Seòmar agus comataidhean

Amendment 139 is specifically about future-proofing and addressing a concern about continuity in learning. In recent months, various institutions have had to take some difficult decisions that have been catastrophic for courses, students and staff. Amendment 139 seeks to empower the Scottish Government, through the Scottish Funding Council, to help organisations to recognise that there could be disruption to continuity of provision and to plan for that. I struggle to understand why the minister does not think that that is a good thing.

I thank the minister for that answer—yes, it does. I look forward to the minister’s engaging with me, Stephen Kerr and other members to pursue amendments in that regard.

Daniel Johnson’s amendment 143 would require assessment of the quality

“of programmes of training for employment, work-based learning and training of apprentices”.

Amendment 142 would require financial scrutiny to be carried out, including an assessment of value for money. The Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 2005 already requires the quality of fundable bodies to be assessed. Amendment 142 simply seeks to mirror that requirement for other bodies that will be funded under the bill. It would apply equivalency in scrutiny and transparency to all providers that receive public apprenticeship or skills funding from the SFC, not just colleges and universities, including private training providers and managing agents, thereby following the public pound.

Colleges Scotland has said that, if the SFC is to fund a much wider delivery base after absorbing Skills Development Scotland’s functions, the whole base should face proportionate financial and quality scrutiny.

Again, I listened carefully to the minister’s comments on amendment 142. I do not think that the amendment as currently drafted contains the complication that the minister set out, or that it is unclear on the requirements. I will, therefore, be moving that amendment.

On amendment 144, in the name of Ross Greer, I thank him for his response to my intervention about ONS classification; I welcome the clarity in that regard.

I will probably not move amendments 138 to 140, in order that we can discuss and pursue reporting amendments at stage 3 with members, including the minister.

Absolutely. I agree that experts in the field are crucial. The fact is that I consider staff who work in the system and students who engage with and are educated in it to be experts, too.

I should also point out that amendment 174, in my name, seeks to bring in those with

“capacity in ... research and innovation”—

in other words, the expertise that John Mason talked about when he referred to research in the area. Financial due diligence is another skill that I know the member will be very keen to have on the council, given the council’s role in that respect and the member’s interest in that matter.

I do not think that the amendments in my name, which seek to ensure that those people have places—and rightfully so—on the council, preclude others, because, as the member has pointed out, there are other spaces on the council. I am just seeking to protect spaces for students, apprentices and trade unions on the council.

Amendment 175, in the name of my colleague Daniel Johnson, seeks to ensure that the chair of the skills board that he proposes be established also sits on the Scottish Funding Council, in order to retain the link between the organisation that will distribute the funds for skills and the sector that will deliver those skills, and employers that represent some of that sector. I hope that the amendment will receive support from across the committee.

I move amendment 172.

I am sorry—you are correct. I will press amendment 172. My screen is frozen; I am trying to fix it.

Amendment 206 requires the SFC to carry out a review of the act. It states that the review should include the experience of learners of access to information and support in relation to different learner options; the experience of employers who provide work-based learning; the participation, progression and completion outcomes in respect of different socioeconomic groups or other characteristics that the Funding Council reasonably considers to be underrepresented; and any changes in the uptake of fundable further education, higher education, work-based learning and Scottish apprenticeships, broken down by region and sector. That is in order that we can have a real understanding of the impact of the act.

I move amendment 206.

Given the commitment from the Government to look to progress this provision at stage 3, but changing it, I am happy not to press amendment 206.

Amendment 206, by agreement, withdrawn.

Sections 21 and 22 agreed to.

Section 23—Regulation-making powers

Amendment 23 moved—[Ben Macpherson]—and agreed to.

Section 23, as amended, agreed to.

Section 24—Commencement

Amendments 207 to 209, 211 and 210 not moved.

Section 24 agreed to.

Section 25 agreed to.

Long title agreed to.

I welcome the minister’s clarification on that point. In that case, I will move amendment 174 when the time comes.

In the meantime, I am prepared to work with the Government. I have made it clear that the council must have representation from students and trade unions across the different bodies. I hope that the minister will help to deliver an amendment to that effect at stage 3, so I will not move amendment 171 at this point.

The amendment is not about saying that the SFC would not prioritise apprenticeships. It is about recognising that the SFC is quite busy with other fires that it needs to fight, including in universities and colleges across the country. People can do only so many things at one time.

Amendment 124, in the name of Daniel Johnson, sets out that

“The Council must secure that . . . providers of high quality training and learning may continue to receive payments from the Council (on the same basis as post-16 education bodies)”,

and would require a formal transition scheme to be arranged so that no learner employer is stranded mid-programme.

Amendment 196, in the name of Daniel Johnson, would require ministers to lay a statement before the Scottish Parliament to set out the anticipated costs of transferring apprenticeship functions and confirm that the funding for delivery of apprenticeships will not change as a result of the transfer.

In relation to both those amendments, I note that the minister’s letter to the committee of 24 November outlines that transfer costs have again been upgraded, this time by approximately £2 million. The minister also states in the letter that no decisions have been taken about some of the transfer options associated with the bill, including decisions on IT, as the minister set out earlier. One of the options outlined in the letter suggests that the transfer would not complete until 2029.

Everybody wants the system to work for the end users—the learners, the people who need the skills and the people who deliver them. That is what the amendments seek to make happen. Therefore it is disappointing that it would appear that, yet again, a bill has come before Parliament for which the diligence work to get the systems right—including determining the cost of transferring staff, which I have not touched on yet—has yet to be done, and we are now looking at delays in commencement as a result. One would expect that for a bill of this sort, if the end user is the minister’s focus, those issues would already have been addressed. Instead, it appears that we have a bill that is not quite ready or fit for purpose.

I will speak to my amendments in the group. Amendment 198 would require ministers to engage with trade unions on the transfer of functions or staff, restructuring and material changes to terms and conditions. Ministers would have to establish formal joint groups and share information with them and report on that engagement to Parliament. Those are fairly standard requirements that would protect the staff who work in those organisations. The staff I have spoken to are worried, not just about great inertia in the system resulting from the structural change that the Government is proposing, but about the lack of consultation and engagement in the process to date to ensure that their rights and conditions are protected. Amendment 198 seeks to ensure that that engagement happens.

Amendment 200 would require that ministers set out a “pre-implementation report”. That is crucial because of the uncertainty that trade unions, including Unison and the Public and Commercial Services Union, and others have highlighted to members individually and to the committee as a whole.

Amendment 199 would require the Scottish Government to set out the functions and roles that will be transferred. If the Government did not want to do that in advance of royal assent, it would have to do so as soon as possible afterwards, to give a level of stability to staff. The staff are essential for the system to work, and are working day in, day out for this to happen, but they do not yet know whether they will be working for one organisation or another, or, indeed, whether they will be working in SDS under a managed contract with the SFC, because the system is not quite ready to transfer.

Amendments 208, 209, 211 and 210 would provide that regulations on staff and functions transfer can happen only after the consultation, a pre-implementation report and a statement on the uninterrupted processes and—crucially—the uninterrupted provision of apprenticeships.

I move amendment 124.

I press amendment 127, but, in the light of the minister’s comments about amendment 195, I will support his amendment 17 and will not move amendment 195.