Chamber and committees

The first point to emphasise is that the SFC is working with the sector on a 10-year college infrastructure investment plan, which is due in autumn of this year. It is important to emphasise that it is a collegiate and collaborative process with the sector and the different colleges. That is being supported by the Scottish Futures Trust, as you would expect.

That strategic work has already started and will continue in the weeks and months ahead. Through that, the SFC continues to work closely with colleges, including Dundee and Angus College. I know that the committee is aware of the challenges that it is experiencing with regard to its estate. I had a good meeting with the principal and the chair on their issues, and they shared their plans and concerns with the Government and, crucially, the SFC.

In the progress that the SFC is undertaking on its infrastructure investment plan, it will consider all those matters and the options to help colleges meet their local priorities. You may want to engage further with the SFC as those considerations develop, but it is important that that work is undertaken so that the SFC can look at the allocation of resource across all the different colleges, because it is the SFC that allocates the resource, not Scottish ministers.

Yes, and of course that is the provision in this financial year to go towards the investment plan. However, I predict that the investment plan will include projects that will span across financial years. I point that out for clarity and completeness.

It is also important to emphasise that, in the financial year that we are still in, and in financial years past, there has of course been capital investment in the college sector. There was discussion earlier about the new campus in Dunfermline that Fife College has opened. Although there are absolutely challenges with RAAC and maintenance and repair—I am in no way not cognisant of those—there are a lot of good buildings and a lot of good college campuses across the country that are great places to learn and be in. It is important to be balanced.

Thank you. I appreciate that I cannot speak directly to years past on the previous fund, but, as the cabinet secretary has emphasised, there is an expectation that this uplifting resource will create not just an alleviation of some of the pressure, but an opportunity for progress. The anticipation, determination and ambition come not only from ministers, as that view is also regularly relayed to me by principals. There is strong determination among many of the principals that we engage with, and they are excited to drive the process of making necessary changes and taking the sector forward.

That is why we really want to get moving on the piece of work that I talked about in response to Willie Rennie a moment ago on how we progress the tripartite engagement into a formal process of considering sustainability and the future. That will empower our sector to take forward what it wants to do.

This is an exciting time. There are a lot of ideas, a lot of innovation, a lot of creativity and, obviously, a lot of passion in the sector, and we want to support it as it continues to develop its institutions to meet the needs of learners and the economy in the 21st century.

I refer you to the letter that I sent to the committee, which details the agreements that we came to in our discussions in the chamber. As far as the legislation is concerned, as I think I said yesterday, the ink is still drying.

We are now entering the very important implementation stage and, in the days ahead, I will be engaging with the SFC, as I do regularly. I will be discussing a number of things with it, including the fair work agreements that we have come to, and we would expect what has been decided to be taken forward.

I know that many members—Ross Greer, in particular—have an interest in this, and I am happy to keep them updated. I know, too, that officials have engaged with the SFC in recent days. I am not sure whether Shirley Laing has anything to add on that.

Every area of skills is on my radar, but other ministers are also engaged with skills considerations for their particular portfolios. The provision of skills and higher and further education overlap across all policy areas; medicine, engineering and other aspects of skills provision are all of interest and concern. I will consider the point further, so thank you for raising it, convener.

Just to build on that, I would say that all education spending is, arguably, preventative spending, in the way that my ministerial colleagues have set out. Indeed, the significant additional investment that we are putting into colleges will have a preventative impact later in a person’s life, and the long-standing commitment to funding people through university and the support through apprenticeships will have impacts, too. Similarly, it is hard to quantify the reduction in pressures on the criminal justice system or the health system as a result of people going to work and flourishing, and thereby not, one might argue, needing the healthcare provision that they might have needed had they not been successful in that way.

It is such an important point. The more the education system thrives and delivers, the more it will certainly reduce pressures elsewhere.

On our engagement with universities and the Parliament, Mr Briggs will recall Martin Whitfield’s topical question about the University of Edinburgh that I answered a number of weeks ago. I will repeat the main points that I made in my answer that are relevant to all our universities. Although they are autonomous institutions that are responsible for operational decision making, we strongly encourage them to engage constructively with trade unions to seek resolutions to the disputes, in line with fair work principles, as has been raised today. I would also emphasise that compulsory redundancies should be considered only as a last resort, after all other cost-saving measures have been fully explored—that is absolutely the key point.

We recognise the financial challenge that our universities—indeed, universities across the UK—face, but they are important employers and are hugely important to the economy, and the staff at universities are key to teaching and research. It is the people who make the organisations, and we will continue to engage with the universities, as autonomous institutions, on these points. We will also need to engage with the unions, and I am grateful for the engagement that I have had with them in recent weeks.

As I said, with regard to the January intakes, I want to get a better sense—beyond anecdotal feedback—of what is happening with other institutions. That is in the context of the UK Government’s intention to reduce the duration of graduate visas from two years to 18 months for most international students, which will apply to applications from January 2027. If that is already having an effect, we need to explore why that is.

I did, and I appreciated the dialogue in the chamber, convener. I hope that you will forgive me, but we have not had a huge amount of time between that debate and today’s appearance at the committee. I undertook to look at the matter afresh, and I reaffirm that commitment today. I will update the committee as soon as I have details to share.

The SFC is involved in those considerations as well as the Scottish Government. I appreciate Mr Greer’s focus on those important issues, and I have appreciated my engagement with him on them in relation to the TET bill, not just around this table but in bilateral meetings, including in recent days.

More widely, the Government is determined to see and deliver more fair work where we can using our soft power, because, unfortunately, employment law is clearly fully reserved under the Scotland Act 1998. If we had such powers in the Scottish Parliament, we could make further impact in such areas. Recently, the Government has been determined to deliver good outcomes for our college staff, whom we deeply value. Lecturers’ pay was settled before my appointment. I am also pleased that, in recent weeks, two unions accepted the pay offer for college support staff, which was sufficient for settlement. That settlement is important, because we deeply value support staff’s role in institutions across the education sector, including in our colleges. All those things matter when it comes to fair work and fair pay.

As we approach stage 3 of the TET bill—and Mr Greer will recall that I gave him this undertaking in recent days—I want to be very clear in giving as much assurance as I can about the Government’s focus on enabling greater fair work in our college sector and about what we can do within the powers that we have.