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Indeed. The point that Mr Harvie makes—I welcome him to the committee, incidentally—is about how we can do that as quickly as possible, which is the key challenge. I think that we all appreciate that there are significant challenges right across public administration and there is a demand right across the public services for them to be funded as well as can be. The Government has a difficult job in trying to balance all of that but, in seeking to persuade colleagues, I will be making the case that we deliver on the commitments that we have made.

In her budget speech on 19 December 2023, the then Deputy First Minister, who has remained the finance secretary, Shona Robison—I printed this out because I wanted to be reminded of it—confirmed the increase of £15.8 million for this financial year, of which, as I have confirmed a number of times, more than £15 million has already been disbursed, and she went on to say:

“Our aim is to increase arts and culture investment in 2025-26 by at least a further £25 million.”—[Official Report, 19 December 2023; c 15.]

That is the next step change. Clearly, a significant part of that will need to go towards the multiyear funding requirements of Creative Scotland. However, by its very nature, it is multiyear funding, and if we can continue to increase it year by year, which is the Government’s intention, that is how we will be able to fund the change.

Mr Harvie might wish to intervene and say that the point is that there is more than multiyear funding and we have more organisations than will be funded by that route. There are our national performing companies, our national museums and galleries, the festivals, the youth music initiative, Sistema Scotland and so on. There will continue to be a hope and an expectation of moving from sustain to thrive, so where are the additional resources? That is why I, together with my officials and with advice from others, am trying to make sure that we get that balance right as we increase the funding going forward. Will we get that balance right? I hope so, because it is really important that we do. I have said this before, convener, but the work that you do as a committee really helps to inform the consideration that we in Government give to those relative priorities.

I will highlight one challenge in particular, because mention has been made of how we can work with a funding body on these things going forward. One of the challenges that we have objectively had in the past year is that we have been working to different budgetary timetables. If we look at the challenge that we had around the open fund, that involved Creative Scotland operating to a Creative Scotland budgetary timeline, and the same goes for multiyear funding. We have a governmental and a parliamentary timescale in which we consider budgets, and they are not in sync. If we are asking our publicly funded bodies to do a job on our behalf and we also have to, with due diligence, make sure that taxpayers’ money is disbursed responsibly, we have to make sure that we are in sync as much as we can be. I hope that that is an area where a review can advise us on how we can best do that.

If I was a creative out there who was trying to get on with being creative and keep my head above water in difficult times, I would be saying, “Please can you just get those kinds of administrative questions sorted?” I understand that, and that is one of the areas where I think that we can do better. I hope that we can do better, and I think that a review might help to give us some of the answers about how we do that.

Again, total agreement has broken out at this meeting. I totally agree with Mr Harvie’s observations. I agree first that the review is an opportunity. I genuinely view it as an opportunity to help us to better understand what Creative Scotland does well and what we need to do differently, to ensure that we are not missing out on the different parts of the creative sector. Mr Harvie alights on an important question. We have a screen sector that is responsible for the support and development of what is produced for television and for the big screen at the cinema, but not for a screen—small or large—in the games sector.

It would not be right for me to put words in your mouth, but you or any other committee member might ask whether what the games sector does—very effectively, incidentally—is not also part of the continuum of what happens for television and for the film sector, whether the skills are not transferable and whether aspects of the games sector are not the same as they are for film and television. Take the example of soundtracks. Is there a difference between the music that might be produced for the games sector and the music that might be produced for a television programme or a film? The answer is no.

Therefore, will a review look at that area? Yes, absolutely, because—I explain in case anybody who is watching the proceedings does not know this—support for film and television is within Screen Scotland, which is part of Creative Scotland, and support for the games sector is not. Support for the games sector is part of the Scottish Enterprise network. That is a historical decision—I was not around at the time—and I am sure that there was good logic for it—

I know that Mr Bibby has already been listening very closely to the past 40-plus minutes of evidence, in which I have been outlining our commitment to increase funding for the cultural sector extremely significantly; to go through a change to the way in which funding is allocated, in line with the wishes of the sector that it be done on a multi-annual basis; to embrace the opportunity to look across the creative and cultural landscape, to ensure that we have its administration in the best possible order; and to deliver on that change as quickly as possible.

Here is a challenge for us all. We cannot just wish the means—we have to vote for it. We will soon have a budget, in which I hope I will be able to secure the agreement of my colleagues in Government that we will provide an allocation for culture that is heading in the direction that everyone would want. We would all wish it to be delivered in one year, no doubt. I will try to be as persuasive as I can, but, realistically, because of the scale of increase that is required and that we have committed to, it will take a number of years to do so. Regardless of that, we will have to vote for it. If we do not pass a budget, sitting and pointing out that things have been extremely challenging and that, for many, it has been a crisis, but then not supporting the means and not voting for it, will be a real problem.

Mr Brown is absolutely right to point out the challenges on income, particularly for a lot of freelancers. He is also absolutely right that it is important that maximum clarity about increasing funding is forthcoming. To be exact—I was looking through the figures earlier to underline the point about the direction of travel in answer to Mr Bibby—we have been absolutely clear that we are committed to increasing funding in Scotland by an additional £100 million on an annual basis. If we compare and contrast the previous UK Government’s funding levels with the funding levels that are being maintained by the incoming Government, we see a 6 per cent reduction in the culture budget for England. In Wales, there is a 6.5 per cent cut to the culture budget this year, while in Scotland it is going up.

I appreciate that people want certainty, but they should know that the direction of travel in Scotland is for culture spending to go up. That has not just been committed to; it is happening, unlike elsewhere in the UK, given that the Labour Party at the UK level and the Labour Party in Wales are cutting culture budgets.

I am proud to be culture secretary in Scotland, where we are increasing culture funding and heading in the direction of a transformational shift in funding culture and the arts in Scotland. Would I wish that to happen quicker? Absolutely. Am I seeking to do it as quickly as possible? Yes. When we get there, will we be in a significantly different and better place? Yes, we will. Could we do it any quicker? If we had a multiyear funding agreement from the UK Government, we could, but we do not.

In fact, the current UK Labour Government has no intention of putting such an agreement in place, and I have heard not a single one of the Labour parliamentarians in this place argue that we should have it. However, it is self-evident that if we want multiyear funding disbursement, it would be advantageous to have multiyear clarity from the UK Government in relation to devolved budgets, given the subordinate financial nature of the devolution settlement. I ask any colleague in any party to recognise that as a commonsense solution, as we move in the direction of Meghan Gallacher's suggestion about the Government having the widest possible multiyear funding approach—which I agree would be the best thing for everybody involved.

For those watching proceedings who might view this as a slightly technical question or a question about accounting, I ask that we just imagine for a second a really small organisation—a particularly small organisation—with not a lot of people to do the paperwork, the finance and the budgeting. When we think of the transformational difference between its having to do that work every single year and its having to do it for a number of years at one go and then getting on with the business at hand—which is to be as creatively focused as it wishes to be—we see that that has to be the prize for us all.

However, I say again that, for us to do that, we have to wish the means. One can be critical and just ask, “When is a commitment not a commitment?”, even when one can see the money beginning to head in the right direction, but we need to be careful that we are not only recognising the challenge but actually doing something about it. The Government is doing so, and the Parliament will have an opportunity to do so in the budgetary process. Then, if we are supportive of the budget, as we will have to be, we will hopefully secure the means—the means that have been committed to, of course—through that budgetary process. That is how finance works in a parliamentary democracy.

I am very interested, in principle, in identifying any funding sources that might support music venues and organisations in addition to—not supplanting—public funding. I made mention of that in my opening statement. A lot more could be done in that area. We talk quite a lot about philanthropy as one income source, but there are others, including, potentially, ticketing.

The member’s predecessor on this committee asked me about the issue with great focus, and I raised it with the previous UK culture secretary. As I have alluded to, some take the view that some elements of the issue are reserved. We need greater clarity around that, along with an understanding of the ability of the devolved Administrations to work with UK Government partners to look at the likes of a ticket levy, because it is viewed as a tax.

I am trying to give the shortest answer that I can—

Yes—for this incoming year.

I am sorry, but as an additional point, I think that it is helpful for viewers to be aware that the current Scottish Government is operating in a minority parliamentary situation. To get a budget through, it will require a majority of MSPs to vote for it. That is why this is not just a question of commitments by the Government. I have given the Government’s commitments; I have underscored those commitments; and I reiterate them. What I wish to communicate to colleagues is that, if we are agreed that the scale of the challenge is such as it is, and if we are agreed that we require to deliver additional resources of the scale that the Government has committed to wanting to deliver, we need to vote for that.

I totally refute—

I do understand the point that you are making.

There are a few points to make about the specialised committees. First, they are all relatively new, but some were set up later than others. I am not in a position to talk about issues with the frequency of the meetings—my officials might want to say whether they have a particular view on whether that has been problematic. To be honest, I think that the challenge was to get the specialised committees established in the first place. Now that they have been established, they have to find a rhythm to what they do. I am not in favour of having meetings for the sake of having meetings. I generally believe that issues that need to be discussed should be raised when they need to be.

There might be an issue around how often the specialised committees meet and whether they meet often enough—I think that that is the nub of your question. I am not sure that we are going to be able to answer that yet—I see that Nick Leake would like to comment, and I will let him in in a second. I had a concern around the fact that, for quite some time, a significant number of the specialised committees had not met at all. It seemed to me that, if it was thought that it was important to establish those specialised committees, it was pretty important that they should at least have an initial meeting and then discuss what the rhythm of their meetings should be in future.

Now that the committees have largely been established, we are in the next stage of working out whether they are meeting as often as they should. It is definitely the right question, but I do not have an answer to that in the round, Ms Gallacher. However, I am as keen as you are to know whether that is indeed the case. I think that that will become more apparent now that the committees have initially met. Nick, do you have some additional information on that?