Seòmar agus comataidhean

Do we have Francesca Morton on the line?

I am afraid we might only have you with us, Mr King. No—we have Francesca now. Good morning; please go ahead.

Our next item is an evidence session on Register of Scotland’s activities and performance. Registers of Scotland is a non-ministerial office and part of the Scottish Administration. It is directly accountable to the Scottish Parliament and responsibility for scrutiny falls within the remit of this committee.

I welcome Jennifer Henderson, the keeper of the registers of Scotland, and I thank her for joining us. As always, it would be appreciated if questions and answers could be kept as concise as possible. I invite the keeper to make a short opening statement.

Good morning, and welcome to the sixth meeting in 2022 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee.

Our first item of business is to decide whether to take agenda items 5 and 6 in private. Are members content to take those items in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Our next item of business is an evidence session on Scotland’s tourism and hospitality sectors, which is designed to provide the committee with a snapshot of the sectors as we recover from the pandemic, in recognition of the important role that they play in Scotland’s economy.

We have two panels this morning. I welcome the first panel. Marc Crothall is the chief executive officer at the Scottish Tourism Alliance, Stephen Montgomery is spokesperson for the Scottish Hospitality Group, and Leon Thompson is executive director of UKHospitality Scotland.

If all members and witnesses could keep their questions and answers concise and to the point, that would be helpful for our timings this morning. I will start off the questions.

Obviously, we have been living through the pandemic, which has been extremely difficult for the hospitality and tourism sectors. In more recent months, at the end of 2021 and into the new year, the omicron variant presented further challenges. Will you tell me about the support that was made available? Omicron was—to some degree—unexpected, and there was an attempt to deliver support quickly.

I will invite all witnesses to answer that; however, if they could be brief, that would be helpful. I invite Leon Thompson to come in first.

Stephen Montgomery, would you like to comment?

Mr Crothall, can you comment on that, and on the way in which funding is being delivered? The previous two witnesses said that they would like to see more targeted funding, but is that a challenge in relation to getting the money out quickly? Is there a balance to be struck between getting the money out the door quickly and doing something that is more granular in relation to identifying who needs support?

I welcome our second panel, who are both from VisitScotland. Rob Dickson is the director of industry and destination development, and Vicki Miller is the director of marketing and digital.

Again, I ask members and witnesses to keep their questions and answers concise.

Thank you for joining us this morning. I will ask first about VisitScotland’s budget. We took evidence from VisitScotland in the lead-up to our budget discussions with the Government, and you highlighted the difference in grant-in-aid allocation. There has been an understandable decrease in 2022-23, but that has left a gap in relation to what you expected from the grant-in-aid allocation.

How is VisitScotland preparing to manage the budget for the coming year, and what challenges is it facing? I understand that the Scottish Government has secured the on-going budget, but there are issues with the budget that is raised from marketing. Rob, would you like to respond to that first question?

Okay. Could you maybe also talk about replacing the self-generated income, which I understand was £6 million in 2019-20? That would usually sit at around £14 million. Do you have expectations about when that budget is likely to recover?

Earlier, you answered questions on phase 1 of the recovery programme and progress with that. You will appreciate that there is a second phase of the recovery programme. The committee raised that issue with the cabinet secretary in relation to next year’s budget. The budget for next year does not include committed funding for phase 2. The cabinet secretary indicated that she is supportive of phase 2. Are you having discussions with the Government about where any additional money might come from? Could money be found from in-year budgets, for example? What can we expect when it comes to finding resources to fund phase 2?

Rob, you might want to address that.

As we have touched on labour market issues, I will bring in Gordon MacDonald next, but I want to clarify a point with Leon first. You talked about the city centre task force advisory group. Is it centred around Glasgow in particular?