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Yes. I am sorry to take issue with you, Mr Cameron, but I am not sure that it is a vexed question. We can differ honourably—as we do—on how we would vote in such a referendum but I hope that, as democrats, all of us believe in having democratic votes. When a Government is returned in an election on a platform for a vote to be held, as democrats, we should all agree that that is what should happen.

There is a cost associated with a referendum, and there are costs associated with Scottish Parliament elections and UK Parliament elections. Is somebody reasonably suggesting that having Scottish Parliament elections is a vexed question? I hope not. Is somebody reasonably suggesting that having UK Parliament elections is a vexed question? Of course they are not. Those are democratic votes and, as a democrat, I respect the results of the Scottish Parliament elections last year, in which a majority of the parliamentarians who were elected believed that there should be a vote. The people voted for that.

The Government has set out its timetable. I gently suggest to Mr Cameron that it would be helpful if his UK Government colleagues were not just as amenable but as respectful of democratic election outcomes in Scotland as the former Prime Minister David Cameron was. That would be helpful, because it is not a vexed question. The decision has been made. The electorate has asked for a referendum, and that is what should happen.

I am not sure that I have much to add to that. The logic is sound, but making it work in practice is the challenge and we will have to be mindful of that. This will be the subject of the committee’s deliberations, as part of which the cabinet secretary and I will come back on a regular basis to look at whether the switch is beginning to happen. If we can see some bite or progress being made on those things, that will give the committee the confidence to say at what point a particular strategy or approach, which is certainly being pursued, is working. When will we begin to see that happen? That depends on how quickly we get up and running with doing some of those things.

Another observation that does not necessarily make things easier is that some things might take longer to change than some other things do. I do not know which those might be and how long they might take, but that echoes the point that Kate Forbes was making about having a mature debate about some of those things. If we are agreed in general terms that this is the best way to go forward—and I think that there is large-scale consensus that it probably is—we have to find our feet by working our way through the process. I know that I am committed to making it happen.

As I have said to the committee before, I am very interested in any ideas or pointers that you and other colleagues on the committee have about how we ensure that the Government thinks about how it can make some things work faster and some things work in different ways. Are any areas being missed as part of the process? It is one of the models of how the Scottish Parliament is supposed to be working. In that sense, we are a collegiate whole, which is trying to make sure that we are able to deliver, particularly on big cultural changes in how we do our business.

I would not rule anything like that out. We need to be open to suggestions of how we make sure that we understand things as well as we can and that we are doing everything that we can. I would need to know more about the proposal but, as I said a moment ago, I am open to suggestions about ways in which we can ensure that we are leading the change that we know is necessary.

If I, as the MSP for Edinburgh Central, can join the MSP for Skye in talking about Skye, I will say that I am strongly in favour of the visitor levy. Such levies are the norm in parts of the world that have significant tourist numbers. As people who travel, we are used to that, and I am perfectly content to make a financial contribution to the places that I visit to ensure that the visitor experience is everything that it can be and that the quality of life and the public services of the people who live in that place are as well supported as possible.

Obviously, this issue gets to the heart of the debate about empowering localities to make appropriate decisions for their locality and the extent to which there is national guidance around what are the good things to be thinking about in that regard. No doubt, we will be talking about these issues at greater length at another time, but I think that the literally millions of people who visit places such as Edinburgh will have little to no difficulty in paying the kind of levy that they would be paying in any other capital as part of their overnight costs. I think that that revenue stream could be transformational in many ways. However, getting maximum benefit from such a funding stream will involve local decision makers having innovative ideas and focusing on the right areas.

You have raised a question before about the Scottish Government playing a significant role in funding that from a public sector point of view. I would need to write to Mr Ruskell about where we are with UK Government funding in relation to that.

I would say, in general terms, that a great deal of work is going into the world cycling championships. The committee will be aware of this, but people watching the proceedings might not be: the event is the first example of a world cycling championship bringing together all the different cycling disciplines—I think that there are 13; please do not ask me to name them all—and it will take place at venues throughout Scotland. It is unprecedented in scale—I think that I am right in saying that it is of the order of the Commonwealth games. It is a huge event. A major part of the considerations around it involve how it is organised and how it is funded in these constrained times. However, an awful lot of thought is also going into what the societal benefits of such an event should be and what the event will do to make more of us use our bikes and change our attitudes to health and wellbeing. There are cash questions—absolutely—and I will write to you with the latest statistics on them. However—and this goes to the heart of the points that we have been making—there are health and wellbeing considerations that cannot be enumerated in cash terms.

I will add to that. Maurice Golden has thrown a pebble in the pond. When I talked before about the visitor numbers for the national museum of Scotland being at 1.5 million rather than 3 million, a light went on for me—I do not know whether it did for anyone else. Given that we have not seen the full return of international visitors, it seems that we are seeing that domestic visitors have more confidence. We may call it a staycation, or it may just be people not travelling very far to go to different cultural institutions.

That gives us hope that part of the small-c cultural change that there has been because of the Covid pandemic is that people are more open to exploring what is on their doorstep. Perhaps there is an opportunity in that for us all in realising that that phenomenon is happening, and that it brings societal advantages if absolutely everybody is able to make use of cultural institutions. I thank Maurice Golden for asking the question in the way that he did, because it has made me want to understand that situation a bit better. It should not just be a passing fad; there is a way of keeping that change while also attracting people to come back. We are all beginning to see more international visitors on our streets, and they are very welcome. The question is what we can do to ensure that people who have previously not visited cultural organisations and institutions close to home are indeed doing that.

Incidentally, people were queuing outside the national museum of Scotland yesterday before it opened, which I thought was a tremendous straw in the wind. Walking past, I could hear that there were international visitors, but also a lot of families and people who were clearly from here or not far from here and wanted to wait in the rain on Chambers Street to go to the museum. That is a good sign. There is something in Mr Golden’s question that is definitely worth better understanding.

Forgive me: I should probably have mentioned health boards in my reply to Sarah Boyack about the partners that are part of the process. I go back to my telescope metaphor. Regardless of which way you look through the telescope, you are going to work back from the individual, to who thinks that an individual needs intervention or support in a form that has not conventionally been prescribed. That will involve a number of organisations—national Government, local government, health boards, the culture sector and individual general practices. There are probably other links in the chain that I have not mentioned. Everybody will need to play a part. Sarah Boyack’s point on strategy was well made. For me, it is important to have confidence that all the links in the chain will play their part.

We can have as many strategies as we like, but social prescribing is relatively new, in terms of adoption of successful models that have made it happen. We are trying to introduce it as quickly as possible. However, making it work will involve a lot of organisations, institutions and—at the end of the day—individuals.

In the evidence session with Humza Yousaf, we talked about GPs in the Western Isles, for example, taking out their little contact books to tell patients the organisations that are available that they could make use of in social prescribing. We have to make sure that social prescribing is available everywhere and not just in some places. I acknowledge that a lot of links are needed in the chain to make it work and that there is a broad geographical spread. We need to make sure that it is available to all, because healthcare should be there for everybody, everywhere, at the point of need.

The point is well made that this is something that we need to get on with. However, there is also awareness that if it were simple it would have been done already. A mixture of pull and push will be required to make sure that it happens. To go back to the conversations that I was having yesterday, I note that people are very aware of that and are turning their attention to how they can play their part.

Forgive me, convener, but we could spend a whole session on that. As part of my broad range of portfolio responsibilities, I chair the Scottish Government’s population task force. I acknowledge that Mr McMillan will have a particular interest in the issue, given that the population statistics for Inverclyde in particular are of great concern for elected members there.

I will answer the question in a number of ways. First, the Scottish Government is very seized of that issue, as are, understandably, local government leaders in authorities whose areas have suffered historical population decline especially. Traditionally, we in Scotland would have looked towards the north-west of the country—the Highlands and Islands—as an area in which there has been particular population decline challenges in the past, but we are now seeing those in other parts of the country, not least in Inverclyde.

That was observation one. Observation two is that we are heading towards population decline in the whole of Scotland. That is a huge challenge—and, frankly, totally unnecessary. Sadly, it is in significant part to do with UK Government policy and the restrictions foisted on us by the type of Brexit that we have, which has ended the free movement of people. Indeed, it is the single biggest contributor to our facing population decline. It could—and this goes to the heart of Mr McMillan’s question—be changed by Government policy. Our views are very well known and understood in Whitehall and Westminster and are totally ignored. The UK Government has shown no willingness thus far to be imaginative with different approaches to immigration policy or, indeed, taxation policy. There was, for example, the approach that we favoured to deal with refugees from Ukraine, which was not the same thing as immigration but was about giving people a place where they could stay and live. As we know, people in such circumstances often make a life decision to stay in the longer term, but we have a UK Government that is pursuing a refugee crisis as an immigration issue.

On all those levels, the UK is taking the wrong approach. Of course, the simple solution is to put Scotland’s Parliament and Government in charge of immigration in order to make better decisions and make Scotland an attractive place to come to and to live, work and study in. We are doing what we can. We are setting up a migration advisory service; we are doing everything we can to join up government at national and local levels to work out what we can do; we are running international marketing campaigns; we have policy ideas that we are trying to understand better; and we are working with other countries on these matters. Not long ago, I spoke to Spanish colleagues about this challenge, because it is being felt in parts of Spain. Lessons can be learned from other countries, perhaps primarily Norway, given what the Norwegians have been able to do to support population numbers in the west and north-west of their country.

There is a lot in your question, and I could give a lot more answers. Indeed, I think that the issue would be worthy of an entire evidence session. I am keen to keep up my attendance rate at the committee, convener, because it has been pretty good thus far and now that other colleagues from Government are attending with me, I do not want to slip down the batting average. I would want to have an exchange on where things are with population decline in Scotland, because it is such an important issue that brings with it very damaging economic and social consequences.

That is an apposite question, because it is a consideration for not only the Scottish Government but National Museums Scotland and the National Galleries of Scotland, whose trustees I met yesterday. That is one of the matters that we talked about, and the trustees made observations about the changes that they have seen over the past 25 years. There has been a change towards a much broader representation of people attending the national museum of Scotland and other museums. However, there is still a gap to be bridged.

I echo what my cabinet secretary colleague said. Embarking on the resource spending review approach will encourage all of us to ensure that we think about those things. One of the potential ways to deal with times of constraint is to increase the number of people of all backgrounds who attend and use our cultural institutions. How do we ensure that there is more school participation in museums, galleries and other cultural institutions, which could help to increase the attendance numbers of children from deprived backgrounds, for example?

Those considerations are very much on our minds in the Scottish Government and on the minds of the institutions, which see it as part of the task in the years to come. We will work collegiately to try to work out how we can help and how they will be able to manage to do it themselves.

I underline the distinction that my cabinet secretary colleague made between a resource spending review and a budget—they are not the same thing. That is point 1. Point 2 is that Historic Environment Scotland is an organisation that is significantly better funded in global terms than other parts of the portfolio, and it is fair to say that everybody has to play their part in making sure that we are able to live within our means.

I am the first to acknowledge that HES is an organisation that has particular responsibilities. The specific nature of the estate that HES has to look after is an area of significant challenge.

Point 1 is that this is a spending review and not a budget. Point 2 is that this is the beginning of a process of working with all organisations, including HES, to work out how we can manage through the next years. We need to be imaginative about whether there is the potential for additional and parallel funding streams—I am extremely keen to explore that area—so that, we hope, not everybody will have to deal with the constraints that the resource spending review points to, as an envelope. I am highlighting the point that it is not a budget projection.