Seòmar agus comataidhean

I have one last question. I may come back in if there is time afterwards, but I know that other members want to come in.

In relation to the Sewel convention, I forget who proposed it, but our papers mention the idea of having a designated committee within this Parliament to look at legislative consent motions. Is there any mileage in the idea of having a joint standing committee between this Parliament and the Westminster Parliament, with members from both sides on it, to try to ease some of the tensions around the Sewel convention? I do not know whether there is a precedent for it.

Mr Thomson talked earlier about the DRS—the law was made, people expected things to happen and then it was struck down. One of the concerns of this committee is the chilling effect that that has had on any proposals that the Government is considering, because people do not know whether or not they will be struck down. That chilling effect is quite profound. It will be interesting to see what impact that has on the parties’ manifestos in the coming election.

I have two questions, but I still expect to take less time than Stephen Kerr did. The first one is for Professor McEwen. In your submission, you make the statement that

“The Westminster parliament, particularly the House of Commons, has less interest in IGR especially at the portfolio level, and has demonstrated less interest than the devolved legislatures in scrutinising the UK Government’s intergovernmental activity.”

That is followed by your statement that

“In my view, transparency and accountability can be best increased by strengthening the requirements upon the Scottish Government to report on its activity in IGR.”

I am all for haranguing the Scottish Government to do more, and it could continually try to increase its transparency, but to what effect, when that level of apathy towards IGR is evident at Westminster?

I remember when I changed my mind on the not proven verdict—it was when I found out that it was not possible for sheriffs or judges to explain to jurors what a not proven verdict meant as opposed to a not guilty verdict. I return to Stephen Kerr’s point. I am not saying that the public want to know the detail of the internal machinations between Governments, but if there is no prospect of getting a reasonable understanding of a process that is so complex and so full of exceptions, with agreements and conventions that are not observed and all the rest of it, I think that you have to say that the system is not working. If the Westminster Parliament is apathetic, until it asserts its interest in IGR, we will continue to get what we are told elsewhere are decisions that are UK Government positions rather than the UK-wide positions that I think we all want to see.

On scrutinising the Scottish Government, I go back to a point that Jamie Halcro Johnston made. It relates to the idea that FOI is a vehicle. FOI has been abused so much that it has become discredited to some extent. Hundreds of FOI requests are put in by parliamentary researchers, which I think has undermined the process, plus it should not really be for individual MSPs to take the initiative and to ask for this information. I understand what you say about the time that FOI requests now take; one reason is that people put in hundreds. The cost is astronomical; it is about £120 an answer at least. The Scottish Government agreed to publish its ministers’ diaries, which it does proactively because it saves on FOI requests coming in and people having to ask all the time. Surely that resource could be tweaked. If a minister met with a UK minister, that could be highlighted so that it could be extracted from the system, which could say, “These are the meetings that we are aware of that have taken place between ministers at an intergovernmental level”. That would not be such an onerous thing to do.

I acknowledge what has been said about the increase in funding for the cultural sector, which is absolutely welcome. Witnesses have welcomed it as well. The point that we get from stakeholders is that they want to ensure that they can have an audience with decision makers across the Government. Education is one example of where that is happening, and social justice is another. I will not look for further answers on that point just now, but it would be good to be kept up to date with examples of stakeholders being able to see across the Government.

My second question is about Creative Scotland. My experience is that this year has been a bumper year for Edinburgh in particular, because of the festival and fringe attendances and the Oasis and AC/DC concerts. You are both a cabinet secretary and a local MSP, so can you share information—if the Government has it—about how successful the year has been? It seems that it has been busier than any time since the 1980s.

To be honest, I do not think that you had to have a ticket for Oasis to hear every word of every song from the south side of Edinburgh.

I have a narrower question about the timing of this year’s budget at Westminster, which will obviously have a knock-on effect on the Scottish budget. Is that presenting any particular issues for the stakeholders that you deal with?

I do not think that the Scottish Government will do that; it will see setting a levy as a local authority power.

It is likely that the budget at Westminster this year will not be produced until 26 November and that there will, therefore, be a potential delay to the Scottish budget. Does that have any implications for what you do or for the organisations that you support?

I will come back to the budget in a second, but I will first jump back to the discussion about the Edinburgh festival and so on. It strikes me that I have never seen Edinburgh as busy as it was this year—at least, I have not seen it as busy since the 1980s. It seemed extraordinarily full. Of course, there were the AC/DC and Oasis events and so on. I know that you are not directly responsible for this, but are you getting feedback on the impact of all of that? For example, it seemed as if the Americans were back in numbers for the first time in many years—local hotels have shown how busy it was as well. Have you had any feedback on the impact of the cultural activities in Edinburgh over the summer?

This is my final question. In your first exchange with Stephen Kerr, you mentioned the extent to which the increased budget, which is very welcome, may be soaked up by additional costs that the sector is facing. Two of those come to mind: one is last year’s promised reduction in energy costs, which turned out to be an increase in energy costs; and the other is the impact on organisations of increased employer national insurance contributions.

What can you say about the scale and effect of those additional costs? The rise in employer national insurance contributions has been a huge—and unforeseen—cost. What are you able to say about the impact on the organisations that you are trying to support of additional costs that have been imposed from elsewhere?

It is a very serious issue which, as you said, the committee is going to examine, but I do not think that it should be done at the expense of pre-budget scrutiny, which is what we were told we were meeting to discuss today.

I have four relatively quick questions. The longest is the first one, and it goes back to the point that the convener made at the start about cross-portfolio funding. As part of pre-budget scrutiny, we have heard from a number of witnesses that they want to see that. I am under no illusion that part of that is because they believe that there will be access to additional funds elsewhere in the Government if they can get that hearing on cross-portfolio working. That is legitimate enough. They want to make the case that what they do should attract funding because of the impact that it has in other areas. However, from what you said earlier, I did not catch any concrete examples of where that is working or where it is planned to take place. I do not know whether you have any of those examples.

I will keep my next couple of questions brief, cabinet secretary, and if you can keep your answers brief, too, I might get away with it with the convener.