Chamber and committees

You have raised a very important point about how that money goes out to local authorities and local authorities’ discretion to move it forward. Yes, the money will go from the Scottish Government to local authorities to allow them to make the decisions that they wish to make, within the funding streams that we put out.

Alison Cumming or Graeme Logan may wish to give more detail of that.

Within the budget, we are allocating nearly £2 billion to Scotland’s universities and colleges. That is a fair settlement in a challenging area. We have also provided fair settlements in the past. I appreciate that there have been challenges but, for example, between 2007 and 2021, the college sector resource budget has increased by more than 30 per cent in cash terms. I give that as an example of how we can invest, have invested and will continue to invest in the college and university sector, and we will continue to look at that very closely in the spending review.

We are committed to driving the work forward. The Government would like that to happen in August, but the Government cannot make it happen. The Government is absolutely committed to doing everything that we can, on our side, to make that happen, but it is not just up to the Government. The Government is willing to do that, and I know that our partners in local authorities and trade unions will be looking at the matter very carefully, too. There is a willingness to make that happen, and there is an absolute commitment from the Government to do everything that we can to make it happen, but we have to look at the very fine details of how we make it happen in every school. We have to consider the different sizes of schools and local authorities. We will start by then if we can.

Yes. In many ways, we are determined to drive up teacher numbers so quickly to ensure that we can move forward on reducing class contact time.

I will be brief. This is an unfortunate part of the usual budget process. Opposition parties demand additional expenditure not just in my portfolio but in other Government portfolios. All Opposition members come to committee meetings such as this one and demand additional spending in portfolios, but none of the demands are included in a budget alternative so that there can be serious discussions with the finance secretary about alternatives to the budget that has been proposed. It is very easy to demand that more money be spent; it is much more difficult to have a budget settlement—

I recognise that Mr Ewing has a long-standing interest in that area, given his constituency interest. I will make two points. The first relates to what we can do through Scottish Government funding, outwith the local government settlement, to take better account of rurality. I point to the changes that we have made to the Scottish attainment challenge fund, which will now allocate funding to all 32 local authorities because we recognise that there is poverty in all areas.

As well as looking at how we distribute money, we recognise that SIMD is not a particularly useful measurement for rural areas, as Audit Scotland has pointed out in the past. We are therefore keen to look at, for example, the data on the take-up of free school meals and children in low-income families, which can provide us with a much better analysis of rurality in different areas. We are challenging ourselves to see how we can change Government funding streams to better take account of that.

As Mr Ewing pointed out, local authority funding is agreed under a settlement, which is based on a formula that is agreed with COSLA. The Government is always open to evidence-based suggestions for improving the funding formula, but I stress to the committee that any fundamental change to it would properly have to come through COSLA in the first instance.

If Mr Ewing has concerns about that aspect, I will be happy to hear about them in further detail. I think that an evidence-based approach is the right way to go about that, as we have—quite rightly—to work with our partners in local government on the wider aspects that are outwith the Scottish Government’s control. I hope that that gives Mr Ewing some reassurance that we have looked at what is within our powers to ensure that we take account of rurality.

Absolutely—we can certainly look to do that. The £10 million was there for CO₂ monitoring, so it was based on the costs of delivering that. For the £5 million, the level of funding is not based on thinking that we have an ask from local authorities for £5 million at this point. We are attempting to ensure that we are able to meet the needs of local authorities as they come forward.

No—money is far too tight for us to be able simply to pluck figures out of the air. We can certainly provide the rationale, and the cost of a HEPA filter, to the committee.

I answered Mr Mundell’s question on the basis of what it takes to deliver exams. The exams will take place unless, during the exam diet, there is—

I am not holding back any information on this, Mr Mundell. I strongly refute that.