Chamber and committees

My colleague Ms Minto will ask about the learning on the matter but, before that, I will bring in Dr Allan, who joins us online, for a supplementary question.

I will bring in Ms Hayes in a moment, but I know that Mr Ruskell has an interest in this area. Did you have a question, Mr Ruskell?

I invite Ms Byrne to speak.

I am extremely sorry—I was looking at the wrong panel list.

Minister, you mentioned seasonal workers. One of the concerns that witnesses on the previous panel expressed was that they do not know who the seasonal workers are. We are in a situation where the third sector is having to step in and support people who are in financial need or who have not been able to maintain their employment and accommodation status. Have you discussed access to that data on seasonal workers with the UK Government? If the Scottish Government gets the data and you know the numbers, can you share some of it with the third sector organisations that we fund to support people?

Thank you.

Ms Murray, you point to the

“well-established research base”

showing

“that participation in culture provides several wellbeing and social benefits, at individual, community and national level.”

Coming out of Covid, with the challenges that we are all facing, how ready are we to adopt that research and realise those benefits?

I have a supplementary question about visas. I am finding the conversation quite fascinating. Prior to Brexit, Scotland had a post-study work visa. You were talking about Erasmus+ not being of economic value, but the post-study work visa was incredibly valuable and incredibly important here. It was initially adopted and rolled out across the UK and then scrapped but retained for Oxford and Cambridge universities. I guess that there is a sense of—I will just say it—grievance in Scotland as to how that was arrived at.

You said that this was all about building a free capitalist economy. Is the Government’s decision last week to shut down the investor visa route with immediate effect, which could limit capital investment, counterintuitive to the stated aims of Brexit?

That goes a bit far from our remit at the moment. I am conscious that this committee might not even consider that bill. If you do not mind, I will ask the witnesses to follow up in writing with an answer to that if they want to do so.

I am conscious of time, so I will move on to Mr Cameron.

I am looking around, but I do not think there are any further questions from the committee this morning. Thank you very much for your attendance. Professor, we will make sure that the link that you put into the chat is circulated to the committee this morning. On that note, I will suspend to allow our witnesses to change over.