Seòmar agus comataidhean

Over the summer—this relates to Liam Sinclair’s point—I had the privilege of seeing the quality of the creative and cultural industries, particularly across the Highlands. I want to focus a bit more deeply on three questions, which pick up on Kara Christine’s point about preventative spend and the need to acknowledge and quantify the wider outcomes that culture spend can deliver, because I think that all of us have continued to be inspired by the Christie commission. Preventative spend has been notoriously difficult to do, because any fixed budget requires funding to go up in one way and down in another way.

When it comes to the public discussion about funding the creative and cultural industries, to what extent do you think that progress has been made in acknowledging that culture contributes more generally to outcomes? When I talk about acknowledgement, I do not mean politicians saying, “We accept that”; I am talking about the concrete movement of funding. That might be a short answer.

Secondly, when it comes to more general outcomes, Duncan Dornan talked about the impact of culture on health and wellbeing, education and the economy. As we have seen in the Western Isles, it has acted as a tool for reversing depopulation, through spending on MG Alba. What further work would you like to be done to demonstrate and quantify the wider impact of culture spend that can be used as proof, for want of a better word?

My third and final question—I am just throwing them all out there, because I thought that you might be able to pick up on different elements of each—is about partnership working between the private and public sectors. I am talking, for example, about joint projects with the NHS or with organisations that are tasked with delivering economic outcomes and so on. To what extent have you seen growth in such partnership working so that some of the risk around projects can be shared, with the result that not just the museums, for example, have to fork out, but they can partner with other organisations?

The root of my question was that you can deal only with situations that you are aware of. To go back to what I said earlier, I imagine that it is much harder to follow up the anonymous guy with a puppy in the boot of a car than it is to follow up someone who is already in contact with some sort of organisation or body, which means that the public will be critical in looking out for problems. Gilly Mendes Ferreira made a fascinating point about certificates improving the rights of the buyer, who will have documentation and proof, even if that flags up inaccurate details.

Good morning. I do have a few questions about certificates.

In the evidence thus far, there has been a lot of emphasis on breeders and the fault lying there, whereas a certificate is presumably designed to trigger a commitment from the buyer to care for the puppy. I have quite a few questions about that. Do you think that the balance is right with regard to the proposal in the bill? On whom should the balance of responsibility lie: the buyer or on the breeder?

Secondly, there are already informal certificates that buyers can commit to, but they are not enshrined in legislation. Are there any learnings to be had from previous informal certificates that have worked? What are the right questions to trigger that commitment among buyers? I do not know who wants to go first.

For the record, if someone is tempted to rescue a little puppy from the boot of a car, what should they do?

My question goes back to a point that Gilly Mendes Ferreira made about enforcement. As always, and as with any legislation, its aims might be laudable but, if it cannot be enforced, we will not see the behavioural change that we are all keen to see. My first question also goes back to my earlier point about certification. To what extent will more formalised documentation and more of a record help with enforcement? Secondly, is it purely a question of financing boots on the ground to go and check or are there other ways of intercepting poor behaviour that does not meet the standards?

It might be worth asking one of my follow-up questions now, just in case anyone else wants to come in.

To what extent might placing more requirements on the buyer—including adding more costs to the process—push buyers into trying to circumvent the formal process, thereby making the situation even worse? For example, if buyers have to complete the certificate and, as a result, might have to pay more for the whole process, that might make some more inclined to buy a dog from the back of a car in a car park. Is that unfair or incorrect?

I know that I already alluded to this, but I will put it on the record. What would reassure the committee to an extent is a willingness on the part of the Government to return at some point—say, in a year—to review the evidence over the course of the year, where there has been evidence, for example, of relatively newly born male deer being shot. Could we get a commitment that the minister will return in a year, when we can consider the evidence of how the measure has been implemented?

That is very helpful. You might be familiar with the Country Food Trust, which does a great job in taking venison that might otherwise go to waste and creating nutritious meals that it then donates to food banks.

One of the risks, however, is that, if there is a massive increase in culling, particularly out of season, that has a huge impact on the likelihood of that meat being eaten. The idea that we might be wasting meat sits so wrongly with me. Does the Scottish Government have a word of warning to give that, if we are to see culling increase, particularly out of season, that is not a licence to see far more carcases going to waste, especially if one of the benefits of this SSI is actually to see more carcases going into the food network?

No, we have not—we are very much still on the first SSI.

An example from recent years is mountain hares. In the debate about that, one argument that was made as to why land managers should still be allowed to shoot and cull mountain hares was that high growth in numbers would lead to hare starvation because the habitat could not sustain them. I think that we need to think more carefully about how we explain the fact that we have taken a very different direction on mountain hares, which have a detrimental impact on vegetation and on trees—I believe—that is equal to that of deer. The gamekeepers who have questioned me have asked how we explain the two different approaches that the Government is taking to mountain hares, for example, and deer.