Chamber and committees

That is pretty consistent feedback from the witnesses. I thank you all very much.

The Auditor General for Scotland published a blog entitled “Christie’s clarion call can’t wait another decade”, and, in October, the interim chair of the Accounts Commission published “Christie—it really is now or never”. Those are the representations that we are trying to get to centre stage.

We have had evidence from SENScot, Creative Scotland, Audit Scotland and COSLA that highlights the massive pressures arising from the pandemic. The cabinet secretary for culture will know about those—we have talked about them. The issue is what the recovery strategy will look like and what will change.

I am particularly interested in your views, cabinet secretary, on the recommendations from the national partnership for culture. Where will the funding come from? It could come from the culture budget, the health budget or the local government budget, but the question is what those funding streams will look like as part of a recovery plan. I am thinking about not just the short term but the long-term, multiyear funding that we have had calls for.

I was being a bit facetious, cabinet secretary.

Just to clarify, I did not say there had been no progress since Christie.

That is very clear. Where are you fixed for being able to deliver on the community investment and community prescribing agenda?

On one level, that is very heartening—the cabinet secretaries are saying the kind of things that we like to hear. However, in a year’s time, post-pandemic, what will you be able to show us that has changed? As the convener said, Mr Yousaf, we are 11 years on from the Christie commission and we have not seen transformative change. We can all quote brilliant local projects, but they are facing massive post-pandemic pressure, and the evidence that we heard earlier in the meeting was that local authorities have had a decade of cuts and that culture is not core funded.

In 2026, GP access will be a real issue—that is 15 years on from Christie—and both of you have basically said that preventative spending is not just good but very important for pandemic recovery. What is the kick-start approach to delivery on the ground?

It feels like we lobby the cabinet secretary for culture weekly, but you have the big budget that has the potential to cut right across our communities. What can happen in the health budget that is transformative? It is not just about link workers, but about them working with local projects on the ground so that those projects are still there in a year’s time.

I will kick off with a question about whether we need core funding for community and cultural facilities, which are clearly integral to successful outcomes and the delivery of wider mental health and wellbeing benefits. The evidence that we have received shows that the financial pressures on councils over the past decade have particularly impacted on libraries, which are a key service for young people to be able to read, overcome educational inequalities and gain confidence. They are also important for older people and people accessing digital services.

The Accounts Commission said that funding for cultural services is not statutory, so they face “budget reductions” when local authorities face pressures. Is there an issue about core funding for local authorities? Should that be part of the process and do the heavy lifting—mentioned by lots of our witnesses during budget evidence—at community level to make the interconnections that some of you have talked about? I will start with Carol Calder from Audit Scotland.

That is helpful and clear evidence. It is 10 years since the Christie commission report, which basically said that we need more investment in such services to deliver on health and wellbeing and to support people with mental health issues. Given the pressures from the pandemic, should there not be more of a focus on those services as we come out of it to enable community investment to deliver on the transformative change that Christie recommended? Both the Auditor General and the interim chair of the Accounts Commission were very strong on that. What needs to change in capacity for local government to have the expenditure to put directly into Christie commission priorities, which would then take pressure off immediate front-line challenges?

I have a quick supplementary that relates to your answer to Alasdair Allan about health issues.

Lots of women and children have fled from Ukraine, but now we are seeing older people, people with disabilities and people with health conditions beginning to leave, because they have no home to stay in. I flag up the fact that people may arrive with quite a range of health conditions—their need could be as basic as needing free medicines. I hope that the Scottish Government is considering the range of support that people will need for their health and for post-traumatic stress, and not just in the future—it could be that people need that support from day 1, as soon as they arrive.

I thank you all for the work that you are doing. It feels like yesterday but, just before Christmas, we had a briefing from the Disasters Emergency Committee about the work that you are doing in Afghanistan. The amount of work that you have done in the past couple of weeks is incredible.

I want to pick up Sue Inglish’s point about older people. We have rightly been focusing on women and children who have been fleeing their homes but, on “News at Ten” last night, there was an incredibly moving piece about older people who had wanted their younger relatives and children to escape but, because things are so bad, they are now moving, too. There were images of people in wheelchairs or on crutches trying to escape. They are in a different set of circumstances, and the support that they need must be very different.

One thing that struck me was that people with heart conditions, diabetes or other long-term conditions all need medicine now, not in a couple of weeks. How on earth do you make that intervention on the ground to support those very specific needs? It is not about what happens in a fortnight; it is about getting people safe routes to somewhere else. How do you support local agencies on the ground to go from nothing to providing that detailed support overnight?

I do not know whether Sue or Madara is the best person to start on that.