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I would always want to be very mindful of that and to try to ensure that the situation that has been described is not the case, because wellbeing matters. At the same time, there is a general recognition that we find ourselves in a very difficult budgetary situation, with the Deputy First Minister currently going through an emergency budget process. I apologise to the committee because, although I am sure that members appreciate that we are in a live budgetary process, they probably want to probe and to ask about certain things so that they can better understand them, but part of the process has, unfortunately, not been decided and is subject to consideration at present. Notwithstanding that, in my department and in departments across the Government, when we make very difficult decisions—perhaps, sometimes, impossible decisions—we try, at all times, to minimise the impact that they will have on people.

As I have mentioned in relation to galleries and museums, we know about the mental health and other health benefits that culture can offer. If people are still able to access—as they are—such facilities free of charge, that is a reflection of the fact that it is an important priority for us. That is a wellbeing priority as well as a statement of the importance of culture.

My additional point about such facilities being warm spaces is also a reflection of the fact that there is a wellbeing dimension to it. Let us be frank: there are people who are making choices, literally, between heating and eating. If there are places that people can visit where it is warm and where one can have great enjoyment in appreciating art and artefacts and the living culture that we see in our museums and galleries and elsewhere, that in itself is a reflection of the importance of wellbeing. However, I appreciate that, when there is uncertainty about the continuity of funding for different projects that provide positive support for initiatives that have a wellbeing dimension, that is a challenge for those who are impacted or who fear that they might be impacted.

All that I can say is that we are taking that seriously as we go through the emergency budget process. As you will appreciate, I will be arguing—I am arguing—as strongly as I can for the maintenance of the maximum possible budget for culture.

I might be wrong, but I think that today is the third or fourth evidence session in which we have touched on that issue as an emerging and on-going initiative that we hope will make concrete strides, so I am glad that the issue has been brought up again.

I will provide an update to the committee on progress since I gave evidence with the health secretary, Humza Yousaf. We have set up a short-life working group with health colleagues to agree a clear set of actions for collaboration. The terms of reference are being drawn up and all the things that you would expect to happen to make the process productive are happening. The group involves health and wellbeing colleagues for their comment, including colleagues with particular expertise in policy interests regarding social prescribing. However, the group will have a broader remit than that, as it will cover a range of policies that cross various bits of government.

We will provide more information on the work of the group in our culture strategy action plan, which will be refreshed before the end of the year, so the Government is considering the issue. I do not want to give the impression that the matter has gone somewhere that it will take a very long time to come back from, or that we will not hear anything because people are away thinking great thoughts for far too long. The work needs to be on-going. Be assured that we are seized of the matter.

The circumstances that we are in now do not make this any easier, because it does not take long before people ask questions about additional funding. We are back to our new initiatives; this would be a new initiative. How do we make a new initiative happen? At some point, money comes into the equation. There is also an additional challenge, to which I do not have the answer yet, but I will signal it. No doubt you would be asking questions about this if I was here with Humza Yousaf again. If there is a growing cultural dimension to health and wellbeing, as there should be, should the health portfolio fund it, or should the culture portfolio fund it? Those are bridges that we will have to cross.

I know that we have a very strong focus on health. It was very helpful that Humza Yousaf and I sat next to each other and publicly declared that we want to make progress on the issue. I am very keen that it goes even wider than that; I have reported to the committee before that it was a Cabinet decision that culture would be mainstreamed across the whole of Government.

There are significant areas of positive impact—for example, I mentioned justice. Many cultural organisations already play a significant role in helping with rehabilitation and with the mental health of people in the justice system, but much more can be done. Similar questions arise about funding, but that should not deter us from making progress.

I have given concrete answers to Ms Minto’s question in relation to the administrative and governmental progress that is being driven across departments. The eternal challenge is to ensure that we are not stuck in our silos, is it not? We will all have to work to help our colleagues who have responsibility for health, education, justice and so on to realise that culture, and much that the culture sector can offer, should be integral to the thinking of many more people than has been the case up to now.

That issue was partly the subject of conversations that I had with UNESCO in Paris yesterday. I was very frank about the stage that we are at. We have an understanding and an aspiration, and we are committed to making progress. We are trying to make progress, although no doubt some people will say that we should be doing more or making quicker progress or whatever. That is fine—it is good to have that encouragement. A bit of pull and a bit of push are good, in this context.

I must say that UNESCO colleagues were extremely impressed that we are at the stage that we are at, and are very keen for us to engage with them, with a view to our sharing what we are doing with other countries and cultural organisations—not because we have the perfect solutions or all the practical applications of how to make things work, but because we are perhaps slightly further down the track than other places are. That is a good thing. The subject is not only relevant in Scotland, although it is extremely relevant here in Scotland; that is our responsibility. We should do our best to work with colleagues elsewhere, and not only to help those who want to emulate, follow or work in parallel with us.

I am keen to understand better whether there are countries that are further down the road. I am sorry—I know that I am digressing slightly, convener. As another update, I note that last week I met the head of the British Council and we discussed how best we can be informed about initiatives in other parts of the world that are further ahead or that are doing things better or in different ways. That could help us to identify and appreciate what we might want to do, and could encourage us to do it. It could also help us not to take a wrong turn somewhere along the way. I am not sure that we have a mechanism in place for that yet. I think that such learning could be relevant for the Parliament’s committees, the Government and its ministers.

How we might do all that was discussed during the Edinburgh international culture summit 2022. I am keen that we learn from others as much as we can, because that will help us to get to where we want to be more quickly than would be the case were we just trying to test our own approach. No doubt the committee will do that, but I strongly encourage members to work in partnership with the Government to ensure that we are best informed about what works. I know that some committee members have a very strong interest in the area. Ms Boyack is not here, but she, together with Mr Ruskell, are examples of members who have repeatedly expressed an interest in the matter. I am sorry—I have started to mention specific committee members. I will get into big trouble for not mentioning everyone.

Yes, yes and yes. We covered some of this ground while you were at the corporate body meeting. In general terms, I made the point that, during the Covid pandemic, additional funding was made available to the Scottish Government. It was up to the Government to decide how that funding would be dispensed to deal with the Covid emergency, and very significant additional support was provided to the cultural sector, for the reasons that Ms Baker has rightly pointed out.

However, it is important to put on record the fact that we do not have additional funding to deal with the present circumstances in which we find ourselves. Unless there is additional funding or, indeed, additional powers for the Scottish Parliament to raise funds—as we know, we are pretty much unique in world governance terms in not being able to borrow in times of emergency—we will have to manage our finances within the constrained devolution settlement in which we find ourselves.

If I were an organisation that had been supported through Covid and which had emerged from Covid to find myself in constrained circumstances with much diminished support, would I feel bitter? No doubt I would. We are doing everything that we can to try to use the resources that we have, while at the same time being absolutely frank with cultural organisations and the committee about the scale of the challenge. Unless somebody is able to come along and say to me, “Here’s additional funding of the kind you had during Covid,” there is not going to be additional funding in general. We are now in an unenviable situation, and some organisations are going to find it extremely difficult, because the same scale of additional funding that was available during Covid is not going to be available at a time when we are trying to recover.

I understand very well the point that Ms Baker is trying to make, but I draw attention to another point that she has made, which I, too, make regularly. A significant part of the spending on the cultural sector that comes from the Scottish Government through Creative Scotland and Screen Scotland, for example, is key to unlocking additional resource in the wider economy, and I am extremely keen to ensure that, in having to make such difficult decisions, we do not lose sight of the fact that we are talking about an important part of not just the nation’s cultural life, but the economy and different economic sectors.

I am making that case very loud and clear in Government. I know that people are listening but, as I have pointed out a number of times now, my colleagues are having to make very difficult decisions on the basis of constrained financial circumstances—and with the additional problem of inflation, which as the committee has heard is, in many parts of the creative sector, running significantly higher than the 10 per cent in the general economy. Indeed, I have been hearing the figure of 30 per cent quite a lot from certain cultural organisations.

Ms Baker is drawing me into an exchange about the Scottish Government’s on-going emergency budget review process. Her point has been made. I have heard it, and I hope that she has heard me say that I am being as vocal, outspoken and constructive as she and the committee would expect me to be during an internal budget process to ensure that we have the best possible settlement in the circumstances to support the cultural sector. Unfortunately, I cannot say more than that.

You were looking at me, convener, when you talked about having to be quick. I feel suitably guided.

My answer to that question is the same as my answer to Ms Baker’s: we are in the middle of a process. Mr Ruskell’s point is well made, and I will take it away and discuss with officials how we can satisfy the need for transparency. As I have often said to the committee, I understand how important that is for you in your work and for us to be able to collegiately make progress in what is a shared endeavour. I will take that away and no doubt, as we emerge from the budget process and there is greater certainty about things, you will have wider questions that we will be able to answer directly. I hope that I can leave that there.

“Youse”, to use the Scots form, which Dr Allan is very well qualified to deploy.

I turn to my NRS colleagues, who were part of that decision-making process. Paul Lowe has put his real hand up, as well as his virtual hand, to answer that. It is not for me to second-guess. To me, just reading through things, the rationale is exactly the same as that which led to at least 60 per cent of other countries that were in the same circumstance to come to the same conclusion. I leave it to Paul Lowe to take us through things, as he was there and was part of the process.

The additional expenditure was £6 million. That equates to 4.3 per cent of the £138.6 million lifetime cost for the May 2022 census. The extension increased the lifetime cost of the census to £144.6 million. and added 4.3 per cent to the cost of the census.

The answer is yes, it was. Is there still more that can be done? Absolutely. There has to be a full toolkit of ways in which one can reach different parts of society—that is a reflection of the fact that we are living in an ever more atomised society.

I am pleased about the different ways in which support was offered. Support was there for people who had English as a second language, some of whom needed translation. It was there for people whose eyesight was not good, so that they could complete the census over the phone, with somebody helping them through it. People who prefer to do things in written form rather than online could have a written census form, and they were given one when it was suggested on doorstep visits that they preferred doing things on paper.

It is important that we do not lose sight of the fact that there was an extremely high digital return rate for the census. This was the first time that digital completion was prioritised in the way that it was. Our society is in flux in that younger people are absolutely at home when using digital access to services—the fact that nine out of 10 census forms were returned digitally shows that people are content to do that—but this time we also had to recognise that there are still people for whom that is not their preferred way to take part in the census. That is why there was an additional range of ways in which people were able to take part.

As far as students and other groups are concerned, I would be interested to know, as part of the on-going process, how effective internal communications were in, say, the university or college landscape or in certain faith communities in which there might be a higher percentage of people who come from linguistic minority groups. There will definitely be lessons that we can learn from that about what worked well and what we need to do more on.

I do not know whether my NRS colleagues have anything to add on any early impressions that we have from all that.

First, convener, if you do not mind me correcting the record, in my previous answer I talked about 60-plus per cent of countries delaying their censuses. It was 59 countries but 71 per cent.

On Jenni Minto’s point about storytelling and the sense of communicating more effectively, that undoubtedly has to be part of the solution. In effect, that is what was happening. I do not know whether all committee members saw the television adverts that involved imaginative ways of communicating the connection between taking part in the census and the provision of a local hospital or other form of public service. Those efforts were undertaken to try and help explain why the census is not an abstract exercise but something that really matters to us all. Could we do that better? Undoubtedly. In 10 years’ time, who knows what Scotland will be like, although I have some hopes about what it will be like. I see Donald Cameron smiling in agreement—good, we are making progress. I am sorry; I am being a bit cheeky.

The trends that we are trying to understand will continue. The nature of society is changing and we will have to be imaginative about reaching out in different ways to different people in different places; we cannot expect to have the same impact or rate of return on things otherwise.

I am sure that colleagues here would agree that it was important to hear that our NRS colleagues are part of international networks and that they work with colleagues in comparable countries, and further away as well, to learn what others are doing. I do not think that there is a silver bullet in any of that, and I do not think that something that would have made significant statistical difference was missed.

The lengthening of the collection period was really important in reaching those places where, notwithstanding the extensive communication work that took place, there clearly needed to be more, different and direct communication. We will have to calibrate that in the best possible way for the next census.

There is something in Jenni Minto’s point about schools. I was talking to officials about that before the evidence session. It is good that efforts were undertaken in the run up to the census. When we think about kids going to school, understanding what the census is and why it is important and then being able to ask their parents about the census at home—asking, “When are we doing it?”, and all of that—we can see that it could be an important part of the equation. Education is part of it, and we need an imaginative response. It is being done already, as are all these other things, but on whether these things can be reviewed and better understood and their effectiveness assured, the answer is yes. It is going to be a case of constant improvement, but that is what colleagues at NRS do already. It is all about doing a job, learning the lessons, reviewing it, implementing the changes that need to happen, and publishing what they are doing. I am all for it when I hear people say that they want transparency. Well, please go to the NRS website and have a look at what is there and at the documentation that has been provided—it is extensive.

I have not said this yet, but I want to put on record my appreciation of the hard work that went into Scotland’s census 2022 by NRS and, by extension, everybody else who took part in the process, from the enumerators to the people in the call centre and so on. An extraordinary effort went into ensuring that we could get to this stage of having high-quality data, which some people cast doubt on—including people in the parliamentary chamber, let us not forget. It is just factually incorrect to suggest that Scotland’s census 2022 will not provide high-quality data. It is providing that and it will provide that, and it has delivered. It is having to deliver in a different way from previous censuses, and I think that that trend will continue. All lessons that need to be learned must be learned, and I have no doubt that we will come back to the committee to report on what those are.

My colleagues here are extremely intellectually curious. They want to know what has to change and how to do it. Countries elsewhere in the world are looking to Scotland to better understand this phenomenon, because they realise that they are dealing with the same phenomenon or similar phenomena. You cannot get much further away in the world, geographically, than New Zealand, and people there, too, are speaking with colleagues here about our experience to ensure that they maximise their return rate. They have settled on a number that is remarkably similar to the return rate that we secured here in Scotland.