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Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

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Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 5 May 2021
  6. Current session: 12 May 2021 to 5 April 2025
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Displaying 570 contributions

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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Scottish Government Resource Spending Review

Meeting date: 9 June 2022

Angus Robertson

That relates to the questions on Historic Environment Scotland that Sarah Boyack asked. It is much easier to retrofit a relatively recent building to reduce its carbon emissions. It is more and more difficult to do that the older a building gets. There is a sliding scale of challenge in that.

On whether different allowances should be given for that reality, I would want to be better advised about how we are doing that in the first place. I observe that—I had this conversation yesterday—many organisations that have begun to go down the path of making the changes that we will all have to make have started with the lowest-hanging fruit. There is a general understanding that the closer we get to the more testing targets that we have, the more difficult will be the decisions that we have to make as we go along.

That fits in part with the appeal that Kate Forbes made for us to try to protect a space to have a mature debate about how we do that. If all we do is retreat into our ideological trenches and not allow ourselves to think in new ways in all directions, we will probably not be able to answer some of those really big questions.

I am not sure that I have to hand the answer for the question that Maurice Golden asked but I acknowledge that some buildings, specifically older buildings, will be next to impossible to upgrade to the latest environmental standards whereas most that are being, or have recently been, built are at it. I am content to consider how one accounts for that difference.

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Scottish Government Resource Spending Review

Meeting date: 9 June 2022

Angus Robertson

There is the view through the other end of the telescope, which is of cultural organisations and institutions coming forward and saying that they have something to offer in this space. That can and, I hope, will come out of the exercise. We are having to rethink how we can deliver priorities across Government, which will be done by working in partnership with organisations. Sarah Boyack is absolutely right to highlight how important local government is in that, but it is also about what cultural organisations do.

I go back to my example of the meeting at National Museums Scotland yesterday and asking its trustees what they are thinking about. Our museums—they are not all in Edinburgh; they are in various parts of the country—lend themselves very well to providing services that social prescribing can offer. There are other institutions across Scotland that can do it, as well. That means that institutions will have to think about how they can make services accessible and understandable to practitioners who would prescribe them. Committee members will remember my evidence session with Humza Yousaf, at which we began to explore what we will need to do next to ensure that people who are likely to want to use social prescribing know what facilities are available to them.

That is why we have exercises such as the review. It is not an unforeseen consequence—it is actually at the heart of the matter and makes everybody ask where we need to be more innovative. It is not necessarily about cash or constraints; it is about asking what we can do differently to ensure that we use the resources of our museums, galleries and so on to fulfil that purpose.

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Scottish Government Resource Spending Review

Meeting date: 9 June 2022

Angus Robertson

We are working together on the matter. I am happy to give Sarah Boyack comfort on that; officials in the culture directorate and others are discussing how to take all this forward.

I took the opportunity to highlight something that should not be lost in all this: there are actors other than the Government, so we need to make sure that we involve all of them, and we need to do that at pace.

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Resource Spending Review

Meeting date: 17 March 2022

Angus Robertson

There is a parallel point to this, of course, which is that it is not just about health boards; where are local authorities as part of this conversation about being joined up? There are some outstanding examples of local authorities and their arts officers, for example, who are already doing a lot of the work in the area that we are talking about. How are we pulling together all this best practice as we go forward with things? We all know that different local authorities have their own local priorities, and that is quite right and proper. Some will view the likes of arts officers as being a priority; in other places, they will not.

There is a conversation to be had and I am very careful not to be steering and instructing local government colleagues on this front, but if we are agreeing that it is a national priority—I count some of the local arts officers as personal friends of mine, so I know exactly the value that they bring and especially in the areas that we have been talking about—how do we bring all this together to make sure that we are delivering across the piece and across government? Bringing people into this at a local level, as well as national Government and then local authorities on a national level through the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, is definitely one of the pieces that make up the jigsaw puzzle of getting us to where we want to get to in this area.

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Resource Spending Review

Meeting date: 17 March 2022

Angus Robertson

At the moment, I am here every week, so I would be massively disappointed if you were to have me back only in a year’s time.

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Resource Spending Review

Meeting date: 17 March 2022

Angus Robertson

It is not just museums and galleries; you could add to that list our very significant built environment—I cannot call it housing stock, but you know what I am trying to say—for which Historic Environment Scotland has responsibility. A dimension of that very much feeds into the net zero side of things.

We are very conscious of that, and we need to understand it better. Indeed, we are engaged in doing so, but again it is all about asking the right questions, and we need to get the answers not just for the net zero side of things but for the cultural resource—if one wants to call it that—or opportunity that we could have in that respect. Of course, that brings us back to our earlier discussion about partnership working not just with national companies with regard to culture at a nationally funded level but with those at a local authority level, too.

I do not want to put words into Maurice Golden’s mouth, but I think that what we are talking about is trying to unlock as much of the existing resource allocation as we can. This is not a matter of reinventing the wheel; instead, it is about finding out how we get everything to work as well as we possibly can and identifying any gaps. However, the only way in which we will know whether there are any gaps is by getting the data back not just from health but from the culture side of things, and if there is a takeaway for me from this meeting, it is definitely to work out what the quality of that information is. I am happy to come back on this issue for Maurice Golden’s benefit, but if other committee colleagues are interested in finding out more, I am happy to share that information with them, too.

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Resource Spending Review

Meeting date: 17 March 2022

Angus Robertson

There is another part to the equation. It is one thing people being aware that this is a good thing to do, but there are other questions to consider. Where does one plug into the arts and cultural offering? Are all arts and cultural organisations aware that they can and should play a part? How do we get that partnership going and working at scale? The deputy convener highlighted that that is the challenge, as there will always be early adopters. The challenge is how we ensure that the provision is offered across the country, without there being geographical or social demographic variances. Ensuring that we match things up is work in progress.

You might imagine that, in advance of such a meeting, we would be well advised on the state of play in our departmental settings. I am happy to go into some detail with the committee about that, because it shows that things are happening, which is heartening. For example, if we consider the programmes that some of our national cultural companies are already involved in, that should give us great heart that a lot of work is on-going.

My question—I need to work with my colleague the health secretary on this—is how we can be satisfied that there is a transmission mechanism in the areas for which we are responsible. As Mr Yousaf outlined, when the support workers, the mental health professionals and the GPs who will prescribe such opportunities are all in place, we need to ensure that we have the transmission mechanism, for want of a better description, for how that should work. That is work in progress. We will have to ensure that the cogs or gears work in harmony.

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Resource Spending Review

Meeting date: 17 March 2022

Angus Robertson

I will try to be quick, but maybe this is an appropriate point to give some examples. You mentioned the Christie commission and how long ago it made recommendations. When looking at the concrete examples that I gave you a sneak preview of, I am struck that they have been operating for some time. The question is how we make them scalable.

To give some concrete examples, the committee will be aware of Big Noise, which is run by Sistema Scotland. It is a high-quality music education and social change programme that works intensively with kids, young people and families in specifically targeted communities and it has benefits that relate to the national performance framework—child-focused wellbeing outcomes such as increased resilience, happiness, sense of belonging, fulfilment and emotional wellbeing. This is a scalable programme. It is up and running. Do we recognise it for what it is? Yes, absolutely. Is there more that can be done with it? Yes, there is.

The Scottish Ballet dance health and wellbeing programme has been across Scotland since 2013, not just for the past few years. It has been up and running for a while and is considered a global leader in the field. Many referrals, particularly for those living with Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis, have already come from partner consultant neurologists at Ninewells hospital and medical school and the Queen Elizabeth university hospital. The programme has been going for some time. Is it scalable? Yes, it is.

The National Theatre of Scotland has just been running a two-year project addressing ageism, social isolation and transphobia, supporting the recreational, artistic and social rights of LGBT+ over-50s. Is that scalable? Yes, it is.

National Museums Scotland has tailored programmes for people with dementia, offering social experience connected to collections and reminiscing. I could go on, as there is more that National Museums Scotland has been doing, and theatre groups and the Scottish Book Trust have been doing things.

There are a wide range of things that are up and running and have been running for some time relating to the Christie commission recommendations. The challenge is how we build on the very good work that is currently happening to make sure that, as we scale up and have the wider awareness that these schemes are up and running, they can provide the capacity when GPs, as the deputy convener was alluding to, are adopting social prescribing across the piece. That will be the challenge—making people aware of schemes and then doing them at enough scale to satisfy the demand as the approach that we are trying to get between health and social care and culture and the arts becomes more mainstream.

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Resource Spending Review

Meeting date: 17 March 2022

Angus Robertson

We need to open things up, because we certainly do not have time to do this. There is also the question of what culture is in this context. We can establish a cultural and arts community and organisations and it is very observable what a local arts or cultural group might be doing in Argyll, as Jenni Minto has said. There are so many other things that we know from the research have an impact but might not be viewed as culture with a capital C, if that makes sense. Sorry, I do not want to open up a conceptual conversation, deputy convener, but I am very keen that we are able to capture that. An example is gardening and allotments. There is a whole series of things that would not necessarily be thought of as being culture with a capital C but which clearly impact on people’s wellbeing and are part of a continuum of what might be offered and supported.

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Resource Spending Review

Meeting date: 17 March 2022

Angus Robertson

It will be a future evidence session perhaps, deputy convener.