Chamber and committees

I call Mark Ruskell, who joins us online.

Thank you all for your contributions. We are again sorry that Professor Barnard had to leave, but she has indicated that she will write in with any comments on the questions if she wishes to add to her submission to the committee.

I will suspend the meeting briefly to allow the next witnesses to come on board.

For our second panel this morning, as part of our consideration for the legislative consent memorandum on the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, I welcome Angus Robertson MSP, Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture, who is joined by Frank Strang, deputy director of EU relations at the Scottish Government, and Chris Nicholson, solicitor, Scottish Government legal directorate. A warm welcome to you. Cabinet secretary, I invite you to make an opening statement.

I have a couple of final questions, cabinet secretary. A lot of our evidence has focused on the Sewel convention and how it has operated. The Hansard Society raised some concerns about that today. At a time when almost everything is changing, if we are dependent on the traditional conventions that we have, how do we move forward and ensure that what happens is not just about who is in place and the willingness of the Prime Minister and the Government? Is there something that we can do to improve the constitutional arrangements? From the evidence that we have seen, the Sewel convention appears to be, to put it politely, under strain.

I will bring in Dr Allan. I am conscious of time, so if we can try to keep things short for the remainder of the session, that will be helpful.

Professor Barnard—are you there? We are not hearing you at the moment.

We can hear you now, yes.

I will move to questions from the committee.

Our third item is two evidence-taking sessions for our pre-budget scrutiny of the culture spending portfolio.

For our first session, I welcome to the meeting Iain Munro, chief executive, Creative Scotland; Councillor Steven Heddle, vice-president, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, who is joining us remotely from Orkney; and Martin Booth, executive director of finance, Glasgow City Council, who is attending on behalf of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy directors of finance section. I warmly welcome you all to this morning’s meeting.

I will start with a question for Mr Munro on Creative Scotland’s plans for a new multiyear funding programme. We have had evidence from the sector on the profound importance of multiyear funding as well as the pressures that the sector is under at the moment. You have outlined that a number of organisations beyond the current network of regularly funded organisations require funding on a multiyear basis. However, given how pressured we know the financial situation to be, what would be your considerations in that regard? How would you assess the impact on the sector of funding fewer organisations on a multiyear basis?

Mr Ruskell has a supplementary question on that.