Dey departs, but what of his bill?

If you haven’t been following what literally dozens of people are referring to as “gull-gate”, the upshot is that Scottish parliamentary business minister Jamie Hepburn has resigned following accusations of a physical alteration with another MSP in a dispute over seagulls that’s really not worth unpicking.

Higher education minister Graeme Dey has been reshuffled into the vacancy left by Hepburn (himself a former holder of the HE brief), and the new appointment in Dey’s spot – subject to parliamentary approval – is Edinburgh Northern and Leith MSP Ben Macpherson.

Macpherson help various ministerial roles until 2023, and then reportedly declined a position in Humza Yousaf’s administration. His recent HE-related interventions include strident opposition to new PBSA developments (both in Holyrood and on the socials). He was also quoted, in his role as a constituency MSP, speaking up against the prejudice working-class Scottish students were said to be receiving at the local university. Readers wanting to learn more can check out this profile in Holyrood Magazine in 2021 – Angela Merkel is supposedly among his dream dinner dates.

He’s also seen as being somewhat out of the SNP in-group – but at least, unlike Dey, he is not planning to stand down at the 2026 elections, so there’s an opportunity for the sector to begin building some bridges.

It’s going to be a tricky first few weeks though. Dey was overdue a grilling from the education committee about higher education financial sustainability, and the SFC’s annual analysis is due out imminently, likely posing some tough questions for the government. Further down the line, Dey’s final appearance at education questions last week included a promise to share more detail about the behind the scenes discussions that have been taking place about the sector’s longer-term financial model.

And even before that, this Thursday we’ve got the stage one debate on the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill, which Dey had been pushing through despite no great enthusiasm for the legislation in many corners of the tertiary landscape.

The Holyrood education committee took the “unusual step” (their words) of not making a recommendation on whether the bill should pass stage one. Shortly before Jamie Hepburn’s resignation on Friday, Dey sent over the government’s official response to the committee.

There’s a lot in there, but of particular note is the minister’s contention that “since the bill was introduced in February, we have learnt a lot more about what went wrong at the University of Dundee.” He says that the Scottish government is “absolutely open” to working further with the committee in the next stage to amend the legislation further to strengthen its provisions around financial sustainability and governance.

That’s an area to watch. More surprisingly – especially if you have been following a year of obfuscating on the issue – we also hear that the government now thinks that the bill can be amended to enable free school meals data to potentially come into use as a widening access metric:

We are cautiously optimistic that this Bill does provide an opportunity to make appropriate provision for data sharing. We hope to be able to bring forward amendments to enable this at Stage 2 and look forward to the Committee’s support in that regard.

This is likely to prove popular, both in Holyrood and in the sector – it may help drum up some enthusiasm for the legislation at a time when the countdown to next May’s elections is already very audible.