Meeting of the Parliament 08 May 2024
Apologies. I am not going to, because I have only five minutes.
I want to focus on the substance of the issue for colleges: the challenges and opportunities for them. Last week, I acknowledged that there are challenges facing colleges—of course there are. I also accept that there is a gap in relation to what the colleges would have had at their disposal now if funding had risen in line with inflation over the past few years.
If the Conservatives believe that we ought to have been raising the funding in line with inflation, they must presumably take serious issue with the fact that, despite the Chancellor of the Exchequer pointing to real-terms growth in public spending, the core block grant is still less in real terms in 2024-25 compared with 2022-23 by around £500 million. That is the gap that has arisen in just one year, and it exceeds the alleged shortfall in college funding that has been claimed. The Conservatives must be even more troubled by forecasts that suggest that our block grant for capital is expected to reduce in real terms by almost 9 per cent by 2027-28. They cannot, on the one hand, insist that funding by the Scottish Government must rise by inflation and, on the other, accept that the funding of it should fall.