Official Report 676KB pdf
Universities (Fair Access) (PE2009)
Item 3 on our agenda is consideration of new petitions. Before I introduce each new petition, as I always do for those who might be following our proceedings elsewhere, I indicate that, as a matter of practice, we invite the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament’s independent policy advice resource—the Scottish Parliament information centre—to offer comment on petitions. We do that because, historically, if we did not do that, that was usually what happened at the first meeting at which we considered the new petition. Therefore, we bypass that and we are therefore already considering the position with a degree of information having been obtained.
We are joined by Michael Marra, who has been sitting quite contentedly through some of our deliberations. In order to facilitate his day, we will move first to petition PE2009, which was lodged by Caroline Gordon, and which calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to ensure fair access to Scottish universities for residents in Scotland and the UK by reviewing university business models and Scottish Government funding arrangements.
The Scottish Government’s response to the petition states that
“Scottish universities are autonomous institutions and as such are responsible for their own admission policies and selection criteria. The Scottish Government and Scottish Ministers are unable to intervene in universities’ business models.”
The submission emphasises Universities and Colleges Admissions Service data, published in January 2023, which shows that a near-record number of Scottish students secured a place at the University of Edinburgh. The Scottish Government aims to have 20 per cent of students entering university from Scotland’s 20 per cent most deprived backgrounds by 2030. The submission highlights that 9.1 per cent of the University of Edinburgh’s full-time first degree entrants in 2020-21 came from Scotland’s most deprived areas.
The petitioner has responded to the Scottish Government’s submission, stating that “many capable young Scots” are unable to attend due to
“chronic underfunding and poor government policy.”
She notes that freedom of information requests have shown an 84 per cent increase in the number of Scottish domiciled applicants being refused entry to Scottish universities since 2006. The petitioner concludes with a call for the Scottish Government to conduct a review of its funding arrangements for Scottish universities and remove the cap on places to provide equal opportunities for all young people, regardless of their background.
As I said a moment ago, we are joined by Michael Marra. I invite him to speak to the committee before we consider how we might proceed.
I pay tribute to my constituent Caroline Gordon, who joins us in the public gallery, for lodging the petition, which is now supported by many thousands of people, and for her continued determination to seek answers on this area from the Scottish Government. I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak to you today.
For more than 600 years, our universities have educated some of Scotland’s best and brightest, from scientists and inventors to philosophers, authors and poets—the great people of Scotland who have lent so much to our history and progress as a nation. However, for many of our young people in Scotland today, the basic promise of a Scottish education has been broken. You work hard, you get the grades, you get in: that is the way that it should be for every Scot.
At First Minister’s question time on 12 January, I raised my constituent’s case, which is about a young man with outstanding grades to whom the doors of the University of Edinburgh were firmly shut. There were no grades that he could have achieved from five As to 50 As that could have prised those doors open. The policy of the Scottish Government has locked him out. Since then, my office has been inundated with emails and phone calls from parents and young people across the country sharing similar testimony, so I am clear that this is not a case of one university or one subject area. The sense of injustice is palpable.
My constituent and I are the strongest supporters of widening access to university in Scotland. The Parliament has seen marked progress in that area in recent years, but we have come from a very low base, whereby young Scottish people from the poorest backgrounds were far less likely to reach university than those from any other part of the UK. We should be clear that we are still well behind the rest of the UK in that, and that much progress still requires to be made.
The real issue of concern that is raised in the petition is the dysfunction of the business model that the Scottish Government imposes on our universities, which includes the cap on Scottish university students. It is combined with 14 years of no increase in the amount of money that is paid per student to our universities. The alternative route that is being taken by many young Scots is to seek a place at a university in England. Many will make a life outside Scotland, will marry and will flourish, and my constituent and many other families will be hundreds of miles from their grandchildren, which is a human element of the issue that we must consider. We can all identify with that.
More broadly, for our economy and the betterment of our society in Scotland, these are losses that Scotland can ill afford. At best, this is a case of the unintended consequences of policy, which I recognise. The issue deserves better scrutiny in Parliament in terms of what might be happening as a result of policy and that is not the Government’s stated intent. The committee could seek further information on that.
Perhaps I could be so bold as to suggest a couple of areas that might be of use to the committee in that regard. You might want to seek evidence from Universities Scotland and individual universities to ascertain the scale of the issue and find out whether certain universities or courses are particularly affected. That would perhaps allow the committee to develop a better understanding of the impact of the current policy on the number of young Scottish people who are being forced to leave Scotland to access higher education elsewhere and of the impact that that has on the country. Perhaps the committee might ask the Scottish Government what analysis it has undertaken of the consequences of the current policy for Scottish applicants in general. Importantly, I would hope that it would give an opportunity for the people who are impacted to have their voices heard in the Parliament.
Thank you for your time, convener, and for the consideration of the committee.
Thank you, Mr Marra. I know that you have been raising the issues in Parliament with the First Minister. I am content with the proposals that you have made. Would members of the committee like to add any further suggestions?
I wonder whether we could write to the Commissioner for Fair Access to seek his views on the actions that are called for in the petition.
That makes sense. Are we content to pursue the suggestions that Mr Marra has made, as well as the one from Mr Torrance?
Members indicated agreement.
That will give us further information, and we will consider the petition again in due course. Thank you, Mr Marra, for joining us for your first appearance at the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee.
Allotments (PE2007)
PE2007, which was lodged by Carol Ann Weston, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to increase allotment provision so that current waiting lists are fulfilled and all universal credit claimants are offered a free plot at their nearest allotment site.
Members will be aware that legislation on allotments is contained in part 9 of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. The briefing that we have received from SPICe highlights the post-legislative scrutiny that the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee has undertaken on the matter. The committee noted that
“local authorities do not have enough resources to simply create large numbers of new allotments to meet all demand.”
In addition to the challenges of land availability for allotments, the SPICe briefing notes that, in January 2023, more than 478,000 people were in receipt of universal credit in Scotland.
Responding to the petition, the Scottish Government recognises the on-going challenges that local authorities face in relation to allotment waiting lists and encourages local authorities to look at innovative ways to reduce allotment waiting lists. The Government response also provides information on the funding that it has allocated for community growing over the past decade.
In relation to universal credit, the Scottish Government states that there is no provision for it to provide an allotment to universal credit recipients in Scotland, but it lists a range of benefits that are managed and paid for by the Scottish Government for which universal credit is a passporting benefit.
Do members have any suggestions or comments on what we might do in light of the responses that we have received from SPICe and the Scottish Government?
When we have 470,000 people on universal credit, what the petition is asking is impossible for local authorities across Scotland to do. I know that Fife Council normally has 1,000 people waiting for allotments who are willing to hire them. It is a very difficult situation. I am quite happy to close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders, on the basis that the provision of allotments is primarily the responsibility of local authorities.
Mr Torrance has indicated that there is a difficulty here, and there certainly is. The idea of the petition is sound in some ways, but it is not practical in others. The problem that we face is that it would be virtually impossible. We are all aware of the difficulties that local authorities have at the moment; they even have issues with the space that they have for allotments and the land coverage that they keep.
The Scottish Government provides support and funding to enable groups to do some of those things in the community, and that is part of the equation. I concur with David Torrance: I do not see this progressing in the way that the petitioner wants, because it is not practical. It is not feasible in reality to achieve what the petitioner calls for.
I endorse what my colleagues have said. What the petition calls for might be desirable in many cases, but to create a universal right would impose an obligation on local authorities that is simply unenforceable and undeliverable. We must always be mindful of supporting the petitioner as far as we can, but we also have to be mindful of the financial realities that local authorities face at the moment. They would not thank us for suggesting that we impose something that is plainly beyond their capability when they are under real pressure to deliver fundamental basic services across the board.
We are agreed. We can all see the substance of the issue at hand, but I am struck by the Scottish Government’s suggestion that local authorities look at innovative ways to reduce allotment waiting lists. I am struggling to think of what an innovative way of dealing with an allotment waiting list would be but, notwithstanding my puzzlement with that concept, I am afraid that I am reluctantly of the same view.
The very clear advice from the Scottish Government is that the matter is for local authorities to deal with and, as SPICe points out, the petition seeks to give an entitlement to several hundreds of thousands of people, which is impractical.
I think that we are agreed that although we understand the substance of the issue, we will close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders. Is that the view of the committee?
Members indicated agreement.
I am sorry that that is not the decision that the petitioner will have looked for, but I thank them for raising the issue. We have put their concern on the record.
Mental Health Accident and Emergency for Children (PE2008)
PE2008, which was lodged by Kirsty Solman, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to provide funding to create a separate accident and emergency for children and young people presenting with mental health issues.
The Scottish Government’s response to the petition details on-going work to support people experiencing poor mental health. It states that several mechanisms are in place to ensure that emergency mental health care is accessible quickly and as close to home as possible.
For example, the mental health unscheduled care pathway ensures that anyone presenting at A and E in a mental health crisis is properly assessed and cared for. Care plans are put in place that may include support from crisis support organisations or local mental health services, or admission to the hospital where necessary.
The redesign of urgent care programme ensures that each health board is providing access to a senior clinical decision maker 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for urgent mental health assessment or urgent referral to local mental health services.
The Scottish Government has published the child and adolescent mental health services national service specification, which outlines the provisions that young people and their families can expect from the NHS, including a 24/7 mental health crisis response service for children and young people.
In her response to the Scottish Government, the petitioner highlights that there are only two wards in the west of Scotland for those in crisis with their mental health and questions the effectiveness of speaking to a child or parent over the phone to assess their mental state. The petitioner also questions the rationale behind the redesign of urgent care programme, stating that the programme does not have sufficient CAMHS staff available. She also notes the lack of information on the locations of available hubs for children and adolescents struggling with their mental health.
The petitioner raises a number of challenges to and questions for the Scottish Government in response to its submission, details of which are available in the clerk’s note.
Do colleagues agree that we will write to the Scottish Government requesting that it provides a clear view on the merits of what the petition is asking for as well as responding to the points raised by the petitioner in her recent written submission, to which I have just referred?
Members indicated agreement.
Thank you very much. That was the final petition this morning. We will now move into private session.
11:32 Meeting continued in private until 11:32.Previous
Continued Petitions