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—in relation to the programme for international student assessment results.

As I have said, the Scottish Funding Council will have discussions with both sets of institutions about the number of places. The overall budget that has been set is the overall environment that the Scottish Funding Council will be operating in. That budget has already been set out. The figure is there, and that is the context within which the SFC will operate when it comes to those institutions. As I said, as was the case last year, the spring will be when those places will be agreed with both sets of institutions.

It is a very challenging financial environment. It would have been more challenging if the tax decisions that we have made had not been made. You have alluded to the fact that you are against the tax rises and you have said that you would want to cut the intermediate rate of tax, all of which would lead us to having £0.5 billion less money for universities, colleges, health and local government. You cannot talk only about the tax side of things; you have to also address the spend side of the budget in relation to the decisions that you are saying that you would take.

I might bring in Alison Cumming here, but this is not about taking that money and spending it elsewhere in the budget—the money has been constrained, so there is less money. The money is being profiled and deployed in a way that is required by the sector but which is also affordable. There is no point in £61 million sitting in a budget line that will not be spent or which will be underspent if it means that we have to reduce funding elsewhere to provide it in a particular area—

As I have said, we await the spring budget. Of course, the best way of addressing your point about new NHS facilities is for the chancellor to reverse the capital cut and not have £1.6 billion—

Steven Heddle was one of the commentators at that meeting, and despite the difficulties—do not get me wrong; the meetings can of course be robust—he pointed out that there are important areas that councils want to work with us on and that the Verity house agreement is really important to them.

I can look back to many budget discussions with local government and they do take a bit of a pattern. Local government will ask for X amount of money, there will be some difficult discussions, and then we land where we land. This year is difficult. We could say that it is difficult for the whole of the public sector because there is less money.

Well, I gave the global amount for higher and further education. If you are asking me whether the Scottish Funding Council has reached an agreement on places with universities and colleges, my understanding is that those discussions are on-going.

Let me say a couple of things about that. Clearly, Parliament has taken a lot of interest in closing the poverty-related attainment gap, and it is our firm belief that teachers play a crucial role in our ability to do that. We are investing £1 billion in the Scottish attainment challenge in the current session of Parliament, and we recognise that the teacher workforce is at the heart of that. However, there are other important supports that are provided through schools and other agencies.

You make the point that the position on teacher numbers is not universal across Scotland. What do we do about that? The offer to the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has been the education assurance board. We would like to get to what we could describe as a single point of truth on what the teaching workforce needs to look like over the next few years in order for us to get to numbers that more accurately reflect the fact that there are differing positions. The numbers are growing in some areas. Overall, the pupil roll has increased by more than 30,000 over the past decade, so it is not true to say that the overall position is down. However, there is variation across the country.

Establishing that board and being able to look at the actual workforce numbers that are required will enable us to align more closely with what is required in order to maintain teacher numbers in the right areas. That is the key missing bit for us. That board needs to be established and that work needs to be taken forward.

We ask the enterprise agencies to do a lot of different things, which struck me when business leaders whom I spoke to talked about a six-page letter that had gone to one of our enterprise agencies, asking them about the things that the Scottish Government asks them to do. We need to be more focused on and sharper about what the priorities are, particularly in the next year and the immediate future.

To be blunt, the discussions that we are having around health, police and fire services are pretty limited, which you can see if you look at the budget lines for front-line services. That is probably because, in terms of where the money is going, I have focused on and prioritised front-line public services. That has meant really difficult budget decisions elsewhere to make the budget stack up. Is that what I would want to have done in an ideal world? No, but given that money is tight, we have had to prioritise front-line public spending. That has meant that we have had to constrain funding elsewhere, and it means that our enterprise agencies will have to utilise that £307 million in a careful and targeted way to align to the priorities.

There are, in the budget, elements of committed funding for our priorities—for offshore wind, for example—and elements where we have made additional investments. However, it is a tough budget for our enterprise agencies. There is no getting away from that, and we have to be clear about what we are asking them to do with that money.

There is nothing different this year.

On that point, I note that the education secretary will, no doubt, be asked questions in Parliament about the number of teachers—