Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, and a very warm welcome to the 32nd meeting in 2023 of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. Our only agenda item today is evidence taking on “Our Past, Our Future: The Strategy for Scotland’s Historic Environment”, which was published in June.

We are delighted to be joined by Bryan Dickson, head of buildings conservation, National Trust for Scotland; Caroline Clark, director for Scotland, National Lottery Heritage Fund; Ailsa Macfarlane, director, Built Environment Forum Scotland; Lucy Casot, chief executive officer, Museums Galleries Scotland; Jocelyn Cunliffe, acting chairman, Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland; and Elaine Ellis, skills planning manager, Skills Development Scotland. We are joined remotely by Caroline Warburton, VisitScotland’s destination development director for central and north-east Scotland. A warm welcome to you all, and a huge thank you to those who have put in written submissions for today’s session.

This round-table session is intended to be slightly less formal than our usual meetings, and I hope that everyone will have a chance to participate in the discussion. Caroline Warburton, if you indicate online that you want to come in on any points, the clerks will let me know.

Our main focus will be your views on the sector’s three priority areas: the role of stakeholders in supporting the delivery of the strategy’s aims; monitoring progress and measuring success of the strategy; and potential blockages, risks to delivery or other concerns that you have. Are the priorities for the sector, as set out in the strategy, the right ones? Do you consider that the actions that are due to be undertaken will deliver against the priorities in the strategy?

First of all, I will go round the room and ask the witnesses to say, very briefly—because we will run out of time; we always do—a little bit about their organisation.

I come to Caroline Clark first.

We have talked about skills. Neil Bibby has some questions on that.

Thank you. Donald Cameron has a question.

I thank everyone for their involvement in what has been a long but really helpful session. I again thank the witnesses not only for their attendance, but for the submissions that they sent in beforehand.

Thank you all for those opening statements. I will move to questions from the committee. I invite Donald Cameron to start.

Okay. I will go to Kate Forbes, because she has a supplementary question

We have some supplementary questions on that topic. Mark Ruskell, do you have a supplementary question, or is your question on a new topic?

I thank the cabinet secretary and his officials for joining us this morning. We are just two minutes over time, cabinet secretary, so it is a good morning.

We will take opening statements from all the witnesses first of all and then move to questions. I will bring in Alice Black who is also joining us online.

I now suspend the meeting momentarily to allow officials to change over.