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In terms of the lottery?

There is a lot in Sarah Boyack’s question and commentary, most of which I completely agree with. We have learned from the particular challenges and circumstances relating not only to the Filmhouse but to Dance Base. I think that Sarah Boyack, the convener and other members will appreciate that, as a constituency member for Edinburgh Central, I am constrained in what I can say in general, but also in specific terms, because my colleague Neil Gray, Minister for Culture, Europe and International Development, takes the lead in those areas.

However, as I have discussed with Iain Munro and colleagues at Creative Scotland, speaking in general terms about the challenge to organisations, we will all need to have much more, and earlier, insight into any particular concerns about organisations. If one wants to maximise the potential intervention and support that Sarah Boyack has highlighted—I concur with her that there are a number of sources—one needs to be able to do that before organisations get to a stage where they cannot trade. That is just a statement of fact. If organisations get to a stage where they announce that they cannot trade, it is beyond anybody’s ability—whether that is Creative Scotland or the Scottish Government—to help to maintain those organisations.

At that point, there is a legal process and administration, so there is another set of challenges and potential interventions but, in some respects, the ability to keep organisations standing and going is reduced. I have discussed the issue with Creative Scotland, which is much closer to the organisations, because that is its role. Members will appreciate that the reason why we have a culture and arts organisation such as Creative Scotland is because it is not for ministers to micromanage the interface with individual organisations. However, there is a general understanding that we need to know where the greatest risks are.

Donald Cameron mentioned the evidence that Iain Munro gave to the committee on his concerns about specific organisations. In and around that space, if it is necessary to help, assist or support particular organisations, I am keen that we are able to do that, and I use that “we” in the sense of Creative Scotland, the Scottish Government and other agencies. It will take a cross-agency approach to make sure that we do that as properly as possible. I think that time is the key thing in understanding that.

Members will appreciate that it is not something that I will keep a running commentary on, for the very obvious reasons of commercial sensitivity, but that process is already happening, and organisations have been able to make changes with the support of others, because people have put up their hands in time for other bodies to intervene and support. In certain cases, organisations have been able to make the most of, for example, the philanthropic support that they have received in the past and have been able to secure that in order to continue operating in the circumstances in which they have found themselves.

Specific funding has promoted public support for a return to the arts. That has already been happening. People have their own degree of hesitancy for their own reasons. We therefore need to build confidence, and our cultural organisations have been doing a superb job in giving people assurance and reassurance about why it is safe to return to galleries, theatres and other venues and events.

Can more be done? Absolutely. I am looking forward to going to the opening of Celtic Connections tonight, and I unashamedly use this opportunity to say to anybody who is watching that they should take the opportunity to support events such as Celtic Connections. Where tickets are available, please attend theatres and festivals and events. That is my first observation—that there has already been support for that, but more can absolutely be done.

Sarah Boyack asked about a number of other points in her previous question, which, if she will forgive me, I was not able to come back on. She asked about potential new funding streams or different ways in which resource could be allocated. Notwithstanding all the pressures and constraints, we in the Government are still keen to make progress on that. She mentioned a percentage for the arts scheme, the visitor levy and a better understanding of how social prescribing can operate. Those are all absolutely under on-going discussion in Government and across portfolios, and we will report to Parliament on that in our culture refresh in the spring of this year.

Having said all that, I would not want to miss the opportunity to say that there is some extraordinarily good practice and progress going on. Sarah Boyack mentioned our national performing companies. I do not know whether everybody on the committee saw this morning the report on Scottish Ballet and what it is doing in relation to health and wellbeing, which is exemplary. Its dance health team is a UK first. Opening a national dance centre that will be aimed at helping people in relation to health and wellbeing, dementia and long Covid is exactly the sort of thing that we have been talking about in general principle terms, and which we are now seeing being taken forward. I am sure that there will be more of that.

To go back to the experience from the round-table sessions that we have been having, one of the participants in our Dumfries meeting—which I attended virtually this week—reported on the work that is under way in hospitals, nursing homes and care homes. It is important to appreciate that a lot of what we are aspiring to have even more of, in terms of scale and reach, is currently happening.

There is innovation and outreach, and culture is delivering much more beyond art for art’s sake and even the narrow issue of benefiting the Scottish economy; it is already delivering in areas such as health and wellbeing, which we talked about before. However, we want to widen and grow that, and, notwithstanding the constraints that we are working under, I am still very ambitious about helping to deliver that in a much broader way.

I take the opportunity to support that event as well.

I think that it is fair to put on the record, when discussing Historic Environment Scotland, that the Government has recognised the particular challenge that it is having to deal with, so the agency’s operational budget is rising by 18 per cent, to £114.5 million. That will play a part in the maintenance of property, but it is also for staff pay and a number of other important areas.

I am pleased not only at the good news about Scottish Ballet and what it is doing for health and wellbeing, but that we are beginning to hear some good news about various sites that are reopening. I see, for example, that St Rule’s tower at St Andrews cathedral is reopening on Friday 20 January. Every opening is a significant positive milestone for communities, for which a particular place will be of intrinsic, and tourist and economic, value. At the same time, however, as I am sure Mr Golden and colleagues will appreciate, it is important that Historic Environment Scotland reopens facilities only when it has confidence that the people attending those sites will be safe.

Mr Golden has asked me to give a number. I cannot give him one, but I will be happy to ask Historic Environment Scotland for the latest update on its facilities. In relation to the committee’s deliberations, with the subject of today’s session being where we are with the budget, the Government’s commitment in respect of the budgetary situation for Historic Environment Scotland reflects an understanding that reopening sites is a big challenge for the agency. It will be an on-going challenge, but I am glad that facilities are reopening. When that can happen safely, and as quickly as possible, it is to be welcomed.

I agree with Sarah Boyack that—I said this in my answer to Donald Cameron—bringing in innovation as quickly as possible is part of the solution to how we move from where we are currently to a better place where we have introduced other funding streams.

Incidentally, as I think I have mentioned to the committee previously, there is also an opportunity for greater coherence in philanthropic support for culture and the arts. There are tremendously generous individuals, trusts, organisations and private sector companies that do an incredible amount to support the arts. That is another area in which we need to work together across agencies, with Government and the philanthropic sector. For example, with the national companies, which have been mentioned, we can work on what we can do to support international and touring efforts.

There is a wide range of ways in which we can help and support. Some of those will require finance, but some will not, because they relate to the convening power of Government or agencies such as Creative Scotland, which need to think anew about how we do things. One of my biggest takeaways from speaking with the sector in the round-table meetings that I mentioned is that there is an understanding that doing nothing is not an option and that we will have to face up to the scale of the challenges.

I fully acknowledge Sarah Boyack’s point about Creative Scotland’s spending constraints, and what she said about reserves not being a long-term solution to such spending constraints. One challenge that we have picked up on in conversations with artistic organisations is that they have been spending their reserves and, when one is trying to proceed through a storm, it is a challenge if one’s ability to use reserves is denuded. However, without making the same point at great length again, we are not in normal financial circumstances, so we are going to have to find a way through the storm, and I am sure that we will do it. There are a lot of good examples of the innovation that is happening.

Incidentally, I should say that I am interested in hearing from others who face similar circumstances, and I was pleased to finally meet with the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport for the United Kingdom, Michelle Donelan, who is my opposite number, a few weeks ago. She faces many of the same problems in her portfolio areas in relation to the funding of culture and arts and the same pressures, which people will be aware of, such as theatre closures in England, because of the same financial challenges, the post-Covid impact and so on.

I am keen to work with colleagues not only in the rest of the UK, but further afield. Are others taking approaches that we can learn from? Alternatively, we may be doing things that we can share. I am keen to work in a collegiate way with colleagues, and I am happy to support the culture sector’s call with regard to the Treasury’s tax treatment of theatres and other venues. I discussed that matter with Michelle Donelan, and I have subsequently written to the Treasury to underline how important it is in the current circumstances that, when tax decisions are made, they do not worsen the situation.

Where it is possible to work together, I am absolutely up for doing that, and I am doing it. Where there are more opportunities to learn from elsewhere, I am keen to do that as well.

There is a very strong case to be made that some of the biggest impacts might be felt through the endangerment of the smaller and smallest organisations. You mentioned a semi-rural community where there is a much smaller population, and that organisation might be the only arts and cultural outlet in that small community. If it was to close, there would be nothing.

Is that a serious situation? Absolutely—of course it is. It is therefore absolutely right that the Government is doing everything that it can for the directly funded national companies, that Creative Scotland is doing everything that it can for the regularly funded organisations, and that we are both doing what we can for the smaller organisations for which we have responsibility.

There is also a local government dimension to this. There is funding and support for culture from local government, and we are seeking to work more on that with our colleagues in the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. For example, my culture minister colleague Neil Gray has been meeting culture leads.

We need to be cognisant of the value and the importance of art for art’s sake—I have now said that twice, because it is so important—but I think that we all agree that the economic and broader benefits that we have been talking about are the prize in linking culture with the wider governmental and societal benefits of mainstreaming culture. Going backwards is obviously not a good thing, so I am seized of ensuring that we have the time to consider where there are particular risks or warning mechanisms around particular groups or organisations, and the kinds of intervention that can be made to reduce those risks.

Will that be successful in all cases? I hope so, and I am certainly minded to work very closely with our colleagues in Creative Scotland and local government to make sure that it is.

The first thing for me to say is that it is important to have an open mind about all those things. I certainly do, and I know that Creative Scotland is updating its funding approach, so I am sure that people there will have listened to the points that you have made. If there are particular suggestions, I encourage you and others with an interest in the matter to take them up directly with Creative Scotland, which has the responsibility. For understandable reasons, we have an arm’s length between Government and the funding of particular projects, who prioritises what one thinks is important and the relative value of all those things.

You talked about screen. I am struck that there have been some amazing box-office successes in big-budget film productions in Scotland in recent years. That is tremendous. It is a good sign of the ending of market failure in the screen sector here and a move in a positive direction. However, it is particularly heartening to note the success of more independent and smaller-scale productions at present. I give “Aftersun” as an example, which was voted best film of last year. It was supported by Screen Scotland. It was perhaps not considered by some to be a traditional box office-type film, but it was tremendous nonetheless.

There are benefits from having more screen output produced in different parts of Scotland. At present we can see—well, we can see it at any time, I suppose, because we can stream it—“The Rig”, which was shot in Leith. “Mayflies”, which is a tremendous BBC production by a Glasgow-based production company and a cutting-edge Scottish author, was, significantly, filmed largely in Ayrshire.

One great thing about screen going in the direction that it is going in is that it is getting to a scale where it goes beyond the studio space that we have and is filming in locations that are not traditionally film locations. That gives significant economic benefits to the areas where those projects take place. Screen Scotland and Creative Scotland absolutely think about how we can support culture and the arts right across Scotland, not just in larger population centres or where particular facilities are concentrated, and they are thinking about that at present.

I have relied on the evidence to the committee and have read it in some detail in order to be fully apprised of where various sectors of the economy are on the matter. Government officials have regular communications with all forms of representative organisations, but the committee has had very thorough discussions with various sectors and with people who have significant understanding of the legal situation. That has been extremely helpful.

For context—we might come on to this, but I will say this, just in case we do not—it is important for me to put on the record how important timing is and how important it is that we all understand what has happened in the past two to three weeks. Since the arrival of the new Prime Minister, there has been a rethink on a number of United Kingdom Government policy approaches. We saw that with the U-turn on the mini budget by the previous Prime Minister, Liz Truss, and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng. We can see news today about the UK Government U-turning on policy on renewable energy in England.

In the past two to three weeks there has been a very active discussion in Whitehall about whether the UK Government should shelve the bill entirely. That has led directly to intervention by interest and representative groups—from the UK Trades Union Congress to the Institute of Directors and many others besides—in a letter that was sent to Grant Shapps and reported in the Financial Times.

At that point, the Scottish Government and colleagues in the Welsh Government decided that we would make a joint approach to the UK Government, underlining our previous approaches and saying that the bill is back to front—that it is wrong, it is disproportionate and it is not the right way to proceed. Even if one thought that revocation was a good thing in principle, the bill is not the right way to do it.

That is all important because we can look back on developments in the past few weeks and, sadly, draw the conclusion that the UK Government has decided that it will go ahead with the earliest sunset date, as was planned by the previous Government. Notwithstanding the opposition of the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and all the interest groups and organisations, and despite the vote in the Scottish Parliament on the subject, the UK Government has decided to proceed.

The window of opportunity for the bill to be shelved or forgotten about after having been at the House of Lords has now passed. It is important to put on the record that we are now dealing with a bill that will go forward. In the UK Parliament committee stage, amendments that would have protected Scotland’s position on retained EU law that had been drafted within the Scottish Government were voted on. They were supported by members of the committee from the Scottish National Party and the Labour Party but were opposed by Conservative Party members. That, in effect, protected the bill’s course through the parliamentary process at Westminster.

That means that we are looking at the worst-case scenario. Any thought that we had of the bill being amended to limit its impact on Scotland has been blocked in committee. There is no longer any thought that it might be shelved or withdrawn, or that we might have a later sunset deadline, with the Scottish Government’s and Parliament’s ability to protect European Union law being spread out over a long period. The evidence to the committee is absolutely clear that there is a big danger, because of the compressed timeframe for managing the process, that we could miss things or legislate in haste.

We find ourselves—the Government and the committee—facing the worst-case scenario, with the bill. I have no doubt that it will lead you to ask another set of questions, but it is important to have set the scene for the committee so that we all understand where we are with the bill. We now believe that it will go ahead within the shortest possible timeframe and without any amendments that are proposed by the Scottish Government being accepted at Westminster by the UK Government.

I will have to defer to colleagues on what we are hearing from UK officials. However, I think that are working on the basis that we will have to ensure that things do not fall off the earlier cliff edge rather than the later. We will always make arguments for things happening later. The Scottish ministers do not have powers over that—UK Government ministers have those powers.