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I am about to attend a meeting with the Scottish Funding Council. We engage with it regularly. I think that the reports that the member alluded to are some months old. I saw them at the time and I was concerned by them. Of course, over a number of months, I have discussed with the SFC its position in relation to Dundee university. I will continue to have those discussions—in fact, I will do that just after this evidence session concludes.

Mr Rennie, you know that I am always a positive minister when I am in front of this committee, and in engagement—

But Deloitte will have to look at the plan when it is agreed. Of course, the plan is not for ministers to sign off; it is for the court to agree to. I think that the court—to go back to Mr Rennie’s line of questioning in that regard—is very important in that respect.

However, I agree with Mr Ross’s observations on the optics of that, and I will continue to pursue those issues with the SFC when I meet with it shortly.

Forgive me, I do not have the conditions in front of me.

I am curious, Ms Duncan-Glancy—I share your curiosity—but the conditions that are put forward by the SFC will be about providing reassurance in relation to public money but also with regard to what it is feasible for the university to deliver, so we have to be balanced in relation to the conditions. We are not going to ask the university to do things that are unreasonable, but this is about public money, so ministers need reassurance in that regard. I do not have the conditions in front of me, so I cannot give concrete details. Once we have the conditions, I need to engage with the university, and we need to engage through the SFC to that end.

The SFC has been holding a number of workshops with the university, and I think that it is fair to say that that has taken longer than we would have expected, so there has been a bit of a challenge in that regard—

We are reviewing the current guidance regardless of the bill’s passage—and it is important that I say that. I am mindful of where we are in the parliamentary year.

A significant amount of public money is being invested to support the institution. You know that that is extremely unusual, because our universities are independent and autonomous. It is not the case that any other institution is receiving the financial support that Dundee university is receiving at this time, and we need to be mindful of that.

If Mr Rennie thinks that the relationship has improved, that is a good thing—I think that it is positive. Like me, he is a Fife MSP; he wants Dundee university to survive and thrive. It supports a lot of our constituents and a lot of young people in the areas that we represent, so I am absolutely committed to working with the management team to support the university to have the future that will see it thrive.

We have also had really positive engagement with the trade unions, and I am sure that the committee will engage with them and listen to their views, because it is really important that the management team listens to staff and students throughout the process. As the committee has heard in recent months, that has been a challenge.

I am not sure that I follow the line of questioning. We published the guidance in November last year; we need to review that guidance, and that was happening regardless of the passage of the bill. With regard to the bill’s general principles, we have always been supportive of the kind of approach that Mr Johnson has taken. I do not really have an issue with his approach. I have set out a number of areas that we would like to see amended. It is for Mr Johnson to amend the bill, but the Government can assist with that, and I have been very clear about that. Therefore, I am not sure that I accept that things have changed in that regard.

What has changed is the requirement for the approach to be put on a statutory footing, so we have had to reflect on that. I do not have an issue with that at the general principles level. We will need to look at the amendments that are lodged at stage 2 and at what our stakeholders’ asks and aspirations are. As the committee has heard, there are divergent views on the matter. There are lots of different stakeholders involved in this matter. To be candid, that has been part of the issue that the Government has faced over a number of years—bringing stakeholders together on the publication of guidance. I still think that it is important that we review the guidance, that we have the data and that that informs the legislative process.

I have written to the committee about the issue of definitions. The definitions that are used in Mr Johnson’s bill are different to those that we proposed in the guidance. We think that the definitions that are currently proposed in the bill are too broad, so we want to see them finessed somewhat. For example, the committee heard anecdotal evidence about whether taking a child’s hand while crossing the road would be considered to be restraint.

We need to be much clearer about definitions of restraint. We have suggested that to Mr Johnson in private session, and we will work with him to that end. Of course, it would not be for the Government to amend the bill; it would be for Mr Johnson to lodge those amendments.

With regard to seclusion, the committee has heard evidence on practices that we would not understand to be seclusion. To my mind—I will be corrected by officials on this if I am wrong—seclusion is about a deprivation of liberty whereby, for example, a child would not be able to leave a room. That is quite different to approaches to behaviour and relationships in mainstream settings whereby a child might, for example, be asked to work elsewhere because there are challenges in the classroom, but that child might still be able to go to the toilet—their liberty has not been deprived of them. We need to be more careful with and clearer about our definitions of seclusion. We have made suggestions to Mr Johnson, and, in my correspondence to the committee, I make the point that the definitions are too broad at the current time.

Robert Eckhart, do you want to say anything further on that?