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I will bring in Andrew Mott.

It is only the starting point. As I have said to the committee, it sits as a key enabler in a much wider, huge, piece of reform work. To be honest, I have made that more challenging because every time that we have lifted a rock—

Whenever we have lifted a rock and found something we have not put the rock back. We want to take the opportunity to get this right.

I saw some talk in the evidence about this being a 10-year project, which it is in some regards, because it will take five or 10 years to get everything in place. However, there are provisions within the bill that we could enact sooner and we will look to do so. There are things that we can do in the meantime. There is a piece of work under way that I can share with the committee because it should be finalised in the next few weeks. It looks at how all this will come together and what the timeframe will be and it may give you a better picture of what I am describing. We are clear about our direction of travel and where we will get to, but, to your point: although the bill is critical it is only a small part of the reform. It is the starting point that will allow all the work to flourish.

I said earlier that we have strong foundations to build on. We do, and we should recognise that. Some of the very people who have established those strong foundations in apprenticeships will move across to the SFC. Thanks to Frank Mitchell, the SDS chairman, I have had direct conversations with those people and have set them two immediate challenges. The first is to look at what they would do differently if they were not working within their current framework and if we let them run free. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but you know what I am getting at. We asked what they would do differently.

The second challenge is a question about what impediments or perceived impediments there are to being able to deliver the vision that they believe would be better. We are awaiting feedback from them on that.

Some of what the OECD report suggested featured in Withers. There are elements that we have taken on board. However, we cannot sit back and say, “Well, the OECD said we are doing well, and we are doing better than England. That is good enough.” I do not think that it is. I do not think that a one-in-four dropout rate is good enough. I am not apportioning blame to anybody in particular in relation to that, but we should all aspire to better.

I will pick up on that point. I fully accept the financial challenges that universities have, for a wide range of reasons. A narrative has developed that suggests that financial sustainability is achieved only through the provision of more public money, but institutions also need to look at custom and practice issues in how they operate. I do not say that to deflect in any way; I just offer that observation.

There is an operating model, certainly in some of our universities, whereby, when a new market and a new source of income is identified, the university recruits quite heavily in order to deal with that. If that market and that source of income is subsequently diminished, for whatever reason, the same number of people face losing their jobs. We have seen that in a number of universities, where there have been significant job losses.

Some of that is down to how universities operate. Collectively, the UK and Scottish Governments need to look at the financing of our universities, and I take on board all the things that have been said in that regard. However, to be frank, it is also for universities to do some work on the way in which they go about their business. I think that they know that.

No, because that information is not shared with us.

The UK Government shared it with us up to a certain point, a number of years ago, but then it decided to take an approach in which it said, “We’re just going to include a relevant amount in the block grant.” I cannot tell you what that amount is, but that is the situation that we are in—that is how things operate at a UK level. There are some plans to change the English system, but we await the details. Greater clarity might emerge, but, as things stand—as has been the case for a number of years—that information is not shared with us.

Sorry—what membership?

I think that I am right in saying that there have been conversations with SAAB about continuing the current offering through to when we get into the full transition process.

The two committees that currently exist within SAAB—the standards and frameworks group and the apprenticeship approvals group—would form part of the transition, because they offer expertise. Their membership might well morph into the membership of the new committee.

However, it is important that we take the opportunity to expand not just numerically but in terms of the breadth of employer voice that is available to advise. I talked earlier about SMEs as an example. We need to do more in that regard, but we need to consider what it is that we need to do more of in order to improve the situation.

For the transition period, we will have SAAB, including those two committees, right up to the transition, and then the new overarching committee will be formed to make the transition work.

As I said earlier, I want to enhance employer engagement in this area. Some good stuff has been done—I do not deny that—but there is an opportunity, as we do things differently and better, to enhance the employer voice in all this.