Chamber and committees

I have a supplementary question about the impact of the announcement on the youth music initiative. It exposed the precarious contract position for a lot of people who work in the sector. It is disappointing that the youth music initiative was conflated with core education funding and curriculum activity, which had not been under consideration.

My question is for Mr Booth and Councillor Heddle. Have you reflected on the impact that that had? Is local government in a position to offer sustainability, rather than project-based and short-term contracts, to people working in that area?

As there are no further questions, I thank you all for attending and for your helpful written submissions to the committee. We will now have a brief suspension for a changeover of witnesses.

I will ask a final supplementary question. Many third sector and voluntary organisations that we have taken evidence from were really thankful for the support that was given through Covid, which helped most of them to keep afloat, but they also expressed to us how dynamic the funding landscape became at that time. Instead of those organisations feeling as though they had to jump through hoops and get through lots of red tape to get to a pocket of money, the funders looked on them as trusted partners and said, “We know what you do, so here’s the money. Go and do it during this really difficult time.” A lot of organisations said that not having to make so much effort to get money was such a relief. It is certainly a significant worry for organisations that they have now to continue making that effort. I recognise that it is public money that has to be accounted for, and that outcomes have to be achieved, but organisations feel that the red-tape barriers have gone back up.

One specific thing that was mentioned by more than one organisation was that it was felt that having been fiscally prudent and building up reserves became, all of a sudden, a barrier to accessing emergency funding. Organisations felt a little hard done by because there was no guidance from the Scottish Government about what levels of reserves they were expected to have. I do not know whether that is something that you or the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator could influence. There were inconsistencies in respect of the challenges that organisations faced, and they would want us to raise that with you.

Cabinet secretary, Ms Baker has been at another committee. I am minded to allow her to ask some questions, but we do not want you to repeat previous answers. If necessary, you can direct Ms Baker to the Official Report.

I thank the cabinet secretary and Ms Baird for their attendance. I ask people to clear the room quickly, as we have another agenda item to deal with and are now very pressed for time.

I close the public part of the meeting.

Thank you all for your submissions to the committee. I note that the joint submission made by Councillor Heddle and Mr Booth highlights tensions with regard to some of the requests in respect of wellbeing and “a whole system approach” not being recognised in the resource spending review. Will you give us a bit more meat on the bones about your concerns in that respect? What would you like to be changed?

Our focus has been on the wellbeing economy and the Government’s ambitions on wellbeing, and I want to explore how that might impact on culture across portfolios. The evidence that we heard this morning from Creative Scotland and COSLA indicates that those bodies feel that there is a disconnect between the priorities in the resource spending review and wellbeing. Have you had time to consider and reflect on that? Do you think that everything is in order to allow people to make decisions with a greater focus on wellbeing?

Thank you, Mr Robertson. I will open by asking about what you said about the recovery in museum visitor numbers. During our evidence session last week, we heard that, although visiting museums is free to the public, additional funding is made through special exhibitions and discretionary spend in cafes and museum shops. In terms of visitor numbers, how are they capturing whether visitors’ discretionary spend is falling, even though visitor numbers might be up? I have asked the question in a convoluted way, but could you reflect on that?

If you do not mind, Donald, I will make an addendum to that question. We also heard evidence from organisations that very similar projects from the same artist can be funded from two different pots of money and that the thinking is not always joined up in that regard.

That concludes questions from the committee. I will be very cheeky by saying that I hope to see you all again next year for Eurovision in Glasgow, which I know is one of your areas of interest. Thank you very much for your attendance this morning. I will suspend the meeting briefly.