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No.

Look, it has been challenging, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

Yes, but I think that it will be challenging to do that. As the committee will know, local government will have a strong view on the creation of league tables. In education, whether it is about behaviour or exclusion rates, there is often a real reticence on the part of local government partners to have an approach that measures them against one another.

I also think that such an approach—which I do not support—would not be helpful. Reporting might increase in a local authority, which would be a good thing, but then it might feel under the spotlight, simply because of that increase. We have seen that with some local authorities with regard to behaviour—I think that it is quite interesting.

I hear the point that Ms Duncan-Glancy is making, but I think that we need to deal with these issues very carefully. Moreover, it should not take away from the fact that, individually, parents and carers should know of incidents of restraint as and when they happen, and that they should be informed as a matter of course. Our national guidance sets that out, and it is certainly our expectation, but I think that the bill will put it beyond doubt, because it will put it on a statutory footing.

I agree with your view, convener, that it should be prioritised, and the national guidance sets out that approach. I do not think that we are going to move away from that view.

Yes. With regard to children attending a school outwith their own area, we are of the view that the report should be made to their local authority. For example, if the placing request caame from, say, the Highland Council for a young person to be placed in Moray, the report should go to where the placing request—[Interruption.] I am just checking that with officials, but yes, there is a bit of an issue in that respect.

As for the independent sector, I know that the Scottish Council of Independent Schools is broadly supportive of the bill, but there are issues there. For example, we do not want dual reporting. However, we think that amendments could be lodged at stage 2 that would resolve such issues.

I think that it is fair to say that the trade unions are not supportive of the legislation, so the Parliament needs to be mindful of that. There is quite a lot of support in the committee for the bill, and, of course, the Government is supporting it at stage 1, too, but we need to work with the trade unions on it.

There is more that we can do in this space to provide reassurance, and I would want to work with Mr Johnson in engaging with the professional associations. They are clear that they do not want the guidance to be put on a statutory footing. For all the reasons that Mike Corbett has set out to the committee, their preference would be for us to work with them on improving the guidance and perhaps making it a bit stronger, as we have done with behaviour. We can give more concrete examples and more support to the profession in that kind of non-statutory space, but that is not where we are here.

I am more than happy to engage with the trade unions on this. However, they have a number of concerns, and I come back to Mr Rennie’s point about the bill creating a chilling effect and, as a result, teachers not using restraint. An alternative view is the evidence that the committee took from Barnardo’s, which said that, on the contrary, there might be an increase in the use of restraint as a result of the legislation. We need to be mindful of those views.

I would hope that our engagement with the professional associations will not create challenges, but I have met them and have listened to their challenge. We need to do that as the bill progresses.

Well, anything can happen in Scottish education, Mr Greer. Thinking of the most recent conversation that I had with the NASUWT and the EIS, which was last week, I would say no, but that does not preclude it from happening in the future.

I sat in the stage 1 debate, which Mr Macpherson was thrown into in his first week after being appointed as the Minister for Higher and Further Education. There are a lot of things happening in tertiary education, which Government needs to reflect on and respond to as a result of the stage 1 debate. I am not going to answer the specific points that Mr Greer made, but we are considering those things in the round. I cannot think of where there has been a legislative block to ministerial action in relation to what has happened at Dundee, but I think that there is a need for greater reassurance.

The issue is that these are independent and autonomous institutions, and we need to be mindful of the Office for National Statistics classification and what bringing any institution closer to Government might do to those institutions. In my view, it would be extremely dangerous if that were to take place; I am sure that Professor Seaton and others will have a view on that when the committee hears from them shortly.

We need to be careful about the role of Government and the role of our independent institutions, but we also need reassurance. That is the point that Mr Briggs was pursuing, and I am in firm agreement with it. We have been raising these issues with the SFC, and the outcome of the Gillies review gives us some pause for thought about how there can be better transparency with regard to some of the financial issues that arose at Dundee university.

I saw the reports at the time and, like you, I shared some of the concerns. As I understand it, at that point, the SFC had undertaken to work with Deloitte but Deloitte had not, at that point, undertaken to look at the plan, because the plan was not acceptable to the SFC. That was dealt with in correspondence. The requirements from the SFC were sent back to Dundee, and it was my understanding that Deloitte was then to look at the updated plan.

Oversight will be hugely important—this is public money—and there will be a role for the SFC in that regard and a role for ministers. We will have oversight of the public money and the conditions, but the university is independent, and we need to be careful about the interplay in relation to the section 25 agreement, which allows us to award money to the institution—or rather to provide it with financial assistance—because of the unique set of circumstances in which it found itself.

There are two points to make in that regard: first, that we have certainty in relation to the conditions and that the SFC will ensure, on behalf of ministers, that those are adhered to; and, secondly, that the institution itself has to run independently. In the future, that is where Dundee university needs to get to, and we have a contribution to make in relation to the public money that is being provided.