 I remind members that social distancing measures are in place in the chamber and across the Holyrood campus. I ask that members take care to observe those measures, including when entering and exiting the chamber. Please only use the aisles and walkways to access your seat when moving around the chamber. The next item of business is consideration of business motion 00123 in the name of George Adam, on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau, setting out a revision to today's business. Any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press the request to speak button now. I call on George Adam to move the motion. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Moved, Presiding Officer. As no member has asked to speak against the motion, the question is that motion 00123 be agreed. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed. The next item of business is topical questions. As ever, in order to get as many people in as possible, I would prefer short and succinct questions and answers to match. To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to address the on-going disruption to lifeline ferry routes served by CalMac. We very much recognise the community's frustration at the current disruption and the impact that it is having with everything that we can support in CalMac to maximise available capacity across the network and to ensure the timely resolution of those issues. Since becoming Minister for Transport, I have very much prioritised those issues. I have already met CalMac reps and local MSPs, including Dr Allan. Furthermore, I will be meeting the independent CalMac community board on Friday to hear their views. I am very much open to constructive, viable suggestions for improving matters. We are currently actively exploring opportunities for chartering additional tonnage, including consideration of the suitability of the MV Pentalena to increase resilience across the network. We have also confirmed new investment of £580 million in ports and vessels to support and improve Scotland's ferry services over the next five years. I thank the minister for his reply and welcome him to his new role. As he will appreciate, the entire economy of any island depends on its ferry. I have been deluged in recent weeks by emails from families desperate to visit relatives on the mainland who have had long booked tickets cancelled. Businesses who can no longer get building materials to the islands or export shellfish and tourist businesses are struggling to cope with the news that all bookings are suspended for a fortnight. MVLock Seaforth is CalMac's largest major vessel, but she is also CalMac's newest. She should not be experiencing technical issues of this severity. Will there be an investigation into the causes of those faults? Let me say that I entirely recognise the intolerable nature of the situation for islanders on an individual and economic basis. I also realise what they want is action rather than war and war, hence the work that is going on to improve matters in the short, medium and longer term. With regard to the vessel at the centre of this, CalMac is fully rightly fully focused on resolving this issue and getting the lock seaforth back into service as quickly as possible. In parallel, however, specialist reports have been commissioned to examine the cause of the issue, and any recommendations will be fully considered once the reports are finalised and digested. I am happy to commit to updating members on the outcome of that. I thank the minister and appreciate the attention that he is giving to those matters. While the issues with MVLock Seaforth are unprecedented, breakdowns of major vessels on lifeline routes are unfortunately not. It is now obvious for all to see that CalMac at present does not have enough vessels to run its services with the resilience necessary. What will the Government do in the immediate term to charter additional vessels and to ensure that the next overdue vessel is placed with a shipyard soon? As I said earlier to Dr Allan, we are actively looking at accessing additional tonnage to take care of the immediate future. With regard to the vessels that are due to be placed, that is also in hand with a view to having one in particular, the one that Dr Allan refers to, well entrained by the end of the financial year. The minister will be aware that part of the reason that we have this problem is a failure since 2011 to commission sufficient vessels. Would the minister be willing to meet with me, as a West Scotland list MSP, to look at how we address the long-term problem of failure to consult and listen with local communities, which was highlighted in the recent committee report, and to look at how we make sure that islanders on Arran and indeed the trade unions that represent the CalMac workforce are involved in decision making? As I have already indicated, I am willing to work constructively with anyone from across the chamber if they are willing to engage constructively as well. What we need, Presiding Officer, is a solution in the short to medium term that does not involve Robin Peter to pay Paul and adds to the assets that we have here to help to properly begin to tackle the issue. First, I am delighted that the minister has hit the ground running, having already committed himself to real and long-lasting improvements to Scotland's ferry service. Can I ask him what changes will be implemented to ensure a more responsive and reactive customer focus at CalMac to improve contingency planning in the event of future ferry disruptions? I think that, Presiding Officer, again that kind of touches on what I have just answered, that we need to have an emergency plan for when these sort of incidents arise. We can respond in a way that is, as I said earlier, not Robin Peter to pay Paul. Mr Gibson will understand that we have been in post for a few days. This is very much a work in progress, but I give him the assurance that all of this is being actively looked at. I am heartened to hear the minister's response and also the investment in the ferry fleet. What I would love to hear is a commitment to a green ferry fleet. Can the minister assure me that, in the next five years, we are going to see ferries that are green and help us to meet our net zero targets? Presiding Officer, as I seem to recall from last week, the greens were very critical of transport sitting in this particular portfolio, but it is self-evidence that it is there for a reason, because transport is such a large emitter. Everything that we do is with a view to tackling the climate emergency and driving down emissions. To ask the Scottish Government what its responses are to the recent Audit Scotland report, which highlighted that the gap between colleges' funding and expenditure has grown to £54 million. First of all, I welcome Ms Gosill to Parliament and congratulate her on her new role. We know that our colleges face significant financial challenges that have been exacerbated by the pandemic, and we are working closely with them to mitigate the effects of the crisis. Assessing and managing the financial health of colleges is, of course, a dynamic process, and the Scotland's Colleges 2020 report acknowledged that the college sector reported an underlying operating surplus of more than £3 million in academic year 2019-20. In financial year 2021, we allocated the college sector and its learners more than £30 million in additional funding, with the Scottish Funding Council allocating an extra £10 million of repurposed funding. That financial year is an overall increase in the college sector budget of £33.7 million, which supports the sustainability of the college sector and helps to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. In addition to that, the Scottish Funding Council will shortly be concluding its review of coherent provision and sustainability of the tertiary sector. I thank the minister for his response, and welcome to your role as well, minister. As we recover from the pandemic, it is clear that Scotland's further education sector will play a critical role in our recovery. As people look to reskill and retrain in the changing job markets, but with the sector deficit apparently set to rise even further in the coming years, Scotland's colleges are facing this task with one arm tied behind their backs. If the Government is really serious about equipping Scotland with its skills, it will need to rebuild effectively. It must commit to properly funding colleges. Will the minister commit to full funding to the colleges? I refer Ms Goswell back to my original answer. I already read the point that in this coming year we are providing £33.7 million more to the college sector than we did in last year. As for her remarks about a deficit in the sector, I urge her to look at the figures that she has quoted with caution. Of course, the figures that she has cited include many reported costs, which do not have an immediate cash impact in the college sector, such as depreciation of assets. I refer her back to the point that I have made that what was reported for the academic year 2019-20 was an adjusted operating position of a surplus of more than £3 million. Minister, you are talking about £33 million and there is a £54 million gap, which the Audit Scotland has said. I remind you that there is no single pathway right now that people want to choose, especially young people, so different people will choose different pathways. University is not right for everyone. Back when I finished school, it was not right for me. My time spent at Cardinal College provided me with the platform not only just to start my career, but to begin my educational journey, which ultimately led me to this week handing in my PhD thesis. However, that is not just about you at my own journey here. I want the same opportunities that I have got for everybody out there. Can the minister explain how his Government plans to prioritise this sector and reverse the trend that has been 35 per cent reduction in college student numbers since his Government first came into power? Let me again congratulate the soon-to-be Dr Gossel in completing her PhD. Let me correct her though, as she refers to a reduction in student numbers in Scotland's colleges. That is not correct. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, we continue to exceed the 116,000 full-time equivalent target. We exceeded it in 2019-20, delivering more than 117,000 full-time equivalent student places. However, her fundamental proposition in her question is one that I agree with. There are many different pathways for young people. She will be aware that my ministerial role is much wider than just the tertiary education sector. I also have responsibility for developing a young workforce approach and for the young person's guarantee. She and every member can be absolutely assured that my commitment is that there is no wrong path for young people onwards and into employment. I will be approaching my role in that vein. Before we move on to question 3, I would be grateful if questions and responses could be succinct. I call Willie Rennie. To ask the Scottish Government whether the reported security flaw in the vaccination status letter has been resolved and whether it will provide an update on the provision and use of vaccine passports for both international and domestic purposes. Yes, it has. Upon learning of the security glitch to download a vaccination status letter, that option has been disabled. Requests for our free of charge vaccination status record can be made from the free phone Covid-19 status helpline on 08081968565. As a Covid status certification programme progresses, the letter will be replaced by a digital Covid status certificate, which is likely to include vaccination status, Covid recovery and negative testing data. On international travel, we are working across the common travel area to put in place a fully interoperable digital solution that aligns with international standards being developed by the WHO. No decision has been taken on using Covid status certificates domestically. However, I have ethical, clinical and equality concerns about their use, and in that vein I am soon to host a round table with human rights and equality experts to discuss those issues. When I asked the First Minister about vaccine passports last year, she said that she did not favour them. Without even a debate in Parliament or a proper public consultation that the Government is now pressing ahead, there is no clarity on how those will work, whether they were used and how long they will be used for. Is the Government just making this up as it goes along? She is clearly not listening to the answer before asking a second question. We are not pushing ahead. The status letters that I am talking about are part of people's medical records. If Willie Rennie is seriously suggesting as a Liberal Democrat that people should not have access to that record, he should just say so up front. That is not what we are doing. People can request that. What we are trying to do is so that they do not inundate their GPs that there is an option for them to request that status. I have just said in my answer to Willie Rennie that I have ethical, clinical and human rights concerns about the use. We want to, of course, deal with those issues in a Four Nations approach, as best we possibly can, but I can give Willie Rennie an absolute assurance that no decision, none whatsoever has been made about using Covid vaccination certificates for domestic use. I always listen extremely carefully to what the minister says, but it took five minutes for a junior researcher to identify a major security flaw in the system that he has set up. What system testing was undertaken before this was launched? Was it piloted before it was launched? How can we have confidence in the new system that it will work? If we do not trust it, why would any foreign Government trust it, either? I want to give an absolute assurance that, upon the security glitch that has been made aware of, of course, we are going to debrief with our IT team. That is happening at the moment. However, it would be worth saying that those vaccination certificates have relatively low currency—not many countries require them at the moment. No airline or no major airline requires them in terms of entry into their airline. However, that was to stop people inundating their GPs, who are already, of course, working extraordinarily hard during the pandemic. However, of course, we will then the lessons of the security glitch. We have resolved it, so that issue is no longer a problem. I will just reaffirm what I have said already to Willie Rennie that, for the domestic use, I have real concerns. I am meeting with a number of organisations that are equal to human rights organisations very soon, and I can promise him that there is no pressing ahead of those Covid vaccination certificates until we resolve any of those issues. Even then, of course, we will have discussions across the party. Pauline McNeill, who is joining us remotely. Around half of people in Glasgow were due to get a Covid jail fail to turn up over the weekend. Reports on Monday said that there was a staggering 83 per cent of non-attendance at the hydro in Glasgow. We know that then you can administer a minimum of 4,000 vaccinations a day with a capacity to scale up to 10,000. I ask the cabinet secretary if the Government understands the reasons for this high level of non-attendance that we are seeing at mass vaccination centres like the hydro for people in their 30s and their 40s. Cabinet secretary, is it time to look at an online registration system for all ages going forward? We cannot continue to have this level of non-attendance. It is inefficient. I agree with Pauline McNeill, and I can tell her that urgently, after the statistics that we saw over the weekend, I am talking to the team about using the online portal that is available for 18 to 29-year-olds and has had very good take-up to look to see whether we can extend that to cohort 10, those that are 30 to 39 or 40 to 49. That is urgently being looked at as we speak. Those that did not attend, those that we have phone numbers for have been followed up by text messages as well. In the south side of Glasgow, in particular, where we are all aware that there is a considerable problem, I was just about two hours ago at the Godwara in Pollock Shields in Albert Drive looking at the walk-in mobile vaccination unit that we have there. We are exhausting every single avenue, using every single tool that we possibly have, to ensure that we do everything that we can to bring case numbers down in Glasgow south side. I would be happy to speak to Pauline McNeill and more detail on the members across the chamber to tell them of the efforts to do so. My apologies to those members who we have been unable to take. That concludes topical questions.