Chamber and committees

Not really.

My point is that, wherever the decision-making power lies, would the Government like to see it happen?

Thank you convener. Cabinet secretary, you mentioned meetings with the Music Venue Trust. My question is about the longer term rather than the coming financial year. One aspect of reviewing the creative landscape is about diversifying funding sources, so I think that there is some longer-term relevance to my question, and I hope that I can get a yes or no answer. When I raised the idea of a stadium levy, which the Music Venue Trust is arguing could help to fund many independent cultural venues, your answer was mostly focused on whether it is a devolved or reserved matter and whether it could happen in Scotland or would need to be UK-wide. Does the Scottish Government wants to see a stadium levy happen, and does it want it to be used for that purpose?

There is a great deal in the picture that you are painting that the committee and the sector would welcome—increased resource, long-term certainty and a review of the remit and operations of Creative Scotland. I think that that is welcome. I hope that I am right in hearing from you that you understand that it will take time for the sector to rebuild trust, given the turbulence and the stop-start nature of funding, particularly very recently. It will take time and the delivery of those commitments for that trust and confidence to build, if the Government does commit to that.

There has been some discussion in our evidence taking about the short-term, immediate step—in the coming financial year—towards that £100 million commitment. One witness said to us, if the figure for the coming financial year

“is £20 million, it will not touch the sides”.—[Official Report, Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee, 19 September 2024; c 12.]

I appreciate that you will not be in a position to give us a figure right now, but do you hear and recognise the evidence that has been given to the committee that clearly indicates that it will have to be significantly more than that, just to be taken seriously?

Thank you.

My other question leads on from the points that Caroline Sewell mentioned earlier about where we get the money from. I will try to join the dots between that and the interdisciplinary, multi-portfolio—holistic, if you like—approach. That sense of joining the dots between different public revenue streams and the public objectives that we are trying to achieve is only one part of the issue.

It is not all public funding, it is also charitable funding, which has taken a serious hit in recent years. It is about the amount of money that individuals spend in the economy when they choose to go out, whether it is money for a ticket to a cultural event or money that they spend behind the bar at the same venue; it is about the commercial operation of some of those venues, whether they are charitable or purely businesses that are looking to get by; it is about local authorities, too, as two or three people have mentioned.

What scope is there for more innovation in relation to where we raise the revenue from? We have seen the tourism levy, which has the potential to fund culture, among other work. Arguments are now being made about a stadium levy, so that highly profitable cultural events do something to fund independent venues. There is the chance to give local authorities more powers to raise revenue at a local level, too, rather than just relying on national funding. How much scope do you see for innovation and change in the way that we raise the money, rather than just focusing on the delivery model for how it gets spent, given the benefits that that could create for the wider cultural economy, rather than just the stuff that the public sector funds?

Good morning. I find a great deal that you have said interesting, especially on some of the cross-portfolio stuff.

I will come on to what Caroline Sewell said about where we raise the money from and finding more creative ways of doing that, but first can I be a bit unfair? You have made a very strong case that the scale of investment needs to go up and is a high priority, and that the stability and certainty that have been lacking are a high priority.

One of the factors that have been part of Scottish Government budgets pretty much since austerity began is that there is a tension between those things. The more money you put into a particular budget, the more risk you create that, halfway through the financial year, you will have to hit the spending controls. If that happens, legally or contractually committed stuff will be protected, whereas a sector that does not have that protection is immediately in the firing line and you are back into instability.

You should not have to pick one or the other—the scale or the stability. Everybody on the committee and probably everybody in the Government wants to give you both. However, can you give us more of a steer on where the priority lies between the two? There have been parts of this conversation where the priority was clearly scale and quantum, and parts where it was clearly stability. I know that that sounds unfair to ask.

Good morning. You have acknowledged that you do not yet have a great deal of information about what the review will consist of or the timescale for it. You have used the phrase “in due course”, which is the same one that the cabinet secretary used in his letter. We can only assume that that means that the Government has not decided yet, either. In the next few weeks, we will be looking at the budget for the coming financial year. I acknowledge that you cannot say what the outcome of the review or the process for it will be, but those decisions will have an impact on the ability of Creative Scotland and the wider sector to deliver in the short term on some of the issues that witnesses have raised with us.

I want to offer you the chance to reflect on what we have heard. I do not know whether you were listening to our earlier session, but you might be aware of some of the issues that came up last week, and similar themes have been discussed today. There is a tension between the scale of funding and the certainty of funding. There is a desire to avoid unexpected bumps in the road as a result of a lack of certainty in the middle of the financial year. There are issues relating to how public funding interacts with charitable funding and commercial funding and to whether revenue that is available nationally and locally, as well as in independent venues, can deliver a fair work agenda.

As well as the challenges, there are a great many opportunities. There are opportunities to invest in net zero, which could reduce venues’ operating costs, and there is the opportunity for the culture sector to tell that story, which is what we need, because there is interaction in that regard when societal change is coming.

Could you reflect on the opportunities that exist—under the current funding model or in the longer term, if changes are made—to respond in the coming financial year to the issues that witnesses have raised with us, given that we will be looking at the budget in a few weeks?

Good morning, everyone. I will come on to some of the longer-term issues that have been raised in the discussion so far, but first I will focus on the coming financial year, because we are looking forward to the Scottish Government producing a budget for 2025-26, in the context of the commitment to increase funding so that it is at least £100 million more a year by 2028-29.

Obviously, we do not want to have to wait until 2028-29 for that extra funding to come along, but we would not expect all of that £100 million more a year to come right at the start. When we see the budget, what should we be looking for as being a credible step in that direction, in terms of either consistency or scale of funding? You have all mentioned the precarity and the different sources of funding—the Scottish Government’s funding is only one stream; there is your own income generation, other institutions and local government, as Susan Deighan was saying very clearly. However, in terms of the specific £100 million commitment, what is a credible path towards achieving that by 2028-29? What should we be looking for in the budget when we see it?

I want to build on that. The culture sector is very diverse. You all represent fairly substantial institutions and organisations within the culture landscape. Does the Scottish Government engage with you directly? Do you have access to the thinking that is being done within Government about what the increased funding that has been committed to will look like? It seems to me that there is a worry about whether it will end up being spent on culture activity or on the other costs that culture organisations have. A few minutes ago, someone—it might have been Anne Lyden—mentioned net zero. Whatever proportion of the £100 million goes to museums and galleries could very easily be swallowed up by decarbonising your buildings. To what extent do you have a sense that the Government is thinking about how that funding should represent an addition to your culture activity, rather than be used for other costs?