Chamber and committees

Clearly, the ICIAs have made a big impact—no pun intended—and they have raised expectations in a way about the decisions that would be subject to that assessment. A question that I am sometimes asked is about which organisations, agencies or bodies are required to consider going down that route. Will you say a bit about which are and which are not? We are sometimes asked that question locally.

That is very helpful. What I am driving at is whether you are satisfied that the list is complete enough, given the variety of agencies that are involved in delivering policy in an island setting, or whether it is something that you keep under review.

Okay.

I want to pick up briefly on a point that was made. In doing so, I realise that a lot was going on today. In her evidence, the cabinet secretary mentioned that the UK Government has an impact on some of the issues that we are talking about with regard to wider islands policy. Have we had any update on when a UK minister might come to the committee to talk about anything at any point?

You touched on the issue of community capacity and the stress that there is for communities in taking on an asset that has been transferred. I think that we all see in our constituencies that one of the biggest stresses of that kind and one of the biggest pressures on capacity is when somebody takes on an asset and then has to apply for funding from multiple organisations to actually make something of it. They then have to juggle multiple different deadlines, with the continual risk of having to retender in the current climate. I have no idea what the answer to that is, or whether there is one, but is there anything that we can all do to try and simplify the burden of competing deadlines that organisations suddenly face when they take on an asset? I do not know whether other countries do that differently. I have no idea what the answer is, but I am curious to know whether witnesses think that there is some way that that particular burden could be lessened.

You mentioned the situation in England. Will you clarify, in general terms, which areas of England we are primarily talking about?

Will you say a wee bit more about the reasons for amending the regulations, such as the process that you went through and the reaction of stakeholders?

You have touched on this already, but I just want to clarify the situation. In essence, you are saying that the Scottish regulations will now be similar to, or will catch up with, those in England. I presume that they will be broadly similar to those in the European Union as well. Is that the case?

The committee has talked a lot about the concept of social prescribing. In your last comments, Jemma Neville, you seemed to say that social prescribing works if you point people in the direction of something that they are already good at or interested in, which makes sense. If somebody goes to the doctor and says that they might be suffering from isolation but are good at singing, you point them in the direction of a choir.

I am putting words in your mouth. Are you saying that, rather than just directing people to go off and do something cultural, we have to find out what they are interested in and direct them to something that they are likely to want to do? That is not simple to do.

I was interested in what you said about the fact that a lot of the volunteering work is done by people who are already leading busy lives and have jobs. At the same time, you mentioned social isolation and loneliness. Is there any way of addressing the issue of isolation and loneliness and, at the same time, bringing in a wider, more diverse group of people into that type of volunteering? I do not pretend that that is a simple problem to solve, but I would be interested to hear any observations that you might have.