Chamber and committees

I hope that that will change in the not-too-distant future.

In the most recent Holyrood election, all the manifestos came out after about a quarter of the population had already voted by post.

Professor Bell, do you have something to add?

Yes, indeed. You were talking about HMRC earlier. I knew a colleague who was very good at chasing down people involved in tax avoidance in the private sector, and he doubled his salary in moving from HMRC. That is a real issue.

I would like to explore those things further, but time is against us. Richard, on the subject of reform by the Scottish Government, Audit Scotland has said:

“it is unclear what additional spending is being allocated towards reform, what levels of cumulative savings its programme of reform will generate, and over what period these savings will be realised.”

Thank you.

Mr Lott, you have been very patient. On universities, one fundamental point that you want to make is about research grants and so on. The floor is yours.

One of the things that John Mason pointed out when we had a similar discussion a couple of years ago was that, at that time, the University of Glasgow had reserves of £770 million. Facts such as that make things difficult from our perspective. I can understand exactly what you are saying but, when some universities have that level of cash assets, it is difficult for us to say that we should take money out of other areas of priority expenditure, which we would have to do, given that the Scottish Government has a more or less fixed budget from which to provide funding. How would you respond to that? I know that not all universities are as prosperous as that, and perhaps Glasgow does not have quite as much money stashed away now as it did a couple of years ago, but how would Universities Scotland address that issue?

There are quite a lot of figures here. For example, according to your submission, London Economics estimates that there is a

“12.7:1 economic multiplier on resources won from UKRI”.

The figures that you have given us all seem to be very positive in that direction.

Of course.

Ms Manson, what kind of relationship does the Federation of Small Businesses have with Universities Scotland? What can it do to help you, or vice versa?

I am tempted to ask about non-domestic rates, but I am sure that colleagues will be keen to come in on that, so I shall allow them to do so.

I will open out the session to colleagues, with Ross Greer to ask the first questions, to be followed by Liz Smith.