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Yes, I am, because you set it out.

I understand that you do not want to get to that and you want to have a collaborative approach. That is what you have been trying to do for years but, apparently, it has not succeeded. I am curious as to how you think that withdrawing more funding from a council will help it to balance its budget and get the appropriate number of staff in the right schools. Will it not end up undermining the objective that you set yourself at the beginning? Will we not end up with fewer teachers and classroom assistants?

The councils do not want to take that approach. As you know, they face really difficult financial challenges—you acknowledged that yourself. I do not understand how the penalty helps anybody. The councils are not the enemy. They are trying to do their best and your penalty might make it even worse.

In rural areas, in particular, some specialities are finding it difficult to recruit. Will those councils be penalised if they are unable recruit the appropriate number of teachers?

Okay. Let us say that you have clear evidence that a council has ignored your warnings and has cut teacher numbers. If you withdraw the funding, what does the council do next? For example, what happens if the council decides that, as a result of that cut in funding, it has to make further cuts in teacher numbers? Will you impose a further penalty on that council? How does that work?

If you penalise councils that believe that they have no other choice than to cut teacher numbers, is it possible that there could be even fewer teachers at the end of that process? Is that a possible scenario?

There is no point in having the threat of a penalty if you are not prepared to contemplate the consequences of that penalty. You have to accept that we could end up with a scenario in which councils have even less funding and, therefore, cannot employ as many teachers as they would like, so there will be a further cut in teacher numbers. You have to accept that that is a possibility with the penalty.

One advantage of making legislation in the way that we are doing in this case is that, irrespective of the content of the bill, it puts a focus on the issues.

I was fortunate to meet representatives of The Usual Place in Dumfries, who attended an event that I was at last week. They provide confident leadership in disability. I am also familiar with Zest cafe in St Andrews. Lisa, who runs that organisation, has no time at all for employers who say that they cannot get enough people to work for their organisations. She employs people with learning difficulties and people from a variety of backgrounds and with different disabilities. She thinks that employers—not all of them, but quite a lot of them—are not educating themselves enough to understand the talent that is available among that cohort. What more can we do to educate employers on the assets that they are missing out on?

Whatever the merits or demerits of the bill, it has brought a focus on the issues, which is in itself helpful. I am struck by my encounters with constituents and organisations. I meet parents who are experts at championing their children’s rights, which they often do until quite late in life. They are brilliant at it, and they are ferocious. We need to draw more on their talents.

I am also struck by employers and organisations that I meet that are frustrated because other employers do not understand the full potential of this untapped resource. Rather than look at people as a burden, we can look at them as an opportunity for employers.

There is also an opportunity for the young people and for older people. Many of the people we are talking about live until quite old age, so we need to consider their lifelong opportunities. Do employers fully understand their potential? If not, what can we do to persuade them to understand it? That is for whoever would like to contribute. I will let you pick.

It seems that you do not understand why the rate has fallen. Why has the percentage gone down?

I will stop there, but I am really concerned that you do not know why that has happened. We really performed well—it was the golden nugget—and now the amount of funding is dropping. You have not given an explanation as to why, and I do not think that we are going to get one.