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We understand all that, but 70 per cent of colleges’ expenditure is made up from staff, so people are the most valuable resource. There is a mismatch there. The colleges will have to make some really challenging decisions—they do not have the money coming to them, so they have to consider all their resources and, unfortunately, those in the college sector will have to make decisions about staff.

Do you not feel that the unions are a bit out of touch in managing and understanding the pressures that are on leaders in our college sector across the country as to some of the challenging decisions that they have to make? As hard as it is, in the financial environment that they work in, with the lack of flexibility that they face, they have to take such decisions.

Good morning and welcome to the 18th meeting in 2024 of the Education, Children and Young People Committee. We have received apologies from Stephanie Callaghan.

Our first agenda item is pre-budget scrutiny of the 2025-26 budget. In this session, we will take evidence from the university and college sector and will focus initially on college funding.

I welcome our first panel. Mark MacPherson is audit director at Audit Scotland, and David Belsey is assistant secretary at the Educational Institute of Scotland Further Education Lecturers Association. Thank you for joining us and for the written submissions that you provided ahead of the meeting.

We will move straight to questions from members. The first comes from my colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy.

Welcome back. I thank my deputy convener for chairing the first part of the meeting this morning.

Our next item is to hear evidence on the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman’s child-friendly complaint-handling principles. I welcome Rosemary Agnew, the ombudsman, Andrew Sheridan, head of improvement, standards and engagement, and Josh Barnham, improvement standards and engagement reviewing officer, all from the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman—I am having difficulty with saying that.

I believe that you are about to make an opening statement. Rosemary Agnew, you have up to three minutes, please.

I call Liam Kerr—I am sorry; I meant Bill Kidd.

That is where we will draw this morning’s questions to an end. Thank you very much for coming. The public part of today’s meeting is now at an end and we will consider our final agenda items in private.

I am really sorry.

That was very swift, Mr Kidd, was it not?

That is a good place for us to start. The line of questioning that we are moving to next will, I hope, ask for more specifics.

Apologies for being late, Professor Logan. I will circle back a little and pick up on some of the questions that Michelle Thomson asked. I had a constituent email me the other week. She has a luxury fashion brand and she was talking about what she calls “the female entrepreneurial dilemma”. I will read what she has emailed me:

“As a female entrepreneur, I often feel like I am fighting with one hand tied behind my back. The gender disparity in access to funding is staggering. Despite the fact that one in five entrepreneurs in Scotland is female, only 2% of the funding is allocated to women. I have personally experienced the frustration of pitching my business to male investors who seem disinterested or dismissive simply because it is in the fashion industry. It’s high time for the Scottish Government to step up and support female-led businesses like mine.”

My question is: what can we do to help Antoinette?

I am sorry, Deputy First Minister, but we will have to pause, because the interpretation is not coming through.