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In 2019, the festival welcomed a total of 38,056 unique visitors (excluding schoolchildren), and a total attendance figure for events of 113,267. This represents a slight increase from the 2016 Economic Impact Assessment in which there were 31,023 unique visitors and a total of 124,746 attendances. Of these visitors, 38.9% came from outside of Glasgow and a total of 15.2% visited from the rest of the UK or overseas. A slight increase in visitor numbers in 2020 is expected to follow this trend.

Exiting the EU and the ending free movement of people poses a range of challenges to international arts and cultural events in Scotland. The organisers of Celtic Connections – as well as other international arts and cultural events – have raised concerns that introducing new visa requirements could create major financial and logistical problems for festivals, make it more difficult to attract performers from outside the UK, and could ultimately cause them to become less international.

The UK’s current visa system already puts in place significant cost and administrative barriers for non-EU artists bringing their work to festivals in Scotland. The current process is often lengthy, complex and costly. These issues could be exacerbated if the same process is applied to performers from the EU/EEA.

Organisers of international arts and cultural events in Scotland have reported problems with the system, including:

- Home Office decision-makers refusing visas because they do not believe that the person seeking entry is a genuine visitor.

- Visitor visa evidence requirements being too onerous, acting as a deterrent to participants.

- Salary conditions for sponsored work visas are restrictive and can impair festivals’ access to international participants invited to the UK by wider culture sector organisations.

- Duration of the Permitted Paid Engagement route is capped at one month, and the system does not allow festivals to invite young or emerging artists under this route.

- Passport retention is unfeasible for touring artists - few can manage their touring schedule while passports are being held for three weeks for visa processing and workarounds such as duplicate passports, passport retention or priority processing fees are unaffordable.

- UK festivals cannot sustain the costs of sponsorship responsibilities for temporary worker Tier 5 visas. Although this would mean lower evidence requirements for individuals applying, the overhead is not realistic for festivals with multiple participants entering the UK in a concentrated period for short-duration events.

International connectedness, and the reputation of Scotland as a welcoming, outward-looking country is essential to Scotland’s festivals, and exiting the EU also jeopardises this.

In 2017, Celtic Connections stated that it had to reduce the number of American and European acts in its line-up by around 20% following the EU referendum due to the impact of the weak pound on the festival’s buying power. Creative Producer Donald Shaw has also indicated that Scottish Musicians will find it more difficult to perform in Europe following EU exit.

The Scottish Government shares the concerns expressed by the organisers of international arts and cultural events in Scotland, and has regularly raised concerns with the UK Government around the challenges for international artists and performers coming to participate in festivals.

On Saturday 28 September and Tuesday 1 October 2019 I met with a number of families of paediatric cancer patients, and some young patients themselves who have been treated at the Royal Hospital for Children and Queen Elizabeth University Hospital. I was able to listen directly to their concerns and hear of the impact of the infection outbreaks which have affected some patients at these hospitals.

I am very grateful to the families for their time and for the frank and open way they detailed their concerns and feelings to me and the impact these have on their lives. They raised a number of important issues with me. Some of these will be answered by the Independent Review I commissioned in January and which I expect to report by Spring next year and by the Public Inquiry I announced on 18 September. But many are pressing now and will be answered and resolved in the coming weeks.

The central thread running through the concerns about the current situation, is that families want detailed information on current levels of safety in the environment in which paediatric cancer patients are treated, including work undertaken to determine the cause of an outbreak and the rationale for infection prevention and control measures that are taken. Families also want information on the work under way in the haematology/oncology areas of the Children’s Hospital, the intended outcome in terms of enhanced safety measures from that work and the timeline for completion.

All of this is information they are entitled to and should receive. Whilst this level of detail must come from the Board, families should not be expected to seek it piecemeal from a range of individuals. Nor would it be right that the responsibility for providing this should sit with the clinical teams. That is why, I have appointed Professor Craig White, the Divisional Clinical Lead in the Healthcare Quality and Improvement Directorate at the Scottish Government, to review their concerns and act as their dedicated liaison person and single point of contact for families in respect to these issues. Professor White has worked for the Scottish Government since 2014 and led the Scottish Government’s work on organisational duty of candour. He has established his expertise in a broad range of areas spanning the governance, assurance and improvement processes implicated by the concerns raised by families.

The families raised a number of specific questions and requirements and Professor White will, work with them and the Board to seek to have these addressed, at pace. In addition, I have asked Health Protection Scotland to undertake an external review of the Board’s data on healthcare associated bloodstream infections.

In the coming weeks the Chair and Chief Executive of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde will meet with those families who wish to do so and I expect to see a number of the immediate practical issues addressed and a clear and full information flow to families established. I also expect to see additional steps taken to support all the staff involved who continue to deliver high quality compassionate care in difficult circumstances.

In all of these discussions the families I met were very clear that all the frontline staff they dealt with, in whatever role, were compassionate, caring and skilled. They were clear that they wanted their gratitude recorded together with their thanks. I hope to meet with staff in the near future but want to use this opportunity to record my personal thanks to them. I will continue to take a close interest in the progress made against the issues and concerns families raised.

The Scottish Government is pleased that Glasgow has been confirmed as the host city of COP26, given its excellent reputation, strong global presence and ambitious plans for climate change.

The Scottish Government is working closely with the United Kingdom Government on security arrangements and to ensure that the hosting of COP26 does not adversely impact Scotland’s public finances in any respect, or impose unfair financial obligations on Scotland.

This Government champions independent living for older people within their community. Living in the right home with the right support can be the key to enabling people to live safely and independently at home. Last year, in partnership with COSLA, we launched Age, Home and Community: The Next Phase, the refreshed housing strategy for Scotland’s older people, which sets out 22 actions to ensure older people have the right advice, the right home and the right support.

We are investing more than £3.3 billion in affordable housing to deliver at least 50,000 affordable homes over the lifetime of this Parliament. 99% of homes [3,758 of 3,810] built by housing associations and councils in 2017-18 through our Affordable Housing Programme met Housing for Varying Needs standards. That means they are flexible and can be easily adapted to meet the needs of older and disabled people.