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Yes, and it might be useful for colleagues to understand why it is 372 days and not 365 days. That is because the first Thursdays in May can fall up to six extra days apart. Thursday 1 May 2036 and Thursday 7 May 2037 are 371 days apart. In case anyone was wondering, that is the reason for that number.

I can take you through what we are doing in the regulations, but I will first bring Ailsa McKeever in to explain the rationale, if that is helpful.

Convener, I was just suggesting that that option is open, if the committee feels the need to reinforce that or to seek further reassurance from the parliamentary authorities.

I am indeed. I was smiling just now because I was thinking about the number of times that the Government is criticised for being insufficiently clear. In this instance, we have sought to provide the maximum clarity, recognising that people would like that, as we are in unprecedented territory.

We would be dealing with a very limited period. Going back to Ailsa McKeever’s point, the approach is about consistency, which is why it is focused on the base salary. A further complication arises in the context of additional remuneration and special responsibility allowances, which can be variable. Therefore, in a practical sense, it would have been quite difficult to manage that. What we have come up with is a pragmatic set of proposals that are easily understood and easy to implement. To address your point about expectation, it is a matter for the individual to decide what they will do with regard to the additional salary.

Yes, it is, but it is also what the public would expect. It is the public’s expectation that people are focused on the job to which they have been elected. As I said earlier, it also helps to protect colleagues from criticism in some instances.

Ultimately, there will always be an element of that being up to the individual. There is only so much that we can control. It is possible that, despite our best efforts, we could have a resignation in the MP-MSP space in that summer period. People will want to sort their lives out and get organised. Most people are cognisant of the reason for the 49 days and, therefore, we would expect common sense to prevail. I recognise the risk that you allude to, convener, but my perspective is that there is a limit to how much we can manage it. I would expect it to be monitored going forward, to see whether the issue that you allude to arises, and we still have a plethora of by-elections.

Yes—it is up to us to do that.

This might take a bit of time, convener, but I hope that you will indulge me.

I entirely understand the stress and frustration that has been felt by the staff and others at how long this has taken and how long the situation has dragged on. I can speak for the cab sec as well and say that we have certainly been frustrated by the time that it has taken. We have had to, at various points, recognise that the role of ministers in the context of legislation and our relationship with universities is at play here, as is the need to protect the Office for National Statistics classification. The situation with the finances of the university is a complex one, and understanding how it got into that situation also took a bit of time and contributed to the delays.

As we moved through that, there has also, to be candid, been an element of everybody involved wanting to be absolutely sure of the numbers in front of them, with regard to the asks, in particular, but also the robustness of two iterations of a financial recovery plan. More recently, the university has rightly been expected by the SFC to bring forward a certain level of detail to underpin what has been placed in front of it. That, in turn, has rightly seen the court of the university take a keen interest, and that has contributed to the delays, too. The plan now goes to the SFC, and the SFC’s board is involved. That is the background to why it has taken this long.

Just to bring this more up to date, I think that people are aware that, on 28 May, the SFC received a further financial ask that had gone through the university’s processes; that has been going through the processes of the SFC and its board, which have been interrogating the nature of the ask. The Scottish Government formally received a notification of the request on 6 June, and we are working on that at pace.

This is an on-going situation within the Government; indeed, the cross-ministerial group will be meeting this afternoon—we meet regularly on this matter. I should also say that the cab sec has led a lot of the direct engagement with the trade unions, which have been an important part of all of this.

The additional ask of £22 million that has been brought forward has two elements to it. The first is to avoid the scale of disruption proposed, particularly in respect of employment, in the first iteration of the financial recovery plan. That would have been quite destructive to employment levels and nobody was in any way comfortable with that.

The second element is liquidity. It is self-evident that the institution got itself into difficulty, because it was essentially living beyond its means, and that position will not be recovered overnight. While the financial recovery plan is being implemented and taken forward, the institution will gain a degree of further support, whether from commercial sources, the Government or a combination of the two.

As I have said, those elements are being progressed at pace. We ought now—famous last words—to be capable of moving into a phase in which a greater pace will be injected into taking the issue forward. Clearly, we now have an ask that we can assist the university with in whatever form. The voluntary severance scheme has finally been launched, which will allow that element to be progressed.

I commend Sir Alan Langlands and his team for their patience and commitment. The task force is conducting specific workstreams to assist the university, and its members have had no shortage of appetite for that, for which I commend them. However, they have needed information and encouragement in order to deliver in the way that they would hope to, and they are now taking that work forward.

With regard to progressing the matter and bringing things to a head—if that is the correct term—there is the Gillies report, which is due to be published next week. Primarily, it will be for the SFC, which commissioned the report, to respond to it, but the university will also have to respond to the findings. As I understand it, at lunchtime on the day of the report’s publication, the university will hold a town hall meeting with its staff to give them an insight into what the review has found and, I would hope, any actions that the university feels that it is necessary to take in the immediate term.

As I have said previously at committee, it is also for the Government to reflect on the report’s findings. If there are any clear issues related to governance and oversight which will have repercussions and ramifications beyond the University of Dundee, the Government will consider them. As I have said before, the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill will provide a vehicle for us to consider introducing further powers for the SFC, or whatever, in legislation. We await the report.

The first thing to say is that the rebaselining exercise that was carried out with the SFC was requested by the sector. It was made very clear to colleges that, in doing that, there would be winners and losers.