Meeting of the Parliament 20 January 2026
It should, and the Education, Children and Young People Committee put that in our report, too.
My time is almost up, but I want to raise a couple more issues. I have serious concerns about the capacity of the SFC. There might be very good people involved at the SFC, but their eye has been off the ball on a number of big issues that we as a Parliament would have expected them to have been all over.
On ONS classification, I have been through stage 1, stage 2 amendments, stage 3 amendments and now the stage 3 debate, but I still do not know what the tipping point will be, if there are more changes in legislation in future, at which universities’ ONS classification will be in danger. During the process, the minister has repeatedly been unable to give an answer on that. Here we are, potentially voting for a bill tonight, and we still do not know.
I cannot support the bill tonight. We had an opportunity in Parliament to do it a lot better, but the Government did not take it. However, the bill will be passed tonight, because the Greens and Liberal Democrats will support the SNP. As seems to happen in this place, we will then get a round of applause from those on the Government benches. I ask them to question what they are clapping for, because I am not sure what they think the bill is supposed to deliver and will deliver. In years to come, we will think that it has been a missed opportunity and that we could have done far better.