Chamber and committees

I welcome the witnesses to the meeting and thank them for their submissions. It has been really interesting to work through them.

I want to follow up Donald Cameron’s questions about different impacts across the UK, and to come back to the peat issue that Vhairi Tollan raised. Such matters are certainly at the forefront of our minds, given that we are in coming to the end of the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties, or COP26. In your submission, you say that

“The UKIM Act could pose challenges for Scotland’s ambition to implement a ban on the sale of peat for horticulture in this parliamentary session”,

although you have just said that that might or might not be the case. What interaction have you had on that policy issue with the Scottish and UK Governments, and to what extent have you been able to talk to parliamentarians in both Parliaments in order to start that conversation?

To pick that up, but also to move sideways, I will ask Alison Douglas and David Thomson about the challenge that you both highlighted with regard to sale of alcohol products. There is a very striking statistic in the evidence about alcohol-specific death rates, which are 68 per cent higher for men and 78 per cent higher for women in Scotland that they are in England and Wales. There is obviously a big issue about responsible alcohol drinking. What discussions have you had with both Governments? Certain products that are made in Scotland are part of our core economy, but there is also a discussion to be had about responsible drinking and getting the balance right. On the basis that public health is a devolved issue, I am interested in hearing, first from David Thomson, about discussions and engagement that you have had with both Governments. There is a debate in Scotland and a strong ambition to address that issue.

No, not at this point. The meeting that we had was a high-level discussion with a big attendance. Culture Counts commented that we could have about 20 different culture groups. We are thinking about the whole range: crafts, fashion and textiles, design, photography, writing and publishing, heritage, cultural education and performing arts. It is still a huge section, even without thinking about the CPG on music. We are not worried that we will overlap.

Thanks very much, convener. We want to set up the group after a lot of reflection from the members of the group and after learning from experiences, particularly during the previous parliamentary session. The term “culture” covers a huge number of areas, and there was a very strong suggestion that it is too broad a term for a cross-party group. For example, the Scottish Government has separate culture and creative industries departments, with a full department for each with different aims, objectives and strategies. We therefore think that the proposed group would make a lot of sense in relation to exploring accountability issues.

There is also a real grass-roots sense about it, looking at the two areas of communities and the industrial sector. There is the publicly funded sector of libraries, museums and national performing companies, and we have lots of community arts and culture groups that want to have a voice and speak to us in the context of a CPG rather than through a committee. We also have the industrial sector of publishing companies, record companies, entrepreneurs and the media. There is therefore a huge area to cover.

We have spoken to Culture Counts, which represents the sector, and we think that, if we had two cross-party groups, that would allow both MSPs and the sector to have a proper focus on both areas. I reassure the committee that we are not necessarily planning on having eight CPG meetings a year, as opposed to four, though. In the first year, we are thinking of experimenting with having two meetings for each of the CPGs, with the opportunity to have more, depending on the members of our groups.

I think that that will work really well, and there is a lot of enthusiasm for it. I hope that the committee will be okay with it, because we think that it is a good idea.

That is on our form. We have formally applied as a group, have we not?

The only thing that I did not clarify is that we would be looking at the publicly funded sector and the creative economy CPG would be looking at the private sector. That goes back to the different Government departments. That was a key issue for us.

There are now so many grass-roots organisations that are involved in culture throughout the country that we wanted to be inclusive. We will be concerned with engagement opportunities and following up how the Scottish Government’s strategy is working in practice. The Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee is examining that, but the CPG would enable us to take a much more grass-roots approach and involve people on the ground. That has been missing because the proposed cross-party group on creative economy tries to cover too much.

People in the sector being happy, feeling included and having access to MSPs is our number 1 objective this year as the culture and communities group.

For each cross-party group. There will be a cross-party group on culture that relates to communities and then one that will be concerned much more with the culture industry. We wanted to mirror the two Scottish Government departments, so we will have one for each. To be honest, as we come out of Covid, we are thinking of giving ourselves the aim of having two meetings each. We have had one first meeting of everybody and we reckon that, in the next few months, we will have another two meetings for our cross-party group in the first year. We might have more in the future.

We will definitely review it at the end of the year. There is a sense that people at the grass roots have felt excluded from the CPG on culture in the past because it has tended to be dominated by the creative industries sector, which is also important. We want to ensure that both sides get a voice and an input.

I have not been to one of these meetings, so I appreciated looking at previous committee discussions. I hope that I have answered your questions.