Chamber and committees

Thank you, Mr Kerr—that is sufficient. I think that we have explored that issue as far as we can.

I will move us on to talking about the college estate. What is the Scottish Government’s response to Audit Scotland’s report, which highlights that, since 2018-19, college capital funding has fallen £321 million short of the amount required for the lifecycle and backlog maintenance?

Ross Greer will lead on a few questions around staffing.

Thank you, minister. We are heading into our final few minutes. I will bring in Stephanie Callaghan.

Thank you, minister. We now move to questions from Bob Doris, in fact.

Our next items of business are evidence sessions with Jamie Hepburn, Minister for Higher Education and Further Education, Youth Employment and Training, and his officials, who are all joining us virtually today.

The first session will inform our colleges regionalisation inquiry and the second will allow the committee to follow up on issues raised at an earlier meeting about universities.

I welcome the minister and the Scottish Government officials—Stephen Pathirana, the director of advanced learning and science; Helen Webster, the deputy director for reform at the directorate for advanced learning and science; and Jess Dolan, the head of colleges and economic impact.

We have a lot of ground to cover this morning, so I invite the minister to make a short opening statement before we move on to questions. Minister, you have up to five minutes.

I am finished for the time being, but I may come in later. I bring in my colleague Graeme Dey.

Thank you, minister.

It looks as though Mr Hepburn did not hear that question. I believe that the technical team is working on that issue at the moment. There will be a short suspension to allow them to deal with our technical difficulties.

Welcome back, after a short suspension while we sorted out our technical difficulties. I will take the liberty of repeating the introduction so that we can make a fair start to the session.

I welcome back Jamie Hepburn, the Minister for Higher Education, Further Education, Youth Employment and Training, and Stephen Pathirana, the director of advanced learning and science at the Scottish Government. I also welcome Shazia Razzaq, strategic lead for university policy, governance and equalities, and Roddy MacDonald, head of the higher education and science division, who join us from the Scottish Government.

As with the previous panel, I expect that most, if not all, of our questions will be directed to the minister. However, anyone else who wishes to come in on any of the questions should put an R in the chat box, which will be monitored by the clerks, and I will bring you in when I can.

Members and witnesses should be aware that there is an active court case relating to the Universities Superannuation Scheme, so that is sub judice. I therefore ask members and witnesses to refrain from referring to matters relating to that case.

We will move to questions, starting with Graeme Dey.

Mr Hepburn?