Chamber and committees

I have another question about the national indicators. Some of them, including the indicators for reputation and for international exporting, apply to Scotland’s international policy. The committee recently visited Belfast and Dublin as part of our inquiry work. In Dublin, we met with Irish officials who work in the international office and who told us that they are about to open their 131st overseas mission, which puts them on a slightly different scale to Scotland at the moment. They indicated that soft power is often the way to open up issues such as trade, or to start conversations.

What is the focus of your work? How do you balance those areas and how do you use soft power? Christopher, you are still on screen, so please answer first.

There is a final question, from Mr Brown.

Thank you.

We will move to questions from the committee, starting with Kate Forbes.

Thank you, minister. We have exhausted our questions for you this morning. Thank you for your first attendance; I am sure that it will not be the last. We were very glad to see you today.

A warm welcome back to the 35th meeting in 2023 of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee.

Before we move on, is the committee content to take agenda item 4 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Were those 220,000 views from within China or globally?

Does Kat from the Copenhagen office want to respond? I am getting confused with the Katrines and Catrionas.

I have asked the broadcasting staff to turn the sound up. We can hear you, but we are straining a little. They have turned it up now.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak on this important subject. The petition has my full support. Ms McKay previously contacted my office, and I raised her case with Police Scotland. She has my admiration for the way that she has approached the issue after such a harrowing incident for her family.

We know that there is a correlation between spiking and sexual offences, and we know the systemic barriers that people face in reporting such crimes. Those are wider cultural issues, which are typically rooted in the tacit societal acceptance of both violence and misogyny. The petition does not speak to those harmful cultural norms, but it is those attitudes that drive the inequity that have made such incidents troublingly commonplace.

As policy makers, we must recognise the areas in which we can make an immediate and tangible difference. Other barriers will still exist to reporting those incidents, but confidence in those incidents being investigated should not be one of them. Victims should feel confident that their complaints will be treated with the utmost seriousness. They need to know that their voices will be heard and that their experiences will be compassionately handled and rigorously investigated. That is not the current position, as demonstrated by the experience of the McKay family. Too many people are hesitant to bring cases forward; our Parliament has an opportunity to change that narrative.

In cases of suspected spiking, I share the belief that appropriate testing should be standard, because we know that the hours following the incident are critical. Further, victims should be directed to holistic emotional support. People in such situations will always feel scared and isolated, and supporting their mental wellbeing is crucial. Promoting that support more widely will encourage more people to relay their experiences so that the crimes can be investigated and perpetrators will feel the full legal scrutiny for their actions. No one who commits those heinous crimes should feel safe and their actions should not go unpunished. No one who suffers because of those crimes should feel that their voice is dismissed.

I thank the committee once again for allowing me to speak and convey my appreciation for Catherine Anne McKay and for her dedicated advocacy on behalf of her family. Their work will make no difference to their experience and the outcome of it, but it may ensure that no other victim or family are left feeling that incredible injustice.

Thank you for that brief introduction. We do not always get that, but it was ideal for setting the tone for our questions.

I will open with a quote from the strategy:

“We will not be able to protect every heritage asset though, and will need to make difficult choices about the historic places we invest in and which elements of our heritage we can maintain for the future. And we must face all of this within a difficult funding environment”.

I would like you to expand on the impact of the funding environment on the numbers of assets that you are able to protect, but I also want to try to understand whether there is a framework or a matrix around that decision-making process and how it develops.