Official Report 564KB pdf
A warm welcome back to the meeting. First, I should let our visitors know that Mr Bibby is online.
The next item on the agenda is an evidence-taking session on the draft budget for 2026-27. I welcome to the meeting Lucy Casot, chief executive officer, Museums Galleries Scotland; Councillor Rick Bell, resource spokesperson, and Matthew Sweeney, chief officer, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities; Steven Roth, executive director, Scottish Ballet; and Billy Garrett, director of culture, tourism and events, Glasgow Life.
I will go straight to questions and put Mr Roth in the spotlight first. The budget, which was published earlier this month, provides a flat-cash settlement for Scotland’s five national performing companies. Can you provide some detail on what engagement you had with the Scottish Government ahead of the budget and what the settlement will mean for Scottish Ballet? If you could speak for the other performing companies, that would be helpful.
Yes, I am very happy to do so, and thank you for inviting me.
We had many conversations with both the cabinet secretary and our department officers prior to the budget, and as I think Alex Reedijk, my counterpart at Scottish Opera, has mentioned, from our last meeting with finance and operations, we were of the understanding that the national companies would receive something from the next tranche of the £100 million funding.
I want to give some context to that, but before I do so, I want to clarify something that the cabinet secretary said yesterday in the chamber. There was a suggestion that the additional £1 million that the national performing companies received in last year’s budget, which was 1.4 per cent of the £70 million that came from the £100 million, and the £700,000 that we received the previous year brought us to the highest point of funding since 2011-12. That might be partly true, but I should point out that the five national companies received a cut that year. For instance, Scottish Ballet’s grant in 2010-11 was £4.6 million, and the following year, it was £4.5 million—it was cut by around £200,000. Therefore, if you compare the current year with 2010-11, you will see that we are actually £100,000 behind where we were then. Once depreciation through inflation and all the rest of it is factored in, our grant has about 36 per cent less value than it had in 2010-11.
Moreover, it is suggested in one of the committee papers that came out for the meeting that Scottish Ballet is seeing an increase from £4.7 million to £4.9 million. That is not entirely true either; our core grant is £4.6 million, but we have also received a little bit of money from the onward international touring fund. I am not sure whether you are aware of this, but there is a completely separate pot of money that the national companies bid for. It fluctuates between £400,000 and £450,000, and it is used to get the five national companies overseas; we put in, and won, a bid of £180,000 to the fund to take the company to Charleston and New York next year. That money gets put into our grant. However, it is a one-off payment, and our base grant is actually static.
As for your question about the consequences of the settlement, we have had 15 years of flat funding and now another two years, potentially, because we have been led to believe that the last £30 million of the £100 million will not be delivered until 2028-29. In light of that, I want to thank Mr Harvie for his question to the cabinet secretary in the chamber about whether there would be some sort of “concrete” guarantee to the national companies that they could expect some of that money. I am glad that he received that assurance from the cabinet secretary, because it gives us a bit of assurance, too.
A lot can happen in two years, though. The fact is that we have been losing good-quality people, because our salaries have been fairly flat, and we have had to manage decline. Indeed, I think that the five national companies have done so extremely well, but that is part of the problem. We have been very successful in managing decline and papering over the cracks, basically by cutting core business. For instance, Scottish Ballet does not tour to Inverness as much as we did in 2010-11, or certainly before the pandemic, because the costs of touring have gone through the roof.
While we have been cutting programmes in our core business, our community engagement and other aspects that the companies deliver have been increasing dramatically. Scottish Ballet announced that we would be a national centre for dance health at the Healing Arts Scotland festival here in the Parliament a couple of years ago, and our programmes, which are for people with multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, dementia and so on, have extended right across the country, as far away as Orkney.
All five companies deliver those types of programmes into our communities, and we fund them separately through trusts and foundations and from private donations. However, those programmes would not exist without a solid core company and programme that is sustainable and financially viable.
We are now getting to the crux of the issue. The cost of touring has gone through the roof—it is now incredibly expensive. The cost of accommodation in particular is ridiculous. Scottish Ballet is now spending £200,000 a year on accommodation in Edinburgh alone. We are only 50 minutes from Edinburgh, and yet we are spending a huge amount of money on that. It is more than double what we were paying just after the pandemic, and almost triple what we were paying before then. We are carrying those additional costs, not to mention the 5 per cent bed tax that will be added to accommodation in Edinburgh come July. When we are faced with such ever-increasing costs, what more do we cut?
We have cut our orchestra back; we used to tour with 65 freelance musicians, who had sustained work throughout the year. We are now sometimes touring with only 20 players.
We have cut our company in half when we tour—we used to tour with the entire company of 40 dancers and rotate the cast so that everybody got a chance to be on stage. Now, more often than not, with the exception of this big, long winter season, we are touring 25 of those 40 dancers, so we have to find something else for the others to do while we are on the road.
There are consequences to static funding, which is really a cut. We are cutting the core programme, which we do not want to do. We are national companies and we are there to present works of scale in opera, ballet, the symphony orchestra, plays and theatre at the very highest world-class standard. I think that we achieve that, but we have now got to a point at which there is very little extra to cut. We have been making efficiencies for the past 15 years and now we are faced with another two years of having to make more efficiencies to get us through to what might come our way in 2028-29.
I hope that that gives you a bit of an insight.
Thank you. I want to ask Lucy Casot quickly about the impact of the £8.5 million increase in capital in the budget. In your view, to what extent does that address some of the challenges in the museums and galleries sector? For example, we have heard about the situation with the upkeep of the galleries themselves.
Thank you, I am grateful to have the opportunity to appear before the committee. We broadly welcome the proposals that are relevant to the museums sector. In our pre-budget scrutiny response, we called for a commitment to multiyear support for the sector, in particular for the new museum futures programme, and for an assurance that museums and galleries will receive a
“proportionate share in any culture funding uplift”,
including in relation to capital investment.
We in the sector welcome the continued support for museum futures, which is a new programme that has been developed in partnership with the Scottish Government and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It seeks to deliver positive change in how the sector operates and collaborates and to create the conditions to test new ways of working. Early-impact research shows that the programme is beginning to meet the needs that we tailored it around, and it is creating conditions for growth and resilience that we anticipate will enable museums to innovate, adapt and thrive. However, continued investment is essential to continue the momentum and realise the potential of that approach. We welcome a second year of funding support for that, and our ambition is to secure a multiyear commitment to enable us, and museums, to plan with confidence.
To come to the question about capital, we also welcome the preservation of a capital budget for the museums that we directly support. The funding to which you referred—the big capital investment in museums—is going to the art works project, which is for the national collections. We very much welcome that and recognise the importance of securing appropriate facilities for the national collections, not just to store them appropriately but to make them accessible to the public. I would note that those same needs are replicated across the country, in the 450 museums outside the nationals. The sum that we have for distribution is £1.6 million. That is an increase from the £200,000 that we had to distribute across the 450 museums in the previous year, so it is certainly welcome, but it does not, in any way, meet the need in that regard.
MGS also has a core budget, which is flat, as is the case for the national collections. In our case, we have had a flat budget since 2020, and that clearly presents challenges in meeting the sector’s needs, and the growing need that it has, given the crisis in the sector, for support from the national development body.
While there are positives in the budget, we know that we need to continue to make the case for a fair proportion of funding to the whole sector, not just to enhance our museums but to empower them to shape our future in ways that benefit everyone.
We move to questions from the committee.
10:30
Both Lucy Casot and Steven Roth talked about the regional aspects and the importance of those. I ask you both to elaborate a little on that.
I am from Orkney—Steven, you mentioned Orkney. There are some absolutely important and vital museums there; I will not name them all, but I will highlight a few. There is Stromness museum, where you can visit and see my great-great-uncle’s Scotland rugby cap from the late 19th century. You can go to the Orkney wireless museum or the Tankerness museum. The museums are an important part of our tourism trade. Some are supported by local government and some are private. Can you tell us a bit about the health of the sector outwith the central belt?
It is really challenging and pretty dire in some cases. We have a good understanding of the situation with the many different kinds of museums and the individual museums around the country.
One of the strengths of the sector is the whole ecology of it. We have the fantastic national museums, some wonderful local authority museums and many independent museums, which make up more than half of the sector; some of those are tiny, volunteer-run museums. It is the ecology that makes the sector really rich. For a visitor, how a museum is funded is not the issue. The local museums that are so important to place, identity and uniqueness across Scotland are as important, in different ways, as the bigger ones that host the nationally important collections.
We need to look at the whole ecology of the sector. I am concerned about civic museums in particular; we see the greatest concern in that area, and we are seeing museum closures there. I am sure that we will hear about that from colleagues on the panel today.
The museum futures programme is an ambition to work in a different way and to look at the ecology of the whole sector and how collaboration across the different kinds of organisations can improve the situation. We are hearing clearly that capacity in the sector has been so limited by cuts over so many years that the ability to innovate and take advantage of new opportunities is really constrained. The programme starts with a diagnostic to understand what the real issues are. Then we work from the situation in which museums find themselves to provide capacity and some investment. Museums do not have a lack of ideas or ambition for how they want to go forward, but there is a lack of investment and of capacity to take advantage of investment. We are excited about the museum futures programme, but we need a commitment to the programme over more years if it is going to deliver on its potential.
There have been some positive examples. Again, I am not looking for free tickets here, but I recently visited the new museum at Lyness—
It is fabulous.
It is fantastic, and it is important as a record, a promotion and a source of knowledge of that part of Orkney’s wartime history. In the past, I have also dealt with the Falconer museum in Forres, which is another fantastic museum that has faced challenges because of funding cuts. This is the concern. The suggestion is that there are some wonderful, high-profile examples with a lot of money going into them, but are a lot of museums simply trying to keep the lights on and the doors open as far as possible? Do you see any real change in the situation?
If there is change, it has been going in the wrong direction and it is getting worse. When we reported to the committee on a previous survey that we did, we said that 10 per cent of those in the sector who had responded to the survey felt that they were at risk of closure in the next 12 months. A programme such as museum futures and the increased investment that we have is absolutely critical. The issue is a long-term lack of funding, so there are no quick fixes, but we need to work in a strategic way, looking at what the future could be. Looking forward to public sector finance predictions, there is probably not going to be a return to the situation with funding that there might have been in the past, so we need to think strategically about how we deploy the resource that is available and try to work that out.
I will give you one example of something that we are looking at through museum futures. Many small museums in the Highlands cannot afford to employ a finance officer. They will have a member of staff, probably a museum specialist, trying to carry out that function. We are looking at whether we could fund one person across, say, five museums to be able to provide that service. That would free up the time of the non-finance specialists to do the work that they should be doing and would meet a need that no one museum could afford on its own. We need to look at piloting ideas like that and sourcing ideas like it from the sector about what could be done differently with resource. We then need to evaluate those ideas and grow from there so that we can test different models of working.
You only have to go into a small Highland community to see a museum about something—the local clan or a bit of its industrial heritage. Is there enough co-ordination across the sector, whether on the private or the public side? Is there an increasing reliance on volunteers who play their role simply because they want to do it? Has the level of confidence in the sector, which you talked about, moved? Is it getting worse? Is confidence in the future for many of those museums increasing or decreasing?
That is a lot of questions.
Some of the small volunteer-run museums are absolutely thriving. It is a great model. Volunteering has always been part of how the sector has operated. Volunteers are absolutely critical, whether they work in front of house in museums; work online, supporting collections; or form the trustee bodies that enable the organisations to thrive. They are critical to the sector. There have been challenges with the drop in volunteers post-Covid for some museums. However, it is not a negative that volunteers are supporting the sector; it is a positive.
In terms of whether there is an attitude of “confidence”, as you put it, programmes such as museum futures give hope. It is about whether we can embed that programme and get that longer-term, multiyear commitment to it. That is critical. The sector is good at mutual support. There is a network of regional museum forums. Sometimes, museums and other heritage organisations share resource, with professionals in one museum mentoring volunteers in another, and so on. The sector is well networked. Museums Galleries Scotland has a role to support that whole ecology and support network. Our ability to do that is itself constrained by more than five years of flat funding, so we are putting our hope to see change in this new way of working.
Steven Roth, I will come to you because, as I say, you pressed the button by mentioning Orkney. I am always very interested to hear about the regional and local aspects and about bodies that sit within the central belt coming out to areas such as mine. How confident are you that you will be able to continue developing remote programmes in communities such as the one that I live in, given the constraints on funding?
That is a good question. We want to continue doing that and do not want to cut back on it—I speak for all my counterparts across the national performing companies in saying that.
The Royal Scottish National Orchestra is delivering digital music lessons to schools across the UK. Orkney is as important to us as Dundee—we are in partnership with Ninewells hospital there—and any of the other regional communities where we are delivering those programmes.
The three programmes that I mentioned are dance health programmes, but we also have programmes for young people, through which we work in schools to support kids who, essentially, cannot be educated in mainstream schools for a whole lot of reasons—they might be personal, mental health or family reasons. We bring those into special schools, and they are transformational. One such programme is called “The Close”. They are not only life changing for those young people; they are life saving. We have seen that over and over again in the feedback that we receive from their teachers. They are absolutely critical programmes that go way beyond our core business, which, at the moment, is presenting “The Snow Queen” on stage—as we speak, there is about to be a matinee on in Inverness.
We consider those programmes to be as important as our core business. However, if our core business starts to fail or fracture, it would be very difficult to continue them, even though there is a separate funding line for them.
Trusts and foundations have been incredibly supportive, and we have partnerships with universities across the world. For instance, the George Washington University is supporting us with the MS programme that we are running in Orkney with the national health service and the local MS Society.
It is an intricate web and everything is tied together. It is a fragile house of cards; if one part starts to decline, it will drag on everything. We do not want that to happen; we want there to be a robust organisation that can deliver programmes right across the nation.
Given the constraints, some people may feel that ballet and other cultural offerings are not as accessible as they could be. My experience of ballet was being dragged along to watch my sister as a small girl try to do things that resembled ballet around a stage. It is a different experience when you see it done properly, as I did when I went to see the Kirov ballet. However, that experience is not cheap or accessible. Are you concerned that the accessibility of ballet in Scotland will be impacted if the funding constraints continue?
The accessibility of the arts from the five national performing companies in Scotland is already being constrained, because we are all considering ways to cut our core programmes.
Essentially, it will be touring that gets cut. For instance, it would cost us about £80,000 to £85,000 to take the company to Inverness for a normal one-week programme of a story ballet. I am not talking about the whole company but the smaller, reduced company. We would achieve only about £20,000 to £25,000 in income from that programme, so the gap would need to be covered in some way. The programme would be covered and subsidised by the cash that we raise over the winter period, when a successful family ballet is produced throughout five or six weeks across the four main theatres that we work with, together with the opera. As I said, we have already cut a whole tour from Inverness—to give one example—so there has already been a decline in accessibility there.
Is it likely that in, say, five years’ time, you will not be able to offer the same amount as you do now?
If we are on static funding in five years’ time and if nothing has changed, I guarantee that we will only be in the central belt. We may be able to take very small groups of people out of the central belt but that would not be the national performing companies; it would be something much less than that.
Okay—thank you.
I will bring in the other half of the panel for the next question. Throughout our scrutiny of budgets, the committee has considered the themes of wellbeing and the wellbeing society. We are keen to engage with COSLA on how we can deliver some of those ambitions. We are interested to hear about the impacts that budgets have had on local government in general and, specifically, about some of the challenges in Glasgow. I am also interested to hear whether you have seen our ask for a percentage of the visitor levy to go to the arts and how you feel about such funding. I will first bring in Councillor Bell. [Interruption.] It is okay—the microphone will be worked for you.
Thank you, convener—I am not used to the system.
I have been called many things in my life, but this is the first time that I have ever been called “Rick”—never mind.
From our perspective, local authorities and local government are in a difficult place. The amount of funding has not been great, and COSLA leaders have taken the view that the budget is disappointing. We ran a campaign about the amount of funding that we feel is required for local government. It would be fair to say that we did not expect the Government to give us everything that we asked for, but the budget falls far short of what we had hoped for. That puts local authorities in a difficult position. I would encourage people to read an interesting report that was published today by the Accounts Commission, which nails the whole problem.
We are pleased that there is additional funding in the budget for local government and that the cabinet secretary has listened to COSLA’s request for less of that budget to be ring fenced, so that local, democratically elected politicians can make the decisions on how money is spent in their communities. There is a bigger chunk of un-ring-fenced money in this year’s budget, which we welcome.
Our problem is that, similar to what our colleagues from the sector were saying to you a few minutes ago, our costs are escalating and our demands are going through the roof. We are seeing very significant rises in the demands on local government and we do not have the funding to match that. Unless something changes in regard to that, we will be facing some pretty difficult budget decisions as we go through that process across all local authorities in the next few weeks.
10:45
We have to have a more grown-up and adult conversation about the longer-term future of local government that is not about whose fault it is but is about what the solutions are and how we can find better ways to fund local government.
You touched on the visitor levy in your question. From our perspective, that is a really positive development, because it is allowing local government to look at other ways of raising money. We accept that the Scottish and UK Governments are probably never going to be in the position where they fund local government to the extent that is needed for us to be able to deliver the required services. We therefore have to have a grown-up conversation about trusting councils to raise some of their own revenue, and the visitor levy is a welcome start to that. Certainly, in Glasgow City Council, where I have my day job as a councillor, we have already started on that. We have done the consultation and we are going through the process to introduce a visitor levy for Glasgow.
We need to look for other options as well. There are a variety of other things that we would like legislative consent for so that we can raise additional revenues. I do not need to tell anybody in this room, but local government services are the ones that touch people’s lives the most and are the ones that are the most important to them. You will know that, because all of you will be out door-chapping just now for the upcoming Scottish Parliament election, and I am sure that it is council services and issues that are raised with you most often. That is simply because councils do not have the money to be able to deliver the services that we not only want to deliver but that our constituents both need and absolutely demand that we deliver. That is where we are at.
We do not think that this budget is particularly great for us. COSLA leaders have said specifically that it is a disappointing budget, given what the ask was. However, I hope that, once the election is out the way and some of the politicking maybe dies down a wee bit, we can have a serious conversation about how we will fund local government and what the purpose of local government is.
Thank you very much. Mr Brown has a supplementary on that.
What is crucial to having that serious, grown-up conversation is an understanding of the general financial environment, and I do not get the sense of that, to be honest. Nobody—neither you nor the previous two speakers—has mentioned the impact of the increase in employer national insurance contributions, which I cannot imagine will have had no impact.
I cannot speak for the Greens, but no other party in the Scottish Parliament suggested an amendment to the budget that would have increased the local government settlement, so there seems to be tacit agreement in relation to that. Did COSLA have conversations with any Opposition parties on the budget?
Yes, we did, and we now have a series of meetings with Opposition parties in the diary to talk to them about what we would like them to ask the Scottish Government to do in the next stage—I get confused by your stages; I think that it is stage 2 next. We have a series of meetings booked where we hope to be able to convince some of the Opposition parties to take on board some of the points that COSLA is making. Those dates are already in the diary.
I will just confirm that no Opposition party came to the Government, with the possible exception of the Greens, and asked for more money—or, in fact, asked for anything, which is quite astonishing.
Can you say something about the impact of the increase in employer national insurance contributions? I know that that was last year, but this will be the first full year that you are having to find that money. What kind of impact has that had?
It is having an impact. You pointed out that we have not mentioned employer national insurance contributions. That is a real problem for us, but it has probably not been highlighted because it is one of so many problems that we face at the moment.
I do not have a figure with me today that would tell you what the quantum of that impact is across local government in Scotland, but clearly it has had a big effect. I would contemplate that there is probably a bigger effect on some of the smaller authorities, whose budgets are relatively small scale. Certainly, it has had a significant impact on Glasgow.
We also find that more and more local authorities have to rely on our third sector colleagues to deliver essential services. Obviously, the increase has had a massive impact on our third sector partners, and that has been really damaging for many of them. They have come to the council to ask us to fill the gap that the increase in employer national insurance contributions has left, but we do not have the financial capacity to do that.
I will bring in Mr Garrett to comment, and then Mr Harvie has a supplementary question.
Thank you very much for the invitation to come along to this session. This is a really interesting conversation, and I will echo some of Councillor Bell’s comments and, indeed, the earlier comments from my colleagues.
There is an issue about understanding the role of local authority funding in the overall cultural space, because there is an underestimation—or maybe a lack of recognition—of the significant role that local authorities are playing in the funding of culture across the country. That is not in any way to diminish the role that Scottish Government cultural budgets play. Certainly, from a Glasgow Life point of view, we welcome the £20 million uplift in this year’s budget, on top of the uplift last year, notwithstanding the legitimate caveats that we have heard. It depends how we count it, of course, and there are always different ways of counting figures, but I believe that, effectively, local authority funding for culture is equivalent to Scottish Government funding for culture in Scotland. That is really significant.
In Glasgow, there is something even more significant. Glasgow is a city that has always taken culture seriously, and we have been fortunate that the local authority in Glasgow has understood the power and significance of culture, whether that is with regard to regeneration or health and wellbeing—the point that the convener has just raised—or to how the city presents itself to the world, how the perception of the city can be changed and how a renaissance can take place through culture. That sophisticated understanding of the power of culture has always existed in Glasgow, and therefore Glasgow has, in a sophisticated and visionary way, invested heavily in culture, more so than most cities in the UK—although a number of them have used Glasgow as a template to develop their own strategies. I will come back to that strategy point in a moment.
That investment in infrastructure has been really significant, and we are fortunate in the city to have an internationally renowned cultural estate. However, it is not just that; in Glasgow, there is also a significant ecosystem—I suppose that that is the word that I would use—around culture. Notwithstanding the challenges, Glasgow is still a place where artists, performers, makers, creators, creative industries and start-ups can succeed. It is a place where people can come and make things, create things, write things and start up. As I think Steven Roth said some years ago, Glasgow is the factory of culture and the factory of the arts. However, because of the reliance on local authority funding and the challenges that local authority funding has been facing over the past few years, that status is really vulnerable now. I have to make the point, because representatives from Glasgow have made that point in these chambers before.
I apologise for being a little provocative here. I will rephrase Mr Halcro Johnston’s question about what the picture is like outside the central belt, by asking instead what the picture is like outside those organisations that receive revenue funding from the Scottish Government.
In Glasgow, we receive very little revenue funding from the Scottish Government. Our museums, for instance, receive not a single penny of revenue funding from the Scottish Government. Kelvingrove, Riverside and the Burrell—museums that attract just under 4 million visitors, the majority of whom are not from Glasgow—do not receive a single penny. They are not just nationally but internationally significant assets for this country, and our events and festivals are of a similar stature. There is no revenue funding from the Scottish Government. We have been very fortunate so far in the support from the council, but we are reliant on that support.
For all the reasons that we have heard, our position is really vulnerable. We work with Creative Scotland and our colleagues in the city, and we are proud to host four of the five national performing companies in Glasgow. That is significant. We work across the board and closely with Creative Scotland and all the other national agencies, but we are coming to a significant point where our position is increasingly vulnerable.
Although the additional capital for the museums sector is, of course, to be welcomed, I point to the fact that that is effectively for museums in Edinburgh. It is for the art works project and the King’s theatre. To be honest, we were a bit disappointed that there was no funding for the People’s Palace capital programme in Glasgow, about which we have had conversations with Government ministers.
There are some really interesting items to include in that grown-up conversation about an asymmetric pattern of cultural funding and about recognition for the role that local authorities are playing in that cultural space. Certainly, we would love to be part of that conversation.
We will move to questions from other members.
Good morning, everybody. I am conscious of time and I do not think that we will have time for everybody to explore every issue that we would like to explore. The main opportunity here is for the witnesses to put issues on the record, so that we can take them up with the Government in the rest of the process.
First of all, I was going to come to Billy Garrett and ask whether he could give us any further update about the People’s Palace. As you are aware, we spoke about that recently on a visit, so I am grateful for the opportunity. You have been making the case for Scottish Government funding for the People’s Palace not only so that you can fund it directly but to lever in additional investment that will come from other sources if the Scottish Government makes funding available. If there is anything further about the dialogue you have had with the Scottish Government that you could make us aware of, I would be grateful.
I will turn to Councillor Bell. I am not sure whether Councillor Rick Bell is speaking for COSLA and Councillor Ricky Bell is speaking for Glasgow, but I am conscious that you have these two hats on, although, formally, you are speaking on behalf of COSLA at the moment. We are a committee with one specific portfolio remit. We are not here as the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee or the committee that deals with issues around homelessness, for example. If the Scottish Government were to make a more generous contribution to local government in general, it would no doubt relieve some of the pressures that you have talked about in relation to the impact on the council’s ability to fund areas such as culture. However, that ability would not be universal or uniform across the country.
If you were here with your Glasgow City Council hat on, you would no doubt make the case that, unless the Government resolves some of the extraordinary pressures that are being felt in relation to homelessness—partly as a result of devolved homelessness legislation that most of us support because we feel that it is more progressive, but also as a result of UK changes in the asylum system—that will massively undermine Glasgow City Council’s ability to provide discretionary funding not only in areas of culture but in statutory services. You are asking for a grown-up conversation about trusting councils to raise more of their revenue and about changing the way in which we fund local government. Are you saying to us that the level of culture funding that the Scottish Government makes available within that portfolio will not be enough to enable councils to fund those aspects of culture that they want to? In that case, how does a subject committee with this portfolio intervene with the Government on that question, when it sits within local government or homelessness, and these things all fit together?
Thank you very much, Mr Harvie; that is a very detailed question. My COSLA role and my Glasgow role do not always align, but, on this matter, they absolutely do. Billy Garrett hit the nail on the head when he talked about how, for all of us, regardless of what issue we are trying to resolve in our community, culture plays an enormously important role. We in Glasgow have been very supportive of that role, and we are keen to continue to support it, but there is no doubt that, across the country, the difficult settlements that councils have received in this year’s budget—although we welcome the increased moneys that are not ring fenced and the fact that some additional money is being provided—and the pressures on the rest of the budget mean that cultural venues will be on people’s closure lists. Without a shadow of a doubt, we will have to look at the facilities that we currently provide. Given that, as Billy Garrett said, a significant number of facilities in the city of Glasgow get no funding from the Scottish Government, that poses an increasing problem.
11:00
That is not just the view of Glasgow City Council and COSLA. Councillors across the whole country recognise the very important role that culture can play in people’s lives, especially in those of people who come from more challenging backgrounds. For them, culture can often be the route out of poverty. Everybody talks about education as offering the answer when it comes to getting out of poverty, but culture is sometimes part of the answer, too.
Many councils continue to support the culture in their authority areas because we can see, feel and touch the benefit that it brings to people’s lives. However, as budgets continue to shrink, culture—along with all other services—will be on the chopping board for councils as they come to set their budgets in February and March this year.
So COSLA recognises that councils are in very different circumstances and that even a general uplift in local government funding, were that to be made possible, would still not resolve the fact that there are certain councils that face extraordinary pressures on other parts of their budget, which will inevitably have an impact on areas such as culture.
Absolutely. COSLA has been very clear in sending a message to the Government that this year’s settlement will not solve many of those problems. As you rightly say, different councils across the country face different issues. As an umbrella organisation, we must take account of, and try to speak on behalf of, all those organisations, but there are some councils that are not in as difficult a position as others. Thankfully, no councils in Scotland have had to declare bankruptcy, but you will be well aware that that has happened in England. That trajectory will come to Scotland if we do not change the current pattern.
I will stay with Ricky Bell—I think that I got your name right. Could you confirm that the settlement for this year does not change the trajectory whereby there has been a lot of encroachment into the non-statutory spending areas such as culture? You do not anticipate that this year’s settlement will allow councils to increase culture spending. I invite you to answer that with your COSLA hat on.
No, I do not anticipate that this year’s settlement will allow that to happen. I think that we could probably put a full stop after the word “increase”, because we do not believe that councils will be in a position to increase many things this year. For most local authorities—assuming that the settlement remains as it currently stands—it will be a question of cutting budgets. As I said in response to Mr Brown’s question, we have lobbying meetings in the diary with all the Opposition parties in the hope that we can convince the Government that changes should be made to the budget, but, as it stands, it is a cuts budget.
So there is no scope for increasing culture spending, unless bigger cuts are made in other areas.
Yes. Based on the quantum that we have in front of us, the only way of increasing culture spending would be to cut spending in other areas, but I think that there will be cuts in other areas anyway, as well as in culture. Obviously, I speak on behalf of councils, but I do not speak for them, if you follow what I mean. Each council makes its own democratic decisions. However, I would be surprised if any council was in a space in which it was going to increase its culture spend—I think that that is unlikely.
You are relaying to us the vibe that culture is just one area that will not see any upside. In fact—reading between the lines of what you have said—it might see downsides.
I think that that is a fair summary of what I said.
Ms Casot wants to come in.
I have a different question for you, but I am quite happy for you to come in.
Scottish local authorities have historically been incredibly supportive of culture and the museum sector. We often look with some envy south of the border on this issue, because regional museums and local authority museums in England can receive core funding from the Department for Media, Culture and Sport through the Arts Council. They can also charge for entry, which is not an option for local authorities in Scotland. Museums need to be funded somehow, and those are some of the options that are not available.
Just before Christmas, there was a £20 million investment in rescue funding for local authority museums in England, and last week, there was a further announcement of £160 million of additional funding for capital for local authority museums and money for museums in England to look at more sustainable business models.
Mr Harvie asked about alternative models that could be advocated for.
It sounds as though there is a plea there for a bit more flexibility in the funding model that you operate by in relation to the direct funding awards from the Scottish Government.
Yes, there is no equivalent for the museum sector of the regular funding that Creative Scotland distributes to arts organisations, so there is no way of applying for that.
And nothing like the funding model that Historic Environment Scotland has. Are you familiar with that model?
That is different again.
It is different again, but you seem to be implying that you would like a freer hand in the way in which you organise and run museums and galleries, including admission charges, possibly.
I think that we need to look at the future we want for the museum sector and how it is funded, because as we are hearing, the trajectory at the moment is not sustainable. Therefore, we need to have that wider conversation about alternatives.
Yes, I think that that is right. That is in the spirit of what Councillor Bell said earlier about looking positively at what solutions look like. What does a realistic way of funding local services look like? That would, of course, include museums and galleries.
You have commented on the capital aspect of the settlement, but you basically have a flat cash settlement, which is a cut in real terms. Keith Brown never misses the chance, quite rightly, to invoke the employer national insurance contribution increase from the Labour Government. What does the flat cash award do to how you operate? Are you going to have to let people go? How will you deal with it?
We have had flat cash since 2020. One of the things that we have done to manage that so far is to reduce our offices. We moved from one office, which saved two thirds of that cost. We are paying a third of what we were paying, so we have managed to adapt.
You cannot keep doing that, though, unless you end up in a phone box.
That was a post-Covid lease arrangement. Next year, we are looking at a 30 per cent-plus increase in our rent, so we have a challenge there. Programmes such as the museum futures grant funding that we bring in for projects have helped us so far to navigate that. A part of that funding is used to run the programme, so that has helped us so far.
Do you have a plan to deal with what you have been awarded? For example, we have talked in the past at this committee about perhaps closing wings of galleries or museums, and closing or limiting access to spaces. Is that back on the agenda, or was it never off the agenda?
We do not operate any museums. Museums Galleries Scotland is the national development body, so for us it is—
Yes, I know, but I am talking about the wider sector.
In the sector, absolutely.
I thought that you were here representing the wider sector.
Absolutely; there have been some closures already, and some closures are definitely threatened, particularly in the civic museum space. A number of local authorities are consulting on closures, and there are museums that are currently closed, pending the ability to reopen them, and we do not see the ability to reopen them coming any time soon.
Do you envisage more of that?
We absolutely envisage more of that, and reduced opening hours—
Fewer heads.
Fewer heads, and seasonal opening.
Not good.
The committee talked about health and wellbeing. Part of the challenge with that is that, in order to keep a venue open, you have to sustain the front-of-house staff, but the programming staff that are bringing those spaces to life with new exhibitions, wellbeing programmes, education work with under-fives and all the programmes that we know deliver all the social impact that is possible from cultural venues, are threatened because the proportion diminishes as basic running costs increase and have to be met.
In the past, there has been discussion of flexibility around, for example, the fair work provisions that you are expected to uphold. That is obviously not on the agenda, but would you like it to be on the agenda?
We absolutely want to see fair work across the sector.
In the past, some in the sector have discussed at committee the desire to have more flexibility in relation to the implementation of the Scottish Government’s provisions on that.
I would absolutely support enabling the sector to deliver fair work.
That is an interesting comment.
Because of time, I will turn to the national performing companies. When I heard that the award was basically no change, I was a little bit surprised, knowing some of the views that I have heard privately expressed by the national performing companies, to get to 29 January without receiving anything in my inbox from anyone in any of the national performing companies protesting or making a case, although you have made a case today.
I also picked up your mention of managed decline; you said that you have become very good at managing the decline. Is that not part of the problem? Have the national performing companies become content that this is the way that it is going to be? What would that imply for your operations and the national performing companies more generally going forward? I am not just talking about Scottish Ballet; we have heard about the reductions in the size of the companies and tours. When I say that, I am thinking specifically of commercial activities. Are you going to be able to become much more commercial organisations? Will that mean, as I have alluded to already in relation to Museums Galleries Scotland, that you will have to have more flexibility in the way that you operate as businesses?
There are a few things in that. Are we content with managing decline? Absolutely not, but we have had to do it, because we want to maintain our success. We have been successful in doing exactly what you have described, which is being more commercial and driving more income from other sources, such as donations. When I started with Scottish Ballet, we were generating a very small amount of money from private donations, but that has increased sevenfold over the past seven or eight years to more than £2 million. There is a finite group of high-net-worth individuals who we can hit up for cash and all five companies are approaching the same people repeatedly. There is a small pool of those individuals in Scotland, but we keep trying to reach them in order to plug the gap.
On the question of managed decline, one of the things that my counterparts in COSLA, who are on my right, have been speaking about is the value of arts and culture to councils and their inability to fund those things. The five national performing companies used to receive funding from every local authority where we performed regularly. For instance, Scottish Ballet and Scottish Opera received funding from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Inverness. We no longer receive any funding whatsoever, so we have been carrying that as well. We have not wanted to cut our community engagement, particularly for young people, when we are touring in those areas. We are still running programmes in schools across Scotland and all sorts of other programmes, such as the health programmes that I have mentioned, which are slightly different. At the moment, when we are performing in Inverness, we are running programmes in schools. That used to be funded by the local council, but it no longer is, so we carry it.
How do we make it work commercially? We perform a commercial ballet tour for 10 or 11 weeks over the winter and try to generate as much cash as possible in order to subsidise the rest of the year. We also have to create art. To be more commercial, you have to perform popular shows such as “The Nutcracker” and “Giselle” every year, over and over again. That does not satisfy anyone in the long term; certainly, it does not satisfy the artists or communities. We need to strike a balance between that and making new work that puts Scotland on the map.
Scottish Ballet is invited to tour internationally at least every second year. Last year, we were the headline act at the Auckland international festival in New Zealand and, this year, we will be the headline act at the Spoleto international arts festival in Charleston, before we go on to New York. We are receiving those kinds of invitations because we are producing new work that no one else in the world is producing. That focuses the spotlight and the attention on Scotland. If we are going to diminish that by becoming more commercial and performing only “The Nutcracker” and “Giselle”, it will not satisfy brand Scotland and, certainly, it will not satisfy most of our audiences.
But you are going to have to become more commercial, aren’t you? All the national companies are going to have to.
Possibly, yes, or take on the American model.
But does that necessarily diminish the contribution that the national companies make to Scotland?
Yes.
It does?
That was the point that I was making, yes.
I see that that was the point that you were making, but I am not sure that I understand why that is.
Sorry?
I am not sure that I understand why that is.
Because—
Mr Kerr, I am really sorry, but I have another member who wants in.
I will have to remain ignorant.
I am happy to have a conversation with you on the side.
Perhaps we can return to this again. I call Keith Brown.
11:15
I want to ask about two issues, the first of which is the mature conversation that has been mentioned, and the other is the asymmetry that Mr Garrett referred to. I will make just a couple of comments, and I would be interested in hearing the panel’s views on them.
First, I think that we do have a fair understanding of local government—it seemed to be implied that we did not. At least half of the committee has spent quite a considerable time in local government. I worked in it for 19 years: I was a councillor for 11 years and a council leader for four; and I also have served on the Parliament’s local government committee. Our knowledge might not be up to date, but there is certainly a well of knowledge here.
As for Councillor Bell’s points about the pressures on local government, I understand that some of those pressures are very different from those that we faced when I was in local government. You are saying that there should be a mature debate about this, given the extent of the underfunding that local government has experienced over a long period of time. I agree with you, and you will just have to take it on trust that many of us make the same argument on a regular basis.
However, I do not think that there is a mature understanding of the other side—that is, the pressures on the Scottish Government. If there were that understanding and that acknowledgement, it would help us to have that mature discussion as we go forward. For example, Mr Roth mentioned 2010-11—I wonder what could have changed in 2010 to account for the constrained budgets. We have had a financial crisis; we have had Brexit; we have had a pandemic; and we have had 15 years of austerity, which we have been told by the Office for Budget Responsibility is going to continue. These things have an impact on the Scottish Government, and I think that, just as you want it to understand the pressures that you are under, you have to acknowledge some of the pressures that it is under, too.
As for asymmetry, Mr Garrett talked about the situation in Glasgow, and I think that he was referring to the asymmetry between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Perhaps I can bring another perspective to this. My council does not have a museum at all; it has one council facility with some artefacts in it, and there is a very small part-time museum. I, and many other people in my constituency, go to Glasgow, and I have regularly spent money in all the museums that you have mentioned. They make that contribution. So, it is not just the asymmetry between Edinburgh and Glasgow that we should be concerned about, but the asymmetry across the country. You say that there is no support for facilities in Glasgow, but the same is true for the rest of the country, too.
Very often, when we in the committee have a discussion about the cultural sector, we end up talking about Edinburgh this or Glasgow that. As Mr Halcro Johnston was trying to point out, there are other big chunks of Scotland to think about. I know that two or three of the panel are from Glasgow and therefore have that perspective, but I think that it would be useful to compare yourself to others as well as Edinburgh. By the way, we get an awful lot of special pleading from Edinburgh, too, and I say that as somebody who was originally from the city.
When it comes to having a mature discussion, I have to say that I just find it hard. I think that the figure that we were looking for earlier is around £600 million; I do not know whether that is the cost of the increase in national insurance contributions to local government or to the whole of the public sector—I am not sure what that figure applies to—but is the response of COSLA or the arts organisations, when they get hit with something that must be a bolt from the blue and a bit of a hammer blow to their budgets really just to turn to the Scottish Government and say, “Can you cover this?” without any acknowledgement of the huge impact on it, too? That is the impression that I am getting from COSLA, mainly, but from other organisations, too. Surely the mature discussion that we should be having should recognise those pressures—surely that has to be the foundation for a better discussion about local government and cultural organisations.
I realise that that was a wee bit contentious, but I am happy to hear any views that challenge that perception.
If I in any way implied that people on this committee did not understand local government, I have to say that that was not my intention.
You did not.
My colleague at COSLA has been able to find the figure for me: the cost of the increase in national insurance contributions across local government is £265 million.
To be fair, Mr Brown, I do not think that it is fair to say that COSLA does not understand the pressures that the Scottish Government is under. In advance of the UK budget, we wrote to the UK Government to say that we were very concerned that the settlement for Scotland was not going to be sufficient to allow the Scottish Government to allocate money. We are very aware that the Scottish Government has a number of priorities and that local government is not the only place where you put your money—there is a whole series of services. Every week, we make the same decisions on a local basis about what our priorities are going to be. We absolutely accept that.
What I was saying is that it is not helpful for us in local government to have a constant debate over where the fault lies; we would much rather have a debate about what the solutions look like. If that means bringing the UK Government to the table, we would welcome that. Indeed, we have on several occasions called on the UK Government to be part of the discussions; it has to be part of the solution because, clearly, we are very aware of the significant proportion of Scottish Government funding that is provided from the UK and that, if that budget decreases, it is much more challenging for you to give local government a reasonable settlement.
Speaking as the umbrella organisation for local government, I think that you will understand that you are our main funder, and we are going to come to you with our concerns about what is happening in local government and the detriment to our services. It is not that we do not recognise the challenges that you are under; if we thought that it was a simple case of the Scottish Government having millions of pounds of money and not giving us any of it, we would be having a different conversation.
We understand entirely the context in which you operate, and I am conscious, too, that many elected members of the chamber understand local government, because, as you have pointed out, many of you come from a local government background. However, there are more challenges in the local government space now than there have been for a number of years, and that is where our difficulty lies. The demand for our services is growing in a way that we have never seen before. Some services have seen massive increases—indeed, 100 or even 200 per cent increases—in demand. In education, for example, there has been a huge growth in the number of young people presenting with various challenges and issues, and we have been required to spend a significant amount of additional money to help and support those young people through the system.
Earlier, my colleague Mr Roth made the interesting point that his company used to get funding for every city in which its ballet productions appeared. All councils have had to cut that sort of thing, and we will have to continue to look at the issue, but it is not from the perspective that we do not understand the challenges that you face. Perhaps I was not clear enough in my opening remarks, but that is why I said that we need to have a grown-up conversation that is not about the UK Government saying, “It’s all the Scottish Government’s fault,” and the Scottish Government saying, “It’s all the UK Government’s fault.” What are the solutions? How do we make this better for everybody? That is our plea.
I agree. What is often not said is that councillors are not trusted, really, but they are trusted more than every other elected member. Indeed, studies will show that they are the most trusted elected representatives. Going back to your earlier point, I think that, during the pandemic, people really appreciated the vital nature of local government services to an extent that they never had before.
Do any of the other panel members want to come in on my substantive points?
I just want to come back on your very legitimate point about the phrase “asymmetric funding”. I am certainly not in any kind of adversarial relationship with anyone or anywhere. The point that I think I am trying to make—perhaps not particularly well—is from an asset-based perspective; there is a view, which is out there for challenge, that the very clear contribution that the cultural infrastructure in Glasgow makes to the national cultural strategy, the national performance framework and the outcomes and objectives of the Scottish Government does not flow through into funding decisions. That is our view.
This is absolutely not about taking anything away from anywhere else. We would love to have a serious conversation about the alignment between strategies and funding decisions, because there is, it seems, a bit of a disconnect in that respect.
I suppose that that is the point that I am trying to make. Maybe I did not make it particularly well.
Thanks.
I am afraid that we have an item in private to deal with, and questions in the chamber start at 20 to 12, so I am sorry to have to end the session. It is just the fate of Thursday morning committees.
I thank you all for your attendance today. If there were any contributions that you were not able to make, or if you felt that you did not get time to respond appropriately, please let your views be known to the committee and we will consider them going forward.
Thank you once again—and if you could leave the room quickly, that would be really helpful. That is Edinburgh hospitality for you.
On that note, we will now move into private session.
11:25
Meeting continued in private until 11:35.
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