Chamber and committees

I am sure that we all agree with that.

How flexible would the funding be? Would it be available for things other than going to outdoor centres? For example, some children in the Highlands and Islands are very used to being outside because that is their normal life, so they would like to come to Glasgow and visit museums and so on. It has also been suggested elsewhere that the money could subsidise overseas trips. How flexible is the whole thing?

I will build on Bill Kidd’s questions. For young people to come, somebody—parents or whoever—has to pay £420. What costs would a young person have on top of that? There would be transport costs. Do they have to bring with them waterproofs and decent shoes, for example, or can they turn up with just their ordinary clothes?

Ms Fallon, you mentioned £1 million. Can you tell us roughly where that came from?

Yes, that is helpful. I will pursue that a little bit further. You mentioned consistency. Providing consistency costs money. If we have parents who are well able to afford to send their children on residentials, it seems rather a shame to subsidise them with public money when that money could perhaps be targeted at the families who need it more.

Willie Rennie will ask questions about money later on, so I do not want to tread too much on his toes. It was suggested that the cost of a week-long residential per pupil is between £300 and £400 or thereabouts. However, some of the submissions noted that the cost was £400 in 2022-23, so I assume that the average now would be up to about £460 with inflation. On top of that will be the cost of travel, clothing, equipment and so on. Even if the £460 was covered, do you feel that some families would not be able to send their children because of the need to spend money on clothing and that kind of thing?

I come to Mr Sweeney on the same theme. If families and schools are fundraising—that is quite good for the schools and young people enjoy it—and that money is already available, we should not replace it with public money, surely.

Do you not think that most workers do more than they have to?

Okay. I will leave it at that, convener.

Do you want to give us a rough idea of the percentage by which you have had to put the cost up?

That is helpful.

We have touched on capital funding. Mr Miller, I think that I stayed in two of your centres when I was younger.

None of that funding comes from the public sector.