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I hope that I can remember all of that. I understand entirely how deeply unsettling and worrying a time this is for the staff, particularly given the way in which the situation just crept up on them. I have heard the suggestion that small surpluses and then perhaps small losses were being anticipated, but nothing on that scale. I hope that Maggie Chapman will appreciate that, in my position as minister, I am not going to engage in speculation about how the situation has arisen. We need to allow the institution a little time—not for much longer, but it is working through this—to bottom out how it got to the situation and, of course, to develop an appropriate and robust recovery plan.

Since the institution announced its financial challenges, the SFC has been actively engaged with it. I also spoke to the chair of court on the evening when the principal stepped down. My offer was that whatever help or assistance the university required from the SFC would be provided, and the SFC has been actively involved with the university ever since in two ways—to assist the process of bottoming out what happened, and then to scrutinise the recovery plan.

Maggie Chapman’s points about fair work were well made. I am sure that the SFC is watching this meeting and, if it is not alive to those points, I will ensure that it is. The trade unions should be engaged in the development of the recovery plan. If compulsory redundancies have been mooted without the appropriate processes having been put in place, I will ask the SFC to look at that.

In the context of providing answers for the staff and others, including the members of the Scottish Parliament who are in this room, I note that I am in no way trying to make excuses, but a new interim finance director is in place and the university is working through getting to the bottom of how the situation occurred and developing a robust plan. Although those questions might be perfectly legitimate and understandable, it might not be appropriate for the university to provide partial answers at this stage. However, I expect that, when it has gone through the process, it will provide answers to the staff and others.

On the point about governance, as Maggie Chapman said, universities are stand-alone institutions but they receive public money. A proportion of the University of Dundee’s income comes from public funds. As the cabinet secretary alluded to earlier, as part of the work that we have been doing on the forthcoming legislation, we have been exploring the governance and oversight powers that sit with the SFC for colleges and universities. To be honest, that work has probably leaned more towards colleges because, as I embarked on a programme of empowering principals in the college sector, I wanted to ensure that there was appropriate oversight at the local and national levels to give ministers confidence about the use of public funds.

If anything comes out of the work that is under way at the University of Dundee to ascertain how it got into this situation, and if—I stress that—some of the concerns that Maggie Chapman has identified turn out to be justified, we will look at the context of the forthcoming legislation as it goes through Parliament to see whether any measures might need to be put into the bill to give the SFC powers of oversight and intervention. If that is necessary, I am happy to commit today to working with individual members and the committee on that goal. However, I stress that, while I recognise how completely unsettling what has happened at the University of Dundee has been, we need to allow it a bit of time to provide the facts on how it arose. From that, we will look at the development of its recovery plan and reflect on how it got into the situation.

The SFC’s next meeting with senior management will be tomorrow. I will make sure that it is sighted on the points that have been made about fair work and other things in advance so that it can raise them with the management.

I touched earlier on the fact that we have to accept that a number of factors contribute to the challenges that universities face. The international student issue is hugely significant in that regard. It is as significant as your point about the level of public funding that is provided for universities.

We cannot have a situation in which a university is prospering and might be getting ahead of itself with something like a big international student influx and expanding because it sees that as a permanent feature, then something comes along to change that. That might not be just migration policy: currency devaluations might have an impact. However, we cannot get away from the fact that the drop in the number of international students has probably been the biggest single factor in creating a challenge.

I am simply saying that, if I accept your point about funding, I hope that you accept my point about the income from international students and how a number of factors are at play.

I am saying that we are exploring those sources; I am not saying that we have found them.

We have to strike a balance in the budget. There are a lot of competing demands, in education and more widely. I do not mean to be flippant but, if you have a proposal that involves putting more money into capital for colleges, you are perfectly at liberty to bring that forward in the context of the budget.

We have made it clear to the SFC that we expect part of the additional funding that has gone to universities to be used to enhance the student experience. That would partly cover what you have alluded to.

I join you in paying tribute to the universities, because the progress that we have made in widening access is overwhelmingly down to them, as a sector. They have done some fantastic stuff and you are right to note that it is not just the modern universities that have done that.

The biggest impediment to reaching the next target is not the amount of money but the ability to get to all the students who could be captured by the policy. The well-intentioned legislation that was passed by the Parliament has worked well to a point, but we need to go beyond that.

Next week—I think—I will chair a meeting with the stakeholder group on widening access to look at what more we can do. In the short term, we are running a pilot in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire to look at data on free school meals. There is a data-sharing problem in Scotland that is holding us back.

We are looking into what more we can do to support our universities on the journey, because we must enable them to achieve the target. We are also looking into what we need to do in the longer term. As I say, in this instance, it is not so much about the amount of money as it is about how we enable the universities to achieve their targets.

To put it simply, the funds that are generated by that amount remaining in the centre, coupled with another uplift that the Government has delivered, delivers 3.5 per cent in total.

Context is everything. The position that Colleges Scotland adopted at the outset was to make a budget ask that many people would have considered unrealistic by any judgment. The capital ask represented 178 per cent of the overall capital budget at our disposal, and there was also a very significant increase in the revenue ask. Because that was their starting position, colleges will regard the settlement as falling somewhat short of that, but we should look at the trend in college funding. I recognise that the colleges are right to ask for as much as they hope to get, but the trend shows that the funding for colleges in 2025-26 is £50 million more than it was in 2019-20.

We all know that, at one point, inflation peaked at 10 per cent, so we recognise the challenges there. However, it is important to see the budget sitting alongside the other work that is going on with colleges, which would be acknowledged by individual colleges if they were sitting here today. There is the work of the tripartite group, which is developing those flexibilities.

On the context of the asks that the sector makes, there was, for example, an issue around the application of maintenance, which we have responded to for 2024-25, and we are looking to do the same for 2025-26. That has made a significant difference operationally for individual colleges.

I recognise that we are focusing on the budget, but I stress the need to look at the work that is being done in parallel, such as the work on asset disposal and the on-going work to broaden the flexibilities to allow individual colleges to better respond to their local economic needs.

I am a huge fan of programmes such as Career Ready, which many members will have come across, that involves people who have been successful in their careers giving back through a mentoring programme to support young people. It is quite a moving experience to visit some of those programmes—it is amazing to see what is happening. I am really keen that we maximise our support for that work. As part of our mapping exercise, we will look at where that sits with the developing the young workforce programme and some of the programmes within that. I want to ensure that we are providing a safety net, if you like, for young people and a real and meaningful opportunity for those who have not necessarily prospered in traditional education settings.

I absolutely take on board the point about the involvement of the trade unions and engagement with their reps being more than lip service. We expect the trade unions to be actively involved in the recovery process and I will reinforce that with the SFC.

On your point about winning back trust, it is perfectly understandable, given what has happened, that the staff lack trust and have the concerns that they have. I cannot sit here and say that the Government has a role in rebuilding, but the role of the SFC here is important. It is not just about providing assistance; it is also about oversight. If the SFC identifies issues that cause it concern, it will be a matter for it to address them using its existing powers. However, we cannot always fix things retrospectively so, if there are lessons to take from the situation in the context of the wider sector—the whole of HE and FE—we will take them. I give you that undertaking.

I am happy to work with the committee and other members if lessons come out of the situation and something needs to be done regarding governance or the use of existing powers, more powers or the power of intervention. To be fair to the SFC, until we become aware of a problem, it is difficult to know what we would be intervening on. Please accept my assurance that we are all over this.

I cannot say anything on it, because the Government is not directly involved in that. In the college sector, a three-year deal was agreed with support staff and, thereafter, a four-year deal was reached with the lecturers, the conclusion of which the Government supported. It will be up to the unions and the college employers to get together in due course this year to look at a pay settlement for the support staff in the context of 2025. That has not been raised directly with us in terms of Government participation. As I say, it is for the employers and the unions to negotiate a deal.