04/10/2012 Newsnight Scotland

don't know when the crisis sense. - We get his thoughts on free

universal benefits and whether the sums add up. And the campaign to

recognise these pioneers of women's education, 140 years on why women

are still under-represented in science, engineering and technology.

Good evening. Another First Minister's Question Time, another

barney. And, like last week, it was sparked by the debate initiated by

Labour over the provision of free universal benefits. Well, tonight

I've been getting the thoughts about that and other matters of

Robert Black - the man who for 12 years scrutinised public sector

finances in his job as Auditor General. But first, a flavour of

today's FMQs. He has already brought in to �0.7 billion worth of

cuts. The poor, the vulnerable and hard-working families in this

country have noticed, they have noticed, the pensioner who needs

help to wash and dress and to feed themselves, suffering the indignity

of 15 minutes can visit in a day. The family paying more for

childcare than their mortgage, the 18,000 Scots denied a place at

college. One of the thousands of working-class students who have had

bursaries cut by �900 the year. is correct to say the Scottish

budget is under attack from Westminster. It was under severe

attack from the last Labour government as well. But the

solution to that facts cannot be surely abandoning concessionary

fares or free prescriptions or free personal affairs, free personal

care or retreating tuition fees or abandoning the council tax fees.

How will working families the benefited from adopting the

policies the Tory party have adopted south of the border? A few

hours after that, I sat down with Robert Black, who retired just a

few months ago as Auditor General for Scotland. It was his job to

scrutinise how the public sector was spending your money. And he

started by telling me how things changed over his time in charge.

Well, I have been Auditor-General for over 12 years and for most of

that period we had growth of 5% a year every year. That allowed lots

of improvements to brought into Scottish public services and couple

of years ago we passed the tipping point and over the next the years

we will be taking out of 0.5% out of the budgets. Given most of the

personal services are driven by stopping cost, teaching numbers and

policing members, it's a lot of money to take out. There will take

us to 2014 and 15. The indications are that beyond that the spending

challenges will continue and already some public bodies like

Glasgow council are planning for significant reductions. The final

point to make his we are only a third of the way into this round of

spending cuts. There are still two- thirds of these spending cuts

between now and 24 team to come. we have the correct quality of

debate to allow Scotland to readjust given these new

constraints? It is easy to kinds of three murder at politicians.

Politics is often a contact sport, that is fine and I will not get

dragged into that but the moves being made by the Labour Party in

Scotland to at least start asking questions is a good thing. We need

to do more of that. We need to do it as a society, can we afford the

services which are free at the point of delivery given the tough

members but are in the report. we? Can we afford it? It is a

current and live debate at the moment whether the benefits that

accrue during the good times of devolution can be afforded in the

year is going ahead. OK, if you take a person in care and the free

bus passes, when the schemes were set up, there was no hint given

that the cost of those would be rising as quickly as they are now.

And as we said in a report, the consistory travel scheme could cost

not far short of half a billion pounds by Twenty20. Were the MS Ps

aware of that? The answer is No 8. The affordability of some of this

has to be questioned, every pound it goes on free services for bus

passes for well off older people is a PoW and that is not there to do

other things. We reported on health in the Community Transport which is

really important for vulnerable people. Because of the council tax

capping we saw those been cut back. People are getting more isolated in

their homes. That means they have a poor quality of life and for the

public sector it means they will be admitted to hospital more often

because they cannot get to there care facilities. We need to find a

place where we can talk about these things openly, tolerate differences

of opinion being expressed on the reality out there and then the

politicians can absorb the information and take it forward to

develop policy. Did you ask -- as Auditor-General have all the

information to see if the large amounts of public money would be

well spent in Scotland? The short answer is No. For all of my time as

Auditor-General, I was a voice arguing for the urgent need to

improve information about costs, volume of service and the quality

of service because in so much of the public sector it was not there.

I am not picking on the orthopaedic surgeons but it is an area we

looked at. We did a report on orthopaedic surgery, the standards

of performance in care were high, let's emphasise that. Over 10 years,

there was a 70% increase in resources after inflation. But we

found a much smaller increase in the activity levels coming through

the Orthopaedic speciality. We simply cannot afford to not have

the answers to these questions given the challenges ahead. I could

repeat that story across large parts of the public sector. It's a

serious issue. If we can't tell how well public money is being spent,

billions of pounds, had we fix that, what is your big idea for allowing

the public who pay taxes to know the money is well spent? There is

no silver bullet or Big Idea. There are some things we can do. The

first thing we can do is within the parliament find a space to have a

debate which is balanced with the debate on independence. I recognise

and respect it's a big issue for the government and Scottish society.

Somehow we have to find the space to talk about these are tough

issues which matter because if the public services cannot continue to

deliver to the standard we expect then people will suffer, the

elderly and vulnerable. One proposal I am making, and I have

taught to people I know about this, people whose opinions I respect,

one proposal is that we need to create some kind of independent

entity that can do good analysis to inform the debate. I am suggesting

we should creates under the auspices of Parliament a commission

on resources and performance in Scotland. People of real ability,

staffed by economists and performance analysts to do work for

Parliament on some of these tough issues. That was Robert Black

speaking to me earlier. Edinburgh University was the only Scottish

institution to improve its standing in the Times Higher Education World

University Rankings. Something to The old Edinburgh Royal Infirmary

has been replaced by this vast complex. 57% of the students that

enrolled here last month were female. 140 years ago that would

have been unthinkable. The small group of women attempted to study

medicine at the institution and they faced ferocious opposition.

The strongest opposition was from the institution itself. They felt

that it was overcrowded and underpaid, so they felt that women

adding to it would add to social and financial ruin for them. It was

an economic argument. ringleader, feisty individual born

in Hastings, Sophia Blake. In 1869 she was allowed to that regulate

and begin her studies. The presence of a handful of female students had

opened a can of worms. The women were not without some supporters.

Some eminent surgeons and the Scotsman newspaper were among them.

But most and the medical profession should open hostility, accusing

them of trying to bring about financial and social ruin. The most

bitter opposition came from their male counterparts and their own

families. The reaction both of the body of medical students, who were

very much against female medical students, possibly because they

were very good these students. They were top of their class. The female

students were used to being patronised, harassed and mocked.

One afternoon in November 1870, they arrived at Surgeons Hall to a

mob. The gates were slammed in their faces. A male student inside

saw what was happening, rushed down and wrenched open the gates and

ushered them inside. Later when their anatomy class finished, he

and 20 others ushered them to safety through the howling crowd.

Sophia was undaunted. Told she would not be allowed to graduate

and therefore be unable to practise, she found at the hospital in London,

completed her studies in Switzerland and in 1870 it was back

in Edinburgh, setting up her own medical practice. -- 1878. It was

another 15 years before the medical school was opened up to women.

Maybe the thing that kept them going was that it fed their

determination. If these were the meant that were going to become

doctors and therefore treat women, then there was all the more reason

for them to become doctors themselves. The campaign is now

under way to get this group of pioneering women recognised by the

university. I have raised this issue and written to the principle

and the Senate. I think it is a good idea to consider this. It

should be celebrated. These are very good role models. I think that

role-model women in tertiary education medicine should be

paramount. To correct an injustice, even though it is 140 years old,

but they think it is important for medical students and medical

practitioners now to realise the struggles that our predecessors

went through to get us where we are. Today, the only official marking of

this trailblazer is a plaque outside the medical school. The new

intake of science and medical undergraduates take it for granted

that they will have the same opportunities as their male

counterparts. There is definitely that element of wanted to prove

yourself. Females have that over males nowadays, just because of the

history. I think it is inspiring. Good for them. It is really good

that they did that and it has enabled us today to be able to come

here as equals. A remarkable story of pioneering

women in medicine. But 140 years later, it seems there are still

glass roofs to be smashed. In the area of science, engineering and

technology it's thought about 40 per cent of university students are

female. Burrow down deeper, though, and you'll find that whereas

biology is dominated by women, only 14 per cent of engineering students

are female. And yesterday we were told that fewer than half of

schools in England had any girl pupils sitting A-level physics. I'm

joined now by Professor Christine Davies, a physicist at Glasgow

University. When you look at your lecture hall,

how many of those looking back at you are female? We have about 20%

women doing physics. Somewhat better than engineering, but

nowhere near as good as biology. presume you think that is not good

enough. A no. We would like to increase that percentage. When you

talk to those 20%, to get any idea of what could encourage more of

their colleagues to go into physics? Of course there are all

sorts of societal issues around subjects like physics and

engineering. If we could encourage more girls to do the subjects at

school, then that would create a bigger push at university and

onwards. How do you do that? example, the Institute of Physics

report yesterday showed that very few schools in England were getting

girls into A-level physics, and one of the issues is the lack of

specialist physics teachers in England. In Scotland we have a

better situation. We have more specialist physics teachers and a

higher proportion of girls doing physics at school. I don't think we

can really congratulate ourselves that much because it does not in

the end produce a higher proportion of gilts going through to physics.

Is there something about physics as a discipline? Biology is doing

better but they are both scientific subjects. Could there be something

specific to visit that females in particular think means it is not

for them? -- to physics? There are issues to do with role models, for

example, the fact that there are so few women going through physics.

That means girls do not have role models but in biology they have

more. It is parental attitudes to some extent. Parents need to

realise that these are good subjects for girls to do and they

lead to good careers with high salaries. They should encourage

their daughters to do these subjects. In terms of those that do

go to university and study physics at these subjects, not all of them,

in fact in some cases very few of them, actually continue into a

career that is directly related to their degree. Is there some other

problem beyond the university gates that needs to be addressed? Yes.

Careers going on in physics are problematic. It seems to be the

environment in companies that is not welcoming to women. What do you

mean by the environment? It is male dominated? Women should not be

physicists? Yes, the male-dominated environment that create attitudes

that make it hard to succeed. One of the things that is a career in

physics, a university department. But one of the things that we have

been doing in Scotland is to work with physics departments and the

Institute of Physics through the Juno programme, which is supposed

to encourage departments to put the practice in place of hiring women.

If you hire more women then you create a better atmosphere, but

also the retention and promotion of women. The University of Glasgow

department of physics is now a junior champion. We have things in

place and we hope we can increase the number of staff that we have

and encourage women into physics. Thank you for joining us. That is

all but we have fall-out on Newsnight Scotland. You can catch

Hello. Wet and windy for many of us overnight and that rain will be

chased away quite quickly tomorrow morning but still quite blustery

across the South East and East Anglia. The rain is never too far

from the South coast but elsewhere it brightens up nicely. Some

blustery showers in North West England. Most of the day will be

dry across the Midlands and it will be drier and brighter across in

East Anglia after a damp start. The wet weather will pushed into

southern areas and into the South West through the afternoon and the

early evening. With heavy downpours tonight, that extra rain could

cause some problems. In Wales it will be dry but with lots of cloud.

In Northern Ireland there will be blustery showers but the winds not

as strong as today in western Scotland but a scattering of share

was as well. The outlook will be showers in the Far North East on

Saturday but over all, there will be some fine autumn weather. There

will be a chill in the air and some mist and fog, but expects any

spells for the majority. In southern counties of England on