Meeting of the Parliament 20 January 2026
The context for the bill is the Audit Scotland report from some years ago. That report was scathing in its criticism of all those involved in the sector and of the inability of SDS and the Scottish Funding Council to come together to agree a strategy. It set out the failure of ministers to direct that change and ensure an integrated approach from those two bodies and others. That is the foundation of this debate.
As well as clearly setting out the need for a single source of funding, the Withers report recommended many other things that have been completely lost in this debate. The minister’s predecessor was passionate about creating a careers service that would drive change throughout the whole system, because, if we can get young people at school to make the right decisions about their future as a result of proper advice at the right time, we can provide parity of esteem and transform the whole skills landscape. However, that has been completely lost in the political debate—the debate might be happening somewhere else, but I am not aware of it.
We have been banging on about the need for parity of esteem for years, but we have failed to deliver it. Skills planning, which Stephen Kerr talked about at length today, was a critical recommendation in the Withers report, but we are not really debating those issues. That is one of my regrets.
Big-bang reorganisations often introduce paralysis, uncertainty and fear of change. They mean that staff are thinking about their jobs and looking over their shoulders rather than driving forward change for the future. That all happens as a result of big-bang reorganisations, which rarely deliver the returns that we want. We are talking about tens of millions of pounds for the reforms in the bill. Will we get the returns that we want from the changes?
There are many public sector bodies, so we cannot bring them all under one roof. We need to have separate management. If we think that we can get integration, joint partnership and systems thinking only by bringing all those bodies under one roof, we are kidding ourselves. We need to get leaders to drive change across boundaries and ensure that everybody under their umbrella is working together and with all the other public sector bodies.
My other concern—I am giving a long list of reasons why the bill is terrible—relates to the capacity of the Funding Council. We know that the Funding Council has been under the cosh and has had to deal with all the crises in the higher education sector and in colleges. Does it have the headspace to deal with the additional responsibilities that are set out in the bill?
From what I have said, members will know that I would not have started from here or gone down this route, but we are where we are. I am afraid to say that, if we go back and say no to the bill, that might cause more chaos in the sector. What would that mean for SDS? Would it mean that another set of reforms would come forward that might threaten it in the future, or would it be secure for ever? What would it mean for the leadership of that organisation?