Enterprise and Culture Committee, 09 Sep 2003

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 9, 2003

Official Report 221KB pdf

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Work Programme

A paper detailing the result of the voting process has been circulated to members.

I have not seen that.

The paper was e-mailed to members.

When?

I received it yesterday by e-mail.

I did not receive it. It was not e-mailed to the rest of us.

The top three choices for major inquiries, in order, were business growth, renewables and broadband. The top three choices for minor inquiries were intermediary technology institutes, the Bank of England and the area tourist board review. I suspect that those results are not a great surprise. They reflect most members' voting pattern.

Because business growth and renewables are the two favoured areas for major inquiries, I suggest that we agree to make those our next two inquiries, with a view to starting around the turn of the year. We will begin by drawing up a remit for each inquiry, so that we can start to take evidence. The broadband inquiry will follow on from those two. Is that a reasonable approach?

There is a problem with the outcome—democracy has its problems and complications, and this is one of them. All of the six subjects that we have chosen come under the enterprise heading. There is nothing on culture and sport, although there is one inquiry into energy, which is a distinct issue. Given that our current inquiry is into higher education, it is not possible for none of our next six inquiries to deal with culture or sport—that would be publicly indefensible. We must find a way round it.

I take your point. To address that problem, we could attempt to make major inroads into the budget lines for the arts, culture and sport. One of the inquiries that members have chosen—the ATB review—concerns tourism.

That comes under enterprise—it is about business, rather than culture. There are cultural and sporting aspects of tourism, but those do not affect the area tourist boards to a great extent. The point that I made stands.

A number of aspects of culture and sport are being examined. The Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport has announced a review of cultural bodies, so it would not be appropriate for us to consider that issue at this stage. We have a broad remit and there is no doubt about what the most important part of it is, but it should not dominate to the exclusion of all the other parts of our remit. If we are looking this far ahead but are scheduling no inquiries in the two important areas of culture and sport, we will come in for immediate criticism—and justifiably so.

I support Mike Watson's general point entirely. I defer to his more detailed knowledge of the subject and the issues that we might consider.

The debate about the national theatre continues—I refer not to the planned time scale for further announcements by the Executive but to the concerns I raised at the committee's first meeting about the balance of funding between the national arts bodies and other forms of local artistic endeavour in schools, communities and so on. Might it be possible to have one or two limited and focused sessions—I hesitate to say inquiries because the word implies a series of meetings—on an aspect of those on-going debates? That would provide a forum for scrutiny of the minister on current issues, but would fall short of us taking on something that we cannot do properly in the available time.

In the light of the controversy over Scottish Natural Heritage and the fact that the Scottish Arts Council might be the next body to be on the move, perhaps we should consider, publicly and openly, where the SAC might best go, which might take some of the heat out of the issue in advance and should not take for ever and a day.

The relocation of jobs is not within the purview of either of the ministers with whom the committee deals. Although the bodies that report to those ministers might at some stage be relocated, the same could be true for almost every other minister. As our ministers are not responsible for any relocation programme that the Executive might have, we would be taking our eye off the ball if we considered it.

I was a little worried by how we were asked to vote on the five issues, because it seemed to me that the inquiry on the creative industries, which I thought was one inquiry, was split into two inquiries, which might have affected the voting.

One issue relating to the Scottish Arts Council is the putative new body to cover everything that could be seen as cultural in Scotland. If we are to consider any issue relating to culture and the arts, how the bureaucracy should be organised would be the most inclusive and wide-ranging one.

I will answer one of those points. Two of the possible inquiries had the syllables in the word "creative" in them—one concerned creativity and the other concerned the creative industries. We were clear at the meeting that those were not the same issue because, if we considered creativity, we would consider its effect on business and entrepreneurship, which is not the same topic as the creative industries.

Given that the minister will shortly announce the terms and scope of his work on the structure of arts organisations, we should leave that issue for the moment. We are in danger of trying to find something for the sake of finding it. I agree with Mike Watson, but I am concerned that we are struggling to come up with a subject for an inquiry in what is an important area of the committee's work. If the committee agrees that we cannot possibly do our first three major inquiries solely on the enterprise part of the brief, we should take time to consider which aspects of the culture and/or sport part of the brief are suitable subjects for an inquiry or need to be inquired into. We should guard against doing something for the sake of it, which, I am sure, is not what Mike Watson wants and not what the committee should do.

That is helpful. We did not arrive at the proposals by accident; they are the combined result of our deliberations the other week.

Once we get the first two inquiries out of the way—by Easter next year or whenever it turns out to be—we will presumably be able to start two new ones. I would not like broadband to be bumped in favour of something else, but I am sure that we can have another inquiry going on at the same time as an inquiry on broadband. I am sure that, as I think Susan Deacon suggested, we also have the scope to slot in some small issues as they crop up or once we have reflected maturely on what those could be. That could even be done between now and Christmas, if we can suggest something suitable for a smaller, more targeted inquiry. I am open to suggestions.

It would be good for the committee to decide to do something on the other part of our brief.

Yes, but we do not know what.

Indeed—we do not know what as yet.

If you will forgive me, convener, I would like to develop the argument that Christine May has put forward. I am aware that we are reinventing the wheel with regard to what we decided last week, and perhaps I should have made this contribution then and not now, but if we lock ourselves into those six inquiries, it will be difficult to cover any other subjects. We should bear in mind that we will have to deal with the budget process too.

Rather than agreeing on three major inquiries and three minor inquiries, I think that it would be better at this stage to agree on two major ones and two minor ones, which would give us more flexibility. Those four inquiries will take us a considerable distance down the road. We have flagged up the issues and the order in which to consider them based on preferences, but we are leaving ourselves open to criticism from those in the cultural and sporting sectors, who might ask, "If the Enterprise and Culture Committee is not looking at issues in our area, who is?"

That is a perfectly reasonable view. We would be taking no action on the later inquiries at this stage anyway, so we are not prevented from doing anything. Would that be acceptable to the committee, if we had two—

I have an alternative suggestion, in fact. I think that we should go down that road, although the other possibility is to revisit a decision that we have just made—although that is always a dangerous thing to do. We could investigate the arts and cultural bodies in relation to the budget, and not necessarily in relation to their organisation, which we know is being reviewed.

Although I am attracted to what Brian Adam said on the possible relocation of headquarters of bodies such as the Scottish Arts Council, I suggest that that does in fact fall within our remit—relocation of such bodies falls within the remits of the respective ministers. Members will be aware of the controversy last week, when Ross Finnie was alleged to have passed responsibility for the SNH move to Allan Wilson. We could claim legitimacy on that, although that might be some way further down the road.

It is my understanding that the SAC, sportscotland and VisitScotland all have leases that are coming up for renewal. It has even been suggested that they might all co-locate somewhere. There is ground for a future inquiry on that subject, although I would not suggest that as the subject of a short-term inquiry. I would prefer to nominate two subjects for inquiry in each section of our remit, which would give us a bit more flexibility.

Okay. I will see what I can do to work the arts side of things into our budget scrutiny. That is a separate issue, dealt with by a separate minister.

I wish to raise a separate point, and I apologise to the committee for failing to do so before now. Under the partnership agreement, the Parliament and the Executive were to develop a community business model. It was my understanding that that was to form part of this committee's remit. I am not sure whether we need to wait for that to be referred to us by the Executive before we can start work on it, or whether we can do that proactively. I think that that is to form part of our work, so we should have an eye to that.

If something happens in that regard, you will be the first to know about it.

Thank you.