Chamber and committees

This is an operational matter for Scottish Enterprise and I have therefore asked the Chief Executive to respond to you directly.

The Broadcast Content Fund is run by Screen Scotland, the dedicated partnership focused on growing our TV and film industry. Since Screen Scotland launched the fund in 2018, they have allocated 52 awards totalling £5,985,781. Of these awards, 19 were for development projects, 14 for production and 19 were for slate development.

Twenty-six awards have been contracted and publicly announced and details of these are available online:

• On 28 March 2019, 6 Scottish production companies received £900,500.
• On 20 April 4 2019, Scottish production companies received £371,182 .
• On 21 August 6 2019, Scottish production companies received £836,820.
• On 3 December 2019, 9 production companies received £751,176.
• On 5 December 2019, 1 production company received £300,000.

The contracts on some of these awards are not yet completed and remain confidential.

The total anticipated budget of all individual production and development projects supported through the Broadcast Content Fund amounts to £31,562,899. Screen Scotland has also provided slate development funding to 19 Scottish production companies, with an aggregated anticipated development budget of £3,456,348. Therefore, the total anticipated budget for all projects supported to date through the Broadcast Content Fund is £36,704,493.

As a number of the funded projects are currently still in development or pre-production, the total Scottish expenditure from funded projects is not yet known but all projects are expected to comply with Ofcom’s updated criteria for a “Scottish” production, with budgets equivalent to those anticipated in their applications.

The Scottish Government encourages and supports participation in local democracy and values the role of Community Councils who undertake a wide range of activities for the benefit of their community.

Community groups play an important role in the cultural life of their areas. Community groups and grassroots cultural activity is the bedrock of creative life in Scotland. Community Councils and other groups have been key to transforming their areas, supporting creative activity and amplifying local voices.

A Culture Strategy for Scotland recognises and celebrates each community’s own local cultures in generating a distinct sense of place, identity and confidence and this aim underpins one of the three main ambitions set out in the strategy: Empowering through culture.

The Strategy seeks to enable people to shape the cultural life of their communities to better value, protect and nurture Scotland’s rich cultural heritage which inspires creativity today and celebrate the diversity of culture as part of every community.

For example, the Creative Communities programme, which will be delivered by Inspiring Scotland working with Creative Scotland, is a new initiative to support and empower individuals and communities to further develop their own cultural activity locally.

A Culture Strategy for Scotland adopts a broad and inclusive view of culture as the way a society expresses itself and includes languages as well as many formal, informal, established, evolving and emerging forms of culture, heritage, creative expression and practice. Both mapping exercises will seek to establish the full extent of current cultural provision either funded or delivered by local authorities (including cultural trusts) and national performing companies and collections across the whole of Scotland. This will aid forward planning and partnership working to ensure geographic equity of cultural provision going forward.

The announcement was made on 10 March 2020 and details of the announcement are available online at: https://www.screen.scot/news/2020/3/green-light-for-studio

The Creative Communities programme will provide financial and in kind support through Inspiring Scotland, working with Creative Scotland, to build capacity in local communities to support and empower individuals and communities to further develop their own cultural activity. Programme details are currently being finalised and will be made publicly available as part of an open call for applications. The Scottish Government is initially committing a total of £900k in 2019-21 to support the programme. Future support for the programme will depend on the outcome of successive spending reviews.

Gender equality is at the heart of the Scottish Government’s vision for a fairer Scotland.

The PWC Women and Work Index reports on data gathered across the UK from 2017 – 2018. More recent figures from Annual Population Survey (Oct 2018 to Sep 2019) show that Scotland outperforms the UK in the gender employment gap and there has been recent positive progress, over the quarter, in women’s employment and unemployment rate. ( Source: Labour Force Survey Oct-Dec 2019, ONS )

Women’s employment rate in Scotland is the joint highest (with England) at 71.6% amongst the countries of the UK and higher than the UK as a whole. ( Source: Annual Population Survey Oct 2018-Sep 2019 )

The median gender pay gap for all employees in Scotland has decreased from 15% in 2018 to 14.3 % in 2019. This is lower than the UK level of 17.3 %. (Source: Office for National Statistics, ONS)

Scotland also has a lower gender employment gap (6.5 percentage points) than the overall UK level (8.4 percentage points). This is close to the lowest gap on record since 2005 . (Source: Annual Population Survey Oct 2018-Sep 2019)

But we recognise the continued need to do more, that’s why we launched our Gender Pay Gap Action Plan which sets out over 60 actions to tackle the root causes of the gender pay gap and reduce it by 2021. A one year progress report will be published this spring.

As at 11-3-2020 there were 755 GlobalScots, of which, 401 are based in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 115 are based in Asia (including Australasia) and 239 are in the Americas. This represents a 13.5% increase over the past 10 months.

 As part of our flagship Fair Work First policy, Scottish Enterprise are attaching Fair Work criteria to large business support grants, starting with those awarded from April 2019.

The award of grants to specific industries is an operational matter for Scottish Enterprise. I have therefore asked the Chief Executive to respond to you directly.

97 businesses have been assisted through the Scottish Circular Economy Business Network, providing opportunities to improve business profitability, jobs and environmental outcomes.