³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

Minister, it is interesting that you mention being here a few weeks ago, because I want to go back to the future a little bit. When I was first elected, in 2007, a young constituent of mine in Sighthill who was originally from Mogadishu in Somalia could not go to university because of the rules and regulations at the time. I made representations to the then Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, Fiona Hyslop, and regulations were put in place to allow young people from asylum-seeking families to go to university. This is something that we have fixed and dealt with appropriately previously. Unfortunately, through the passage of time, we have not been as attentive to the legislation as we should have been, to make sure that future generations of young people who are in the asylum process can have their right to an education.

Will the new regulations be kept under review to make sure that we do not find ourselves in that back-to-the-future position again, given that the Scottish Government previously did the right thing and my constituent was the first asylum-seeking under-18 to go to university in Scotland with a fully funded place?

I thought that I was giving the appropriate context. I have got City of Glasgow College to accept that it will charge my constituent home student fees if they can take up their place and have no right to funding from the Student Awards Agency Scotland. Is the Government looking at any pot of cash—I know that this is hugely challenging in the current times—that students might be able to access when the higher education institution has agreed and is willing to charge home student fees when they do not have to, to allow my constituent and others to access higher education?

It is all relevant to the regulations.

I welcomed the regulations before I heard from the minister, and I got the assurances that I required from the minister that they are robust. The only further assurance that I need is that our committee will continue to monitor them and return to them during the next parliamentary session, to see how successful they have been and how we can improve them further.

That is helpful. Now that I have talked about going back to the future, I will ask about future proofing. I had a constituent who was over 18 when they arrived in Scotland, but they will be here for a heck of a long time and certainly way beyond three years. They still have no decision on their case and they have no temporary leave to remain. They are keen to get a higher education place at the City of Glasgow College. They will not be captured by the regulations and I absolutely understand why, but something will have to give at some point. I would prefer it if the Home Office speedily made the correct decision to give my constituent the rights that they deserve. At what point will the Scottish Government return to look at these matters for adults who wish to be students but who are caught in a system not of their making? Will the Scottish Government look at that at some point for the benefit of my constituent?

I have a final question, convener.

I will be brief, convener. I thank the clerking team for producing the report and supporting our meetings over the past year.

I commend Emma Harper’s observation about the brevity of the report. That brevity means that the report talks in broad brush strokes but does not necessarily give the full details of what has been looked at. I know that we will come to those matters in our work programme at some point later in the year.

One aspect of the iterative nature of parliamentary reform that has been alluded to in the past is about making this place more family friendly. I am minded to put on the record again that there is still no appropriate childcare facility or crèche that would allow members to be here instead of having to work remotely or be elsewhere. That applies not just to members but to staff, who are just as important in supporting the Parliament. Maybe that is a bit of joint work for the future. I mention that merely because it will not be in our brief and concise annual report. However, we can expand on it a little more in a meeting, so I put that on the record and hope that we return to it.

I want to ask about the £26 million. We were all pretty shocked when that was taken off the table; indeed, I was involved in representations to get the Government, and your predecessors, to signal that that £26 million would be embedded in the core settlement. As I understand it, if it had been, we would be looking at fewer redundancies—and any redundancies would, we hope, have all been voluntary severance—and fewer course mergers and amalgamations. As we speak, colleges are finishing five-year forward plans. If that £26 million had been embedded in each and every year, we would have more lecturers, more associated staff and more courses. They were really disappointed in that respect. Although one year of £26 million might not have impacted on courses, lecturers and numbers, do you acknowledge that, had the money been embedded, it would absolutely have had an impact?

I have said for a number of years now, including in submissions, that the regional board should go. Would the £675,000 that you mentioned—every penny of it—be retained by colleges in Glasgow, should the board be abolished?

Have you made the case to Government colleagues for moneys to be transferred from other portfolios into the education portfolio?