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Thank you.

I will follow up on that point. How granular is your assessment of the balance of your activities around the country and your support for other activities? The city of Stirling is in my area, although I do not represent it—I represent Bridge of Allan, Dunblane and a chunk of the Stirling Council area. Clackmannanshire is next door. As a city, Stirling attracts a lot of cultural attention, not least because of its cultural assets, but that is much more difficult in Clackmannanshire. You have said that, where you see ambition, you try to reward that, but how much cognisance do you take of the situation in areas such as Clackmannanshire, where it is difficult to attract some of that attention?

Thank you.

This is about the budget.

It is a very serious issue which, as you said, the committee is going to examine, but I do not think that it should be done at the expense of pre-budget scrutiny, which is what we were told we were meeting to discuss today.

I have four relatively quick questions. The longest is the first one, and it goes back to the point that the convener made at the start about cross-portfolio funding. As part of pre-budget scrutiny, we have heard from a number of witnesses that they want to see that. I am under no illusion that part of that is because they believe that there will be access to additional funds elsewhere in the Government if they can get that hearing on cross-portfolio working. That is legitimate enough. They want to make the case that what they do should attract funding because of the impact that it has in other areas. However, from what you said earlier, I did not catch any concrete examples of where that is working or where it is planned to take place. I do not know whether you have any of those examples.

I acknowledge what has been said about the increase in funding for the cultural sector, which is absolutely welcome. Witnesses have welcomed it as well. The point that we get from stakeholders is that they want to ensure that they can have an audience with decision makers across the Government. Education is one example of where that is happening, and social justice is another. I will not look for further answers on that point just now, but it would be good to be kept up to date with examples of stakeholders being able to see across the Government.

My second question is about Creative Scotland. My experience is that this year has been a bumper year for Edinburgh in particular, because of the festival and fringe attendances and the Oasis and AC/DC concerts. You are both a cabinet secretary and a local MSP, so can you share information—if the Government has it—about how successful the year has been? It seems that it has been busier than any time since the 1980s.

To be honest, I do not think that you had to have a ticket for Oasis to hear every word of every song from the south side of Edinburgh.

I have a narrower question about the timing of this year’s budget at Westminster, which will obviously have a knock-on effect on the Scottish budget. Is that presenting any particular issues for the stakeholders that you deal with?

I do not think that the Scottish Government will do that; it will see setting a levy as a local authority power.

It is likely that the budget at Westminster this year will not be produced until 26 November and that there will, therefore, be a potential delay to the Scottish budget. Does that have any implications for what you do or for the organisations that you support?

I will come back to the budget in a second, but I will first jump back to the discussion about the Edinburgh festival and so on. It strikes me that I have never seen Edinburgh as busy as it was this year—at least, I have not seen it as busy since the 1980s. It seemed extraordinarily full. Of course, there were the AC/DC and Oasis events and so on. I know that you are not directly responsible for this, but are you getting feedback on the impact of all of that? For example, it seemed as if the Americans were back in numbers for the first time in many years—local hotels have shown how busy it was as well. Have you had any feedback on the impact of the cultural activities in Edinburgh over the summer?

This is my final question. In your first exchange with Stephen Kerr, you mentioned the extent to which the increased budget, which is very welcome, may be soaked up by additional costs that the sector is facing. Two of those come to mind: one is last year’s promised reduction in energy costs, which turned out to be an increase in energy costs; and the other is the impact on organisations of increased employer national insurance contributions.

What can you say about the scale and effect of those additional costs? The rise in employer national insurance contributions has been a huge—and unforeseen—cost. What are you able to say about the impact on the organisations that you are trying to support of additional costs that have been imposed from elsewhere?