Seòmar agus comataidhean

I thank you and Ms Tavaziva for your contributions this morning. I suspend the meeting for five minutes while witnesses are swapped over.

Welcome back. Our next item is pre-budget scrutiny of culture sector funding. As part of its pre-budget scrutiny work, the committee is looking at the continuing impact of Covid-19 on the culture sector and its longer-term future.

This morning, the committee will hear from Paul McManus, negotiations officer for Scotland at the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union, and Barry Dallman, acting regional organiser for Scotland and Northern Ireland at the Musicians Union. I welcome them both to the meeting and thank them—and others—for the written evidence provided for today’s session.

Given the time constraints, we will move straight to questions. I note that Ms Boyack is appearing remotely. I remind members to direct their question to a particular witness. That will be helpful.

We move to questions from Sarah Boyack, who joins the meeting remotely.

Agenda item 1 is to decide whether to take item 4 in private. Do members agree to consider our work programme in private following today’s public meeting and at future meetings?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you. I will add a bit of context around the games industry. A lot of the skills involved in games development are similar to those in the screen industry.

It is an issue that the committee has discussed in private, because the games industry has fallen between certain areas—it is not fully tech and it is not fully culture. For your information, we have been talking about it in the context of the wellbeing society, and how people consume and spend their time. We have discussed how the big Comicon events and gaming competitions fit into the culture portfolio. That issue is not for today, but it brings me to more localised questions, not about Edinburgh but from Dr Allan.

Cabinet secretary, can you just confirm that you referred to a meeting of the British-Irish Council?

Thank you for clarifying that.

I invite Donald Cameron to come in.

Item 2 is a Scottish Government update. We will take evidence from Angus Robertson, the Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture, on the Scottish Government’s priorities relating to the remit of the committee. The cabinet secretary is joined by Donald Cameron, who is the deputy director of the constitution and United Kingdom relations division, and Euan Page, who is the head of UK frameworks. Welcome to the committee. I invite Mr Robertson to make an opening statement.

I hope that we can ask questions in a logical order this morning. Obviously, the committee has a wide remit, so we will start with the constitution, move on to Europe and external relations and then finish with culture. I hope that that is helpful to know. Members should bear that in mind when they are requesting supplementary questions.

I open by thanking the cabinet secretary for your letter last week to the committee that explained the Scottish Government’s position on a lot of the issues. In it, you state:

“Work is ongoing to fully map out and understand the Act’s impact: it will take time to fully grasp its implications”.

Will you say a little bit more about that work and whether it will be published and made available to the committee for scrutiny?