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Will the debate happen before that or after?

Thank you. I will turn to early learning and childcare. I have seen the pledge to pay workers in that area at least £12 an hour.

Sorry—I have had an acknowledgement from Minister for Children, Young People and Keeping the Promise that that will not deal with the problem that we have talked about, which is the loss of experienced staff to earn more than £12 an hour. It does not help. How are you going to close the gap?

You might be in trouble with your First Minister, because, during the SNP election hustings, he promised to resolve the problem.

I have a question about the whole family wellbeing fund. The commitment is to provide £500 million during the current parliamentary session, of which £100 million has been committed so far, which will mean spending £400 million in the final year of the parliamentary session. How on earth are you going to do that?

I get that. My fear is that your course of action is a bit more about the status quo and will not deliver the promise that you have made to make significant progress on overall performance and on the poverty-related attainment gap. Are you not afraid that that might be the case? I understand the pressures—I get all that—but are you not afraid about that? I characterise your approach as the “status quo”, although I know it is more than that, but are you not worried that, if you do not drive forward more substantial change, you will not get substantial improvement?

The minister knows that I broadly welcomed his statement in December, which represented pragmatic progress. Other members have pressed him on timing, so I will not go over that other than to say that we did not start from here, because the reform has been a long time coming. The situation culminated in quite a critical report from Audit Scotland on the lack of leadership, so there is a degree of urgency.

I understand the minister’s point that we must get this right, but I hope that he appreciates that, when he publishes a timeline—perhaps in March—there will be pressure for delivery to be as prompt as possible because of the tangible impact, which I will explore a bit. Having a single funding source sounds neat and tidy, but what tangible benefits will it have?

I mean for the whole skills agenda.

I will move on briefly to UHI Shetland, with which you have been involved. First, some redundancies have been announced recently. What are you doing to protect college provision in Shetland?

Secondly, the cost base for rural provision, particularly in the Highlands and Islands, is much greater than it would be in the central belt. I recently met the principal of the new UHI North, West and Hebrides to discuss its provision. What are we doing to make sure that the provision in the Highlands and Islands is protected, recognising the higher base of costs?

There seems to be some ambiguity about exactly what colleges’ budget will be for the forthcoming year. They feel that the world is very uncertain for them. There are significant in-year cuts this year, and there is uncertainty about next year. When you try to provide colleges with some direction, do you fight their corner enough with the finance secretary?