

We do not hear much about this target, but I imagine that it is unlikely that it has not been affected by 14 years of austerity bearing down on revenue and, especially latterly, capital budgets, by the Liz Truss budget and consequent double-digit inflation, wage suppression, the cost of living and rising inequality. Many of those things—not all—lie outwith the Scottish Government’s control. When the Government sets a target, it should be specific about what it controls. What are the witnesses’ views on that?

A meaningful target has to be as simple as possible but there might need to be caveats in it for it to be sensible. I am maybe making a plea for presenting the electorate with more sensible targets at election time. It would be interesting to hear any suggestions on that from those with an academic background.

Good morning, Professor McKendrick. I do not think we have met, but I offer no apologies for anything that I might have said at Easter Road, should you ever have had the privilege of going there.

Your comment has kind of cut the legs off the question that I was going to ask. I know you have said that you do not support crude measures, but if we look at what Glasgow Caledonian University has achieved, it might be simplistic to suggest that that model could be applied to other universities.

Glasgow Caledonian was challenged to achieve an aim. I might be being a simplistic politician, but the idea of having a target and achieving it is important in its own right for public confidence. I assume that there must be some compelling reason why this is the case, but your comment seemed to suggest that some institutions would never be able to achieve that target because of their core population. I do not want to put words in your mouth, and you will get a chance to come back to me, but is that right? If that is the case, how realistic are the targets in the first place?

I forget the exact phrase that the commissioner used earlier, but he said words to the effect that, taken over a slightly longer period of 10 years, there has been a remarkable transformation and an almost doubling of the number of people coming into further and higher education from challenging backgrounds.

On this panel, we have heard that it is a remarkable success story, unique to Scotland—Claire McPherson mentioned that

“This is a success story”;

Mr Dunphy, you said that although we are not done yet, great progress has been made. That is not the narrative that the public is hearing. It is important to me, as a politician, but for the people who are interested in thinking about widening access and in their opportunities for access—which will not be the entire population—to continually get an apocalyptic picture is detrimental. It is what they get; they will get it from the coverage that will come out today. In the same way, pretending that nothing is wrong is detrimental. Is there a danger that we will demotivate people and that they will say, “Well, actually, there’s no way I’m going to get into university, look at what’s happening just now”? Is that apocalyptic approach potentially damaging? If so, what can be done?

To be fair, I said “college and university”—I went to college before going to university, so I acknowledge your point.

I think that a parent or a child who is thinking about access should be open-eyed about the challenges around student finance and some of the things that we have heard about. However—and this was my point—should they not also be open-eyed about the stuff that we are doing that is unique to Scotland, which other parts of the UK are looking at with envy? Should there not be some cause for a bit more optimism around those people’s chances of getting into a college or university?

I am interested in anything that could be helpful in preventing the undermining of a target by the inevitable extraneous events that can affect it, for democratic accountability as much as anything else.

I have a very brief question that will probably have a brief answer. Is there any information on former forces personnel accessing either further or higher education? I know that it will be a small number and difficult to track.

I did not expect the answer to be that short, to be honest.

Does anyone engage with the armed forces regarding resettlement programmes or such things?

I have one last question on that point. This is probably well known to other members of the committee, but not to me. You mentioned Australia, but how does Scotland perform in Europe and United Kingdom comparisons, in terms of widening access?

I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests.

Today, we have heard what MSPs think of the budget, but, in due course, we will hear what people think of it. It is probably useful to look beyond the details of the budget—which we have heard a great deal about this afternoon—to some of the broader themes.

Many people will form a judgment on the budget based on the issue of trust. The SNP has balanced its budget for 17 years. It built the new Queensferry crossing with £400 million less than was budgeted for it. It built the Aberdeen western peripheral route, which previous Administrations had just talked about. It built in the Borders the longest piece of new rail infrastructure in the UK for 100 years. It built many new primary and secondary schools across Scotland, and it provided the child payment, free tuition fees and free prescriptions.

We also abolished the bedroom tax. We used to hear a lot about issues with the bedroom tax from Labour, but we do not hear about them any more, given that the bedroom tax has been left untouched in England.

As for the Tories, they brought us the highest tax burden since world war two, with the country more than £2 trillion in debt. It is the party of financial incompetence on a grand scale. The Tories also gutted the armed forces in terms of both personnel and equipment. Sandesh Gulhane said that the SNP spends beyond its means, but his party left us £2 trillion in debt and with the highest tax burden since the second world war. Where are the bankrupt councils in the UK? They are not in Scotland—they are in England and Wales.

What about Labour? It is the party that started by saying, “There’s no money left,” and, by abstaining on the budget, it is now the party with no conviction left. In the words of the dictionary, it has decided to refrain from performing a public duty. That says it all about the Labour Party—it has absolutely no conviction whatsoever. Since Labour was elected in the UK, it cannot be trusted on finance. It has already changed the fiscal rules, and the headroom that it talked about has already gone. On trust, the SNP Government comes out well ahead.

There are two very big issues underlining the budget of which the public will certainly take note. The first relates to the tax on jobs through ENICs. I will give a local example of the detrimental impact of that policy. Scottish Autism, an organisation that is anchored in my Clackmannanshire and Dunblane constituency, provides indispensable services across communities, but it is now confronted with an unsustainable financial burden. It has forecast an annual increase in costs of up to £850,000 due to the policy. That £850,000 should be channelled into improving lives and enhancing services in communities; it should not be wasted on mitigating the fall-out from an ill-conceived policy decision.

The jeopardy that organisations such as Scottish Autism face underscores a profound policy failure that threatens the very fabric of our community support systems. We cannot and must not allow that to continue. The Labour Party’s choice to stay silent and abstain from this historic budget vote speaks volumes, not least in relation to the impact on the fabric of our communities.

The other major issue that casts a huge shadow over the budget relates to Ukraine. The budget is perhaps not directly affected, but it has to be formulated against the backdrop of the threat of future major public spending cuts. I speak for myself when I say that there is no option other than that we will have to contemplate a substantial increase in defence expenditure in relation to personnel and equipment. That means rearmament, recruitment and research. We will do that because we want to defend not just Ukraine but Europe. However, in my view, this Parliament cannot be asked to subsidise nuclear weapons or an even more obscene nuclear weapons system such as the one that might replace Trident. That cannot be demanded of us.

Nor should we be subsidising the complete failure of successive UK Governments, which have gutted the armed forces to the extent that they are now 20,000 below what they were in Napoleonic times. That has now been admitted by previous Labour and Conservative secretaries of state. The equipment and the training are not there.

Nobody can deny that Russia poses an existential threat, especially given the fact that the guarantees that we have taken for granted since the second world war are now absent. The idea that we protect countries only if we can extort their mineral resources is the geopolitics of protectionism, and we should have no truck with it. We should protect Europe because we want to protect Europe.

In summary, we have to make that contribution, but we should not give carte blanche to a UK Government that has not shown itself to be capable of properly building a defence infrastructure. The response should be European-led—I say “European” rather than EU, because I do not know how Romania and Hungary will respond. We should be willing to back a European-led response.

I will make one final point. Some big issues have been touched on in the debate, such as social care and reform of local government finance. It would be ideal if, before the election, the parties could show that they have the maturity to get together to agree some common ground. That would squeeze out room for manoeuvre for whoever is successful in forming the Government, but the long-standing issues of local government finance reform and social care have to be addressed if we are to improve the quality of life of people in Scotland.

There is no question but that there are difficult times ahead, but I am delighted to support what is an excellent budget.