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I said in the session with the Auditor General that it is important to put on the record that colleges provide an important bridge for people from disadvantaged backgrounds and deprived communities—a bridge into work, a bridge into retraining, a bridge into higher education from further education for some, and a bridge from social isolation. When I speak to people in the colleges sector, they tell me that there are some “perpetual students” who keep enrolling on courses. In part, that performs a certain social function. People who otherwise would be left behind, would be isolated and would be cut off from society find some purpose in life by enrolling on college courses.

Going back to my first question, I am asking whether you have made any assessment of whether the contraction of courses available has or will have unequal impacts on learners.

I think that there will be some questions later on the funding formula.

I will move us on to another area that is contained in the Auditor General’s briefing, which is the job evaluation process for support staff. We have followed up on that with correspondence with College Employers Scotland, Unison and Unite. I should point to my entry in the register of members’ interests and my membership of Unite the union. The picture that we get back from College Employers Scotland is that it is committed to the job evaluation process for non-teaching staff and that it is committed to backdating any agreement through the job evaluation process to, I think, 2018.

There are various perspectives on that. The Unison perspective seems to be fairly frank and robust. The response from Unite finishes by saying:

“Unite and our members have lost faith in the project, some members have also lost interest, but other members are frustrated as they are confident that job evaluation would have delivered an increase in pay which they have been waiting for this last 5 years or so.”

There is pent-up demand, and there is an outstanding job evaluation process. It seems, at least from reading the replies that we have had from the employers and the trade unions, that there is a willingness to get the issue resolved, but that has financial implications. How is that going to be funded?

Does the Scottish Government or the minister not have any responsibility for making sure that the outcome of the job evaluation process is an objective assessment of whether people are being paid correctly? Some people may get paid less as a result of the job evaluation, but there is obviously also an expectation that some people will receive an uprating in their pay to reflect their duties. Does the Scottish Government not take any responsibility at all for that?

Many people have been calling for that for a long time. How do you achieve that when, as we were told earlier in the evidence session, individual colleges work with their regional economies and local employers? How do you get a national strategic approach to skills planning that takes a longer-term view about the direction that the economy is going in and the skills of the future that we will need that might be different or adapted from the skill sets that we are training people for at the moment? How do you reconcile the local and the national?

Just to be clear about the process, if the job evaluation exercise is concluded and, as a result, there is a net additional staffing cost for non-teaching staff, the Scottish Government will stump up the money to cover it and hand it over to the Scottish Funding Council, which will, in turn, make sure that colleges can pay the non-teaching staff what they are now due—and there will be a backdated element to that.

I invite Colin Beattie to put some questions to you next. There are some themes that we might return to before we conclude.

We are going to come on to that point. My understanding is that the range of college courses has contracted as a result of those flat-cash settlements and real-terms cuts.

Mr Rennick, I think that you said in your opening statement that learners at our colleges are disproportionately from the least advantaged communities. Have you carried out any equality impact assessments or economic impact assessments of the reduction in courses?

I suppose that the fundamental question that people have is about the extent to which these changes are educationally, economically or socially driven and the extent to which they are simply financially driven.

Thank you very much indeed. Your report opens with some very harrowing figures, not just in terms of the absolute numbers of deaths and of the lives that are affected by them, but also in showing how bad the picture in Scotland remains in relative terms. It draws on figures from August 2024, so they are very up to date.

Even in paragraph 2 of the introduction, you say that the drug-induced death rate in Scotland is

“27.7 per 100,000 population”

and that

“The next highest rate was Ireland with a rate of 9.7”

per 100,000 people. That is almost three times the incidence of drug-induced deaths in Scotland compared with Ireland, and it puts Scotland way out in a wholly worse place than anywhere else in the rest of the United Kingdom, as well as in relation to the European examples that you draw on. You talk about the death rate from drug poisoning being twice as high in Scotland as it is anywhere else in the UK.

Those figures do not seem to be getting better, even over time. What is your reading of the reasons that lie behind the record that Scotland has, compared with other parts of the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe?

Thank you very much indeed. Your report opens with some very harrowing figures, not just in terms of the absolute numbers of deaths and of the lives that are affected by them, but also in showing how bad the picture in Scotland remains in relative terms. It draws on figures from August 2024, so they are very up to date.

Even in paragraph 2 of the introduction, you say that the drug-induced death rate in Scotland is

“27.7 per 100,000 population”

and that

“The next highest rate was Ireland with a rate of 9.7”

per 100,000 people. That is almost three times the incidence of drug-induced deaths in Scotland compared with Ireland, and it puts Scotland way out in a wholly worse place than anywhere else in the rest of the United Kingdom, as well as in relation to the European examples that you draw on. You talk about the death rate from drug poisoning being twice as high in Scotland as it is anywhere else in the UK.

Those figures do not seem to be getting better, even over time. What is your reading of the reasons that lie behind the record that Scotland has, compared with other parts of the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe?