Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning to you, convener, and to committee members, especially any new or substitute members. It is nice to see you all.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to open our discussion with some reflections on what I have heard from the organisations that gave further evidence to the committee last week and from colleagues, particularly from members who took part in Tuesday’s debate on valuing culture. I have listened to and read those responses with great interest and have also listened to the views of the many and varied culture stakeholders that I have had the opportunity to meet since the Scottish Government’s draft budget for 2025-26 was published in December.

It is clear to me that, although the proposed significant increase of an additional £34 million for Scotland’s culture sector in 2025-26 has been warmly welcomed by many across the sector and underlines this Government’s on-going commitment to strengthening it, we will not achieve all that we want to achieve together for culture in a single year. However, the budget is a significant milestone and, if supported by parliamentary colleagues, will take the Scottish Government halfway towards meeting our forward commitment of at least an additional £100 million annually for culture by 2028-29.

I would add that our aim for 2026-27, subject to the normal budget processes, is to deliver a further £20 million increase for the sector. I hope that my opening remarks will provide a level of confidence for the committee as well as the sector with regard to the longer-term trajectory of the Scottish Government’s commitment to invest in culture.

The Scottish Government’s budget is transformational for the culture sector in Scotland and could not be clearer about our steadfast support for Scotland’s arts and culture. It will enable us to continue funding initiatives such as the youth music initiative and Sistema. The additional funding will provide a package of support to the culture sector as a whole, including a significant funding uplift and multiyear settlement for Creative Scotland, giving it the means to offer regular funding to the biggest ever number of cultural organisations across Scotland.

The draft budget will enable the development of a culture and heritage capacity fund for the organisations that would benefit most from tailored supportive funding and guidance to help build their capacity and develop their future resilience. There will be increased funding for our national collections, the centre for design and the national performing companies to support their work, which is so important to our local communities, as well as being of international significance.

The draft budget will also double the funding available for Scotland’s festivals and ensure that more festivals beyond the central belt receive the support that they need to reach their full potential. There will also be an increase for Screen Scotland’s successful production growth fund, which will help attract international investment and encourage large-scale productions to choose Scotland because of our incredible locations, our studio and post-production facilities and our talented crews.

If passed, the draft budget for 2025-26 will support other important of areas of work, such as community access to culture, improving Scotland’s cultural exports and exchange and improving access to Scotland’s vital public libraries. Those plans for increased investment will be delivered alongside a commitment to reform the funding mechanisms for the culture and arts sector. We want to help the culture sector maximise the impact of every penny of public funding and to support it to work more closely with the private and third sectors to grow the overall funding pot for culture, diversify funding streams and become more sustainable and resilient.

In the recent programme for government, we announced a review of Creative Scotland as part of wider considerations of how the culture sector is supported. That review will ensure that the additional funding coming to the culture sector can be used to best effect.

I recognise that it is essential that the culture sector has an opportunity to input into the review, and at the start of the week, the Scottish Government launched a short survey to inform its scope. Members will know that, during the debate on culture in the chamber on Tuesday, I invited colleagues to take part, and I would encourage as many people who work across the culture sector as possible to respond. I should also say that the Scottish Government announced this week that Dame Sue Bruce will be appointed as the chair of the independent review of Creative Scotland, with a view to providing recommendations at the end of the summer.

I know that the pressures of meeting what are often significant capital infrastructure needs, along with pay settlements and inflationary pressures, have not gone away, and that many of our publicly funded culture bodies are continuing to grapple with those issues. Through our on-going work on public service reform, we are supporting our national culture bodies to work collaboratively and think creatively to come up with solutions to some of those challenges.

That approach has already yielded some positive outcomes. For example, we have agreed a revised framework document with Historic Environment Scotland that provides it with greater financial freedom to manage its commercial income. As part of that agreement, HES will reduce its dependency on public funding for its operational budget as commercial income continues to grow. This is the first year of that agreement, with a £2 million reduction in public funding as part of a five-year plan to reduce public funding by £10 million. Those greater freedoms will mean that HES will for the first time be able to invest every penny of its commercial income in protecting our historic environment for future generations, mitigating the impact of climate change, improving visitor experiences and delivering for Scotland.

It is that spirit of innovation, confidence and self-determination that is at the heart of the planned budget increase for culture in the next financial year. Facilitating an expanded multiyear funding offer from Creative Scotland will enable more of our creative people to worry less about funding and focus more on their creative practice. I look forward to working with the committee and members across all parties to make our collective ambition for a flourishing culture sector in Scotland a reality through support for the budget bill in the coming weeks.

You suggested that 150—

Point taken. There are a couple of points to make. First, this is a process that Creative Scotland is progressing with as an arm’s-length organisation. The “arm’s-length” part of that is really important. Secondly—

Mr Bibby makes my point: there is no certainty until the votes have been cast. Given that there are some weeks for Mr Bibby to listen to what is, I hope, the very persuasive case that I am making for the Scottish Government’s culture budget, I hope that he can be tempted to vote for it.

Whoever is inferring that would be incorrect. I stand by the comments that I made. However, I think that the number is higher than the one that you put to me.

For the third time, for the benefit of Mr Kerr, the remit of the review will be agreed. It has not yet been agreed. It will be agreed with Dame Sue, who is leading the review, and me, and that is yet to happen.

No. I agree with Robert Wilson. For a third time, if not a fourth time—

I have just outlined the two—

Frankly, I hope that Dame Sue will also consider how we can work in partnership. We have done that, but we need to think about whether we can do more, working with the likes of local government, to ensure that our infrastructure is retained—or retained for the best purpose for 2025 and the future—and to ensure the delivery of cultural policies, whether those relate to music tuition or anything else.

One area for which we have a budget allocation this year, which we have not had until now, is a culture and heritage capacity fund. That could provide some very useful help and support to organisations that might not have the capacity for, expertise in, or insight into how to diversify or build more resilience into themselves.

I am really interested in the matter. At the heart of what Mr Adam is pointing to is the fact that, although some organisations are early adopters of doing things in new ways, reviewing how they operate and working out how they can access more funding streams, that might be more of a challenge for other organisations. A fund that will support organisations through that process is a really good thing at a time of change, and £4 million has been allocated to it.

There is a lot of thinking in Creative Scotland about organisations that will be funded on a multiyear basis, but also about organisations that will not. How can one help those organisations to get themselves to a place where they may be considered for multiyear funding in future rounds, or where they have the help and support that they need in order to become more commercially successful, better able to get income from other sources or better able to use certain kinds of technology?

That, in part, is what I am saying about the budget being not just about foundational funding change, but about helping with change in organisations so that they are on a firmer footing and able to do what they want to do.