Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning. Obviously, it is a happy circumstance to be at a parliamentary committee meeting hearing witnesses talk about a rising budget and multiyear funding. I guarantee that there will be committee meetings happening throughout this building and throughout this month at which members will be hearing from witnesses who do not have such a positive story to tell.

You will be aware that we have heard—from the previous panel, too—about the wide range of costs and challenges faced by the culture sector, including some parts of it that are not seeing the rising budget that Creative Scotland is seeing. We have heard about workforce and employer costs. We have heard about net zero, both in an operational sense and as part of the cultural response that people want from the creative sector with regard to the climate emergency. We have heard about the transition to fair work, and we have heard some people asking for more flexibility. I hope that nobody will want the sector to go further in the wrong direction on fair work and see the kind of abusive and exploitative practices that are endemic in the private sector becoming more of a problem in the culture sector. That said, achieving fair work in a sector with lots of freelance, casual and short-term employment is a real challenge. There are also issues around accessibility, which itself has many dimensions, as well as the need to regrow audiences.

My worry is that, if Creative Scotland tries to help the sector to do a little bit of all of that, it will do most of it inadequately. The rising trajectory of budgets is a good thing, but is it enough to achieve a response to all the different challenges? If not, how do we prioritise things? What strategic approach can we take with the budget that is available?

That is connected to the work that the Government is doing to review Creative Scotland and the wider landscape. We still do not really know what direction that review will take or how long it will take. How is it possible, in the absence of answers about that process, to know what the strategic approach will be to deploying the resource that is available now in order to meet all the diverse challenges that the sector faces?

It is not accurate.

It might not surprise the witnesses that my questions follow on quite well from the points that Mr Berman just made.

You mentioned the idea of a price link between the UK and EU emissions trading schemes. You also talked about skills in relation to clean energy infrastructure, and about multiregion loose volume coupling being the solution to efficient electricity trading, which sounds like a wonderfully geeky subject that I will have to read more about.

Those are current issues. I ask that you look ahead as we consider the other changes that need to happen for us to transition to a sustainable energy system. What in the current arrangements might inhibit that transition? What aspects of a review—whether that is decarbonisation of heat, where the skills and experience of other European countries are decades ahead of that of the UK, whether that is building more transmission connections between the UK and other European countries or whether that is the emergence of something such as green hydrogen, the production and export of which could play a significant role—might help to resolve the issues that we will encounter?

Could I break in at this point? Would you go as far as to say that there should not be two separate systems?

That is really helpful; thank you.

Mr Bain, do you have anything to add from the British Chambers of Commerce point of view?

This is happening at a time when we need to be learning from the skills of countries that build homes to the energy performance that cold northern European countries require, which Scotland has not been doing.

Are there any other perspectives on the same question about the long-term impact and the role that the restoration of youth mobility might have in ameliorating at least some of the harmful effects?

Is there anything to add from the computer science perspective?

Clearly, there has been an immediate impact on the operation of businesses that work in your sectors, whether that relates to their ability to access work in European countries, share skills or in other ways. I will ask about the long-term impact of those barriers not just on folk who work in the sector but on how those sectors will develop if there is no movement and no youth mobility in particular. Who will come into those professions? How will they develop their skills? In what way will their networks with folk in other European countries develop or get hampered if there is no progress on restoring youth mobility? How much of an impact will that have in relation to how your professions develop in Scotland? How much benefit would be gained in relation to the development of those professions were some that youth mobility to be restored?

I have a question for Ben Addy. We have a written submissions from RIAS. As RIAS was producing evidence for a Scottish Parliament committee and our job is to scrutinise the Scottish Government, most of the content of the last section on the way forward is about what the Government can do to try to support the sector or mitigate some of the damage that has been done. I appreciate that, but I wonder whether there is already an established or emerging view from the wider sector across the UK, including in Scotland, about the changes that the UK Government should pursue with the EU. Is a view emerging about specific changes that you seek to advocate for to improve or—as the UK Government sometimes says—to reset the relationship with Europe and to remove some of the barriers that have been put up?