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::One of my local newspapers advertised for an AI journalist. I am not entirely sure what that is, to be honest. There is very little local content in local newspapers now, and there tends to be a concentration of ownership.

It seems to be the case that we do not have what we should have, in relation to the funding of the Gaelic language, for example. It seems to be the case that network TV at a UK level does not serve us. A lot of the examples that we have heard about, including the convener’s, are about a news item that comes on at six o’clock or ten o’clock on the BBC and completely forgets to mention a dramatic situation. There is so much coverage of student loans just now, but virtually none about student loans in Scotland. That is a serious concern, but more fundamental is how they choose which stories to concentrate on.

Yesterday, there was one on recycling rates for food waste, which was actually about England, although it did not say that it was for England. It was a very good piece on Wales that said that every local authority in Wales has a scheme to uplift food waste every week. That is newsworthy, but that was not the basis for the story. It was about the Barnett formula. The BBC decides what is important in England, and then it might do an add-on. It decided that the UK Government was telling English local authorities that they had to comply with that, and then it covered a bit about Wales. The issue is the basis of the BBC’s decisions on what news to report.

The point is not just that, very often, the news is irrelevant to Scotland. It is also that the BBC does not understand that Scotland has a separate NHS—that just does not register with it at all. Frequently, we have headlines here about some development or a crisis in the NHS in England, but the BBC does not cover such issues here. If the BBC is not giving Gaelic broadcasting its place and is not covering Scottish news—sometimes it just blacks out things such as the aircraft carriers, which I have mentioned before—maybe we should pay only part of the licence fee. I say that as somebody who supports the BBC and the licence fee, but we are not getting the same service as the rest of the UK gets. We are being short-changed. I am interested to hear your view on that.

::To your point, cabinet secretary, you have said before that we have been saying this stuff about the BBC for years. I do not attend the BBC dinners at the SNP conference. Stephen Kerr can take my place at those if he is keen to go to the SNP conference.

We have said this stuff for years. I will give two recent examples. You mentioned Ofcom. I raised with BBC Scotland what is I suppose a niche concern that the network news regularly overruns, thereby delaying the Scottish bit of the news. I presume that the news is also delayed in every other part of the UK. The issue was the utterly dismissive way that the people from BBC Scotland dealt with that—they said, “Oh, sometimes, there are scheduling issues.” That is not about a big crisis that requires an extended news piece. There is regular overrunning, and there is a contempt for local—as they see it—news. The issue is the BBC’s complete lack of response, which was mirrored by Ofcom.

I raised with Ofcom the BBC’s press review programmes—most of the channels have such programmes now, with a token leftist journalist and a token rightist journalist. The issue is that a Scottish person is never involved. The programmes highlight in a very one-sided way the print media and all the stories that it wants to print. There is never a case for Scotland. When I raised that with the woman from Ofcom—I forget her name now; it might be Christina—she absolutely brushed over that with no concern whatsoever. Those programmes usually continue through election periods as well. I noticed that the BBC website has truncated some of its coverage of the newspapers because of the by-election today. It is recognised that a democratic process is going on, and that such coverage might influence that, but the BBC does not do that with its press reviews.

My point is that neither the BBC in Scotland, nor in the UK, nor Ofcom is taking those points seriously. They have had every chance over the years, so perhaps we have to try something different. I argue that the solution is to devolve the BBC. I think that we would suddenly see a lot more attention on the customer in Scotland if it was devolved. That is just my view.

::It is a bit more than that. Look at the sports coverage. Look at the coverage of the six nations. Every programme has to have at least one English representative on it to safeguard the programme from local natives going over the score. Every programme, regardless of who is playing or who the presenter is, there will always be an English player there to talk about it. With the Nick Robinson stuff and what happened during the referendum, it is like the BBC has to send somebody who will understand and can translate into language that the corporation will understand what is happening in this distant land. It is a mindset that the BBC cannot seem to shake.

::I have just a couple of questions. From all the evidence that we have heard, it is clear that what is common to the BBC and other broadcasters is the threat, as it is perceived, from streaming and various other sources, and the fact that a majority of people, when they switch on their TV, now look at YouTube first, rather than a terrestrial channel. It seems to me that broadcasters look through only one end of the telescope—focusing on how they cope with all those threats—rather than considering what their subscribers and customers want, which is a mix of local and national news. That is the sentiment that we have seen in the responses to STV closing down its functions in the north-east and so on.

If broadcasters were to consider what viewers want, surely they would better safeguard their audiences. I am not saying that they should ignore streamers or the various threats that they face, but the idea—although I have got it across quite badly—is that you could establish a cohort of people who are experts in broadcasting, such as the entire production crew, so that if some of the big streamers or companies want to locate a project in Scotland, they have the ready resources to do so. The BBC is best placed to do that, because it is the biggest organisation, but it keeps on chasing the latest thing, rather than rooting itself in what is wanted. You made the point that Gaelic is underfunded, not least compared to the Welsh language service. Surely it would be more productive for the BBC, and broadcasters in general, to look at what people in Scotland actually want.

Are there events in Clackmannanshire?

Having previously been responsible for the enterprise companies, I will say that there is a difference in their remits. I am not arguing with your point, cabinet secretary. There might be a role for Scottish Enterprise to view cultural initiatives more broadly, that is, as also being economic initiatives. I understand that point. However, from memory, HIE was set up with a specific remit to do that, and I am not sure that Scottish Enterprise was.

However, it goes to the point that we made. The committee requested information about cross-portfolio working in relation to that, but precious little detail has come back to us about any initiative—there is a little bit, but not much.

To go back to the point about Clackmannanshire, it is not down to individual members to provide such information. I could cite a number of people who have grown weary of making applications to Creative Scotland and no longer do it. In a small place such as Clackmannanshire, it is very difficult to maintain an infrastructure without at least periodic success.

My point is that we are not in year zero. Creative Scotland has existed for 16 years. What does it know? What has it done in relation to Clackmannanshire? That area’s next-door neighbour, Stirling, has been relatively successful, but is still well below average in what it gets. What is Creative Scotland doing?

I do not know what the Scottish Government can do, but it should be seized of the need to do something urgently in that area. I have been talking about Clackmannanshire but, for example, West Dunbartonshire probably also comes at the bottom of most Scottish deprivation indices and is getting nothing at all. This is a pressing and urgent problem and the Scottish Government and Creative Scotland especially should show a bit more urgency in dealing with it. Culture is important and is no less important to areas of huge deprivation.

I am keen to hear about that. I have asked Creative Scotland to provide a pattern of its grants and support over the 16 years of its existence, for both Stirling and Clackmannanshire, and it has undertaken to do that. However, it would be nice to see it taking a joined-up approach with the Scottish Government to considering how the issue can best be addressed urgently.

I want to go back to the convener’s opening question about the disparity between local authority areas. The convener mentioned Clackmannanshire and West Dunbartonshire, which are noticeable, as those are two areas of the greatest deprivation in Scotland, but they received nothing at all in multiyear funding. I would be interested to know how that has developed over the 16 or 17 years since Creative Scotland was created. I probably do not need the specific detail, as that would be hard to recollect, but has there ever been a period of bounty for Clackmannanshire, for example, or has the situation been pretty consistent?

It would be useful to get that information. If possible, it would also be good to get information for Stirling. I represent quite a chunk of Stirling and hope to represent a larger chunk of it after the election. It would be interesting to see what the pattern has been there. I see that the figure sits at around £12 per capita, which is still below the average, although it is an awful lot more than nothing at all, as we see in Clackmannanshire. I want to try to understand why that is. It is hard to judge until I get the information on how the different patterns have emerged.

You have said that you keep a close eye on the situation, but we are now 16 years into Creative Scotland, and its investment in Clackmannanshire, at least through multiyear funding, is zero. That is an area of substantial deprivation, so I find that hard to understand. It is no consolation to folk in Clackmannanshire to say that 28 other local authorities now receive funding. They are not receiving it, and their need is substantial.

It is not just about being seen; the experience of the arts and culture sector in Clackmannanshire also concerns me.

You mentioned Stirling. I would have thought that Stirling would be relatively vibrant due to the creation of Creative Stirling and some of the activity that has been associated with that, but, at £12, the figure for Stirling is still well below the average for multiyear funding, which is £17. The discrepancy in that chart is striking. You have said that you will provide a pattern over the past 16 years for Stirling and Clacks. In some ways, they are cheek by jowl and pretty hard to disentangle, but can you give us an idea of how many RFOs there are in those respective local authority areas?

You have, quite rightly, over the years, pushed and pushed for multiyear funding, because of the particular advantages of multiyear funding for organisations. For all the work that you said you have done, you have ended up in the situation in Clackmannanshire, as well as in three other local authority areas, where there is no multiyear funding.

Perhaps it is time to have a wee look at what has been going on and whether it is the right approach. Perhaps a different approach is needed for those authorities. North Lanarkshire is not much better—17p per head. Such a discrepancy should be a very urgent issue for Creative Scotland. I will leave it at that.