Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning to the panel. I have a question about the future and public service broadcasting in general.

Ofcom produced a report this year that said that public service broadcasting faces considerable challenges and threats and that the situation has been exacerbated by Covid. In particular, those relate to rapidly changing consumption patterns and markets as well as competition, especially internationally. Ofcom made several recommendations to the UK Government in relation to modernisation. From a BBC Scotland perspective, do you agree with Ofcom’s diagnosis? What observations do you have to make on the cure?

Is there a tension around funding going to organisations—be that theatres or whatever—and not to individuals? Is it a difficulty that funding might go directly to a small local organisation and therefore not reach individuals?

The other Donald Cameron, as it were.

I welcome the cabinet secretary and his officials to the committee. I want to start with an observation about common frameworks. In the cabinet secretary’s answers, there was a sense that we cannot really get on with scrutinising common frameworks until certain issues have been resolved. It is worth saying that the Health and Sport Committee in the previous session of Parliament, of which I was a member, scrutinised two common frameworks and heard from the Scottish Government, stakeholders and officials. Therefore, it is not a novel process, albeit that we are all feeling our way a bit on it. I just wanted to put that on the record.

I want to pursue the issue of intergovernmental relations. As the cabinet secretary has made clear, it feels like relations are at a pretty low ebb, although it has emerged today that there are constructive contacts at ministerial level and at official level. To go back to something that Mr Cameron said, there comes a point when the policies of the UK Government and the Scottish Government are diametrically opposed, so engagement ends. It is the Scottish Government’s policy to take Scotland out of the United Kingdom and to oppose Brexit. When that happens, how do we break the impasse?

I have a question about external affairs, which you touched on in relation to the outreach that you were doing. Under the devolution settlement, external affairs are reserved to the UK Government but, over the past 20 years, we have all accepted that Scotland has an international presence and a need to promote itself. How does the Scottish Government work alongside the UK Government on external affairs? In the recent co-operation agreement with the Scottish Green Party, one of the proposals is to open new international offices in Copenhagen and Warsaw. In that example, how would the Scottish Government work with an existing UK diplomatic operation in those countries to enable that to happen?

I have no relevant interests to declare.

Thank you very much, convener. I congratulate you on your appointment as our convener, and I am delighted to be the committee’s deputy convener in what should be a fascinating session of Parliament.

I will speak very broadly and, I hope, briefly on the legacy papers, because I think that that is the purpose of this agenda item.

I will start with culture. Arts funding will be a very important aspect of the committee’s work, especially in the wake of the pandemic. I was briefly a member of the Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs Committee in the previous session of Parliament. That issue was covered, but the state of arts funding will be pivotal to arts organisations in the next few years as we seek to recover from Covid. I am particularly interested in exploring the relationship between central arts funding and local funding of more community-based arts groups.

In relation to the United Kingdom’s relationship with the European Union in the wake of Brexit and the trade and co-operation agreement, the committee can play an overarching role in how the next few years go. In my view, it should not be the committee’s role to investigate specific policies relating to trade, agriculture, the environment and health that fall within the remit of subject committees. Our role should be slightly more overarching, as I said. However, there are important issues, such as the Northern Ireland protocol, which the legacy paper says is an urgent matter. Clearly, that is very topical.

Beyond that, the workings of the devolution settlement will require our scrutiny, not just in terms of Brexit and common frameworks but more generally. I was very interested in what the legacy paper said about interparliamentary working. My strong view is that we should energise that process through our relations with similar committees in Parliaments across the UK and more widely.

Finally, in relation to our international focus, the “External Affairs” part of our title is important. Although Europe will necessarily dominate our discussions, it is important that our international focus is wider than purely on the European Union. We should think about Scotland’s relationship with the rest of the world more generally. I was struck by the comments on international development in the legacy paper. That is an interesting aspect of policy that we could look at.

Thank you for your time.