Chamber and committees

I, too, thank all the people who gave evidence to the committee and all the organisations that provided helpful briefings ahead of the debate. In seven minutes, I will not be able to touch upon all the work that they highlighted, but we were given a lot of helpful content about the work that our colleges and universities are undertaking to try to close the gap and give people the opportunity to get into education.

I highlight something on which I agree with Keir Starmer—I did not necessarily think that I would say that. It is something that he said at the Labour Party conference. I say to Mr Whitfield that I was not there. I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister set the challenge of making vocational options as attractive to parents—we must remember them—and young people as higher education. We lack that in our debate in the Scottish Parliament.

As I have stated in almost every education debate, Conservative members want real reform to provide more opportunities for our young people. I refer to opportunities such as the ones that I saw on Friday when I visited Liberton high school with my Lothian colleague Sue Webber—I know that Daniel Johnson was there a few weeks previously. The school has partnered with the Tigers construction academy to offer young people in that part of the city a foundation apprenticeship in construction skills to give them a taste of the careers on offer in the construction industry. It was positive to hear from those young people that that helps not only by providing practical sessions but by focusing their learning in other subjects, including the theoretical importance of, for example, mathematics to work. It also plants in those young people’s heads the seed of a future career ladder and pathways beyond it into further and higher education.

Lothian MSPs have been contacted by newly qualified midwives who have expressed concern that they cannot access further experience without gaining employment and securing a permanent position. There is no clear pathway for midwives to complete their preceptorship before applying for permanent positions in NHS Scotland. Has the Scottish Government considered the approach of the Welsh Government, for example, which provides a job guarantee scheme for newly qualified midwives that guarantees them a minimum of 22 hours of work, allowing them to achieve their preceptorship before they apply for jobs?

Give the minister’s commitment to further conversation at stage 3, I will not move it.

Amendment 180 not moved.

Section 15 agreed to.

Section 16—Co-opted members of the Council

Amendment 36 moved—[Paul McLennan]—and agreed to.

Section 16, as amended, agreed to.

Section 17—Apprenticeship committee

My amendments and those of Stephen Kerr go to the heart of the Scottish Conservatives’ concern that the bill does not reflect adequately enough the voice of industry and business. My amendments 182, 184, 187, 188 and 189 would provide for a voice for business to be placed at the centre of the development partnerships and draw on the wealth of talent and business voices who want to be involved in our apprenticeship systems and on that committee.

Amendment 184 would add a requirement for the apprenticeship committee to include members who represent the interests of businesses in relevant industries, along with other individuals whom the Scottish Funding Council considers appropriate. That would ensure that the committee would have an industry-focused representative and representation, while giving the council flexibility to include additional expertise.

Amendments 187, 188 and 189 would ensure that employer perspectives were considered in shaping the apprenticeship committee’s membership alongside ensuring that the Scottish Funding Council directly considers including people who represent the interests of businesses and relevant industries, as well as delivering geographically balanced employer representation. That was not discussed at any length during the committee’s work on the bill, but it would ensure that the apprenticeship committee was not dominated by particular parts of the country.

Stephen Kerr’s amendments 190, 192 and 194 go to the core of whether the bill will create a credible, accountable and employer-led apprenticeship system, or whether it will simply replace one layer of bureaucracy with another.

We should view this group of amendments as one of the most important, because they concern the institutional architecture that will determine whether Scotland’s apprenticeship system succeeds or fails in meeting the needs of learners, employers and the wider Scottish economy. The bill proposes the creation of committees and boards that will advise the council on apprenticeships and skills, but, as it is drafted, the bill leaves critical questions unanswered. It does not guarantee that the people who understand apprenticeships best—the employers, practitioners and industry representatives—will have meaningful influence over decision-making, nor does it ensure that their advice carries weight, visibility and accountability. Too much is left to the discretion of ministers and the Funding Council, and too little is embedded in statute. My colleague Stephen Kerr’s amendments are designed to correct that weakness and to ensure that the governance structures have the strength, legitimacy and transparency that a modern skills system requires.

Amendment 190 would require that the committees and boards established under the bill be composed in a way that reflects the real economy. That is fundamental; if a body is charged with advising on apprenticeships, it must not be dominated by bureaucratic or academic voices at the expense of the employers who create the apprenticeships. For many years, Scotland has benefited from the Scottish Apprenticeship Advisory Board, which we all acknowledge and agree on. It brought direct employer insight into the system, and the model should not be weakened. Amendment 190 would ensure that committees are not tokenistic but generally representative of industries that depend on the apprenticeship system for their future workforce.

Amendment 192 would introduce a critical element to the apprenticeship committee: transparency. Under the bill, committees and boards may operate entirely out of sight, with no obligation for their advice to be published, shared or even explained. That is not good governance, and it is not good enough for a system as important as our apprenticeship system. Therefore, amendment 192 would require that the advice that is provided by those committees be transparent and that the Funding Council should set out how it will respond to the advice. That is essential for accountability. If the Funding Council chose not to follow the advice of committees, it should explain why it has not done that; if it accepts the advice, learners, employers and providers should be able to see the rationale behind the decision making.

Amendment 194 would build on that by ensuring that the committees and boards had a clear statutory purpose and defined responsibilities, rather than vague consultative roles. Like others, we have repeatedly made the point that advisory structures are effective only when they are empowered. Without a statutory mandate, committees risk being sidelined or used selectively—consulted when convenient and ignored when not.

Amendment 194 would ensure that the advice of those committees be sought, considered and responded to. It would move the system from a discretionary model to a principled one, in which employer and industry insight was not an optional extra, but a structural requirement. Taken together, the amendments would do something vital: they would stop Scotland’s apprenticeship governance being dragged back into a centralised bureaucratic model and, instead, would embed the principle that apprenticeship policy must be shaped by those who understand apprenticeships best.

The amendments are the difference between a system that listens and a system that merely hears; between employer-led governance and institution-led governance; and between a skills system that responds to the economy and one that expects the economy to respond to it. If the Scottish Government is serious about improving productivity, reducing skills shortages and expanding high-quality apprenticeships, the bill must empower employers, industry and practitioners—not sideline them. Amendments 190, 192 and 194 would do exactly that. For those reasons, I invite colleagues to support the amendments in the name of my colleague Stephen Kerr.

Amendment 203 is a probing amendment, as the minister has touched on. Concerns have been expressed by organisations such as the EIS on the impact of the modification of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, which he will be aware of, which would allow private providers to be designated for the purpose of paying student allowances and loans. The clarification that the minister has provided is helpful. I do not intend to move amendment 203, given the assurances that he has given the committee.

The amendments in this group and the next are consequential. Amendments 145 and 150 seek to set out new duties for the Scottish Funding Council, requiring it to ensure that strategy and funding across the tertiary education system are aligned through collaboration with local authorities, training providers, employers and further and higher education bodies. The amendments would embed a statutory expectation of joint planning and co-delivery by all key partners when the council exercises its functions. As a result, amendment 150 would insert local authorities as a new first grouping within the schedule.

Am I to speak to the second grouping, as set out in amendments 151 to 171, convener?

Sorry—I have just amendments 145 and 150 in this group.

I move amendment 145.

The rationale for including local authorities is so that they can look at how, in some cases, training has changed. One example of that is here in Edinburgh, where, as the minister will know, Edinburgh College has lost its traditional building skills course. Across the Forth, Fife Council has taken the decision to help fund training places for those skills. My amendments would provide for and facilitate a local authority being the lead deliverer of such training. The minister and Government need to be aware of the different models that are emerging in response to very specific, often niche, shortages in the workforce—workers with traditional building skills being one of them. I am happy for the minister to take that away ahead of stage 3. However, it is important that that role for local authorities is included in the bill so that they have the potential to deliver such training.

As the debate has demonstrated, there is an important role for councils to start to play in providing more training opportunities, specifically with regard to some of our sector skills shortages.

The amendments in this group, on which members have done a lot of work, go to the heart of something that I think is vital, which is that representative voices of teaching and non-teaching staff must form part of the decision-making process on the board of the SFC. That would be in line with provisions in the Higher Education Governance (Scotland) Act 2016 and the Colleges of Further Education and Regional Strategic Bodies (Membership of Boards) (Scotland) Order 2023, so I think that it is important that that consideration is included in the bill.

My amendment 180 is very similar to Pam Duncan-Glancy’s amendment 177, as both look to ensure that a trade union representative is appointed to the council.