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Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. I anticipate that there will be a report. I think that an explanation needs to be provided because of the element of public funding. It needs to be provided for the staff and students. We need to understand how the situation occurred. I fully expect that there will be a report and I will reinforce that expectation in my conversation with the SFC.

Of course, it should be available to the committee to take a view on the nature of that report. Those are public institutions and public entities that are partly publicly funded, whether or not they are stand-alone institutions, and I would fully expect that an explanation will be available of how the situation has arisen.

I will check the Official Report, convener, because I think that I said that I would have “expected” that to happen, rather than “hoped”. It is a natural reaction for chairs of court to say to their vice-chancellors, “Have you seen this? Are we absolutely assured of our position?”

I want to see what the SFC makes of this in the context of what comes out of Dundee. As I have said, if there needs to be some movement on the governance arrangements—or, perhaps more accurately, the oversight arrangements—we are open to considering that, and we will do that in conjunction with the university sector.

The cabinet secretary has led on that issue on behalf of the portfolio, so, if you do not mind, she is probably best placed to answer that question.

I dealt with the £70 million underlying deficit—if one accepts that figure—in a previous answer, when I outlined some of the measures that have been taken in response to it.

On the four colleges being in significant difficulty, the SFC works closely with individual institutions as and when it emerges that they have an issue. That often requires that colleges come forward and identify to the SFC that they have issues of that kind.

In no way am I looking to dodge your question, but it is difficult to answer because there has to be a dialogue between the SFC and the colleges. Ministers do not deal with the finances of individual colleges. If a college comes forward and suggests that it has a short-term or a long-term difficulty, there will be engagement between the SFC, the institution and any regional body that might be involved to ascertain the nature of the problem and how it might be best addressed and then to react to it.

That goes to my earlier point about the need for the SFC to have a bit of flexibility in its financing, so that it has those moneys when it needs to step in and provide support. Of course, when the SFC does that, the institution concerned is required to demonstrate that it is on a path towards sustainability. Providing support cannot be an on-going, constant process where the institution is not trying to achieve a more stable position than the one that it is currently in.

There are a number of figures being bandied about. As I said earlier, if we trace the funding that goes to our institutions and pick one year and compare it against another, we see that there are different positions.

I accept that universities can reasonably argue that the funding that they receive, in real terms, has gone down. I accept that—we can argue about the extent of it, but I accept the premise. That is why, as part of our discussions with the universities, we have been looking at what more we can do, beyond the obvious funding streams that sit within education.

Our universities contribute so much to what we are doing. For example, we have been working closely with health colleagues on workforce planning. What opportunities lie with the universities? We are looking at expanding the graduate apprenticeship offering—there is real potential there. However, I recognise that that will require additionality for universities, and that they cannot simply use the places that they have. Steve Decent, the principal of Glasgow Caledonian University, is leading a piece of work on that for me.

We are seeking to maximise access to our universities through the broad spectrum of Government funding, in order to reflect the impact that they have on the work of the Government and the economy.

Do you mean broadly across the Government?

As I have said on a couple of occasions during the session, I have detailed discussions with individual institutions in many instances. In the university sector, there are individual universities that will feel that they should receive different treatment from some of their colleagues. In the college sector, there are anomalies in how funding is delivered, and not just in the context of rural settings; there are interesting anomalies in central Scotland around the premise of the funding for certain colleges. The SFC has been looking at the whole picture of funding.

I go back to your mention of a couple of universities in particular. We have heard the point raised in committee previously about the reserves of some of those institutions. We need to remind ourselves that those are massive institutions and that the reserves that they are sitting on are there for a purpose—they have a multimillion-pound project to deliver. At any point, you can take a snapshot and say that university X has a great deal of reserves and that we should do something to reflect that, but you need to look at the overall picture.

The point about fairness of funding is a good one. I was a member of the education committee some time ago. We produced a report in which we acknowledged that, when colleges were performing the first part of degree education—towards a higher national certificate or a higher national diploma—for the first two years leading to university, it seemed unfair that they were funded at one level when, if a student went straight into university, the university was funded at a different level. Having signed up to that report—Mr Rennie is smiling there to remind me—I recognise that there is an unfairness that, over time, will need to be addressed.

You will also recognise that, as we carry out an exercise to consider funding—as you said, not necessarily with more money but in relation to how it is distributed—there will be winners and losers. I am sure that the losers will be deeply unhappy about it, but I assure them that the SFC is looking at the matter.

I would simply add that the whole approach to shaping the mental health action plan was to bring about greater consistency. I have talked to representatives of individual colleges and universities and to front-line staff, and I have heard about some of the issues that they are having—and we fed that into the process. I refer here to the ability to escalate someone’s case through the system.

It troubled me greatly to hear stories from front-line staff of students coming to college or university and presenting on day 1 to the college support services saying that they had been told by their general practitioner that they should come and speak to them on arrival because those services would be able to get them into the system. That was, and remains, deeply troubling, and is one thing that has driven the actions that we have taken. However, as I said in my earlier answer, Mr Briggs, we will monitor how things work in practice, so that we can more effectively support our universities and colleges.

It is difficult for me to answer that question without potentially being misconstrued or misrepresented. Let us be clear that I am not talking about one particular institution or one instance. As minister, I would want to be satisfied, as the cabinet secretary would, that where public funds are being utilised by institutions, they are being deployed appropriately. As for where concerns are being brought forward, one of the areas that I have been exploring in the context of the forthcoming legislation is the need to ensure that there are mechanisms in place in FE and HE to ensure that, where trade unions or other groups have legitimate concerns about activities in institutions, they can be looked into and responded to.

There needs to be a balance here. As we know, industrial relations in some sectors are very poor, and there is a risk that there may be an endless stream of complaints. On the other hand, we need to ensure that, when legitimate concerns are raised, the SFC is in a position to respond, to investigate them and to act. One of the drivers for me in looking at the proposed legislation is that I am not entirely convinced that its powers of intervention are as strong as they need to be. I may be proved wrong, but that has certainly been a driver. I am keen to take the opportunity through the legislation, which the committee will be involved in looking at, to ensure that the most robust set of powers is available to our regulators so that all of us as parliamentarians can be satisfied that public money is being used appropriately.

We have not had an approach to that end. In the context of the lecturers’ dispute, there was significant movement, particularly on the part of the trade union, to try to bring an end to the dispute. As you alluded to, there was a small gap of £4.5 million between what the colleges felt that they could afford and what the union would settle for. The Government stepped in and supported that. We will of course always engage with employers if they come to us with requests. I cannot say today that we would be able to meet any request, not least because we have had no approach.