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In the immediate term, yes—that is a fair assumption. However, there is an opportunity for colleges to get more into the commercial space and to work with employers to generate more income. On your point about the resource allocation, I note the work that we are doing on the tripartite group. What can we do to give colleges a bit of flexibility to operate in a different way if—I stress this point—they believe that that will help them to cope with the current pressures? That is another piece of work that is going on.

As I said, those flexibilities were not provided during my tenure as minister. I was quite open with the committee that the previous set of flexibilities that were provided had not been fully exploited. That is not a criticism of anyone; it is just the reality. Those flexibilities remain in place, and we are now better placed to exploit and take advantage of them.

We are in a dialogue about what more needs to be done. Lots of little things could be done to help colleges to operate more freely, and that is driving a lot of the conversations that are taking place. As I said, if we get to the point at which there is something tangible to report, I will, with the agreement of the other participants, write to the committee to outline that.

There are a number of strands. We need to do a lot of structural things to deliver on our agenda. Essentially, we want to make the learner’s experience better than it is and to ensure that employers have better access to the skills that they require to deliver for the economy and to give young people in particular sustainable employment. Those are our ambitions. In however many years’ time, the judgment will be made about how successfully we have achieved that. One reason why I have been taking a bit of time to look at unintended consequences and practicalities is to save time as we move to the implementation phase, because we will have determined the hurdles that we have to overcome first.

You will appreciate that that will evolve. I am probably being a bit conservative on the timeline, but I hope that we will have tangible information by mid-March on the first elements that we have committed to, such as consolidating apprenticeship funding in one locality and consolidating student support funding in one locality. As a starting point, I hope to share publicly what that will look like by mid-March at the latest.

Two things are at play. First, pilot projects are run to identify their worth. Most projects are Europe-based, but there are others—for example, in South Africa. I recognise that we need an assessment of that fairly quickly.

I keep stressing—and I mean this—that the relationship and the dialogue between us and the university sector are quite good. For example, we co-designed the international engagement strategy, which we will launch shortly. I will not sit here today and say that we will do X or Y without having input from university and college partners in the context of the pilot scheme.

I do not want to avoid the question. I would be happy to write to the committee with more detail in due course, but that is the path that we have gone down.

There is no doubt that it is time consuming, but it has been essential to commit that time and to listen. One of the things that has come out of all this is the fact that some of the really good ideas that we are picking up are coming from the staff in the agencies, for example.

Some of the agencies were criticised by James Withers—we cannot shy away from that—and that has stung for some of them. We have therefore asked them what they would do differently and whether, never mind Withers, we could do something more and do it differently. I found that we started to get some good thoughts coming from the staff. For example, yesterday I was chatting to the staff at the Scottish Qualifications Authority and they threw one or two things at us that are quite thought provoking.

That is helping, and it goes back to the overwhelmingly positive vibe that there is around the reforms, which is that people want to seize this opportunity to make things better.

Given that this is 10 January, the answer to that question is that I do not know. The pilot scheme runs from January until the end of March. I know that quite a lot of planning was going on.

That might be the case, but I honestly cannot answer that question.

I recognise that the approach that I have taken has perhaps lent itself to the fear about cherry picking because I did not provide the standard Government response and say, “Here are the recommendations and this is what we are saying about them.” I did not do that, first, because I thought that it was more important to get on with it and, secondly, because we really need to get into the nitty-gritty around some of James Withers’s recommendations.

I would say that, overwhelmingly, we will end up doing what James Withers has called for. There might be elements that are tweaked slightly because we have gone into them in a bit more detail—we might have identified unintended consequences that James Withers did not see. That does not mean that we will not do what he is looking for, but we might have to do it in a slightly different way. We might go further in our expectations in some of these areas.

We are well progressed in our thinking, if I can put it in that way, and we are now moving into the planning-to-deliver phase. If the committee would find it useful for us to summarise where we have got to in all of this, I will be happy to write to you about it in due course.

We have touched on employers and their role, but there is another element that would benefit everyone, which is developing the work experience offer for young people. I have seen examples of that as I have gone around the country. I was in Shetland last year, where, before the pandemic, Developing the Young Workforce provided meaningful work experience for every pupil at the local secondary school. It expects to be back in that position later this year. That is incredibly important for young people who are thinking about careers because, if they get an opportunity to test their thinking, they may be enthused to carry on and do it, or it may be that they are put off and change their mind. That will be better for the would-be employer, the system and the young person, because we need to drive down the attrition rates and failure rates that we have in all elements of the post-16 landscape.

If we can develop the offer around the work experience that a number of employers provide, that will help us to move forward. That is one of the asks that I have of employers, whether they are in the public or the private sector. If they can provide meaningful work experience for young people who are thinking about careers with them, with similar companies or in similar industries, I ask them to step forward and provide that opportunity. I hope that, through the new careers set-up, we have the mechanism to deliver that.

A lot of this is being tested at the moment with relevant stakeholders. We are working directly with colleges around their role in all of this; they have taken some of it away to work through, and they will come back to us with their thinking in those areas. The universities are coming forward with thoughts, as well. It is very much a work in progress, but I stress that we have taken these six months to do the listening and talking, and we are now very much moving into the delivery phase.

There was some understandable scepticism when the review came out, because previous reviews have gathered dust on the shelf and have not immediately been acted on. I understand that scepticism, but I hope that we have removed it in the past few months because of the momentum that I have tried to bring to this. “Momentum” is the key word, and we must build that so that people are clear that things are going to happen and will get on board.

Regarding political consensus, I pay tribute to colleagues from across the political spectrum, because I have had a lot of direct, one-to-one engagement with colleagues from many political parties who have given me their thoughts and offered incredibly helpful ideas. We will disagree on some things—that is perfectly appropriate—but there is a political consensus about the need to seize this opportunity. I very much welcome that, and my door remains open to anyone who wants to come and offer me their thoughts.

On the timescale, I would be disappointed if we did not see considerable change long before 10 years from now. James Withers was right to talk about the need for structural change. That will require primary legislation and it will, no doubt, be for the next Parliament to deliver on some of that, but we are trying to set a direction of travel now. I am trying to be clear about the things that we can do without waiting to change the badging or labelling of organisations, essential though that will be, and I think that there is an opportunity in the current session of Parliament. We may have an opportunity to get some of the primary legislation through. The modus operandi of some of what we do needs to change, and it can be changed quite quickly.

There are substantial challenges, one of which concerns the qualifications landscape. We will need to have far more short, sharp qualifications and we will need an agile qualifications body to be in charge of that. Over the years, we have built up a bank of qualifications, many of which are now not utilised. We will have to go through an exercise to remove those because they are no longer utilised or necessary. That will take a few years, but it is part of decongesting the landscape. After that, if someone has an idea about a job opportunity and wants to know what qualifications are available, it will be much clearer what those are and what their value is. That exercise, which will have to take place, may be part of the 10-year process that James Withers has spoken about, but I think that we should be aiming at a much closer horizon for meaningful change.