26/10/2016 Scotland 2016

Student debt's doubled over the past decade,

and the supply of university places is failing to keep up with demand.

So how is the Scottish Government going to close the attainment gap?

Good evening and welcome to Scotland 2016.

Could dark days for universities spell the end of days

Also tonight, it's only 17 years old but is the Scottish Parliament

And with so few women pursuing a career in engineering,

we'll be looking at attempts to redress the balance.

Now, there's been a lot of talk recently about driving up

But if Nicola Sturgeon is to close the attainment gap and boost

the chances of young people from the least affluent backgrounds,

then higher education looks like it could do with some urgent attention.

According to Labour there are now 20,000 fewer students receiving

grants and bursaries than at the beginning

Add to that the threat from Brexit to our universities,

which are so dependent on staff and students from abroad

for research and revenue, and it's easy to think that

Well, I'm joined in Edinburgh by the SNP's James Dornan,

who's also convener of Holyrood's Education Committee,

and Liz Smith, who's the Tories' spokesperson for education.

James Dornan, you are going to abolish student debt in 2007. What

happened? And number of things, one of them was called the financial

crash. I wasn't here in 2007, I was elected in 2011 so cannot be held

responsible for what happened in the circumstances changed after the

election of 2007, no one realised what we would be facing. But we are

hearing these figures that the number of students receiving

bursaries and grants has fallen and debt has doubled. You see that as a

problem or just the price we have to pay to four more students going to

university? The amount of cash paid out in bursaries and grants was

increased last year so there is a greater amount of cash going into

the system. Liz Smith, there are conflicting views about these

figures. Is there more money going into the system? There's been more

money in the last two years but the crucial fact about the bursary

system is that the fun thing in the last five years has almost halved in

terms of the available bursary and grant support. Much more important

than that is that the percentage share of the support available to

students from bursaries used to be 22% five years ago, now down to 8%.

That makes a difference because when it comes to bursaries and grants,

these do not have to be repaid whereas the student loan which is

now the bigger part of this, you do have to replay that, and that is

hitting poorer students hardest. Would you accept that increasing

bursaries and grants is more of an incentive to get students from

deprived communities into university and loans put people off? We have to

live in the world we are in. I find it ironic that a Conservative

spokesperson who I have a great deal of respect for is suggesting we

should be looking after the poorer students were suggesting they should

pay tuition fees. There is an issue about making sure students can get

to higher education that we have to live in the world we are in and make

sure we use money wisely and we do not have an unending part of Monday.

But you could put more into bursaries and grants rather than

putting off this debt on the shoulders of students. Were not

putting doubt on the shoulders of students, the debt in Scotland is

less than in the rest of the UK. Times are difficult for everybody,

nobody denies that but students in Scotland have had the best package

over a number of years compared to other areas. Liz Smith, you want to

get more in the way of bursaries but you will pay for that high taxing

students after they graduate to the tune of ?1500 a year, so you are

putting more emphasis on loans. Let's be clear about the situation

with the university sector, every principle in the land is asking that

more money goes into that sector, and to do that either you can ask

the state to pay the bill, which will mean putting up taxation and in

the last few days we have seen what business would think of that, or you

take more money away from different areas of spending, which has

happened to college budgets to enable the SNP to say they are

funding free higher education, or at the alternative, which has been

thought about right back to the days of Stewart Cink and, is to look back

-- is to look for a graduate contribution, a part payment by

students going to university. But what is wrong with tuition fees, at

least in England where you have students paying for education there

isn't a cap on numbers to university, but in Scotland there is

a cap and we see demand outstrips supply, and that will hit some of

the poorest students. Two things about that, one is that the

principle of education being free is important and one we should try to

stick to. There is no way in the world you will encourage people from

poorer families come from families who have tried to make ends meet, to

support a son or daughter to go to university when they will have to

pay tuition fees with other debts. But if you look at other countries

that have had these graduate contribution systems, the actual

payment towards bursaries is much greater, you were not stopping

people applying because there is an aspect of fee-paying. The bursary

contribution has been greater, so more students attend from

backgrounds. You were asking us to increase bursaries yet take a

graduation tax, I don't see what the difference is. But certain trusts

this year said young people from disadvantaged areas are four times

less likely to go to university than those from wealthy backgrounds.

There is a huge job to closed that attainment gap. Yes, there is a lot

of work to do, some of it is cultural and some of it is about

families who do not have a tradition of sending kids to university and we

have to work through that, but there have been great steps taken and we

have to continue along that line but not forget about the elephant in the

room, the danger that Brexit is bringing to universities and future

funding. We need to leave it there, we are out of time. Thank you.

Now, do you remember all those years ago we were told

the Scottish Parliament would herald a new era of open democracy,

holding the politicians to account more effectively than they do

Well, it seems Holyrood might be in need of reform

because the Presiding Officer is setting up an independent

commission to review the way it works.

We'll discuss some possible ideas for improvement in a moment.

Scotland's Parliament ceased to exist in 1707 but aspirations to

restore it never went away. In 1989 the Scottish institutional

convention's claim of right pledge to see an assembly established.

David Gill maintained a constant presence in Edinburgh to keep up the

pressure. Few people want a Scottish parliament? In 1997 the votes of

Fife settled the matter once and for all. So now for the first time in

nearly 300 years Scotland will have a Parliament. There shall be a

Scottish parliament. I like that. But now the Presiding Officer is

setting up an independent commission to look at the role of Holyrood in

scrutinising legislation and its independence from government. We

will have a range of new powers and I want MSPs and the public to have

confidence that we can carry out government and be accessible to the

public and I want this independent commission to look at all our

processes and procedures and come back with recommendations so we can

all have confidence that Parliament is fit for the next century. One

former MSP who was there at the beginning welcomed the review,

but... You have to be careful what sort of review it is. Will it be an

establishment think where the usual suspects are on board to give their

lofty opinions which take the boxes and come out with mild

recommendations or will it be thorough and hard-hitting and for

real improvement? She highlights the influence of civil servants. The

establishment is strong in Holyrood and too much is dominated by

officials. There are many good officials to set things up and are

very clever but also quite a number of Sir Humphrey people who do not

have that accent but have the Sir Humphrey desire to control and once

things get under a blanket of officials it begins to go and MSPs

need to be more assertive. The Presiding Officer says now is the

right time for a review because Parliament is turning 21. I do not

have a shopping list of reforms I want the commission to win loss, I

want them to look at all our processes, how we engaged with

government and hold the executive to account, how we engage with the

public. We were set up to be more accessible and that needs to be

referenced. There is still a monument commemorating the vigil

that base for five years and Edwin Morgan's charged to the Parliament,

read by Liz Lochhead, still sets out what many hope for from MSPs. A

symposium of procrastinators is what they do not want. A phalanx of

former Tigers is what they do not want. And perhaps, above all, the

droopy mantra of it wasn't me is what they do not want.

You can judge for yourself just how many of those were achieved!

I'm joined here in the studio by Dr Craig McAngus of the Centre

of Constitutional Change at Aberdeen University,

and from Edinburgh by the Scotsman's Joyce McMillan,

who was a member of the group which advised on the Scottish

Parliament's procedures ahead of its establishment.

How much of that original vision is still intact? Some of it, I think

some aspects of the Scottish Parliament by there to be proud of,

I think the quality of the debate, have is not in the round of First

Minister's Questions which people see that the general level of debate

can be strong, especially on social issues which a lot of MSPs are very

concerned with and I think some aspects of the Parliament's

openness, its petition system and so one have been much admired and

imitated, but 18 years have passed, as Ken Macintosh says there has been

a huge technical to call revolution and one thing which is disappointed

has been the failure of the committee system to live up to the

high hopes people had at the beginning of the Parliament. The

committees are widely seen as inadequately resourced and not

independent enough to hold Parliament to account when we don't

have a second chamber. A complaint in the last parliament is that with

a majority government it was SNP dominated but there are more

structural issues? Certainly, it is unusual for a party

to do as well as the SNP did in 2011, winning almost half the votes.

It is very rare anywhere in European politics, and it was down to the

sheer strength of their performance. But yes, there are structural

issues, such as not enough MSPs. If you look at the weight of

responsibility is that the Scottish Parliament now has, and the number

of areas it has to legislate on. It is trying to deal with at least two

thirds of the work Westminster does with one fifth of the number of

members. It seems there are not enough members. Let me bring Craig

in here. On that committee system, the committees in the Scottish

Parliament do not make the headlines in the way Westminster ones do. Is

that because they do not have the legal power to call witnesses? It

could be. They don't calling people like Russell Brand, so they don't

get the headlines. Joyce makes a good point. This is something that

academics in the field have been studying for the last ten or 15

years - how effective the committees are. Clearly, a lot of things that

happen in committees may or may not, you know, happen... In the Scottish

Parliament, for example, the Scottish Government has its

pre-legislative agenda scrutinised by the committee, or can do. So the

committees can have a look at what the Scottish Government is doing

before it gets to the committee stage. So some of the issues that

may arise at committee stage later on don't do some. So in some

respects, committees have been very effective, but the under resourcing

has been a factor. In terms of research? Back up? Staff, time,

members... You are looking at a pool of about 80 MSPs that are available

to fill up 16, 17 or 18 committees. It is very thin on the ground for

MSPs to staff that. The majority of Parliamentary staff work on

constituency business. They are not working on committee business, so

there's a real capacity problem. But in increasing the size of the civil

service, there is a danger. In that report, it was made clear that the

civil service is too powerful in Scotland. You want a balance. What

we are not getting, because of the Parliament not being big enough, is

the kind of career committed chairs, like the famous Margaret Hodge of

West Minister's Public Accounts Committee, who can really carve a

Parliamentary life for themselves, chairing committees and becoming

very powerful, knowledgeable forces. And they are then in a position to

ask and tell the officials what to do. Even without increasing the size

of the Parliament, a step we could take is to make it a rule of the

Scottish Parliament that if you take on the chair of a big committee, you

have to remain in the chair for the session and not be tempted away by

the offer of ministerial office. Is one of the problem is not having a

second, upper chamber? It doesn't have to be a problem. There are many

legislatures around the world that have just one chamber, and act very

effectively. These unique Amaral parliaments have very effective

committee capacities. It is not a problem that Scotland has just one

chamber. Thank you. Engineering is still

a male-dominated business. One estimate suggests

there are eight times more men There've been many attempts

in recent years to redress the balance, including today,

when nearly 100 interested female pupils were brought together

by Aberdeen University in a concerted campaign to get more

girls into engineering. A lot of people think engineering is

just offshore, doing the busy jobs, and not realising there's more to it

than that. It just comes down to stereotyping, that women are more

traditionally in humanities, and men do jobs that involve building or

maths. Hopefully, that is changing, and events like this really helped.

It is important for them to feel that they are not the only ones who

want to do this, and it is possible for them to get a job there.

Engineering seems to be a profession that attracts a very few girls.

However, when they choose that profession, they performed

brilliantly. As a female engineer, I feel we can give ourselves more

opportunities, and that is why this event brings them to try and see

that they actually have skills for this profession. This is what we are

doing, trying to challenge the misperception. That is experienced

in Aberdeen. Earlier I spoke to Talat Yaqoob

from Equate Scotland - the organisation that aims

to increase the numbers of women There is clearly a massive imbalance

between the genders. If women are saying they are not particularly

interested in engineering jobs, Weiss fight against that natural

instinct? We do not have people say that they are not interested in

those jobs. If we were looking at natural merit, we would have an

equal number of young women pursuing stem related subjects. We are

finding there isn't the same level of choice available for girls as

there are for boys, for women as there are four men. It's not a case

of fighting something natural, it's a case of providing real choice for

women to pursue their interests and capabilities. There is choice. Girls

can study physics, chemistry, biology and maths at school. The

opportunities are there, but they are just not doing so in such great

numbers. There is a bigger pattern of inequality. Last year, of all the

pupils who took physics at higher level, only 23% were girls. If it

was natural, it would be a much more equal number. There are stereotypes

and biases at play here that prevent girls from seeing stem related

subjects as being for girls. We have an out dated view of engineering,

that it is particularly masculine as a pursuit. We need to overcome these

perceptions. I can see there might be a male stereotype when it comes

to engineering jobs, but subjects at school like physics and maths - what

is male about those subjects? It is about the stereotypes we have at a

young age. If young girls are not encouraged to pursue those subjects,

whether it's the toys they are given all the conversations they hear

around them. Media portrayals of science and engineering in what they

watch. They might have a bias that that is not for them. It is

important that we overcome that stereotype, and make sure that girls

know that pursuits of any type are not gender-based, and are there for

them to push you. It is an obvious question, but why does any of this

actually matter? Women could go off and do other careers that and just

as much. It matters to the Scottish economy. By 2020, Scotland needs

140,000 more engineers. We have to take populations of women with us to

reach that target. It matters when it comes to women's social

inequality. The majority of jobs in the future are going to be in stem

related careers. If we don't do more to get women into those subjects, we

will exacerbate the problem we already have of occupational

segregation, and we will exacerbate gender and economic inequality. It

matters to the economy, and two women's social justice. What can you

do about it? Equate Scotland specialises in this. Just today

there was a conference for young girls to come into the university

from the local area, and see what engineering is all about. That is an

example of one intervention. Equate Scotland provides placements and

opportunities for graduates to have opportunities, to go into businesses

and stay there. We encourage women to remain in stem sectors and then

rise up in the ranks. We develop and challenge the industry, so that we

have policies and practices in place to create an inclusive environment

that is welcoming to women, and looking for women's leadership. We

need a combination of all those efforts to create real change at a

fast pace. Thank you for joining us. Now, joining me to discuss

the day's big stories are Marianne Taylor and David Leask,

who are both from The Herald. Talking about Parliamentary reform

there. Ken Mackintosh, the leader of Holyrood, wants to make changes.

What changes need to be made? There is some room for change. As we heard

earlier, I'm not sure that the Parliament has had the level of

scrutiny it's needed over the years, but it is a Parliament. I am very

much in favour of having another chamber. It may not be hugely

popular with those who have to pay for it, but I think it is the right

thing to do. That sounds as bad as the idea of having ordinarily MSPs

-- having more ordinarily MSPs. Is the idea going to wash with the

public? I think the idea of having another chamber is going to do

better. We need more scrutiny. More MSPs is not the same... I think

another chamber is different. Would it be elected, or would we appoint

business people or academics? I would be in favour of an elected

chamber. I know it is hard to get people out to vote, but in

principle, it is the right things to do. First past the post MSPs, list

MSPs, a second chamber... It could get very complicated. Many think of

our politicians as ghastly, and some are, but they are not all as bad as

they appear. Ken Mackintosh has made some wise remarks about how we have

had a very tribalistic debate in the last ten years in Scotland. I think

politicians are better than we make them appear. As part of the problem

being the calibre of politician? For the Labour Party in the past, there

was always the sense that the best talent went to West Minister and the

second division stayed in Holyrood. It has perhaps stretched the amount

of talent it has, and people who are maybe not quite so good have got

into elected offices. But some of those accidental MSPs have been

quite good. If we allow them time to breathe, to be MPs and MSPs, we can

find those dissenting, neighbourly, nuanced voices, those cross partisan

voices, and let them be heard in the Parliament. Let's talk about First

Minister Nicola Sturgeon. She's been talking at the annual economic Forum

in Edinburgh about Brexit. I think there is a real opportunity

to present to the UK Government a unified Scottish position,

an all-Scotland coalition And all Scotland coalition. What

does that mean and will it be successful? This is all part of her

move to play to a more European audience. We saw the German

newspaper, their version of the FC, with a very prominent article

earlier today about how she is out there, Nicola Sturgeon, and is the

only one in the UK, from their point of view, who has any sort of

strength of opposition to Brexit. She has many admirers across Europe.

This week we have seen the pressure piled on for a hearing for Scotland,

a new deal for Scotland. Whether Theresa May will have anything to do

with that is something else. She has her own voters to look to. If she

finds an audience in Europe of all the institutions that are able to be

pragmatic, the European Union is one of them. She might be finding an

audience, or a lot of sympathy out there. But it is nothing if not

backed by action. It's nothing of the -- if the leaders of Europe

don't get behind her. Previous hostility to Nicola Sturgeon's

independence project is evaporating in Europe now. Europe can be

flexible, but can Britain be? Some months ago, long before the Brexit

votes, there was a story featuring all sorts of ways in which Scotland

could have a differentiated voice in Europe after Brexit. They are no

more absurd than Scotland being pulled out of the European Union

against its will. Can Theresa May be as flexible in recognising a

multinational union on her own island? Is it not a hideously

complex issue? Anything is possible. I'm not sure it's probable, but if

the European Union wanted to make it work, they could. Thank you both

very much indeed. I'm back again tomorrow

night, usual time. Marlon James has been labelled

a troublemaker for his novels exploring

Jamaica's violent past, but the real threat was to come from

his own personal demons. Whether it was in a plane

or a coffin,