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As I have said, the figure of £15 million reflects an underspend that was available under financial transactions. The SFC budget was increased to that level to give it the flexibility to respond to the situation. It was not a figure that was plucked out of thin air, which I think is what you are alluding to—it was entirely linked to the amount of financial transactions that were available.

I am not aware of a costing, and I have not sought one, because I am not looking that far down the road. At the moment, I am looking at whether we can implement it. However, I am happy to look into that and write to the committee on it.

Right now, we are not clear on the scale of the challenge at, for example, the University of Dundee. On the wider point, we are aware of action that is being taken by individual institutions to address some of their challenges.

We can sit here and bandy around views as to how that has come about. We can talk about international student recruitment and the policies of the previous UK Government; we can talk about the level of teaching funding that has been provided by the Scottish Government; and we can talk about employer national insurance contributions, energy bills and so on. There are a number of contributory factors, but for a number of our institutions, the simple fact of the matter is that they grew rapidly on the back of significant increases in international student recruitment, which, for whatever reason—I suspect that we do not want to get into that today—contracted. They are finding themselves with nothing like the income that they had, but with the same cost base, and they are taking action to address that.

I recognise that that can be painful in some instances, with job losses, but that is how they are acting. We have never said—and I have certainly never said—that the £15 million was deemed to be a solution to all of this. It was never presented as that.

Which of my colleagues should I drop in it, do you mean?

The SFC will set the criteria for the use of that funding. It is not a fund; it is funding, and it is at the SFC’s disposal. I anticipate that the SFC would allocate any funding based on need, and I suggest to you, based on the evidence that we are all aware of, that the University of Dundee has needs that are substantially greater than those of any other institution.

Just over 10 years ago, the Government committed to establishing a commission on widening access. To put it simply, we did so because talented students from the most deprived backgrounds were underrepresented in our universities, and we wanted to change that. It was not just a matter of numbers—it was a matter of fairness and the future of our society.

Since then, we have seen record numbers of disadvantaged students reach university, and I think that we should all be incredibly proud of that. Credit for that belongs to our universities, which have made brilliant progress on widening access. I thank colleges for their contribution, too. My regular engagement with universities, including at a round table in January, has only reinforced to me how committed they are—as are we—to building on that progress. Indeed, we do need to build on it.

I am grateful to the committee for providing an opportunity to focus on how we can do that. We all know that we have targets to meet, and that the next interim target in 2026 looks to be challenging. We are at risk of hitting a ceiling due to the single measure of SIMD that is being used. We know that the SIMD can be a blunt tool; our role is to help universities to overcome those challenges, and as part of that, we are progressing work to transition towards individual measures such as free school meals.

We are working to overcome data-sharing barriers, including through using the pilot in the north-east, on which I previously updated the committee. We have also undertaken activity to better understand access for students in remote and rural areas, and we continue to progress efforts to implement the commissioner for fair access’s recommendations, including on changing the institutional SIMD targets.

That work is as much of a priority as it was 10 years ago, and I am committed to going further. Following suggestions from the sector at the recent round table on widening access, I am exploring how we can better reflect the role of part-time study in the widening access targets. A consultation on part-time study is also a valuable step towards widening access, because, by gathering insights into the needs of part-time students, we can better understand the barriers that they face and explore potential solutions. It is therefore my intention to launch a consultation, prior to the summer recess, on part-time study and support for disabled students.

I look forward to hearing the committee’s questions.

I absolutely get the principle of what is being asked. Obviously we see the advantage of having a unique identifier. It would improve our ability to track learners, allowing us to conduct more robust analysis that would help us evaluate our policy decisions; it would help us carry out work to identify access students earlier; and it would make it easier to share data to support learners at key points in their journeys. We absolutely get that, and in principle, we are absolutely in favour of it.

I noticed, in some of the committee’s evidence last week, talk of this being a resourcing or financial issue. Of course, there are resources involved in scoping, establishing and then running such a programme. However, that is not currently the principal barrier. It is not as simple as just introducing a unique identifier; I wish that it were, because I am, in principle, in favour of it.

I make it clear to the committee that, as we work through some of the challenges in this area, we are doing so not because we do not want to implement this measure, but because we want to overcome those challenges. Ultimately, a unique number is a solution, so we are committed to taking it forward. We will work with the commissioner for fair access and with those in the sector, who I know are enthusiastic about it, and see where we can get it to.

My understanding is that it was an underspend of £15 million.

I would expect it to be shared publicly, frankly.

Yes. I am sorry if I picked you up wrongly. You are right. When there is any public financial input to an institution, while respecting its autonomy—I stress, again, the ONS classification’s significance for those relationships—it is right and proper that that financial input is protected.

I am choosing my words carefully because we do not know what the outcome of the internal review will be, but I undertake that, if anything comes out of that or anything else—members will scrutinise the bill that I am referring to and might feel that they want to make changes to it by amendment—we are open to considering what could be done and to using that vehicle to strengthen internal and external oversight of all institutions if that would be in the public interest.