 The next item of business is topical questions, and we will start with question number one from Tavish Scott. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to EIS members considering supporting industrial action. Cabinet Secretary John Swinney. The Scottish Government would encourage negotiations in all circumstances on all employment issues to avoid industrial action. Tavish Scott. The teaching union EIS has today published figures on the pressure teachers face. 54 per cent of teachers say that their workload has risen in the last year. A further third say that their workload has increased significantly. Despite all the parliamentary assurances saying that teacher workload is falling, it is actually rising. Does that not start to illustrate that this Government is out of touch with the reality of teaching across Scotland? Will the education secretary not accept that teachers are considering strike action as his improvement plan and tackling bureaucracy initiatives have failed to address that very pressure in the classroom? Cabinet Secretary. The Government has taken a series of steps to tackle the issue of teacher workload. They have included the removal of unit assessments, the work for which will apply in the next academic year, the publication of benchmarks to provide clarity at the levels that students are expected to achieve within curriculum for excellence and to provide the clarity that the teaching profession requested. We have issued curricular guidance to provide the clarity that issues of literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing should be given priority within the curriculum. I have given guidance issued to all teachers, which indicates that the teaching profession should be free to concentrate on learning and teaching and enhancing learning and teaching for young people across the education system. In addition to that, I have commissioned Her Majesty's Inspector of Education to audit the burden of bureaucracy that has been applied to schools by local authorities. As Mr Scott will realise, about half of the local authorities were identified in that inspection to have work to do to reduce the workload that has been applied to schools. That reduction in bureaucracy is now being undertaken. I encourage Mr Scott to look at the various measures that the Government has taken to reduce the workload and teachers to ensure that our teachers can be free to concentrate on what we need them to concentrate on, which is learning and teaching. As we have looked at the initiatives that the Government has brought forward, the figures from the EIS illustrate that, far from going down, the workload is increasing. In 2014, an EIS survey said that 44 per cent of teachers would not recommend teaching as a profession. The latest survey again suggests that that figure has risen to 56 per cent. In two days' time, the Education Secretary will propose school reform. Will he accept that Thursday's statement must now include a far-reaching independent assessment of teachers' paying conditions on the Crohn 2 and that the 16 per cent cut in teachers' wages over the past decade is repaired, the promotion structure in schools is reviewed and that the standing of the profession, the most important profession for Scotland's future, is enhanced, not allowed to wither any further? I certainly agree with Mr Scott that we need to enhance the teaching profession and the statement that I will make to Parliament on Thursday will be designed to take a number of very substantive steps to ensure the enhancement of the professional responsibility of teachers and to enable teachers to fulfil the role that we all require them to fulfil in delivering education for young people in Scotland. Secondly, I acknowledge that there has been constraint in public sector pay for some considerable time and I cannot deny that. I was the author of the public sector pay policy in Scotland as the finance minister and I might no attempt to deny it. What I think Mr Scott needs to reflect on is that he was a supporter of a United Kingdom Government that presided over austerity for five years which created the financial climate in which this government had to operate. If we are all, as I am accepting my responsibility as the author of public sector pay policy in Scotland for many years, Mr Scott has to accept that the challenges that have existed around teachers' pay and public sector pay in general have not been the product of individual decisions taken by this Government, but of the financial climate that he and his colleagues in the Liberal Democrats were prepared to support within the United Kingdom Government without complaint for a five-year period. Finally, I would say to Mr Scott that the Government is determined to ensure that we work with the profession, we work with other stakeholders, we work with our local authority partners to ensure that we strengthen Scottish education. That will be at the heart of the reforms that I take forward. It has been at the heart of the measures that I have taken to reduce bureaucracy and to focus the curriculum, and I will continue to do so in the period ahead. Liz Smith. Thank you, Presiding Officer. In light of the first part of the answer that Mr Swinney has just given to Tavish Scott, does he foresee an opportunity within the Government's reforms and greater autonomy for schools to allow greater devolution of pay structures and the working conditions to headteachers? One of the points that I made when I introduced the Government's consultation paper to Parliament some months ago was that I envisaged the continuation of national terms and conditions discussions in Scotland. That will be my position in the Governance Review on Thursday. It was my position at the outset and, of course, for the other details of the Governance Review, I will be making a statement to Parliament on Thursday and I will, of course, answer the questions that members have to me on the details that I put to Parliament at that time. Iain Gray. We read today in the press that a welcome additional £2 million has been made available to colleges to finally honour their pay deal with lecturers. How much additional funding, then, will the Cabinet Secretary make available to local authorities to allow them to address teachers' concerns about salary and workload and thus avoid industrial action in our schools? Cabinet Secretary. Clearly, there is a process of negotiation to be undertaken with the teaching trade unions as part of the SNCT arrangements with which Mr Gray will be familiar. The Government will, of course, as a member of the SNCT, participate in those discussions and we look forward to progressing those discussions in the period that lies ahead. Jenny Gilruth. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and my members are some of the PLO to the Cabinet Secretary. Does the Deputy First Minister agree that there is a varying national culture with regard to teacher workload, which is often driven by local authorities, for example, in terms of tracking and monitoring, reporting and recording of attainment data, for example? Can he therefore outline what action the Government has taken to ensure greater consistency across Scotland when it comes to what our local authorities are asking of Scotland's teachers? Part of what I have asked local authorities to do as part of the work that we all committed to, long before I became the education secretary, was to reduce the workload and the bureaucracy applied to the teaching profession. I look to local authorities to exercise a considered judgment about the appropriate collection of information of a tracking and monitoring nature to ensure that that is appropriate and commensurate with their responsibilities. As I indicated in my earlier answer to Tavish Scott, I asked Education Scotland to undertake a focused review of the demands placed on schools by local authorities in relation to curriculum for excellence. They found that there were a number of local authorities where there was a significant variation in the extent and effectiveness of the actions that have been taken. I am, of course, continuing to monitor the progress that has been made to support improvement, to address the specific issues and to share best practice between authorities. Ross Greer. The latest inflation figures released this morning show a four-year high of 2.9 per cent and an expectation that it will continue to rise due to fallout from Brexit. The public sector pay cap has seen a massive erosion in the value of salaries. Teachers are now considering strike action and rising inflation is only going to make the situation worse for them. How much loss to the value of teachers pay is the Scottish Government willing to accept before it will act on the pay freeze? Cabinet Secretary. As I indicated in my earlier answer, I seek—I in no way try to avoid my responsibility for public sector pay. I was the finance minister here for nine years and I made a very clear judgment, which I was open about with Parliament, that in order to protect public sector employment, I had to ask public sector employees in a period of significant fiscal restraint applied to us by the United Kingdom Government, of which Tavish Scott was a supporter and the Conservatives were supporters, that I had to apply that pay constraint to protect employment. I accept that the situation we now face, where there is rising inflation in the context of pay restraint, it is difficult to support that given the pressures that are on individual public sector workers. The Government will look carefully at the issues of public sector pay as part of our negotiations with trade unions and as part of the budget preparations that the Government undertakes on anio basis. 2. Jamie Greene To ask the Scottish Government what the final cost will be of the Edinburgh Glasgow improvement programme. Minister Humza Yousaf. As I recently informed the chamber, Network Rail has confirmed a further delay to the route electrification. We now await further advice from Network Rail on the cost arising from that delay. Mark Khan, the chief executive of Network Rail, will be in front of the rural economy committee tomorrow, which I know the member of. Jamie Greene The Edinburgh Glasgow improvement programme was supposed to cost the taxpayer £742 million. However, just under a year ago, it was reported that this had already risen by £32 million. There was a further delay to replace faulty electrical equipment and the additional staffing costs that that might incur. Can the minister outline today what the cost of the improvement programme is? Can he tell Parliament more importantly if the additional costs will impact any other rail projects or rail funding in general? Minister. For the question and the tone in which he asks it, he will be very aware that the responsibility for the delivery of the project is Network Rail. The Transport, Scotland and the Scottish Government is a client and the funder. We must work within a funding ceiling. I do not expect that funding ceiling to be breached if that is his question. However, there is, and there has been a further delay, we will continue to have discussions with Network Rail. I would have to defer to Network Rail to come back to us with what the potential cost increases would be of the last report of the cost increases that we did from a Scottish Government perspective was an independent report against a young which, again, the committee had sight of. That is a shared problem with the UK Government as well. We know that Network Rail is a reclassified body under the Department for Transport. Clearly, the UK Government is also facing similar issues with Network Railway and the Scottish Government are facing similar issues. Now that the Government and certainly Cabinet members have been appointed, I would be keen to sit down with the railway minister and the UK Government as soon as possible to see how we can come to an acceptable position. We fund those major projects, we are the client of those major projects and yet the delivery done by Network Rail is not accountable to this Government or to this Parliament. Jamie Greene. I thank the minister for that answer. I notice that the minister is passing the buck to Network Rail, but surely as the minister in charge of transport in Scotland he would have some oversight and be able to share with the Parliament the costs of the project. That should be delivered on the Edinburgh Glasgow line until October this year. That is nearly a year after the original 2016 deadline with a whole range of problems including the breakdown of components, poor project management, unforeseen corrective action and a delay in the energisation of the overhead cables. A spokesman for the Scottish Government has said that this is wholly unacceptable. What assurances can the minister provide to passengers in Scotland who have already suffered quite significant disruptions on the line that they will now have to potentially wait until autumn for electric trains to be in operation? Does he not agree that this is unacceptable? Of course I agree that it is unacceptable, but let me just take issue with one or two things that Jamie Greene has said. I am sure that he does not expect me as the minister for transport to be literally on the wires on the lines delivering this project. It is delivered by Network Rail. We have responsibility as the funder where we are the client but the delivery of the project is done by Network Rail a reclassified body under the UK Government's department for transport. In terms of our projects, yes, of course it is unacceptable when there is any delay. The last time I informed the chamber in front of the committee no doubt under his questioning was that electric services we were expecting to come on this route in July of this year. It has now gone into October. That is extremely disappointing, but again just to give a comparison the delays of some projects south of the border have been not months, four years, for example, on the trans-Pennine electrification for talking sake. We are in a better position but I agree that it is wholly unacceptable that Network Rail are continuing to come to me to say that we are unable to deliver this project despite the fact, of course, that we have as the funder and as the client provided the funding that is there. In terms of the reassurance to the passenger yes, we have a project board which is actually helping to flush out some of these issues much earlier and we could have had sight of them before. My commitment to this Parliament is to continue to keep you updated as a Parliament and indeed the relevant committee whenever I get that information from Network Rail but I would end on this point to the member. I would welcome a discussion with parties across this chamber even if they do not agree with the full devolution of Network Rail which I respect as a position that they may hold to at least think about the devolution of the infrastructure projects because it is unacceptable once again that we fund these projects yet the accountability remains with Network Rail a reclassified body under the Department for Transport. John Mason. I wonder if the minister can confirm that the original cost of Egypt was quite a lot higher and that the idea of running longer trains with less frequency meant that there was huge savings on signalling, less congestion and I imagine better for the environment. Minister. There have been cost savings not only on these projects but also on some other projects but that is not to take away and I must reiterate that that does not take away from the fact that we have seen a cost increase from our revised estimates coming because Network Rail I think have failed to notice some foreseen circumstances they should have been able to foresee some of those circumstances and that is not to take away from that we wait from Network Rail to get a further update in regards to what further delay there may be on Egypt and there is a potential that that may have a cost increase so that is not to let Network Rail off the hook on that. Having said that I am confident that there are railway projects the many railway projects that we are looking to deliver in control period 5 can be delivered within that funding ceiling that we have committed to so there have been savings and there have been savings not just on Egypt but on other projects but let's not take away from the fact that that is disappointing news that we should be held to account not just to the Department for Transport but to this Parliament and to this Government. Neil Bibby as left the train drivers union say that Egypt has been mismanaged and lacked political leadership by both Network Rail and the Scottish Government as the Scottish Government is ultimately responsible for this project and it is ultimately responsible for this project despite what the minister may be trying to suggest otherwise does the transport minister accept that he will take leadership on Egypt from the start and what will he do now to reassure the workforce, the passengers and the taxpayer that his Government should be trusted any longer with meeting the railway infrastructure needs of this country. He is a beyond ludicrous question from the member for a number of reasons because Egypt has already delivered on many occasions December 2010 electrification of Haymarket tunnel will take the political leadership I'm sure for that December 2013 the transformed Haymarket station opened to passengers on time and on budget as part of Egypt. May 2014 the electrification of Glasgow to Cumbernauld he forgot to mention that. May 2015 Haymarket and Vakithing re-signalling complete he forgot to mention that. December 2016 Edinburgh Gateway rail tram interchange opened to all passengers of course he forgot to mention all of that so Egypt has of course met many of the milestones we have funded them of course and he should recognise that on top of Egypt if he wants political leadership on the railways we of course delivered Borders railway Airdrie to Bathgate electrification as I said of the Cumbernauld line one that affects him of course the paisley corridor improvements and many many other rail projects as well so I'll certainly take no lessons from Neil Bibby when it comes to management of our railways I would suggest that he looks at his own Labour colleague the former transport minister in the UK Tom Harris who said that but this responsibility cannot be properly exercised while network rail remains answerable to the UK government Reform Scotland, I think tank he was working with believes that network rail in Scotland should be fully accountable to the Scottish Government and that means it must be devolved that is somebody who used to be a transport minister within a Labour Government in the UK Government I would suggest that he will be instead of carping from the sideline actually take some expert advice there minister people will be incredibly frustrated with this delay not least because the drip drip of information prevents anyone taking full responsibility so can the minister tell Parliament on what date he was informed of the potential delays for the project and is he willing to publish all minutes of meetings in which the delay was discussed in terms of the documentation about the delay I have a letter from Mark Carn sent to me on the 25th of May I have written to the committee convener if a copy of that letter if it is able to be published of course I will look into that and I will discuss that with my officials but I also share his frustration and the public's frustration at the drip drip drip of information that we tend to get from network rail as I continue to say network rail is accountable to the UK Government ultimately under the department for transport as a reclassified body I would like a conversation with him with members across the chamber on how we actually rebalance some of this and ensure that network rail is accountable to this Parliament and to this Government but in terms of his actual question I will look into the latest letter that I received from Mark Carn and see if that can be released Thank you very much that concludes topical questions The next item of business is a statement by Angela Constance on the independent advisory group on hate crime prejudice and cohesion The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of her statement so if you do wish to ask a question please press your request to speak button now there will be around 20 minutes for questions after the statement