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—and I agree that those pressures are felt across the piece, which is why, among other interventions, we are raising the amount of funding for local government, because the issue is not just the responsibility of the Scottish Government.

Well, I would—

Convener, do you require me to say for a third time that the remit of—

I have always acted.

My understanding is that it is not a downgrading as much as it is giving teachers the ability to choose texts and areas for focus. I definitely do not want any downgrading of Robert Burns or Scottish literature more generally; I do not want downgrading of literature or poetry from any background. Learning as much about our own culture as we do about others is a boost to our culture. Any evidence of downgrading of teaching Scotland’s literature would be of concern to me.

I have no doubt that Mr Bibby will continue to ask me about the subject, and I will be happy to correspond with him on it.

The arrangement with Historic Environment Scotland is a first. It was asked for, considered and has been agreed to, and everybody will be looking very closely at how it works. HES is confident that it will be able to grow its commercial income. Everyone understands that if organisations in the sector are better able to increase their income, it will allow us to think about the appropriate use of Government and public funding in the years ahead, and there is potential for a recalibration in our natural heritage, historic environment and cultural organisations as a result.

It is part and parcel of not only providing a funding increase for the culture sector but changing the nature of funding across the sector. We are at the beginnings of that journey. I will not rule out changing the financial arrangements for other organisations in the light of what we learn from Historic Environment Scotland.

We should be prepared to think about the broad range of ways in which we can marshal the good will of people who want to support our heritage and culture sector. On a number of occasions, including in front of this committee, I have talked about opportunities through philanthropy, working with the sector both domestically and internationally. Some organisations are very good at raising money; understandably, those are usually the larger organisations, but there is potential for cultural organisations of all types to find financial support through philanthropy.

I am very interested in working out how we do that. How do we help people who want to be helpful? How do we help them identify which projects have the greatest need? I discussed those questions with the new chief executive of Historic Environment Scotland only yesterday, and I will be having those conversations with the rest of the sector, too.

A review of Creative Scotland that also considers the wider culture sector will give us pointers in that area. The Government does not have all the answers; indeed, that is why I have made my offer to colleagues. If anyone with a particular interest in any relevant area has views on how the culture sector or, in the case of HES, our historic environment, can be better supported—that is, what we can do more of, less of or differently—I am sure that Dame Sue Bruce would welcome all of them, and I genuinely encourage colleagues in that regard. It will help steer the remit of her review, her considerations and, no doubt, her conclusions, which we will all await with great interest.

I very much hope that that is not the case. One of the great hopes across the culture sector is that multiyear funding will be able to deliver the exact opposite of what you have described.

I do not diminish the fact that there have been significant pressures and existential challenges, particularly for cultural organisations with built property and the issues that Mr Stewart has narrated as being a challenge for them. I await Creative Scotland’s confirmation of its multiyear funding decisions, in the anticipation that it will significantly improve the funding of cultural organisations across Scotland and that it will be transformational for a great many of them.

I have no doubt that we will come back to that, but it is for Creative Scotland to announce its decision and its board still has to sign off on that.

On Mr Stewart’s point about things that are causing significant problems, many of which we have already discussed in committee, a relatively new one is employer national insurance contributions. That is a real challenge, not least because the expectation is that the United Kingdom Government’s offset for its decisions to introduce the tax on jobs will not cover all the overheads. The increase in national insurance contributions for cultural organisations at scale, such as our national galleries, national museums and the National Library of Scotland, is a significant deal. It did not need to be so. We have not yet had satisfactory answers from the UK Government on funding to offset it, but we are working on that. I acknowledge that that is a significant challenge.

On the general point, I welcome the fact that Mr Stewart describes the budget funding commitments as being welcome, because I think that they are. I am perhaps generally more of a glass-half-full person than he is, but I know that he is asking pointed questions to identify whether the Scottish Government understands that things have been very challenging in the culture sector. I understand that—I have said that before and do so now again—but I think that this year will see a significant change at scale for the culture sector.

In the current year, funding for culture has increased by £15.8 million. Next year, it will increase by £34 million. That will take us halfway towards our five-year aim of raising annual funding by £100 million. We will have done that in two years. I am trying to do it as quickly as I can. Any encouragement that colleagues can give within their parties to support reaching that target is gratefully received; it will make a big difference.

Even when we get there, there is no doubt that there will be more to do, Mr Stewart. However, we are on the right course and that is why it is important that we get the budget passed.

I am sure that Dame Sue Bruce will look closely at colleagues’ views of Creative Scotland and the wider cultural sector. That is why I have encouraged colleagues to take part and share their views. Dame Sue will look closely at any suggestions about potential changes and will come to her own conclusions on the basis of the evidence that she is provided with.

In fairness, it is important to put on the record, among other things, the fact that Creative Scotland was responsible for helping the culture sector to get through the pandemic. As far as I am aware, at no point have any serious concerns been raised about the way in which very significant public funding was used to keep the culture sector afloat at that time. I have no doubt that Creative Scotland will have its own reflections on how it might wish to have done things differently. However, given the history of arm’s-length cultural organisations in Scotland, it is important that we have an organisation that plays a significant role.

I will share with the committee my hopes for what will emerge from the review. Given that we will have multiyear funding, it is important to understand what that will mean for, and how it will interact with, the rest of cultural support. How will the provision of multiyear funding for more cultural organisations relate to the open fund that Creative Scotland operates? How will it relate to other funding streams for festivals and so on? I could go on. I am really keen for the review to think about those questions and to work out what needs to happen next, because the world in which our creative community operates is changing very quickly.

I have mentioned to the committee previously that there are things—the digital dimension and the artificial intelligence dimension are just two examples—that will have an absolutely transformational impact on cultural organisations, on venues, on creatives in general and on freelancers in particular. A lot is wrapped up in what is heading in our direction.

Therefore, I think that now is the right time for a review. There has not been a review of Creative Scotland since 2010 or 2011, which means that Dame Sue Bruce has a good length of time to reflect on. She will also think about what is happening elsewhere. I am always keen to find out whether there are good examples from arts bodies in the rest of the UK or further afield that we can learn from, and whether there is anything that we should be thinking about doing more or less of or doing in a different way.

There is also the question of our arts infrastructure—we have Creative Scotland, Screen Scotland, Architecture and Design Scotland and a number of other bodies. We need to think about how we make sure that all that works together as well as it can. I do not know Dame Sue Bruce personally, but she has a great track record, and the fact that there has been such a broad welcome for her appointment makes me extremely pleased that we have someone in whom we can have the greatest confidence. She will look at what needs to be looked at, she will reflect on everyone’s input and she will make recommendations, which we will, of course, take very seriously.

In fairness to the new Government, it is a new Government. That is the first thing to say about the UK level of governance. We also need to be aware that the membership of the new European Commission was approved—I think that I am right in saying this—only yesterday, so it has not even got on to its future legislative programme. Because of the European Parliament elections and the formation of a new Commission, there has not been a lot emanating from Brussels.

My answer to Mr Stewart is that proposals will be made, and we will deal with them at face value. We will work with colleagues at a UK Government and a European level as well as we can to make sure that we pursue our avowed aim of remaining aligned with the European Union.

We are making sure that that aim is understood right across Government, by which I mean the Scottish Government. Historically, there has always been a risk that a European issue has been seen as something that needs to be dealt with by the people who deal with Europe, whether that means this committee or, previously, the European Scrutiny Committee at Westminster or a Europe minister or a minister for external affairs. In talking about different policy proposals, as a Government, we are committed to making sure that individual cabinet secretaries who have responsibility for different areas—agriculture and fisheries, justice and the environment are three areas where there is a particular European locus to proposals—understand why those matters are relevant right across Government. That is why we have been holding interministerial groups. I have been holding bilateral meetings with my colleagues in the Scottish Government to explain all of that.

Of course, it is for Parliament to make a decision about the extent to which the scrutiny of individual proposals is undertaken by subject committees of the Scottish Parliament or by this committee. I gently put down a marker that, where proposals have a particular locus in the environment, agriculture and fisheries or justice, because it will be my colleagues who have a responsibility for that at a policy level, they will probably be best placed to answer questions, whether here or in other committees. I am always happy to come to this committee, as Mr Stewart knows.

Proposals will emanate not only from the European Union, but from the UK Government. The examples that Mr Stewart gave of suboptimal relations are totally avoidable. I look back at the extensive efforts that I have made since 2021 to have good working relationships with colleagues in London and in Brussels to make sure that there is no reason to fall out about things for any reason other than that one has a difference of principle on a particular proposal. Administrative relationships between officials and colleagues in UK Government departments and in Brussels should be good and those channels should be open. I think that they are.

We await the reset of the UK Government and what that will mean in concrete terms. We can be pretty confident that that will involve a proposal for an agreement on agriculture and food and drink. I am very confident that the UK Government will wish to make progress on that. That raises questions for us, because a lot of that area is devolved. Therefore, how will that work?

On the direction of travel, I am as certain as I can be that that will be coming down the track. At this stage, we do not know how complex a legislative proposal that will be. In fairness, we cannot know that, because the UK Government will still be working out its preferred route for making such an agreement. I think that that is definitely coming, and we will need to have a think about how we make sure that devolved interests are part of that process.

There are other potential areas for agreement with the European Union before we get into what is described as “cherry picking”, which is unlikely to be welcomed by the EU. It is clear that the potential to rejoin Erasmus+ is on the table. We know that the opportunity to rejoin the creative Europe programme is on the table, and we know—because the Commission proposed it—that there is the opportunity for a mobility agreement, particularly for younger people. Such an agreement would be important in general, but it would be of particular importance in specific areas of the economy or cultural life—for example, in relation to touring for creatives and artists.

That dialogue will continue with the UK Government, and I will be impressing on it—I encourage colleagues to do likewise—the desirability of reaching such agreements. In that respect, we can perhaps be inspired by the most recent Conservative UK Government in reaching agreement with the European Union on the horizon programme, which I was very pleased to see. If it was possible to do that on the horizon programme, I hope that the UK Government could see its way to doing that on Erasmus+, creative Europe and mobility.

First, on an agriculture, food and drink agreement, that will, because it will relate to border controls, necessitate what is known as dynamic alignment. Therefore, there will need to be common rules, which I think would be a good thing, as does this Government. Having an understanding of that is important for those who are supporters of Brexit; Mr Kerr, perhaps, might not welcome such a thing. It is, though, the difference between a hard Brexit and a less-hard Brexit.

If you work in an exporting industry or in agriculture or you operate in the food and drink sector—and we understand how absolutely vital that is to the Scottish economy; indeed, it is among the UK’s biggest exports—you want the access to the European single market that such an agreement will give. What it means, in effect, is a massive reduction in the necessity for border controls. If you are trying to export shellfish, seafood or anything that is fresh, where time is of the essence, the ability to export quickly is absolutely key. We know from a lot of feedback from business in Scotland—and I am sure you will have heard it in your evidence sessions, too—that large parts of the economy have basically given up exporting to the single market, because of the complications that are now involved. Therefore, anything that we can do to obviate the problem should be explored.

In my view, there is a much better solution, which is being in the European single market and being a member state in the European Union. That is what everybody else in the EU thinks is the best thing, and I agree with them. However, if in the meantime we had an agreement that reduced all the problems of exporting—I was going to say “and all controls”, but it will not be all controls; instead, I should say for the record “significant aspects of controls”—such an agreement would be welcomed.

Of course, there will be different negotiating positions, but we are talking about existing schemes. Erasmus+ is an existing scheme that we are not a part of; Creative Europe is an existing scheme that we are not a part of; and the European single market is a product of treaty agreement between member states. The idea that a UK Government would seek to renegotiate unilaterally all those areas of agreement between European countries is just not realistic, nor do I think that it is particularly sensible. Are there individual areas where there can be negotiations on things? No doubt there are.

I also imagine that Mr Harvie and colleagues who were in Brussels were probably hearing a little bit of encouragement from European colleagues to say what the UK actually wants.