Seòmar agus comataidhean

But the question has been asked again, so I will answer it again. I have not been invited to a board meeting, but the board meetings have been attended by the appropriate officials, to make sure that we best understand what the discussions are in Historic Environment Scotland and that we, as the Scottish Government, take the responsibilities that are ours. I have run through them, but I will run through them again. We are making sure that we are—

I was invited to the trustees of the National Museums Scotland at one stage, who wanted to talk with me about fundraising and funding—unsurprisingly. I was invited to attend a board meeting of Creative Scotland at one stage, again to talk about funding. However, in the normal run of things, that would not be how the relationship I have as cabinet secretary with the non-departmental bodies would take place.

There is a regular range of meetings that I have, both formal and informal. Some of them are sit-down meetings and some of them are at-site visits—there are different formats for the meetings. They tend to be with the chief executive and/or the chair of that organisation, which is the appropriate way to do it, and that happens with great regularity.

The chief executives and—I hope and I believe—the chairs of the bodies across my areas of responsibility are very well aware of my wish to be informed about anything they would wish to raise with me personally. However, both they and I have the greatest confidence in the sponsorship team in the culture directorate, which has the direct day-to-day responsibility, as senior officials, to talk with the senior officials in the organisations to make sure that we are best informed and doing everything that we need to do.

I wish to give you the assurance that that is very much the focus of Historic Environment Scotland and our interest in supporting what it does. Indeed, as I alluded to earlier, I was at the headquarters of Historic Environment Scotland with its senior management and others as part of a strategic partnership to deliver on the “Our Past, Our Future” strategy, bringing together non-departmental and other organisations to deliver on exactly those issues, such has the challenge with skills.

You will be aware of—and I have already made mention of—the opening of lock 16 as a focus for skills in traditional crafts that are acutely in demand for Historic Environment Scotland and, in that case specifically, Canals Scotland. That is an example of where changes are happening and partnership working is taking place. Having had the good fortune to be part of the considerations yesterday, I attest that Historic Environment Scotland is seized of that. Partner organisations such as Skills Development Scotland and Young Scot were also part of the conversation, as were enterprise agencies. Others are part of the process, too.

Therefore, the first thing is to say we are very focused today, for obvious reasons, on the particular leadership issues in Historic Environment Scotland. However, I also want to put on record my appreciation for the excellent work that has been taking place within Historic Environment Scotland in relation to matters such as skills and in partnership working. That work perhaps receives less focus because we are dealing with a significant problem at present, but we should not lose sight of the fact that its day-to-day operations continue. What it does is extremely important, and what it is doing financially is, in many respects, ground-breaking.

You also asked to understand when some of the problems emerged. I would not want to opine about that ahead of the investigations that are taking place under new leadership and the chair of Historic Environment Scotland. I think that they will throw up a lot of the answers to when exactly some of the issues took place, to what extent they were endemic or not, and what the consequences must be.

I am keen to build on a number of aspects of cross-portfolio working. As I have said in previous evidence to the committee, there are areas of the cultural space, in relation especially to health and wellbeing but also to the economy space, where there is the potential for us to do more.

I do not know whether the committee has heard from, for example, Scottish Ballet about what it has done, is doing and wants to do in the health and wellbeing space. I highly recommend that the committee hear about that work, because it is absolutely world class. Scottish Ballet is a really good example of a cultural institution in Scotland. It is a national performing company, so it is directly funded by the Scottish Government, and it is doing a lot in the health and wellbeing space, which is paid for out of the culture directorate’s finances.

At the same time, there are other areas in the cultural space, such as the screen sector, in which we can look at significant economic aspects. The committee has been well advised about the ambition for it to become a £1 billion GVA industry in Scotland by 2030, on which really good progress is being made. How does that marry with other parts of Government that have responsibilities? We are definitely doing more to ensure that we get the most out of opportunities. I could move on to tourism, for example, and there are other areas that are, to all intents and practical purposes, not part of my direct responsibility in Government. However, by ensuring that everything works together, we can do more.

Screen is another good example of an area in which we are required to do more. Screen Scotland has direct responsibility for television and film but not gaming, which sits in the economy space in the Scottish Government. Meanwhile, we have a national performing company—the Royal Scottish National Orchestra—that has a significant new source of income in the form of soundtracks for films and games. In painting that picture, I am making your point that cross-portfolio working is absolutely key. I have not even got to social prescribing, which is one of the committee’s previous particular interests and one that I have given evidence to the committee about.

I am cognisant of all the different areas in which culture has a lot to offer. Given that you are interested in the budget element today, I note that the key change that we are seeing at present—Creative Scotland’s multi-annual funding of twice as many organisations as before—is foundational for the delivery of cross-departmental benefits, which might have been harder to achieve in the past.

It was definitely the case that, when there was significant financial distress, especially as we emerged from Covid, there was concern in some parts of the country that certain local authorities might make decisions on the provision of some cultural services that raised the potential for funding to be diverted. The Scottish Government would take very seriously the prospect of the likes of Sistema Scotland or the Youth Music Initiative not being able to continue in one part of the country, because they are an important part of our commitment to helping children in more challenged social and economic circumstances to access music and cultural provision. I have been very alive to that possibility. I have been meeting the cultural lead and other representatives of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities throughout my term in office, and meetings have been taking place more widely with the cultural leads of local authorities.

I am optimistic about learning more from the review of Creative Scotland, which has been looking into the availability of cultural services in different parts of the country, as it is not uniform and there is not a uniform approach. There is one issue around local government and another around the local enterprise companies—we have three in Scotland, and they take quite different approaches to culture. That is another layer of understanding: how are things working in different parts of the country?

We must then add the question of the extent to which Creative Scotland’s decision making is about what is funded and what that means in different parts of the country. Are there gaps? I would be keen to understand whether that is the case. I would say in mitigation that both the Culture Collective and Collective Communities funding streams, which are being provided throughout Scotland, offer important mechanisms to ensure that all parts of the country have the ability to draw down funds to support cultural activity.

Your question, convener, about ensuring that there is provision of cultural services is absolutely right, and there is a whole parallel discussion to be had about libraries, which fits into that context, too.

As the committee knows, I walk a fine line between wanting to ensure that we, as the Government, are doing everything that we can to support local government, the enterprise companies and Creative Scotland and respecting our arm’s length relationships—which exist for obvious reasons, as it is not for cabinet secretaries to micromanage what we might personally wish to have more of, whether on stage, on screen or wherever. I leave that to the experts.

Having said all of that, and referring back to the question that you posed, convener, I would say that there is a role for Government in using our convening power and the best possible information to ensure that we have cultural provision across Scotland that can by accessed by people of all backgrounds. In general, that is working well, and I am interested to learn, through the review, whether there any areas where we could be doing more.

I can see a very subtle hand movement from Lisa Baird, who may, I think, want to add something.

Mr Bibby knows how committed I am to the screen sector in Scotland, which, as he also knows, is growing in economic importance. More is being spent now on film and television in Scotland than has been spent in past years. There are additional job opportunities in that part of the cultural sector, and I am confident that there are more jobs in that area. He highlights a particular concern about Scottish Television. He will have to forgive me—I do not have information about that announcement in front of me. However, I can give him the assurance that I take all of those issues very seriously. From previous examples, such as the BBC discontinuing “River City”, he knows that I have had concerns about anything that suggests that we are not heading in a positive direction when it comes to jobs.

Mr Bibby also highlights what that means for our wider democratic discourse—if important public service broadcasting provision is being downgraded, that would concern me greatly. I will, no doubt, be speaking with the chief executive of Scottish Television about this. I need to understand what exactly is happening, because we want STV to flourish, just as we want the BBC and other public service broadcasters, such as Channel 4, to flourish.

I would be very concerned about job losses, because we certainly do not want to see a loss of talent in the television sector in Scotland. We want to maintain confidence in the direction of travel in Scotland, which, in recent years, has been very positive, as we move towards a £1 billion gross value added to the Scottish economy from the screen sector in the years ahead.

If I can take the virtual microphone back for a second, I will add that, in parallel to that, the decisions that we have been able to make with expo funding and in being able to support festivals beyond Edinburgh and Glasgow, working in parallel with the strategic partnership for Scotland’s festivals that we now have, provide another example of our trying to ensure that we have benefit throughout the country from the available funding.

I am looking at Mr Halcro Johnston, who has, I know, an interest in culture in the northern isles, which is a very good example of a place that has tremendous festivals. The Orkney folk festival is an example of that. If we have a tremendous model, as we do through the expo funding route—which really is first class—why would we not want that to be able to support festivals in the rest of the country? We agree with that point.

That is a good example of our trying to add value right across Scotland.

I look forward to hearing about progress on that issue and on all the outstanding issues that Mr Kerr has raised. He will appreciate that some matters lie in the human resource space.

Certain procedures are currently under way, so it would not be appropriate for me to comment on them, save to say that I have confidence that the appropriate processes are being gone through and that, with a new chair, the issues that Mr Kerr has highlighted and that others, I know, will want to highlight, too—I am perfectly happy to take any follow-up questions from colleagues who might want to raise them—will be dealt with. I want people to have confidence in the core delivery of what Historic Environment Scotland manages to perform in Scotland; after all, it is in all of our interests that issues to do with the management and governance that have been raised with members of this committee directly, and with me, are dealt with by the incoming chairman of the board.

I look forward to learning any conclusions that emanate from the HR process and other inquiries that will be undertaken, and I give a commitment to Mr Kerr, and the rest of the committee, that I would wish the committee to be fully informed of all of that. We all need to have confidence that Historic Environment Scotland, which, as Mr Kerr has pointed out, does such important work, is operating as it should.

That was question 1?

By its very nature, the range of organisations that have become regularly funded organisations through the multiyear funding process is extremely broad. There is a challenge for Government—both with a small g and a large G—to work out how we can marry together what they are able to do in communities and society more generally to bring maximum benefit in spaces such as health and wellbeing, tourism or economic development. Through the Creative Scotland review process, I am keen to understand where there are examples of this working very well and where there are examples of it working less well.

For example, I am aware that the approach of Scotland’s three different enterprise agencies is quite different. Cultural organisations in the Highlands and Islands might well have a very different relationship with Highlands and Islands Enterprise than cultural organisations have in the part of Scotland that Scottish Enterprise serves, as well as in the south of Scotland and the Borders.

What I am trying to say to Mr Brown is that there is not a fix-all solution to all of this. We will have to make sure that we are making progress on that across the piece. Some of it will be very easy, and I have already given examples of where that is happening, such as with our national performing companies. What is Scottish Ballet doing? What is the RSNO doing? They all have tremendous examples of things that they are doing, and I encourage the committee, if there is an interest in learning what those might be, to do just that. Because the number of organisations that are funded on a multiyear basis has doubled literally only this year, this is new, so we will have to look at it with new eyes to understand how the significantly increased part of the cultural sector that is being funded through Creative Scotland in this way is able to deliver on a cross-portfolio basis.

We are discussing all these opportunities in a pre-budget space because the Government has committed to the biggest increase in cultural funding since the outset of devolution. We are ahead of target in delivering the additional £100 million annual uplift to the culture sector, and it is important that we do not lose sight of the foundational change that there has been in the level of spending on culture in Scotland and the fact that it is based on a multiyear approach to funding. We are the only part of the UK that is doing this; we are ahead of most other countries in the industrialised world in doing this; and we need to recognise that what we are doing here is groundbreaking, and is a good thing. Therefore, I would answer Mr Brown’s question by saying that I think that we have opportunities as never before to ensure that we are getting that cross-Government benefit.

One thing that I have been reminded of, and which it is worth reflecting on, is that, for historical and administrative reasons, certain things in the cultural space are funded from elsewhere. With music, for example, the funding for Sistema Scotland comes from the children and family fund, while funding for instrumental music tuition comes from the education portfolio. We are going to have to work together, but the good news is that we are doing so.

For example, we have recently seen the launch of what is a world first—a curriculum for screen education in our primary and secondary schools. It has emerged from Screen Scotland, which is answerable to me as cabinet secretary, and it will be delivered in the education space. Jenny Gilruth and I have been working closely to deliver something that no other country in the world has done to date, for which there is a tremendous welcome and acknowledgment that it is a good thing, and the benefits of which will be felt particularly in areas of economic and social deprivation.

We are trying to work together across portfolios to understand where culture helps education, economic development and so on, but there will be no one-size-fits-all approach.