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There is another part to the equation. It is one thing people being aware that this is a good thing to do, but there are other questions to consider. Where does one plug into the arts and cultural offering? Are all arts and cultural organisations aware that they can and should play a part? How do we get that partnership going and working at scale? The deputy convener highlighted that that is the challenge, as there will always be early adopters. The challenge is how we ensure that the provision is offered across the country, without there being geographical or social demographic variances. Ensuring that we match things up is work in progress.

You might imagine that, in advance of such a meeting, we would be well advised on the state of play in our departmental settings. I am happy to go into some detail with the committee about that, because it shows that things are happening, which is heartening. For example, if we consider the programmes that some of our national cultural companies are already involved in, that should give us great heart that a lot of work is on-going.

My question—I need to work with my colleague the health secretary on this—is how we can be satisfied that there is a transmission mechanism in the areas for which we are responsible. As Mr Yousaf outlined, when the support workers, the mental health professionals and the GPs who will prescribe such opportunities are all in place, we need to ensure that we have the transmission mechanism, for want of a better description, for how that should work. That is work in progress. We will have to ensure that the cogs or gears work in harmony.

I will try to be quick, but maybe this is an appropriate point to give some examples. You mentioned the Christie commission and how long ago it made recommendations. When looking at the concrete examples that I gave you a sneak preview of, I am struck that they have been operating for some time. The question is how we make them scalable.

To give some concrete examples, the committee will be aware of Big Noise, which is run by Sistema Scotland. It is a high-quality music education and social change programme that works intensively with kids, young people and families in specifically targeted communities and it has benefits that relate to the national performance framework—child-focused wellbeing outcomes such as increased resilience, happiness, sense of belonging, fulfilment and emotional wellbeing. This is a scalable programme. It is up and running. Do we recognise it for what it is? Yes, absolutely. Is there more that can be done with it? Yes, there is.

The Scottish Ballet dance health and wellbeing programme has been across Scotland since 2013, not just for the past few years. It has been up and running for a while and is considered a global leader in the field. Many referrals, particularly for those living with Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis, have already come from partner consultant neurologists at Ninewells hospital and medical school and the Queen Elizabeth university hospital. The programme has been going for some time. Is it scalable? Yes, it is.

The National Theatre of Scotland has just been running a two-year project addressing ageism, social isolation and transphobia, supporting the recreational, artistic and social rights of LGBT+ over-50s. Is that scalable? Yes, it is.

National Museums Scotland has tailored programmes for people with dementia, offering social experience connected to collections and reminiscing. I could go on, as there is more that National Museums Scotland has been doing, and theatre groups and the Scottish Book Trust have been doing things.

There are a wide range of things that are up and running and have been running for some time relating to the Christie commission recommendations. The challenge is how we build on the very good work that is currently happening to make sure that, as we scale up and have the wider awareness that these schemes are up and running, they can provide the capacity when GPs, as the deputy convener was alluding to, are adopting social prescribing across the piece. That will be the challenge—making people aware of schemes and then doing them at enough scale to satisfy the demand as the approach that we are trying to get between health and social care and culture and the arts becomes more mainstream.

We need to open things up, because we certainly do not have time to do this. There is also the question of what culture is in this context. We can establish a cultural and arts community and organisations and it is very observable what a local arts or cultural group might be doing in Argyll, as Jenni Minto has said. There are so many other things that we know from the research have an impact but might not be viewed as culture with a capital C, if that makes sense. Sorry, I do not want to open up a conceptual conversation, deputy convener, but I am very keen that we are able to capture that. An example is gardening and allotments. There is a whole series of things that would not necessarily be thought of as being culture with a capital C but which clearly impact on people’s wellbeing and are part of a continuum of what might be offered and supported.

It will be a future evidence session perhaps, deputy convener.

Forgive me, but I did not get to Mr Ruskell’s question about language skills and assisting people who might not have English as a second language. The Scottish Government has been identifying a number of colleagues who are speakers of Ukrainian and/or Russian. The Ukrainian community in Scotland is, as you might imagine, seized of doing absolutely everything and anything that it can do to help people who are arriving, which is why we are working so closely with them to mobilise as many resources as we possibly can.

I should perhaps clarify that what we are learning about the significant change in the UK Government’s approach is that it is not moving from a position of waiving visa requirements for entry into the UK to the same position as the European Union countries are taking. The system it is changing to is making it possible for people to apply online and to receive a reply to that request online. We do not yet know how long applications might take. We are still at the early stages of understanding how things might work. Given the constraints on human resources, I imagine it would be easier administratively to deal with any application online, compared to using a smaller number of outlying visa offices where there are now long queues.

Our preference is for the UK to emulate the approach of Ireland and other EU member states and waive visa requirements entirely. That is not, apparently, what it is planning to do. It is changing the system in a way that should make application and the processing of such applications a lot speedier, with the anticipation that that would allow a lot more refugees to arrive here much more quickly than would otherwise have been the case.

Yes. This relates in part to the community scheme that the UK Government has talked about under which individuals, organisations or companies might be able to sponsor applicants so that they might secure a visa. We have been talking with the Home Office about those areas, and this is a very good example of where we would want to impress on the Home Office that families should be able to be together.

My view is that we should take in everybody who needs to be taken in. If the UK Government is going to continue to use what are effectively administrative immigration systems to deal with a humanitarian crisis, we have to do our best to make sure that it has the fewest restrictions possible. What Fiona Hyslop raises is a particular by-product of the existing approach, and it is exactly the type of thing that we have been bringing up.

One of the problems that we have had in the Scottish Government—and this will be the same for our colleagues in Wales and Northern Ireland—is that when one seeks to speak with UK Government departments about the intended workings of schemes, nothing comes back on how they are intended to work. We have made major suggestions about what we would prefer, and I described to the committee earlier our approach involving local government at its heart. We say that to the Home Office and ask whether it agrees that it would be workable and advisable regardless of what one concludes is the best way of doing it elsewhere in the UK. We are very clear about what we want to do here. We think that it is the best way of delivering for people. In addition to that, it would appear that those specific administrative restrictions might still apply with after today’s update to visa applications that the UK Government is in the process of deciding and announcing, and we might still have to press to make sure that we do not see the circumstances that Ms Hyslop has raised.

I totally agree with Sarah Boyack. Such considerations need to be at the forefront of people’s minds. We will probably all have seen the same reports of the children with cancer who were unable to continue to receive medicine in Ukraine, who have now left and are receiving treatment in Poland. We can only imagine the challenge that it poses to the Polish health system to have to deal with a million refugees, including people with existing health conditions and other challenges.

That underlines why we all need to do our share so that the burden does not fall entirely on the immediately neighbouring countries. We have an excellent health service in Scotland, which is there for everybody at the point of need, and it will be there for Ukrainians who arrive here, too. They are entitled to free healthcare, as they should be, and the medicines that go with it.

Yes, in principle. I agree that there is a fine line in all of this. There are very principled Russians, often exiles, whether in the cultural sphere, journalism or political activism, who are opponents of the Putin regime, who have spoken out against the approach that the Russian Government has taken in pursuing its aims through violent means. As we know, this is not the first time that it has done that. It has done so in Georgia, twice; it has done so in Moldova; it has done so within its own borders, in Chechnya. This is not a new phenomenon. We have now got to the stage where the international community is saying, “We need everybody in Russia to understand that this cannot go on.” There is a general approach of divesting from Russia. There is a general approach of ending the participation of official Russian delegations, teams and so on.

At the heart of what you asked is an appreciation of the nuances of a situation in which the honorary president of the Edinburgh International Festival, who has not spoken out against the Putin regime, has been asked to give up his position—and quite rightly so—and a conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra has taken a principled position in condemnation of the Russian Government. There is and must be nuance in the approach that we are taking to Russia, which recognises that there are a great many people who should be applauded for their principled stand, whether those in exile—who might be here—or the thousands of people who have been protesting on the streets of Russia itself. We need to make sure that, while taking a very strong and principled stand that is aimed at having a significant impact on Russian public opinion and the Russian regime, our approach is nuanced enough to encompass those Russians who are opponents of the regime. I am sure that nobody would wish an unintended consequence to be that we cause them difficulties.

Before I answer that, convener, I draw your attention to the fact that I am joined by Joanna Keating and Alison Byrne of the Scottish Government. They are the experts in the field, and I will ask them to follow on from my own answers if there are any pertinent aspects that I have not been able to share with you or if they have any insights from the constant meetings that are being had at the moment.

We have been communicating with the Home Office on our preferred scheme, but thus far we have not had a response on whether, from its perspective, it is workable or preferable. However, in Scotland, we want to work with local authorities, given the experience of the Syrian refugee scheme in particular, to ensure that there is, de minimis, an understanding of who is seeking resettlement and where. That will allow a local authority to know what people who are arriving in a new country require by way of help and support, whether it be housing—which obviously will be a primary consideration—or other wraparound care and support.

As we are talking largely about women and children, there will, in addition to housing, be questions of access to health service and health visitor support to deal with, and people will need to have an understanding of how nursery and school provision works. Of course, the focus in that respect is on the refugees who require that help and support, but it is also mission critical for our local government partners, in particular, to have an understanding of what they need to be doing, given the very rapidly increasing numbers of people who might well be arriving in different parts of the country. Local authorities will need to know how many additional places will be required in nurseries, schools and so on. That is why we have been sceptical of what appears to have been the UK Government’s preferred approach, which is that people just receive a visa and arrive. There seems to have been no thinking in the Home Office or in other UK Government departments about the primary role that local government needs to play in the process.

Up to now, therefore, the Scottish Government has been trying to impress on the UK Government its view that we have established practices in place, and we have been making it clear that we want to ensure that, as people arrive from Ukraine, we have learned from best practice from the Syrian refugee scheme and all the lessons about what works. My expectation is that the refugee numbers that we are talking about will be multiple times the 3,300 who arrived as part of the Syrian refugee scheme. Indeed, Ireland, which is pretty much the same size as Scotland, has seen more than 1,000 arrive in the first week alone. As I have no particular insight that suggests to me that we would be looking at any significant difference between Scotland and Ireland in that regard, it is quite helpful for us to understand what the Irish are already going through. If the updated UK scheme expedites the ability of Ukrainians to arrive here, we are going to have to stand these systems up very quickly and at scale. As you will appreciate, after this evidence session, I and my cabinet secretary colleague Shona Robison, who has the primary responsibility for the domestic side of this challenge, will be very actively having meetings to understand how things are likely to work and what the impact will be.

Thank you very much, convener. I will read out the first half of my statement and then, because of the very fast-changing situation that no doubt members will wish to ask me about, update the committee on my understanding of a very significant change in UK Government policy towards Ukrainian refugees.

I begin by reiterating that the Scottish Government has condemned Russia’s unprovoked invasion of a peaceful, democratic neighbour in the strongest possible terms several times over the past weeks. Scotland offers its unqualified support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. Russia’s illegal act of aggression has no conceivable justification, and we reject whole-heartedly the premise of the invasion that is being peddled by President Putin and the Russian Government.

I deplore, as I know colleagues right across the Scottish Parliament do, the heartbreaking loss of life, including that of civilians, which is the direct responsibility of the Russian regime. I wrote to the Russian ambassador on 25 February in those terms, and I have spent time with the acting consul general of Ukraine to assure him of the Scottish Government’s steadfast support.

The Scottish Government has so far committed £4 million in humanitarian aid as part of global humanitarian efforts, with £2 million of that allocated to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Ukraine, which launched last Thursday. I thank everybody in Scotland who has also contributed so generously on a personal basis. The DEC appeal has now raised more than £10 million in Scotland alone.

The Scottish Government has allocated £1 million of our humanitarian aid to UNICEF to support its work in providing life-saving services and supporting families, while a further £1 million has been allocated to the British Red Cross and to the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund. Our financial aid contribution will help provide basic humanitarian assistance, including in health, water and sanitation and shelter to those fleeing Putin’s bombs.

On top of the £4 million in humanitarian aid, we have committed to providing around £2.9 million-worth of urgently needed medical equipment for Ukraine. Our first donation of medical supplies arrived in Poland on Thursday 3 March and is destined for the Ministry of Healthcare of Ukraine in Lviv. A second donation worth £1.2 million left Scotland on 4 March containing more than 130,000 items of medical supplies, including bandages and syringe pumps, and a further 32 pallets of bandages, intravenous sets and syringes left Scotland on Tuesday morning. I would like to place on record my thanks to NHS Scotland for responding to the specified needs of the Ukrainian Government with such lightning speed and fulfilling the request for urgently needed medical equipment, supplies and pharmaceuticals.

Like many across Scotland and the world, I have watched with distress the most significant displacement of humanity since the second world war. It is estimated that around 2 million Ukrainians—although that figure is soon to be overtaken—have been forced to leave their country because of Putin’s invasion, and I am sad to say that many more will follow. If I can take any heart from this tragedy, it has been the amazing generosity shown by people here in Scotland who have rallied to provide support for their fellow humans on the other side of Europe. The stories of families, communities, churches, mosques, shops, schools and workplaces across Scotland raising funds and collecting provisions and clothing for Ukrainians show the humanitarian support that has long been a feature of our country.

As is mentioned in the supporting documents for this evidence session, the Polish embassy in London has welcomed our communities’ generosity but has asked those wanting to help to make financial support and contributions instead, given the scale of the logistical effort and to ensure the most effective use of resources. I would echo that: the best way now of supporting people in this crisis is to provide cash to allow agencies to respond quickly in Ukraine and surrounding countries. The Scottish Government has provided information on the Ready Scotland website, where people can make donations of humanitarian support safely and effectively.

I will now briefly update the committee on the resettlement issue. Scotland, as ever, stands ready to offer refuge and sanctuary for those fleeing Ukraine, as we did with the Syrian resettlement programme, in which all of Scotland’s 32 local authorities participated and as a result of which more than 3,300 refugees were welcomed into communities. In recent days, we have been working very closely with colleagues in the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Scottish Refugee Council and Police Scotland to co-ordinate plans and address the practical challenges of resettling Ukrainians here.

However, people need to arrive in the UK for that support to be given, and up to now, the UK Government has not, in our eyes, been doing enough to enable refugees to seek refuge. The UK Government’s planned community sponsorship scheme does not go far enough in supporting all those who seek refuge in Scotland and, instead, places responsibility for resettlement on to the community rather than with the UK Government.

We must also ensure that we learn lessons from the Afghanistan resettlement schemes with regard to providing rapid and appropriate support for those who need it. We absolutely stand ready to offer refuge and sanctuary to those who might be displaced, and we have been appealing to the UK Government to work with us on developing the detail of the scheme to ensure that we in Scotland can build in appropriate support from local government and other partners. We are working on the detail of the Scottish approach to implementing the UK Government’s schemes, but for us to do so effectively, the UK Government must share its plans and the detail urgently. After all, the situation seems to be changing literally as we meet.

We must be clear that the route as foreseen is completely inappropriate in addressing what could become the biggest refugee crisis since the second world war. Reports are beginning to emanate from Westminster that there has been a major rethink of the UK Government’s resettlement and visa scheme, which, uniquely in Europe, requires Ukrainian refugees trying to reach these shores to seek a visa from a UK Government office and to provide biometric data in situ—that is, in the likes of Poland and other neighbouring countries and indeed in France, too. We have all watched the very distressing television pictures of largely women and children, distraught as they wait for hours to register their interest in getting a visa and then have to wait an indeterminate amount of time to learn whether they will receive one.

It has been widely reported that the UK Government is in the process of deciding and announcing a major policy shift on this front, but I do not have any confirmed final details of that announcement. There will be colleagues who, while I have been speaking, have been able to follow updates on social media and might well know more than me, but we have not yet been formally informed of the position. My understanding, though, is that the visa application process is set to change by being dramatically speeded up and by not requiring people to automatically present themselves at offices. The expectation is that that will dramatically increase—and in a much shorter time—the number of people who can reach these shores.

That raises questions for us, and, after this meeting, I and my colleagues from the civil service will no doubt be having very detailed discussions to learn what we can expect as a result of this change in UK Government policy. As somebody who has been very vocal in calling for the UK to change its system, I will welcome anything that makes it easier for people seeking sanctuary and refuge to get it. Yesterday and the day before, I was in Dublin, holding talks with the Irish Government about, among other things, its humanitarian and resettlement programme. I was hugely encouraged by how the Irish national and local authorities and public administrations, including the health service, have been mobilised and are on hand to give people arriving in Dublin airport on a plane from Poland the help, support and guidance that they require from the minute that they arrive in Ireland. We, too, will look at doing absolutely everything that we can to ensure that, when people arrive here, they receive all the help, support and guidance that they require.

Deputy convener, I will stop there. Members will no doubt have many questions, especially in relation to the change in UK Government policy, but I am also happy to answer questions on any other aspect of the Scottish Government’s response to the crisis in Ukraine.