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I respect the minister. He sat beside me in this committee just a few weeks ago. We have heard him ask questions of ministers who have come before us and we have heard him talk about his passion for this issue, so I do not doubt his personal commitment. However, it is a bit rich of him, as a minister, to say to us, as members, “Tell us where we can save the money and we’ll spend it.” We do not know where the money can be saved, just as we do not know where the rest of the money will come from to pay the teachers’ settlement. If the minister wants a number of us to sit down and go through all his budgets with him, I am up for that, but he should stop pretending that somehow we have got the same vision of things as he has.

My question is simple. Colleges Scotland said:

“Colleges are needed more than ever to mitigate poverty in communities across the country, provide life-changing opportunities for people, and create the future workforce which will tackle the climate emergency.”

We all agree with that, but look at the record of the Scottish National Party in government for the past 16 years. It transpires, from answers that the minister gave to parliamentary questions recently, that the number of people studying in our colleges has gone down by 33 per cent in the 16 years of this SNP Government. Funding for every place has gone down by 10 per cent in real terms. Those are answers that the minister gave to parliamentary colleagues. This is a hatchet job on the college sector. How can the college sector do the job that we all know that it needs to do when it has been the victim of a Government hatchet job over 16 years?

You came into Government—

Open the books, invite us in and we will go through the budget with you.

In the context of what we have been discussing, the colleges have had quite a lot of air time at this meeting, and rightly so, but the universities also need addressing. Let us put the whole discussion into context. In its submission to us, Universities Scotland said that

“university teaching funding had already been cut by the Scottish Government by 27% in real terms between 2014/15 and 2022/23.”

As Willie Rennie highlighted, it also said:

“The main research grant had been cut by 31% in real terms over the same period.”

We cannot afford to allow Scotland’s universities to languish or to have a managed decline. Minister, I think that you agree with that. Will you affirm, here and now, that during your term of office as Minister for Higher and Further Education there will be no further decline in the funding of those institutions?

So, it is £188 million.

I am all for calm and considered reflection. Last week, Sir Peter Mathieson called for that when he raised what he terms the brain and cash drain to south of the border. When the minister and I were both on “Drivetime” on BBC Radio Scotland, I listened carefully to him. Why is the Government not engaging openly and in a calm and considered way with Sir Peter’s reasonable and reasoned approach on revenue that Scottish universities are not getting but could get and that is ending up south of the border?

I mean the money for 2023-24 that is impacted by the £46 million.

Minister, you would also expect that, as the committee responsible for education scrutiny in this Parliament, we want to know where the other budgets are impacted. We want to know in detail where the rest of the money is coming from. We are not getting that information today, so will you write to us and give us a complete breakdown of all the different budgets from which this money is coming?

Do you accept it as factual?

No, no. You can hear evidence and you can decide for yourself whether you think that it is consistent with what is rational or feasible. Is it feasible for the children’s hearings system to cope with additional recruitment on top of the attrition rate that it already has to deal with? That is already an issue. Is it feasible for the system to have a net increase of 300 volunteers?