I ask those who are leaving in the gallery to please do so quickly and quietly. The next item of business is a member's business debate on motion 4187 in the name of Maggie Chapman on supporting striking university staff. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put and I would ask those who would wish to speak in the debate to please press the request to speak buttons now and I call on Maggie Chapman to open the debate U mating, Farnedd. Urodgwrs yn gaelgio Sfotlantiaid, ac yn gweithio dyn nhw'n barn i Llyfrgell Third ac i Gwylun, Ym Ddweud, Siarad ac Iedwyr. Fyrdd meidio meidio i Llyfrgell Third ac i Gwylun i Llyfrgell Third a i Llyfrgell Seoldation, Siarad ac i Gwylun i Llyfrgell Seoldation. Arataf yr unig rhagleniaid, mae y gwaith o Unsyllun ac yr unig rhagleniaid ei Gwylun i Llyfrgell Leolwyd Cymru. Mae'r unig rhagleniaid yn gweld hynny oherwydd ddim yn ddwy analys i ddweud ar briforol Abertyn ac Ieunifeil. Abertau fashioned yw'r unrhyw o'r gwestiad gydych yn ddweud ac mae'n ffordd diolch gynyddiad wedi'n ddyn nhw'n gyllid cydnidod ddwy iall briforol Abertyn a'r ddatblygu'n ddweud a'u proiectogol am gymhiliadau ac arlai ddiwethaf. Ond oedd unrhyw o'r ddweud hynny, oedderfod ac ymwybodol, ac ei gyrain i ddweud o'r ddweud yn cymrydol i ddweud yn ddifetwm arall o'i ddweud o'r ddweud ymll�ardd. Arbyn o'r ddweud ystafynnol, a gwblwyddoedd o'r parlymouth yn ddifudio'r ddweud o'r ddweud i gael i ddatblygu'r ffordd llwygol. Rydw i'n ddweud i'n ddweud o'r ddweud, oedden nhw'n ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud, ac, wrth gwrs, rwy'n gweithio'r ddweud o'r ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i'r ddweud. Pensions are a vital element of any fair society. They should allow us to live in dignity after a lifetime of hard work. But dignity is not what university staff will get now that new arrangements for pensions have been forced through. Staff will see a cut in their pensions of between 35% and 41%.  And why? Because university management insists on basing pensions on a largely imaginary deficit. The university's superannuation scheme, the pension scheme that operates at many universities in Scotland and across the UK, was last valued in March 2020 when economies across the world were in free fall as a result of Covid lockdowns. Since then, the health of the scheme has recovered significantly. A recent financial monitoring report provided by the scheme's trustees, their own trustees, confirms that if a new valuation was conducted now, the deficit would be reduced by at least 85%. But with some honourable exceptions, including the University of Glasgow, which has called on the next valuation to be used to increase pension payments, management insists on pushing ahead with a clearly outdated March 2020 valuation. University principals and managers appear content to spend public money, Scottish public money, voted on by this Parliament to fund a deficit that has massively reduced. That is where the Scottish Government comes in. Pensions are not regulated by the Scottish Parliament, and universities are autonomous independent organisations, but they are funded by public money, our money. So I would argue that the Scottish Government has a clear role to ensure university management acts responsibly and encourage them back to the table to negotiate properly with trade unions. Staff are striking not just for pensions, but also for fairer pay, an end to unsafe workloads, rolling back the casualisation and action on pay gaps, facing women, bain and disabled staff, their four fights campaign. Average pay in the sector has been cut by around 25% since 2009, and with inflation set to peak at at least 10%, that will only get worse. The same period has seen ever rising workloads for staff, with the average higher education staff member working around 50 hours a week. Like so many other public sector workers, university staff went above and beyond during the Covid-19 lockdowns and still are doing so. Under resourced counselling staff had to deal with a huge demand for their support from students. Library staff worked incredibly hard to ensure that students could access learning resources off campus. As well as dealing with the disruptive impact of Covid on their research, academic staff converted entire degree programmes to be taught online. That's a process that would usually take years, but it was done in weeks and facilitated by legions of IT staff. Universities might simply have shut down under the pressure of what they were needing to do, but they didn't, and that was because of their staff. That they were rewarded for all of that with a pay increase of 0% in 2020-21 is nothing short of sheer contempt. Staff are also striking against increasing casualisation. Over a third of academic university staff are in fixed term contracts. Talk to any academic and they will tell you of the years they have had to spend trattling from contract to contract, often having to constantly uproot themselves to move to a new university. Many of our students are taught by postgraduate research students who teach alongside their studies and on highly insecure contracts. Given all of that, falling pay, rising workloads and more precarious contracts, it is no wonder that the gender, black and minority ethnic and disability pay gaps stand at 15.5%, 17% and 9% respectively. Faced with that, staff have voted to strike in huge numbers. Last month, 77% of those balloted voted to strike again for fairer pensions at Dundee University, 73% in Aberdeen. Some local unions will not be going ahead with further strike action, but that has nothing to do with the resolve of staff and everything to do with Tory trade union laws that have made it deliberately harder to strike. A UCU survey shows that two thirds of staff said they were likely or very likely to leave the university sector within the next five years because of pensions, pay and working conditions—two thirds lost in five years, potentially. Those working conditions are students' learning conditions, many of whom this Parliament rightly spends hundreds of millions on so that they receive an outstanding education, a level of excellence and a threat because of the pressures on staff. Those pensions are paid to researchers who conduct life-saving medical research and that ever-falling pay and those ever-rising workloads will make it harder to retain expertise on climate change and the other challenges that we face. In short, it is not just a problem for our university staff or the higher education sector. It is a problem for all of us. If our universities lose our hard-working researchers, lecturers, library staff, learning technologists, graduate teaching and research assistants and many more, we will all be worse off. It is time for university management to come to the table and negotiate in good faith and it is imperative for Scotland that they do so. We need to take a close look at what is happening with pensions if deficits that don't really exist are allowed to take nearly £80 million out of workers' pockets. In closing, I would like to pay tribute to the university staff. The current disputes had roots going back years and they have struggled against unfair treatment for a long time, too long. But I say to them, unions work, strikes work, solidarity works, your action is not only the way to better pay in conditions for yourselves, it is part of a process of rethinking what universities can be, not businesses but places where we can imagine a better world and create and develop the tools to build that better world. Be in no doubt that you have the full support of the Scottish Green Party in doing so. Before I call the next speaker who will be Michael Marra, could I remind all members who are wishing to speak that they need to have their cards in and their button press so I call Michael Marra to be followed by Cookab Stewart? Up to four minutes please, Mr Marra. I would start by sharing in the comments of Maggie Chapman who I pay tribute to for securing this important debate and paying tribute to higher education staff across Scotland. I would also declare an interest in part of my remarks. I am a member of the USS pension scheme of 15 years of contribution and recently received my letter to indicate the significant deductions in my own pension. I think in comparison to some of my former colleagues at the University of Dundee, some of the lowest paid staff who are fighting now to make sure that they can retain the benefits of their local pension scheme. I do consider that these are a process of breaking a covenant with staff that university management make. When you take on a job and you are paying into a scheme and you are planning for the life that you have ahead of you, you make decisions on the basis of that money. I do think that we have a responsibility to maintain, as best we can, wherever we can, a dignity and retirement to make sure that those schemes are continued and well funded. Maggie Chapman makes very important and correct points in terms of the valuation of the scheme. When the valuation was taken and the last major dispute that happened on the USS scheme took on exactly the same form, there was a misvaluation of that and, lo and behold, within months that value of the scheme rose very significantly. This is a very long-term issue that has bedevilled the sector and resulted in many strike days and the impact on students and research that happens as a result. What the UCU are fighting for in terms of a uplift at a time of cost of living crisis is absolutely critical. The issues of casualisation and pay and equality have to be addressed and those figures of two thirds of staff considering leaving our precious universities is a stark reminder of that. I also want to talk about workloads and the workloads that staff in universities have taken on over recent years and we have to pay tribute to them. I think of the one woman in my university of Dundee when I worked there who put the entirety of teaching for our school of thousands of students online in a period of two weeks, a scheme that had previously taken the university, I think, £16 million to attempt with utter failure. That kind of can-do attitude that has maintained our universities in the face of the pandemic and the challenges that were in front of them, I would pay tribute to them. We are in a really difficult situation in our universities and it is getting worse across Scotland. We have an overloaded system and I am afraid that we have a business model in Scotland that is not working. This Government has steered ship of a vital national infrastructure and it could not be more critical to our national future and whatever direction that national future might take. I know that we have regular disagreements on that point. We have to look at the REF results today, the research excellence framework, an outstanding set of results in many regards, but we should also look at the fact that eight of the top ten of those research institutions have declined in comparison to the rest of the UK. We know why, because there has been an 18.2 per cent decline in the research excellence grant under this Government. The research funding capture as a result of that has declined by 2.5 per cent for the sector and all of that is based on the fact that there has been no increase in the unit of resource paid to universities for 13 years. That is a precarious situation for the universities that they are in and these things are flowing down to staff. We know that the business model of ever increasing reliance on international students driven by the decisions that this Government takes is not sustainable, it is not sustainable socially, it is not sustainable environmentally, the ever-increasing sizes of universities in our major cities pushing families out of housing causing a huge crisis and that is because of the business model that is imposed on our universities. The system is tracking colleagues on our committee and the Parliament are keen to look at this, I know, but the Government must change its attitude before the system breaks. I am grateful to Maggie Chapman for giving us this member's debate on this very important issue affecting universities' colleges around Scotland. Scotland's universities are world-leading. We can and should be proud of their success and international reputation, both which are down to the expertise and the dedication of lecturers who have been working with us in the past. I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank university and college staff for supporting students throughout the pandemic. Universities also play a key role in the Scottish Government's Covid recovery plan and we need them to be robust and resilient institutions in order to fulfil their needs. We need them to be robust and resilient institutions in order to fulfil that role effectively. The on-going dispute highlighted in this debate clearly undermines this work and it is absolutely vital that a resolution can be found as soon as possible. This dispute focuses primarily on measures to cut the university superannuation scheme pension and we have been very clear that the UK-wide university superannu scheme does not fall within the devolved responsibility of Scottish ministers. Universities are autonomous institutions and matters relating to pay, working conditions and pensions are for them to determine. The Scottish Government therefore has no locus to intervene in this dispute. Nevertheless, the Minister for Higher and Further Education, Youth Employment and Training has, I know, met with university leaders and trade unions on a number of occasions encouraging them to continue with negotiations in an attempt. I will. I understand that the Scottish Government provides over £1 billion to universities every year. Do you not think that that gives them some locus to intervene in this issue? I understand the intervention. However, the dispute resolution has to be between the employer and the trade unions. The nature of collective bargaining and we would not want the Government to intervene in that. Central to the Scottish Government's fair work approach is the expectations that employers, workers and trade unions should work together to ensure that workers are treated fairly and university and college staff should not be an exception to this approach. The university and college unions briefing for this debate lists some concerning statistics, which suggest that resolution of this dispute will be difficult, but that does not remove the responsibility of the university leaders and trade unions to reach that agreement as soon as possible. In the interests of staff and students, of course. Many students have written to me to highlight the effect of the dispute. It is having on their education and learning as well. Despite the on-going dispute, University Scotland has today released statistics showing that nearly 85 per cent of the research submitted by Scotland's universities has been judged to be world-leading. I'm just going to crack on. Most recently, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland was ranked fifth in the prestigious Quacarelli-Simons World University rankings to study the arts. I make no apology for repeating that Scotland's unisyn colleges are institutions that we can be proud of. In my finishing remarks, I'd like to remind everybody that Glasgow Kelvin is very proud to have eight institutes of further and higher education within its constituency. Nine, if you include the Open University, I trust that employers and unions will redouble their efforts to find a resolution. Thank you. I now call Oliver Mundell, who is joining us remotely, to be followed by Martin Whitfield. Up to four minutes, please, Mr Mundell. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I start by thanking Maggie Chapman for bringing this important debate to the chamber and for giving voice to the concerns many in the university sector feel about. As a member of the education committee, I'm well aware of the strength of feeling, and so is my inbox. While it's hard for the committee to intervene in a dispute between employee and employer, I do welcome the fact that the committee has committed to looking at wider issues and challenges in the university sector later this year. Speaking for the Scottish Conservatives, we remain incredibly grateful, like other speakers today, to lecturers and teaching staff and support staff at universities who have worked exceptionally hard over the past two years as Scotland has gone through the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic. That builds on years of professionalism and world-leading research and teaching. Without our lecturers and teaching staff, our university sector wouldn't be as vibrant, successful and ultimately would have fallen further behind in the face of financial pressures. Given this clear and unwavering commitment, the fact that we are seeing widespread strike action and discontent speaks to the deep unhappiness in the sector and is something that Scottish Conservatives are concerned about. Of course, we don't want to see education further disrupted, especially for students, but we do recognise the pressure staff are facing and we also recognise that changes to pensions and issues over paying conditions are understandably a source of frustration and a threat to the longer-term viability of the sector. While I do not believe that it is for politicians to tell independent institutions how to employ their staff, I cannot believe that anyone thinks that the casualisation of the university workforce, unsafe workloads or inequalities in pay and promotion are in the best interests of university staff, students, universities themselves as a whole. Here, I think that the Parliament and the Government do have a role and I think that we need to be asking the difficult questions about funding and the general decline the current model is promoting. I say this, if universities don't feel that fair working practices are affordable under the current funding model and within the context of the courses they provide, then they need to speak out on the issues that they face. In the meantime, the priority must be for university bosses to get back round the table with staff and unions to try and find a way forward. Here, members of the Government party suggest that the Government has no role in this matter. I think that it is quite disingenuous and I think that whilst it is not for the Government to tell universities what to do, it is an important role in facilitating that discussion and making it clear that where Government funding is supporting activities that fair work and good employee-employer relations must be at the heart of all decisions. Those long-standing issues need to be resolved, otherwise everyone suffers. We cannot go on letting this drag out because the parties need to take responsibility for trying to bring things to a conclusion and move the sector forward. Again, I thank the member for bringing this forward and I hope today's debate can nudge the situation a little bit further forward but, as we have heard from other speakers, those issues are not going to be easy to resolve. I would like to apologise that your screen was frozen at certain moments but we could hear you loud and clear so hopefully that gives you some comfort. I now call Martin Whitfield to be followed by Richard Leonard up to four minutes please, Mr Whitfield. I'm very grateful, Deputy Presiding Officer and it is a pleasure to speak in this debate and I congratulate Maggie Chapman for bringing the motion and indeed getting the cross-party support for today because this is talking about an element of our community, the university and college staff but also our students that are so important for a future that we all hear so much about in this chamber and indeed echoed across our newspapers about what we want Scotland to become. It is our university and college staff who are entrusted with leading our students into their entry to adult life and we expect so much of them and I think this current dispute and indeed the worded motion shows that perhaps we invest so little in them. I say this because the support between our students and our university and college staff has been one of mutual support, each know the importance of the other, students know the key to success lies in quality university and support in college staff and those staff know for many of them an absolute vocation that our immediate next generation needs the very best to start in their adult lives. As NUS Scotland president Matt Currilly has said college students in Scotland at the minute face a perfect storm in a letter to the Scottish Government co-signed by student officers from colleges across Scotland Matt Currilly calls for an investment to ensure that students, staff or colleges do not bear the brunt of the cost of living crisis that we now face and this motion sets out that there are two sets of industrial action and two sets of disputes based on what we have heard and described as the four fights and also the ongoing dispute on pensions which we'll see as we've heard 35% average cuts are cut based on what we now know to be an outdated valuation of the fund. But this comes on the back of the Scottish Government's budget for 2022-23 the college sector facing a real terms cut of 23.9 million in their core budget the loss of 28 million that was provided in 2021 to support them through the pandemic although of course our students and colleges haven't come out of the pandemic and have not returned to pre-pandemic teaching support and conditions even before the current cost Minister Jamie Hepburn Would the member recognise that that specific funding he is referring to came in the back of UK Government consequentials which they have removed that money doesn't exist for the Scottish Government anymore I'm very grateful for that intervention but of course the reality is the impact is still hitting our college sector it's still hitting our students they are not getting their lectures Scottish Labour supports the position of the trade unions that the current pay officer is unacceptable our dedicated lecturers should not be facing real terms pay cuts below inflation levels but this is just the latest in a long line of education and our teaching professionals there is so much rhetoric used by the Scottish Government regarding their prioritisation of education but do you know the action that they take rarely backs this up our young people have had two years of unprecedented disrupted education our college and university lecturers are key to these young adults recovery from Covid and they must be valued as stuff these staff pride themselves on supporting the education of their students and they are right to do so they would not risk more disruption through industrial action unless they believed it was absolutely necessary College of Scotland as highlighted the 22-23 budget just passed by the SNP Green Government means a national reduction in funding in the sector equivalent to £51.9 million all of this is leading to increasing pressures on finances that the pay offer devalues our education and can I say this with some caution the attitude of the government in standing by the side and not doing stuff also devalues our education as Matt Crowley also said we need to the government to prioritise student welfare reverse the cuts to our education and ensure staff are supported I'm grateful Deputy Presiding Officer Thank you Mr Whitfield I now call Richard Leonard to be followed by Katie Clark up to four minutes please Mr Leonard Thank you Deputy Presiding Officer and can I refer members to my register of interests and can I thank Maggie Chapman for securing this important parliamentary debate on this long running industrial dispute there is no wonder that these university workers are taking industrial action these are workers whose employers imposed a freeze on pay two years ago and then imposed a below inflation pay award on them last September timed timed I have to say to undermine a lawful ballot for industrial action with the squally bribery and cajolary of back pay a trick which did not succeed these same employers have now threatened the deduction of wages and presumably pension contributions as well when trade union members take part in industrial action short of strike action a draconian step I have to say in all my time as a trade union organiser I never saw taken even by cutthroat multinational corporations never mind public institutions whose very existence depends on billions of pounds of public money and then there is the widespread and unforgivable casualisation of the workforce in our universities so that a third of academic staff a third are on fixed term contracts one worker I spoke to in Glasgow just this week said since 2010 he's been on a procession of fixed term contracts sometimes out of work for six months at a time he told me in his words there is a generational layer of academics stuck in a hugely disruptive cycle of short term employment and unemployment that denies us dignity and a basic quality of life no wonder no wonder these workers are angry they have every right to be angry this is not only an assault on individuals it is a war on hard one collective basic employment rights and it is a war without honour and when I've spoken on picket lines to these striking workers at university avenue in Glasgow at the rickerton campus at Murray House in the cannon gate on the way down to this parliament they tell me how angry they are but they tell me how determined they are as well and that is the message for their employers that they are angry and determined but it is the message for this SNP green Scottish Government as well last November the EU unites the EIS, the GMB and unison wrote to the cabinet secretary for education and skills they wrote of successive below inflation pay in positions of unsafe workloads of pay inequality of insecure contractual arrangements they concluded while the trade unions believe universities in Scotland can and should be doing more issues there can be no doubt that consistent underfunding is a major contributory factor to the various disputes and unresolved collective issues in the sector so my message and the message of a new generation of outstanding trade union leaders like Joe Grady like Mary senior who joins us in parliament today is clear education disputes and collective issues still remain unresolved as we have been reminded by the EIS this morning with their members protesting outside this parliament they are now joined by unresolved disputes and collective issues in our further education colleges as well the situation in our colleges and universities is at crisis point so the minister for further and higher education needs to step in the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills needs to step up and the First Minister needs to wield the authority of her office exercise the leverage of the Scottish Exchequer and act decisively to get these disputes and to get these injustices resolved once and for all Thank you Mr Leonard and I now call Katie Clark who will be the last speaker in the open debate Thank you very much and I would like to congratulate Maggie Chapman on securing this important debate today and indeed on her opening contribution which set out very clearly the issues there's no question that colleges and universities are in crisis in this country and I speak today in support of the UCU and indeed the EIS fellow college lecturers are on strike also as they face a real terms pay cut and indeed have been demonstrating outside the Parliament today as I said earlier in the debate the Scottish Government provide over £1 billion every year to universities so they simply cannot wash their hands of these issues and expect the institutions are allowed to behave autonomously as fair and benevolent institutions the Scottish Government has the ability and the responsibility to intervene there must be a clear expectation that universities in receipt of public money taxpayers money treat their staff fairly and act as good employers as it stands that is not happening staff pay in the university sector has fallen by an astonishing 25.5% in real terms since 2009 and employers continue to offer insulting real terms pay cuts to staff around a third of all university staff both here and across the UK so both in Scotland and across the UK are on precarious fixed term contracts I am told that some university staff have been fixed term contracts for decades within some institutions in Scotland I am advised that some have been for more than 30 years the average working week in higher education is now over 50 hours a week with 29% of academics averaging more than 55 hours and a UCU Scotland survey conducted in July 2021 saw 76% of respondents reporting an increased workload during the pandemic so there's a number of issues that I believe that the Government have a responsibility to address the level of casualisation in the sector is alarming it is not good enough to simply say that governments cannot intervene they need to ensure that the Scottish funding council has a guidance stating that temporary or fixed term contracts should not be used they need to intervene in the current dispute to bring the parties together and to set out very clearly what government expects to happen they need to be at the forefront of demanding and pushing change in the sector that means fair work should be the minimum standard that is accessing Scottish funding council funding and the minister needs to intervene to make sure that that happens the Scottish Government needs to ensure that all staff in the sector are part of national collective agreements and bargaining with trade unions these are vital steps that the Scottish Government needs to get involved with in a leadership capacity to ensure that we have dignity that the workers are treated fairly but also that our money is appropriately spent thank you Ms Clark and I now call on Minister Jamie Hepburn to respond to the debate on behalf of the Scottish Government up to seven minutes please minister thank you I begin also by thanking Maggie Chapman for bringing forward today's motion the interests there is in this particular area and it's entirely appropriate that Parliament debates the issue I would also reiterate the importance of the contribution of our universities and those who work on them as Maggie Chapman early out and indeed the contribution they continue to make, Michael Marra mentioned the research excellence framework results that were published today which by my estimation by any reasonable estimation is another demonstration of the world-leading research that is conducted here in Scotland and on picking up on the point that Mr Marra made I can say that the research excellence grant allocations will be made clear in due course I also Michael Marra I appreciate the minister taking the intervention does he recognise that there are worrying trends within those figures of the 10 top universities in Scotland in the relative position to the rest of the UK is the causal reality of that not the significant cuts in real terms to the unit of resource and also the research excellence grant in Scotland over recent years Minister There's going to be various factors that contribute to the movement in these rankings at the point that I am making the one which I'm sure he must agree with that if you look across the piece institutions across the country we have seen significant improvements for most of our institutions which is something I think that we should be celebrating I'm also conscious of the context of the matter that we debate today the recent context the last couple of years which of course in common with all sectors has been particularly challenging for those in and study in our higher education sector I'm enormously grateful for the resilience that the sector has demonstrated throughout the period In relation to the dispute I share the concerns that have been expressed regarding the ongoing disputes within the higher education sector over a range of issues has been mentioned by a number of members the role, the responsibility the Scottish Government has to try and intervene in this situation I don't shirk from that responsibility and I want to make it clear we are not standing by idly on the sidelines Maggie Chapman suggests the Scottish Government should be urging universities to remain at the negotiation table to continue to contribute to the process I have made that point any time this has been raised directly to university management I have met unions and university management on a regular basis and my clear call to all parties is to continue to negotiate this to resolve it I think they are fundamental and the other point to make is that this is not a scotty specific situation this is a UK-wide situation so it cannot be resolved here in Scotland alone on a scheme that is the subject of negotiation and disputes at this moment in time The fundamental point though and I think this is where we should offer clarity is that where for example Cookab Stewart makes the point that the Scottish Government does have a locus to intervene I think the fundamental point the one I would agree with and I think one that surely anyone would agree with is that we are not to these negotiations and I think anyone is seeking for us to be a direct party to these negotiations so in that sense that is where the difficulty exists that we are not directly involved because the universities are autonomous institutions I'm not aware of anyone suggesting that that should be anything other than the case and on that basis it is for the universities and their workforce representatives to come together to resolve these matters but of course I will meet and work with those parties to try and assist and urge them I'm not sure that the minister is saying I'm just about to get away I didn't want Mr Marasby standing about endlessly waiting for something well he needs to wait no longer Mike Marra I greatly appreciate being put out of my misery I thank the minister for giving way does he not recognise that we may not be calling for a direct to be at the table in those negotiations because I'll link between the Government's decisions in terms of the funding that it makes but there's also interventions directly that it can make as my colleagues have laid out with the Scottish Funding Council who set the terms against which public money is spent in these institutions requirements can be made of that in the outcome agreements and the discussions that on-go with universities on a contractual basis as to what they're required to deliver for taxpayers' money and that the minister has a direct role in mandating the Scottish Funding Council to act minister again this fundamentally comes down to the process and the ambitions that we have for fair work I used to be the minister for fair work I take the fair work agenda very seriously indeed and I recognise that central to fair work is enabling and endowing workers to have their voice heard and heard in this instance through trade union recognition and there should be an appropriate and effective avenue if I can finish this point I'll gladly give away if you give me two seconds but an avenue by which parties can come together and yes in that sense the Scottish Funding Council in line with the Scottish Government has a role to play to further the fair work agenda that's one we take seriously that's one we engage with our institutions on a regular basis to make sure that the fair work first criteria that we have will be embedded within our workplaces I would respectfully say that having a fair work framework and having fair work practices there's no guarantee that they will not end up sometimes being dispute between workers and management that may still happen even in a fair work context is about ensuring that the platform for being done in a fair fashion exists I'm not sure who wanted to intervene but I'm happy to give away to Ms Chapman Maggie Chapman for those comments about fair work does the minister think then that it is acceptable that it will be women and younger staff that are most affected by the pension cuts the plans bake in discrimination discrimination baked in because of the deficit recovery payments to repay deficit that doesn't really exist anymore will require cuts to the pensions that will most likely affect the younger workers and women Minister I would be concerned about any disproportionate impact and I think those are legitimate things that should be raised through the prison middle school station these are issues, these are matters that I have the ability to discuss directly with Universities Scotland, with the trade unions and these are matters that I will discuss but ultimately it is inescapable I'm afraid to say that this is a matter that requires the universities and their workforce representatives to come together to resolve I think that we would all agree that it is no one's interest that there is long term industrial action although I fundamentally agree with the fundamental right of workers to undertake industrial action if they feel it is necessary but what we want to see what we must see is a coming together the continued need to negotiate that's my message and that should be the message of this Parliament and we want to see this dispute resolved thank you minister that concludes the debate and I suspend this meeting until 2pm this afternoon which is very soon, thank you


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