Chamber and committees

The relationship with the EIS trade union seems to be deteriorating. There is no doubt that when the revised pay offer was made to the EIS, the BBC was told first. Why was that allowed to happen? Secondly, the cabinet secretary criticised the EIS for not putting the latest pay offer to members. Is it the cabinet secretary’s job to tell union leaders how to do their job?

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on pay negotiations between teaching unions and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, in light of the Educational Institute of Scotland rejecting the most recent offer and reports that industrial action is set to continue. (S6T-01181)

After the pandemic, young people cannot afford any more lost days of education. I want to understand what went wrong. I assume that the new offer was made to teachers only when the cabinet secretary was confident that it would be accepted. The cabinet secretary waited weeks for that moment. Can she explain what went wrong and why the situation was so badly misjudged?

The Deputy First Minister says that there is £100 million extra on top of the £500 million that he announced for local government previously. He knows that those figures are disputed. He must accept that there will be significant cuts in local government. Will he accept responsibility for those cuts? They will be a direct result of the decisions that he is making in his budget.

When I was making my choices for fourth year at school, my mother accompanied me to meet Mr Hayward. At that time, I was keen to abandon maths—I was bored with maths and had had enough of it. That probably tells now, because I was in charge of the finances of my party. Nevertheless, I was determined to abandon maths. However, Mr Hayward repeatedly said that maths was a must for boys, and my mother’s face went brighter red the more he said it. Even at that time, she was incandescent about the discrimination that was built into the careers advice at our school. It is very clear that we saw it before then, and it has been evident ever since.

Today, we are told by the Institute of Physics that physics is the fourth most popular subject for boys, but that, for girls, it comes 16th. Therefore, something is still wrong at the heart of our society and, perhaps, within our careers advice.

It is no wonder that sometimes women do not want to choose those subjects. If they are going to be the only girl or woman in the class, why would they choose them? We know that in politics: if you think that you are going to be the only person in the room like you, why would you go in?

If we are going to get change, we need to start that change. Thankfully, the situation is a little better now. According to the RSC, half of the people who sit higher chemistry are female; at advanced higher, the number goes up a little bit, which is good; and at university, when people are studying for a degree in chemistry, the level goes up to 60 per cent. However, then it absolutely plummets—at professor level, the number goes down to 9 per cent. That is a clear indication that there is something wrong with the career path in science. The higher up we go, the less likely it is that there will be women.

Yes, of course, parents are an important factor. We have had recent discussions about apprenticeships, and this is where Stephen Kerr’s point comes in. Trying to get more people to do apprenticeships rather than go through the university route is a real challenge, and a lot of it is down to the influence of parents and society, and peer pressure.

The same applies to this area. Stephen Kerr asked the minister for some figures. Of those people who take modern apprenticeships, 38 per cent are female, but the level goes down to 8 per cent for engineering and energy apprenticeships. That is a dramatic difference and, again, shows in-built discrimination in the system. We need to change that, and part of the issue is pressure from society, parents and schools.

What do we do? What steps do we take? The Scottish schools education research centre runs good projects with the STEM ambassadors, allowing people such as my wife, who is a scientist, to go into schools and encourage young women and men to take up science. Those projects are important—they are trying to get a million interactions with young people.

However, there is also something that we can do in policy terms. It is of great credit to the Government that the last few chief scientific advisers have been female. Anne Glover was fantastic and a great advocate; she went off to Europe to do the same role there. Julie Fitzpatrick is doing a great job now, too.

We need to call out the discrimination, as Michael Marra did earlier. However, we could use funding to incentivise organisations to have plans in place and take steps to encourage more women into all these subjects. We could have some requirements, just as we do for the likes of Amazon, with regard to apprenticeships, paying tax and paying the living wage. Perhaps we should use funding to incentivise organisations to make that change.

Education Scotland’s improving gender balance and equalities programme, which the minister referred to, is great. Education Scotland is changing, but I hope that the programme will continue, because it is important that, if something is working, it is allowed to continue to do that good work.

We will cautiously support the resolution. As it is an emergency, we understand the need to protect public finances. However, if public finances improve, the economy will improve. Does the Government intend to then restore tax rates to the lower levels that they were at before this resolution?

I completely understand that point—the world is unpredictable. However, I hope that the minister understands our point about the balance. We need to have proper evidence to make sure that, in future years, we do not create behavioural change that has a cumulative effect on tax, and that we consider the possibility of reversing tax changes that we have brought in in an emergency. I hope that he understands that.

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its commitment to deliver superfast broadband to 100 per cent of premises in Scotland by 2021. (S6O-01876)

The Liberal Democrats seem to have spooked the health secretary. On the eve of this debate, he rushed out a letter to NHS dentists across the country. In it, he promised an extension to the interim bridging payments to October, when they were supposed to have been sorted in April, as he referred to. He also said in the letter that he was “pleased” and “grateful”, but I do not think that many dentists will be pleased with and grateful for the Government’s performance.

Under the current funding system, dentists are losing money with every procedure that they undertake. Sandesh Gulhane gave some excellent examples. Lab costs for dentures are estimated to have gone up by 50 per cent. One dentist told me:

“I have made dentures recently and lost £6.00 on”

every single

“job.”

As in so many other sectors, the SNP Government is expecting private work to subsidise public work. That is happening with nurseries and in higher education, too.