Chamber and committees

Following on from that, it is about what practical support could be available now. There is support for organisations through Creative Scotland. It is clear that it is difficult for organisations that are using reserves, because they have those reserves for very good reasons—they could be about the organisation’s legal obligations, for example. The issue is about support for them now. Going back to the cuts to Creative Scotland, it is about that message of health and wellbeing, jobs, economy and tourism; it is about not only the cultural aspect but the wider impact on the economy.

I will broaden that out to look at our big five cultural organisations: Scottish Ballet, Scottish Opera, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the National Theatre of Scotland. They have had standstill budgets since 2016-17. How do we support our organisations now? Part of that is through funding, but part of it is through challenging Covid hesitancy, which Donald Smith spoke about last week. What is the Scottish Government doing to get people back into culture? We have a cost of living crisis, but what more could the Scottish Government do now to get people back into culture and to support those organisations now?

I welcome that response. I saw the announcement that you spoke about.

It would be good if there was something that we could look forward to, such as the acceleration of the tourist visitor levy or the introduction of a percentage for the arts scheme. However, the most recent response that we had from you on the budget said that that is years away, in 2025-26, so it is not a current solution. There is pressure on Creative Scotland’s budget this year.

It is good to be able to follow up the discussions that we had last year. I want to pick up on the opening comments of Iain Munro from Creative Scotland. You mentioned a number of organisations that you fund and the potential impact on budgets, because they have had cuts and significantly rocketing costs.

We need to look at the opportunities. We have raised things such as the per cent for art scheme and the tourist visitor levy, but they seem a long way off, as does social prescribing. What do you think the solutions are now? In the organisations that you mention—this was also mentioned in the SCAN submission—there has been a hollowing out, and a lot of artists and cultural workers have already gone. What is your advice on what we should say in our budget report?

I wonder whether Donald Smith wants to come in. You mentioned visitor hesitancy after Covid in relation to festivals, but there is also the cost of living crisis. What do we need to do more of to enable festivals to be more successful? We have already lost the Edinburgh Filmhouse and the Belmont Filmhouse, which is impacting on the film festival.

That is very helpful, because I do not think that that issue has been raised in the committee before. I know that there are issues about changing ticket prices as the date of an event gets nearer. You mentioned a ticket price of £60, and I have seen much bigger prices than that, and there is a question about where all that money goes. That has been really helpful in our thinking about the stark issue that there is not enough money. There has not been enough funding for a long time, but there will be a crisis this year and going forward—I appreciate that.

This has been an excellent discussion. I took out of our previous round-table discussion the phrase “the perfect storm” and the challenge of keeping the doors open and the lights on. Today, I have heard that culture and heritage are in our DNA but that we need to avoid the culture of doom.

Given the cuts that you have talked about from the start of our discussion today, is there a need to have rescue plans to keep organisations viable? I give the closure of Filmhouse as an example. Nobody saw that coming. It came as a total shock. The organisation went into administration and there was no space for a potential rescue plan. There are still discussions, but the moment an organisation is in administration, there is a very different trajectory.

Given that it is much easier to save a project than to deal with the wider negative impacts of loss, and given that everybody has talked about the benefits of culture, is there something that we need to do, such as creating crisis plans, in order to get wider cross-Government support? In the case of Filmhouse, we will potentially lose two cinemas, with a massive impact on the Edinburgh international film festival, and there are impacts on jobs, the economy, culture and education.

Is there something that we need to do now to avoid walking into further crises? Should we be asking Government to provide support and stop the cuts? From what you have said, particularly in your opening contributions, it seems that many organisations across Scotland are moving into a very difficult position. I am looking at Iain Munro, because we started with him and he has the big cuts coming up.

Is it possible to get a sense from Chris Sherrington of what kind of money we are talking about in terms of business rates? I think that he said that only 10 organisations got support but I presume that it is not a massive amount of money. The challenge is that, to go back to Donald Smith’s point, local authorities then have less income.

That the budget cut will have real impact is a really powerful warning to us. Many of those venues have already started to dive into their reserves, so there will be no spare cash left for organisations to keep going, never mind invest in buildings. That is really powerful evidence.

I will follow that up with Moira Jeffrey. In your submission, you gave us powerful case studies, which cover the matters of wider community benefits, impact on the economy and loss of jobs—if we lose people from arts and culture, we do not get them back. Do you want to say a bit more about that?

What is your expectation of our capacity to scrutinise that as a Parliament—not just this committee, obviously, because most of the other Scottish Parliament committees should scrutinise it—if the process goes through as you currently expect it to?

I welcome that. In our first evidence session on the issue, the people round the table were all of the view that it would be far better to retain EU law and then decide what we do not want rather than, as you say, upend the entire process. I cannot remember, as a committee member, an evidence session where we have not heard evidence that disputes the approach. That is really unusual, given the range of organisations that we have had.

On how the Government responds, there is parliamentary accountability to us. I presume that, at UK level, there has to be a parallel to the work that we are doing and the work that is being done in Wales. The Northern Ireland Assembly is not in place at the moment, so there will be no scrutiny by elected representatives there, which must be an issue.

In your work and in the support from the civil service, do you have a ranking in deciding where to start? You mentioned biosecurity. We are not out of the pandemic yet, and there is an issue about transparency and safety, because this approach is potentially, without thought, putting people’s safety at risk.