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Thank you.

I am interested to understand how you engage with stakeholders. There are obviously customer forums, and there is the role of the economic regulator, but I am interested in what your relationship is with environmental organisations and campaigners, in particular.

We heard earlier that Surfers Against Sewage has been very critical in recent media coverage. Do you engage with those organisations? Do you meet with the likes of Feargal Sharkey and others who are campaigning in that area? Do you take on board their concerns?

My question is about the role of small and medium-sized enterprises, social enterprises and community businesses in the circular economy and whether they can be supported through financing. Over the years, that is where some great innovation has taken place in relation to the circular economy. Can you find mechanisms to support such business models?

Finally, I turn to the opportunities around offshore wind, which you mentioned. There is potential with onshore wind too, and with a linkage between the onshore and offshore sectors. Given that we will be going through quite a dramatic phase of repowering onshore wind farms, do you see a circular economy opportunity to develop a supply chain and links to the offshore industries?

I welcome the Minister for Transport’s intervention on the issue. It is clear that recent flooding has destroyed pedestrian access between Inver and Dunkeld, forcing people to cross the A9 on foot. Coupled with the extreme traffic delays that were caused locally by the SGN works, that is causing real danger at that part of the A9.

For many years, the community has called for improved lighting at that junction to improve road safety. Does the minister agree that, more than ever, Transport Scotland must introduce emergency floodlighting at local junctions to keep everyone safe?

I, too, thank Paul Sweeney for bringing this important members’ business debate to the chamber, and I pay tribute to the incredible activists who have been driving the campaign over the past two years; I know that many of them are in the public gallery today. For me, their testimonies have been deeply moving, and I am sure that it is thanks to them that many of us are in the chamber to take part in the debate, amplifying their voices.

It will come as no surprise to many of my colleagues to hear me talk about buses. I am incredibly proud of the success of the extension of concessionary bus travel to under-22s. With millions of young people now signed up to the scheme, we have been shown exactly how transformative free bus travel can be.

All young people under 22, including those who seek asylum, can access that concession, which, undoubtedly, makes a huge difference to their daily lives, especially in the middle of a cost of living crisis. Extending that scheme to all people who seek asylum would be a real and tangible step that would make a huge difference to a community that is forced into poverty by the Home Office.

I use the word “forced” carefully. People who seek asylum are forced into poverty because they are not allowed to work. Instead, they must rely on a limited form of housing and support from the Home Office of £6 a day for all essential living needs: clothing, travel, keeping in touch with loved ones, toiletries, school supplies for their kids, food and so much more. That is barely 58 per cent of what anyone else would receive on universal credit.

Those who live in hotels get only £1.40 a day. In my region, more than 100 people in Perth are in that situation. In Perth, a bus day ticket costs £3.90. To travel by bus from Perth to Edinburgh or Glasgow, a ticket costs £9. Travel is completely unaffordable for someone who survives on £1.40 a day.

Over the past few years, the inadequacy of that so-called support from the Home Office has become painfully clear. The UK Government has forced torture survivors into squalid camps on former Army bases; folks have been forced on to repurposed barges, which are better described as floating prisons; and, here in Scotland, people have been stuck in hotels, sharing rooms with people that they do not know, for months on end, unable to access the services and support that they desperately need.

Asylum is, of course, reserved to the UK Government. Although we may want to dismantle that racist and hostile environment in its entirety, we cannot yet legislate in this place to do so. However, we have the powers—and the responsibility—to mitigate some of the worst harms that are caused by UK Government policy. The Scottish Government has shown leadership in protecting people who seek asylum, through the limited powers that are available. Extending free bus travel must be part of that safety net.

We also now have evidence of how such a scheme might work and the impact that it could have. The Scottish Government funded a pilot in Glasgow, and there have been similar schemes in Aberdeen and Wales. The evidence is clear: 100 per cent of participants in Glasgow said that the scheme had a positive impact. Every pilot has recommended a national roll-out of free bus travel to all people who seek asylum.

I know that the minister is actively considering the outcomes of the recent pilot and the options going forward. I thank the Scottish Government for its constructive engagement over the past two years with me, Paul Sweeney, Bob Doris and others.

I end by saying that we do not need any more evidence to show us how much such an intervention is needed or the impact that it will have. In the words of a pilot participant in Glasgow,

“this ticket is a life saver.”

The route to implementation may be challenging, but we have to get such a scheme over the line. That is our responsibility, as a country that is proud to protect all those who seek safety.

I absolutely concur with the cabinet secretary’s comments about Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership on the issue. However, given the scale of loss and damage around the world—some estimates put it at $580 billion by 2030—many states are considering going beyond just funding reparations to address loss and damage. They are also considering establishing in international law a crime of ecocide. Is the Scottish Government open to considering how we could embed the concept of ecocide in Scots law in the way that the EU is looking to adopt it? Some states, such as Belgium, have already started to implement that.

The disturbances are deeply distressing for residents in Vale Grove. What kind of assessment of noise was conducted by SPS during the design phase, especially given the proximity of the residential wings to housing in the local area?

I thank Labour for using its time to debate the plight of the cultural sector in Scotland.

It is a privilege to sit on the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee and be given the opportunity to learn from an incredible array of cultural organisations and artists every week. What is clear to me is that many of those bodies are real anchor organisations in their own communities. They are the spaces where artists get opportunities for paid creative work that would otherwise simply not exist and where pipelines of talent are nurtured from the grass roots up, and they are places where mental health and wellbeing can be nurtured and communities can come together to educate and organise.

During the depths of the Covid crisis, it was often cultural organisations such as Creative Stirling that helped communities to look after each other. Whether it was through opening safe spaces when others were closing them down or through delivering core services such as food ladders, those organisations were central to supporting and galvanising action. Scotland’s cultural sector is not just an economic generator. It is about life, creativity and community.

I had hoped that, in this debate, we could all agree that Covid’s impact on the economy, coupled with Brexit and the cost of living crisis, has helped to create a perfect storm for the cultural sector. The funding outlook was already challenging, but in this environment a small change in public funding can have a disproportionate impact on delivery. Some organisations are already stuck with what has been called doughnut funding, whereby project delivery costs are funded but the core running costs are missing.

I understand why many in the cultural sector have been concerned about recent changes to Creative Scotland’s funding from the Scottish Government and what that might mean for funded organisations. However, the cabinet secretary has confirmed that £6.6 million will be paid to Creative Scotland in the upcoming financial year, which means that the reserves used in this financial year will be replenished by the Scottish Government.

Of course, that does not mean that everything is fixed. The long-term future for cultural funding remains challenging. The funding settlement that has been given to the Scottish Government from Westminster does not keep pace with inflation and it is forcing difficult choices. We must find a way forward that provides the financial security and certainty that our cultural sector deserves, so I am pleased that the First Minister has made the commitment to double cultural funding. Like many members, I look forward to examining the detail of that in the forthcoming budget.

We now need to take the opportunity to radically rethink the way in which the sector is funded in order to secure a future for it and its workers. We need a long-term strategy for culture that pivots away from stop-start funding towards multiyear budgets and values the wider benefits that culture brings, including through preventative spending and creative use of the transient visitor levy at local level. We need a strategy that co-produces with the cultural sector and reflects calls from artists’ unions for fair work conditionality on arts funding to value, protect and grow the workforce while attracting even more talent, and a strategy that encourages the big culture sector to support its grass roots, whether that is through a levy on stadium tickets or through screen companies giving back to communities that host big-budget productions.

Cultural organisations have shown the incredible value that they deliver. It is time for the Government to help to reset its relationship with the sector, build on trust and allow it to thrive.

Have the difficulties with 801 and 802 affected you as a business? Would you have expected to have more work coming in, or is the work on the frigates what you would have expected to have right now?