Chamber and committees

Wendy Alexander said a few other things in her report. Is there anything else in there that you want to respond to? Right now, the balance of what we are hearing—it is unfortunate that Wendy Alexander is not able to give evidence to the committee because of a commitment—is that her side feels much stronger, to be honest. If there is anything that you feel you need to respond to in what she said, I think that you should do it, because to be fair, I am not sure that the committee is convinced by what we are hearing just now.

I am just trying to understand the numbers. I have a piece of paper that shows the introduction to the draft audit, on which you had handwritten something in order to try and change some of the auditor’s words. It says very clearly at the very bottom—this goes back to 2023-24—that:

“adjusting for non-recurring items, the underlying operational position is a deficit of £11.5 million.”

I do not understand why the urgency of the situation was not realised. We have heard about the £1.2 million figure, but that document talks about £11.5 million. You said that you were not aware of that, but it is there in black and white, and you have not tried to change that bit.

Thanks very much for coming along today, Professor Gillespie. It is appreciated. It is important that we understand what has happened.

Like the witnesses at yesterday’s meeting, you have apologised, and you have told us that that is heartfelt. I am not sure that that cuts it for the staff and students who will be watching, but it is definitely better that you did that than not.

However, folk are still hugely concerned about their jobs and their studies. There is real concern about how the university manages to move on. That is why it is important that we get as many answers as possible from this meeting.

The convener asked about the covenant, but that was a specific thing. Putting aside that and the irregularities in the evidence that we have had on it, when were you aware of how bad the financial situation was at the University of Dundee? When was there first a red flag that something was not right, never mind the technicalities?

There is a final area that I want to come to, but it would be good for you to finish your response, if there is anything else that you want to say.

I am trying to understand why action was not taken back in 2023-24. All the signs were there. I do not think that I have heard why Dundee was more invested in those riskier markets than other institutions. What was the decision-making process behind that, and why was action not taken? We have read in the submission from Wendy Alexander that she warned you that that was a problem and that you ignored her. This is an opportunity for you to respond to her comments.

That is really helpful. I think that folk who are watching this session will find it incredible that you, surrounded by a team of people who are all paid significantly more than the First Minister of Scotland—you are paid multiples of that, I think—were not aware of the structural problems until somebody came in the door and, all of a sudden, everything was clear. That is incredible.

I want to go back to the international student element of what happened, because that is significant. It feels that, apart from the mismanagement across the board, something appears to be different in Dundee. There are pressures across the higher education sector in the United Kingdom, but something different happened in Dundee.

Why was it that Dundee university was so invested in those very risky markets? Why were the signals in 2023-24 not taken more seriously so that action could be taken at that point? What advice were you getting? Who was responsible for taking those decisions? I am just throwing things in so that you can be more complete in your answer. Why was there a continued increase in the number of staff in that area? It looked like numbers coming down, but nonetheless, you were still recruiting folk to the team.

When something from the auditors flags up the figure of £11.5 million—you have written on it, so you definitely read it—I just do not understand how you could think, all of a sudden, that the deficit was less rather than more, in spite of £40 million managing to disappear without anybody in the executive team being aware of that. I hope that you can understand that it is really difficult for us all to understand how this happened, given that the evidence that we have shows that you had so much information that showed that things were not adding up to the figure that you used. How could you have come up with the figure of £1.2 million when everything was showing that the situation was much worse than that?

I thank the witnesses for coming along today.

Staff at the university are hurt and angry, and they remain anxious about their employment. I know that a large number of them will be watching this meeting live. Students are graduating as we speak, and others will be starting their studies soon, so there is a lot of deep concern. I think that your apologies will be welcomed by those listening, but I have to agree with the convener’s comment earlier that your involvement in how we got to this situation seems to have been unsettlingly relaxed, particularly given what is said in the Gillies report.

I will initially focus on some of the points that have been raised about the court. Thanks for the points that you have made, Amanda. You have said that you had to deal with the information that you had.

I turn to Dr McGeorge and Peter Fotheringham. Following on from Jackie Dunbar’s question, was there a degree of deliberate misleading of the court? Amanda Millar, as the chair, and the rest of the court had to work with what they had. The former chair has accepted that the court should have been asking more questions and probing more. Was it not your responsibility, as public servants, to ensure that the court had the information that it needed to understand the scale of what was happening at the time?

Universities across the United Kingdom are going through a difficult time just now, but something particularly different clearly happened at Dundee university. The court appeared not to be able to grasp that. Was that not your responsibility, Peter Fotheringham?

Are you able to put a timeline on when there was a realisation that things were a lot worse than you had previously realised? We have had a lot of conversations in the past about the challenges that the university was facing, but this was clearly something different. Can you give a timeline—roughly by month—of when you realised that this situation went beyond those challenges?

As late as that?