Seòmar agus comataidhean

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.

If it is helpful to the committee, I am happy to provide the background of the different types of messaging that we use across different platforms, from television through to social media. It was full-spectrum communication and was aimed at different target audiences. I do not have to tell Mr Ruskell that the audience that uses TikTok is quite different from the one that uses Facebook, which is quite different from one that watches certain television channels, which is different from other types of audience.

It is a reflection of the times in which we live that one has to communicate across all those platforms and more. No doubt the conclusion will be that we will have to do more of that the next time the census comes round. However, Paul Lowe made the important point that the lessons that we are learning from the process are not unique to the census. They are reflective of a societal trend and a challenge for anybody who wants to collect information about the public to help to provide the best public services, in the case of the census, to understand the labour market or to understand any number of other things about society at different stages.

How can we do that in a way that is genuinely reflective of the whole of society? Sarah Boyack has spoken about that before and she is right to highlight the point. There are variable rates of return. In shorthand, the more affluent an area, the higher the turnout; the lower the income demographics, the lower the rate of return. I am very much simplifying, but that is one of the most significant factors. Because of that variable rate, we must have mechanisms in place to ensure that the conclusions of the census or other statistical products are genuinely reflective.

The survey work that takes place after the census is really important. I have no reason to disbelieve that the committee understands that. I think that I am right in saying that that work—I am looking at my NRS colleagues before I overclaim—is the biggest survey in Scotland after the census. We are talking about a return of the best part of 30,000—off the top of my head, I think that it is between 25,000 and 30,000—and, as committee members know, it is normally about 1,000 for a representative statistical survey. Therefore, we are talking about an exercise that is 25 to 30 times the size of that.

Significant efforts are being undertaken to make sure that targeted information is obtained. I am sorry; I should have stressed the point that it is targeted within those harder-to-reach parts of the return from the census, to make sure that the overall picture provides not only the statistical certainty of population numbers, as we are confident it does, but that level of granular detail about people of different backgrounds in different communities, so that the provision of important public services, such as health and education, is done on the basis of reflective and high-quality data. I and my NRS colleagues are confident that that has been achieved in the 2022 census.

Dr Allan used the word “you”. I was not part of the decision, so it is difficult for me to think my way into—