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I am aware of what you are referring to. There was a reference in a document to that possibility, or that risk. We will monitor that risk.

At this stage, I am not seeing any anecdotal evidence of there being a problem, but we will monitor that because the agenda is hugely important for us. I have acknowledged today that there is a threat to the 2026 target. However, the biggest threat would come from being restricted to using one measure. When we embarked on this agenda, we took that approach with good intent, but the experience of our universities shows that we need something else, or that we need multiple things, and that how we facilitate that matters. The pilot in your area is a good example of that.

I absolutely accept that higher education finances are not as I would want them to be. I could trade reasons with you about why we are in that situation. We are working closely with the universities to determine what opportunities there are to further enhance their access to public funding to mitigate that.

Having the power to investigate seems to be a reasonable ask.

We cannot apply that retrospectively. College principals, like all other employees, have rights, which are protected.

I think we can outline a future expectation. I understand people’s unease about the characterisation that you have just made about the levels of some salaries and packages in the sector.

That is a pressure for next year, convener.

Your local university—the University of the West of Scotland—is a good example of that, but there are others. I pay tribute to the universities for the way in which they have embraced widening access; right across the board, the universities, including universities such as the University of St Andrews, have been absolutely superb on that.

The challenge that we face, to be realistic, is that we are in danger of hitting a ceiling in continuing to use the current single measure. For a variety of reasons, it becomes difficult to go further and to hit the 2026 target. Widening access is a success story, and universities have done really well in that space, but we have to find a way to allow them to go further. We are running a pilot in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, where there is an existing data-sharing arrangement between the two local authorities that allows them to share information on free school meals. Unfortunately, we do not have such agreements in place in other localities. We are looking at the options with regard to whether that can happen in other places.

Another suggestion has been that we could use the school clothing grant by way of an additional measure. The commission on widening access feels that we would benefit more from a basket of measures, and I agree, if we can do that. The difficulty concerns the existing legislation in this area. It may be that, in the longer term, we have to introduce legislation to change the position. In the short term, we can do more.

I convened a meeting a few months ago at which I was blown away by the turn-out of universities and the enthusiasm of principals to embrace the approach further. We are working with them actively to see what more we can do. Widening access is a success story, but we realise that we need to do more in order to tap in fully to the potential.

You are right that there is clearly work to do. I think that we touched on that last time I was at the committee. For the past 10 years, in good financial times and bad, industrial relations in the college sector have been very poor and deteriorating, culminating in the latest dispute, which, fortunately, has now been resolved. I pay tribute to the Educational Institute of Scotland Further Education Lecturers Association in particular for its part in bringing the dispute to an end. The resolution of that dispute buys us a bit of time to take forward the work that was already under way. That work takes the form of a group that I have convened of representatives of the trade unions and the college side to have a frank and honest discussion about what has gone wrong and what needs to happen to improve industrial relations in all sorts of ways.

I think that I said in the chamber a little time back that I was, at that point, more optimistic about that process than I was about the resolution of the dispute. The dispute has now been resolved, and I am optimistic that we can make some progress in this regard simply because, in the privacy of those meetings, it was clear that everyone had had enough of the nature of the conduct in negotiations and so much that happens around that, which has come to characterise the sector. That is both because it is wearisome for the individuals and because of the negative impact that it is having on the sector—there is no doubt that it is having a negative impact.

We will look to reconvene that group shortly. I do not want to go into too much detail about what has been discussed, because that would breach confidentiality and we are at a delicate stage in the process. However, I think that there is a genuine appetite to find a way to do this differently, which everyone around the table would agree is long overdue. We will look to reconvene the group and crack on with this work quickly.

What changed was that the significant impasse that existed between the two sides was broken. We did not intervene. To be absolutely clear, what happened was that the two sides found a way forward. They were able to reach an agreement. The stumbling block to the agreement was that the difference between what the colleges could afford in year 4—next year—and what the union would settle for was 1 per cent, which is roughly £4 million to £4.5 million. On that basis, we took the view that, for all the reasons that we would all highlight about the impact of the dispute, the Government would undertake to provide that level of support next financial year in order for the agreement to be secured. However, the detail of the agreement was reached by the two sides. We were asked to provide assistance, as it were, to get the agreement over the line, which we were able to do.

To be clear, I should say that the difference that was required to be found was a fraction of what would have been in play earlier in the dispute. There is a lesson for everyone in the nature of the dispute and the way that it developed, which enabled it to reach the point that it did. Had the sides been able to come to such an agreement much earlier on, the Government would have looked to assist them, but they were poles apart, and they remained poles apart until about a week before the agreement was reached.

That is the new pension increase.

The UCU and Universities Scotland have jointly asked whether it would be possible to provide some assistance to address that. That goes go back to a point that I made earlier about something that predates the change of Government. The UK Government made a commitment around consequentials for pensions for college and teacher pension schemes. We have been asked whether it might be possible to utilise some of that funding to assist the universities to address the challenge that they face. The answer is that we still do not have clarity on the numbers associated with that, but we are alive to the ask and sympathetic to it. We will look to do what we can in that space to assist them.