Chamber and committees

Thank you, minister.

All that engagement is good; I get all that.

Another thing that we have heard, which is really important in relation to getting things right, is that the various budget holders often do not join up. For example, social care and employment services do not work together to get the best outcomes for people.

I am not going to go on about self-directed support, because I know that Mr Smyth has got particular questions on it, but how do we get local authorities, which are dealing with all this, to take into account the needs, desires and aspirations of each individual in order to get provision right for them?

Therefore, this is the first time that there has been this level of controversy because of a Creative Scotland award.

Mr Wilson, with regard to ensuring that artistic freedom continues to flourish but also recognising that public money is involved and that people have differing views about what money should be spent on, what does the board do in looking at the overall actions of the day-to-day work of Creative Scotland employees?

Good morning. You have said that the decisions that you take are at arm’s length from Government and politicians. That is probably a very wise thing considering what we have seen in certain places in the past with politicians trying to be the censors, including in the United States at various points, particularly the likes of Jesse Helms.

You will now be under a huge amount more scrutiny after what is seen by many as a controversial application garnered public money. Mr Munro, you said that one controversial award does not mean that there is a systemic problem, but you might have a little bit of risk aversity now with regard to applications. How will you get over that? Maybe you can give us an indication of when last an application garnered as much controversy as this one.

Mr Munro, you mentioned fair work as one of the principles that Creative Scotland follows. I know that I am going off on a bit of a tangent here, convener. However, I have been trawling through the vast bulk of information that the committee has received, including all the FOIs, and there is an email about the advertisement, which says that it is being looked at by a member of the team in terms of meeting the minimum wage and being funded by CS. The minimum wage is not fair work in my book. Are we making sure that all the applications that you receive and fund are meeting the real living wage and fair work principles rather than the minimum wage, as that email indicates?

Has it been clarified for the committee that applications that receive funding need to meet fair work principles?

Good morning, cabinet secretary. You said earlier that we are part of a global economy and that people can invest in any jurisdiction. You also said that skills and talent are vital in order to attract investment. I think that we have skills and talent in abundance in our energy industry. There is a huge number of folk in oil and gas who have the skills and talent to help us to make good in the renewables revolution.

However, in this past week, on Monday, Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce published its “Energy Transition 39th Survey”, and it said that confidence in the United Kingdom has plunged to a record low. I recognise that we are in a purdah period, so the Scottish Government cannot move forward with the green industrial strategy and the energy strategy, and that a huge amount of policy decision making in this area is reserved. How do we ensure that we rebuild that confidence so that the just transition moves jobs from oil and gas, as required, into renewables without losing the skills and talent? How do we persuade the UK Government to think logically and work with us to ensure that that happens?

It is.

You have talked about consents, cabinet secretary. Consenting—not just through devolved regulation or legislation, but through UK-wide legislation—has been a frustration for a number of players in the sector. How do we get better at consenting? How do we go about listening to people’s views on the barriers that they feel that there are, and how do we make the change—

On Friday, I had an energy day—although every day is probably an energy day for a north-east MSP—when I met a renewables company in the morning and folk from the oil and gas sector in the afternoon. You stated that 100,000 jobs are at risk if Labour sticks to its plans when it gets into Government.