Hansard

Thank you, Presiding Officer.

I agree with the cabinet secretary, up to a point. We need certainty and we need the message to be absolutely correct. However, it is also important to give full clarity about how we will ensure that the best brains—domestic or foreign nationals—can be part of not only this country’s institutions, which we value so highly, but our economic future. The Prime Minister said in her Marr interview on Sunday—and the point was repeated twice in speeches at conference—that there is a real determination to make sure that the two match up. I suggest to the Scottish National Party that there is some light at the end of the tunnel with the consultation process. I am clear that we did not have that before, so some things are moving in the right direction.

I believe very firmly that when it comes to the crucial funding streams that are attached to higher education and college education there is an opportunity for us to reset some of the issues.

Perhaps, in Mr Russell’s case, there is a bit of a silver lining in all this. I remember an education question time in the Parliament some six years ago when my late colleague, David McLetchie, asked Mr Russell, then the cabinet secretary, how he would resolve the issue of the inherent unfairness of the Scottish Government paying EU students’ fees when rest of the UK and international students who were studying the exact same courses had to pay their own fees.

Mr Russell said then, and several times thereafter, that he was working on ways to get round the problem. Of course, he should have said that there was no way round the problem because of EU law. With Brexit, that problem will be removed; what will not be removed are the funding issues for those EU students. Will they be liable for fees in the same way as rest of the UK and international students, assuming of course that the SNP clings to its policy of allowing Scotland-domiciled students to go for free? What arithmetic is the SNP doing to assess whether the payment of fees by EU students in the future will lead to a possible fall in demand for places and, if it does, by how much? An awful lot of arithmetic has to be done to ensure that we get the background to that.

Where the Westminster Government has responsibilities, so too does the Scottish Government. As Ross Greer pointed out to the minister, it is very important that certainty can be given not just to students who are on courses just now but to students who are applying to join courses in the near future. That point was put very strongly at the Education and Skills Committee and the Scottish Government is responsible for ensuring that there is that certainty.

Let me be very clear. The Scottish Government continues to lambast the Westminster Government for its actions, but the Scottish Government is responsible for higher education in Scotland and for its funding. Brexit might not be what FE and HE wanted, but it provides the Scottish Government with a way of realigning its funding policy and building a new one that is based on what we would see as greater fairness.

The mantra that the SNP consistently uses—it is built into the rocks and the sun carving at Heriot-Watt University—is to claim that access to higher education is based on the ability to learn, not the ability to pay. That might work well for a Scotland-domiciled student but it has never really been true for a rest of the UK or international student.

Mr Russell knows more than most what needs to happen in higher education to bring in additional income so that our institutions remain wholly competitive on the international stage, not just the European stage. If he really wants to do something about that, we need to hear what it is.

We know from every briefing that the colleges and universities have given us that the Brexit problem is serious. However, on this side of the chamber, we have faith that the challenge can be met head on with the same resourcefulness and pioneering spirit for which our institutions are world renowned, and with good-quality negotiations between the Scottish Government and the Westminster Government.

I move amendment S5M-01792.1, to leave out from first “the benefits” to end and insert:

“that Brexit represents a significant change for both further and higher education, and that, alongside challenges, there will be new opportunities for both colleges and universities, especially in developing closer international links with further and higher education institutions in non-EU nations with which Scottish colleges and universities already have expanding collaboration, research projects and knowledge exchange; pays tribute to the resourcefulness and creativity with which further and higher education institutions have always reacted to changing circumstances both at home and abroad; welcomes the existing commitments by the UK Government on EU-funding streams, and calls on the Scottish and UK governments to work together in a constructive manner to support higher and further education in Scotland”.