Seòmar agus comataidhean

We have talked a lot about a national conversation and have highlighted particular strands of that conversation, such as the ticket office closure consultation, the first complete national timetable review in Scotland in, I think, 30 years and a welcome focus on women’s safety. How do our witnesses see a national conversation going forward? We have heard mention of having passenger representation on the board or some kind of focus on that. However, is there a wide way of doing things? For example, could we have a kind of citizens assembly on ScotRail? Should we have more regular and involved discussions about services at a community level? We are in quite a participatory democracy, but I am not seeing that read across into some of the discussions about the future of ScotRail. It all seems to be quite disjointed.

Does Mick Hogg, or anyone else, have views on that?

Later this week, we will finally get the report into the tragedy at Carmont, near Stonehaven. I do not want to pre-empt the detailed findings of that report, but do you have any broad recommendations about dealing with the two issues of climate adaptation on the rail network and how we ensure that services on the network are safe, and how franchises and the operator of last resort should be run? Are there any lessons in relation to rolling stock or safety that need to be brought into the discussion? You have all mentioned safety as a top issue in getting people back on to the railways. Do you have any thoughts on that?

I work with a number of communities that are building up business cases for line reinstatements or bringing back stations on existing lines. They have been successful in getting money from the local rail development fund to do that. Those communities are concerned about the escalating costs of reopening railways and of capital projects on the rail network.

Michael Clark, why have we seen cost estimates, particularly for station reopening, double in recent years? I do not see where the additional costs are coming from.

Across Europe, Governments are waking up to the fact that we must end our dependency on oil and gas in order to create a safe and secure world. Does the cabinet secretary agree that the UK Tory Government needs to invest urgently in renewables and insulation instead of listening to the likes of Liam Kerr and Nigel Farage, who would rather plunge households into poverty and lock us into a future of volatile gas prices and climate breakdown?

What needs to change, then? Should there be a duty on local authorities, a commitment through community planning partnerships or something else to state that this has to be addressed, rather than it being dependent on, as you say, a good relationship between one officer in a council and an organisation?

There seems to be a difficult balance between ensuring that you have the conditions for creativity without overformalising it to the point that it is stifled. My final question relates to that issue and is about monitoring and evaluation. Is there capacity in the wider social enterprise and creative sector to articulate what the sector does in language that NHS and other bodies, which have harder targets, can understand, so that they say, “Oh yes, I can see that that is saving X thousand pounds”? I know that that is a bit dry, but the chief financial officers of those organisations need to see that stuff.

There is obviously a big and intricate national picture; there is also the local picture. That leads me to the question about who leads on strategy and development. Are councils able and willing to do that? Is there inconsistency across Scotland? We heard last week about Renfrewshire Council, I think, doing good work on social prescribing. Is it a bit of a postcode lottery as to how social or cultural enterprise organisations—however we wish to define them—are supported? Is there good practice to point to from community planning partnerships or elsewhere on how to do this work effectively?

How do we map out the good work that is happening around Scotland? We heard in evidence last week that Creative Scotland is doing some of the mapping but that it perhaps excludes those organisations that are working with the NHS. How do we get to grips with the extent of the work that is happening around Scotland? Do we approach that from a Creative Scotland point of view or from a SENScot point of view, or are there other organisations that should be taking the lead on making sure that we understand everything that is going on and the value of that?

That makes a lot of sense.