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Do you mean broadly across the Government?

As I have said on a couple of occasions during the session, I have detailed discussions with individual institutions in many instances. In the university sector, there are individual universities that will feel that they should receive different treatment from some of their colleagues. In the college sector, there are anomalies in how funding is delivered, and not just in the context of rural settings; there are interesting anomalies in central Scotland around the premise of the funding for certain colleges. The SFC has been looking at the whole picture of funding.

I go back to your mention of a couple of universities in particular. We have heard the point raised in committee previously about the reserves of some of those institutions. We need to remind ourselves that those are massive institutions and that the reserves that they are sitting on are there for a purpose—they have a multimillion-pound project to deliver. At any point, you can take a snapshot and say that university X has a great deal of reserves and that we should do something to reflect that, but you need to look at the overall picture.

The point about fairness of funding is a good one. I was a member of the education committee some time ago. We produced a report in which we acknowledged that, when colleges were performing the first part of degree education—towards a higher national certificate or a higher national diploma—for the first two years leading to university, it seemed unfair that they were funded at one level when, if a student went straight into university, the university was funded at a different level. Having signed up to that report—Mr Rennie is smiling there to remind me—I recognise that there is an unfairness that, over time, will need to be addressed.

You will also recognise that, as we carry out an exercise to consider funding—as you said, not necessarily with more money but in relation to how it is distributed—there will be winners and losers. I am sure that the losers will be deeply unhappy about it, but I assure them that the SFC is looking at the matter.

I would simply add that the whole approach to shaping the mental health action plan was to bring about greater consistency. I have talked to representatives of individual colleges and universities and to front-line staff, and I have heard about some of the issues that they are having—and we fed that into the process. I refer here to the ability to escalate someone’s case through the system.

It troubled me greatly to hear stories from front-line staff of students coming to college or university and presenting on day 1 to the college support services saying that they had been told by their general practitioner that they should come and speak to them on arrival because those services would be able to get them into the system. That was, and remains, deeply troubling, and is one thing that has driven the actions that we have taken. However, as I said in my earlier answer, Mr Briggs, we will monitor how things work in practice, so that we can more effectively support our universities and colleges.

It is difficult for me to answer that question without potentially being misconstrued or misrepresented. Let us be clear that I am not talking about one particular institution or one instance. As minister, I would want to be satisfied, as the cabinet secretary would, that where public funds are being utilised by institutions, they are being deployed appropriately. As for where concerns are being brought forward, one of the areas that I have been exploring in the context of the forthcoming legislation is the need to ensure that there are mechanisms in place in FE and HE to ensure that, where trade unions or other groups have legitimate concerns about activities in institutions, they can be looked into and responded to.

There needs to be a balance here. As we know, industrial relations in some sectors are very poor, and there is a risk that there may be an endless stream of complaints. On the other hand, we need to ensure that, when legitimate concerns are raised, the SFC is in a position to respond, to investigate them and to act. One of the drivers for me in looking at the proposed legislation is that I am not entirely convinced that its powers of intervention are as strong as they need to be. I may be proved wrong, but that has certainly been a driver. I am keen to take the opportunity through the legislation, which the committee will be involved in looking at, to ensure that the most robust set of powers is available to our regulators so that all of us as parliamentarians can be satisfied that public money is being used appropriately.

We have not had an approach to that end. In the context of the lecturers’ dispute, there was significant movement, particularly on the part of the trade union, to try to bring an end to the dispute. As you alluded to, there was a small gap of £4.5 million between what the colleges felt that they could afford and what the union would settle for. The Government stepped in and supported that. We will of course always engage with employers if they come to us with requests. I cannot say today that we would be able to meet any request, not least because we have had no approach.

It is important to make it clear that the moneys that we are talking about for the Dunfermline learning campus in last year’s budget were additional—they were brought into the budget to support that project. However, I recognise your point about the concerns of individual institutions about their maintenance backlog. As you are aware, Mr Greer, the SFC has been doing a piece of work on mapping the situation across the whole country. We are in no way unalive—if that is the right word—to the problem. That is reflected in the work that we have done around asset disposal, which you will be aware of, to support institutions that have buildings that they are not currently using or do not need in the long term to dispose of them and to retain the bulk of the moneys for the purpose of improving their estate. That work has already been taken forward.

In anticipation of the report from the SFC—which will come in a few months, I suspect—and in conjunction with the Scottish Futures Trust, we have been looking at whether there are any innovative funding models to support the process. I realise that that is not about day-to-day maintenance, which we touched on earlier, but we are very much alive to the fact that there will have to be a response to the report, and we are looking into it. I cannot sit here today and say that we have found innovative solutions, but that work is on-going.

Yes and no, because the sector asked us directly to do that. It will be for the SFC and the sector to discuss how the money will be utilised, but we expect that it will be used in the context of the teaching grant. Bear in mind that, if those places were not filled, they would have been subject to clawback and the money would have come out. The money is being effectively guaranteed for the sector.

I said earlier that the SFC is able to assist institutions up to a point. When we are talking about universities, two things are at play, and one of them has not been picked up on.

First of all, there is the financial aspect: if multiple institutions were asking for bail-outs—as you have termed it—the Government would not be in a position to do that. The second thing for universities is their Office for National Statistics classification. We would have to be very careful about how we assisted them—we will call it assistance—so that it did not jeopardise their ONS classification. A bit of care needs to be exercised there.

On your underlying point about whether there is a wider problem, and whether what has happened at Dundee—not that we know what the exact circumstances are—is something that has happened elsewhere, I strongly suspect that, when the news broke, chairs of courts in other institutions said to their vice-chancellors, “Can we get assurance from our finance directors that we have nothing like that lurking?” Inevitably, that will have happened. The SFC’s conversations with Universities Scotland about the situation are on-going. It is a good point, and we want to be satisfied that whatever has happened at Dundee is not symptomatic of a problem in the sector.

As you are aware, other universities have taken proactive steps when they have got themselves into difficulty, particularly in relation to an overexposure to international students. They have sometimes taken painful steps to act. That gives me a degree of reassurance that, by and large, the universities are on the case. We will wait to see what comes out about Dundee.

How one would interpret that would be subjective. I say to Mr Marra that the SFC would want to satisfy itself that the plan was robust and that it got the university to a sustainable position. The part about sustainability is about ensuring that it is a vibrant and viable concern going forward. There might be short-term pain, but it will still be a thriving university.

I will not speculate on the detail around this, but all that I can say to the member is that the SFC has a track record of engaging appropriately with institutions. We find ourselves in a unique situation with the University of Dundee. I cannot sit here today and say, “The SFC will do X or Y”—that is not for me to say—but I know that it will approach the issue from the point of view of supporting the university’s recovery to a sustainable position, and of not doing or overseeing anything that would jeopardise that.

I will have to go back and look at the form of words that was used, because I certainly did not interpret it in that way.

We, as a Government, are not in the business of seeing institutions fail, but they need to become sustainable. That is their purpose, and it is in everyone’s interest that they are sustainable. A lot of the work that we have been doing through the tripartite groups and behind the scenes, working with the SFC and with institutions, is to get them to that place where they are more sustainable.

I go back to the earlier point about their growing their commercial income. We want thriving institutions that deliver the appropriate skills and qualifications in as many localities as possible. That is what we are in the business of doing.