Chamber and committees

However, what the economists have said is that, if you implement some of these policies, you will not get any more money, because people will simply avoid it, work less hard or leave Scotland. For example, they said that, when the top rate went up by 1p in the pound last year, 90 per cent of that revenue was lost through behavioural change. Someone who works five days a week might say, “Do you know what? I am just going to work four days a week because I am not going to lose all that money to tax. Why should I work for that?” It is one thing to say that, if we do X, we will raise an extra £500 million or whatever in tax, but if we lose 90 per cent of that or possibly end up losing £600 million in tax because we have implemented that change, it does not deliver the changes that you and, I am sure, everybody really want to see. Everybody wants to tackle poverty, create better-paid jobs and have more money for the health service, but how do we realistically fund that when the impact of behavioural change is so fundamental to doing that? You can raise tax as much as you like, but if the money goes elsewhere, how do you deliver?

Alastair, in your submission, you talk about how research and development in Scotland is still punching well above its weight, at 13.25 per cent of UK research and innovation funding, compared with 8.2 per cent of the population, but that funding is down from around 15.4 per cent just a few years ago. Will you talk about how important that is and how important the university sector is to Scotland’s economic growth, wealth and prosperity?

No one else has indicated that they want to come in, so I will make a couple of comments.

What has been done in Dundee with life sciences and gaming is phenomenal. Scotland really is on the global map when it comes to its universities and knowledge economy, which is important. However, have you tried to get a roofer, a plumber or an electrician these days? There is a real issue with the balance between people going to university and those not going to university. For example, we talk about building houses and the importance of affordable housing, but there is a chronic shortage across the construction industry. Sadly, some teachers in schools—I certainly found this in my area—say to children, “You will be a bit of a failure if you do not go to university,” so the people who would go into apprenticeships and probably go on to have really good and highly skilled careers are not doing so. We have chronic skills shortages in engineering and construction, for example. Where do we strike the balance?

What we need and want in Scotland is for our universities to remain cutting-edge, but what about the rest of the economy? What about the situation with apprentices perhaps not being valued as much and, therefore, not enough people doing apprenticeships? Of course, without those basic skills to support the universities and other sectors of the economy, we cannot grow as well as we could.

John Mason is not asking a question to anyone specifically—is that right, John? You are just looking for people to respond.

I will bring Adam Stachura.

I was talking to an economics professor about the number of people who are economically inactive. That includes students, who are not unemployed, despite what the Daily Mail said on its front page a week or so ago. He suggested that Scotland could do as well with a three-year degree what we do with a four-year degree, given that there are three-year degrees south of the border. I thought that that was an interesting suggestion to at least look at. How do you feel about that? What would the impact of that be on the cost base of the university and so on? Would it free up resources? It would certainly mean that people would leave university a year earlier and contribute to the workforce a year earlier.

Who do you want to answer that?

You will get your minute after this, by the way.

Before I let Ruth Boyle in, Jamie Halcro Johnston and Ross Greer are keen to come in.

I echo that on that specific area, because I have raised that point myself.