Chamber and committees

Thank you all for your evidence, the time that you have spent with the committee and the answers that you have given to our questions. We have another panel after you, and we have the minister next week. Then we will conclude our consideration with a report on stage 1 of the bill. Thank you for your input.

I suspend the meeting for 15 minutes.

Welcome back. We will now hear evidence from our second panel on the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill. I welcome Vikki Manson, deputy head of policy in Scotland for the Federation of Small Businesses; Paul Campbell, general manager at Scottish Water and the Scottish Apprenticeship Advisory Board employer engagement group chair, representing SAAB; and Carolyn Currie, chief executive of Women’s Enterprise Scotland. Thank you all for joining us today.

I will start with the question that I have asked consistently throughout our evidence taking. What problem exists that the bill seeks to address, and is the bill the answer? Vikki Manson, we will start with you.

Mr Campbell, you say in your written evidence that your concern is that

“the potential benefits of reform will not be delivered, involve significant costs, and introduce risks that will take many years to mitigate, without cost savings or financial return.”

To follow up a question that Mr Mason asked of the previous panel, do you think that the cost of the proposed reform is too much and that we should scrap the idea because it would be disruptive, would not do what you would like it to do and could be extremely expensive?

Mr Campbell, you say in your written submission:

“SAAB is unapologetically ambitious for apprenticeships”.

Given the risks that you have highlighted, are you concerned that the bill could harm your ambitions for apprenticeships?

I have one final question. In the previous evidence session, we heard quite a lot about a lack of consultation and engagement with the Government. As important players in this field, how much engagement—if any—have you had with the Government on the bill?

Ms Manson, I know that the FSB has a lot of engagement with the Scottish Government, but has there been engagement specifically on the bill?

In our previous evidence session, we heard quite a bit about private or independent providers versus colleges. Can you tell us a bit about your interaction with private providers, as businesses and business organisations, and about how it compares with your interaction with colleges that provide apprenticeships?

That is one of the issues that we cited in our submission. It depends on the convener, but the clerks perhaps sometimes have more influence than they should. They have expertise, which is important, but, ultimately, it is up to the committee to decide on witnesses. I have certainly tried, since becoming a convener, to get more committee agreement in that regard. We went through suggestions for witnesses for the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill, and some of those from whom we have now taken evidence were not suggestions by the clerk or people I had thought of, but good ideas that came from Pam Duncan-Glancy, Ross Greer, Willie Rennie and others.

I also want to use this as an opportunity to make a pitch for our point that witnesses should register and declare any interests. We have found at a number of committees that, because of the size of Scotland and our landscape, many of the witnesses are from organisations that are funded by the Scottish Government. We believe that those who are answering questions should register a financial interest and make that clear to those who are watching the proceedings, in the same way as we do when we are asking questions in which there is a financial interest.

I would look at the limitations of not changing. Again, I speak as someone who convenes a committee of 10. Our committee is very good. Everyone wants to ask a question, but either you allow everyone to ask a question—in which case, there is less opportunity for supplementary questions and the committee cannot go into things in as much depth as we have done today—or you do not.

If we have smaller committees, there is a greater opportunity to have additional committees. Again, in our submission, we say that we should go back to having a stand-alone post-legislative scrutiny committee, which I think is something that we have largely agreed on today. You can have additional committees more freely if you have more members available, because there are fewer members on each committee.

This is not quite the same as what Rhoda Grant was saying about rapporteurs or co-options but I go back to the University of Dundee example. Four additional members came along to that meeting because it was a big issue in the north-east. If everyone had turned up that day, there would have been 14 MSPs seeking to ask questions and the meeting would have lasted for longer than the three hours that it went on for.

With a smaller committee, I think that there is more opportunity for people to come in with their personal interests and to be able to engage. At the end of 10 committee members asking questions, there is not much time for those with additional interests to come in.

If I do not mention this, Finlay Carson will not forgive me. He has been very clear that the change that we experienced in 2016 in relation to training was really good in getting things up and running. In 2021, because we were the Covid Parliament, there was less ability to do that face-to-face training and to have that important interaction between the new members and the committee. He certainly felt that it took committees longer to get up and running. We would stress that that face-to-face training—almost team bonding—is important for committees to get off on the right foot.