Enterprise and Culture Committee, 04 Nov 2003

Meeting date: Tuesday, November 4, 2003

Official Report 131KB pdf

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Work Programme

Item 2 is consideration of a paper that has been circulated to members on our work programme from now until Christmas. We are in the final stages of our inquiry into the introduction of top-up fees. We have already agreed that our next two major inquiries will be into renewable energy, and business growth and entrepreneurialism. We have also stated our desire to undertake an inquiry in the field of culture. The paper puts forward some ideas about how we can progress with those areas of work. We have also agreed to consider the intermediary technology institutes and to hold an evidence session with the Bank of England.

We have a separate paper on renewable energy, which is a separate item on the agenda. The business growth inquiry is slightly more complex. It is, potentially, a very broad area for investigation. Many initiatives in that area are fairly fresh or have resulted from decisions of our predecessor committee. There are significant areas for us to consider before we establish a remit. I wonder whether it would be a good idea for us to have a briefing session with representatives of the Scottish Executive, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise to help us to focus on what we want to investigate, rather than for us to draft a remit right away.

The only difficulty with our hearing from witnesses from the Executive and the enterprise agencies is that they would be trying to steer us in particular directions. I thought that our role was to scrutinise what they are doing and to looks for gaps in that. I have no difficulty with hearing what they have to say, but I am worried that they might wish to steer us away from areas with which they feel uncomfortable.

That is a reasonable point, although I am sure that we could resist their blandishments.

I concur with what Brian Adam said. Given that the enterprise companies run the business gateway, which used to be called the small business gateway, they will try to defend the status quo. Perhaps we will end up with the status quo, but we have to consider other options. If we are going to have an informal briefing, we should at least bring in people from business organisations or chambers of commerce, for example, who might have a different viewpoint.

I am anxious not to turn the informal briefing into the inquiry itself, which is the danger if we go too far down that road and open it up to everybody to come and talk to us. I want to narrow it down and hear from just one or two bodies. If we start talking to business, we might wonder where we should stop and to whom else we should or should not talk.

I agree that whoever comes to talk to us will put their particular slant on issues. The business gateway is delivered by the economic development people from local authorities, so perhaps if we got a view from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities as well, we might get the warts-and-all brief that we seek. There is no harm in adding in a representative from the chambers of commerce. That would give us four folk who might well represent the broad spectrum of views across the business sector.

Once we get that far we are into the inquiry itself, are we not?

I would not have thought so.

To some extent Brian Adam is contradicting himself. The point is that the briefing that the Executive and Scottish Enterprise would take part in would be informal, and we would decide what weight to give to various aspects of what they told us and use that to frame our inquiry. We would not be taking formal evidence. I am not quite clear what COSLA would add. It might be better, as a starting point, to hear from Scottish Enterprise, for obvious reasons, and from the Executive so that it can put its strategy to us. COSLA could well come in at that stage, but we have to remember that we are talking about an informal briefing, rather than something that will be the subject of a report.

The session will grow like Topsy unless we stop it. It was supposed to be a short briefing to establish some of the facts, rather than opinions. It was intended to help us to focus on what struck the clerks and me as a fairly broad area. It was difficult to focus immediately on the remit with which I could come to the committee in the first instance. We could have the briefing, provided that we agree that we will not allow ourselves to be contaminated by what the Executive and Scottish Enterprise say to us.

We are big boys and girls.

I think so. With those caveats and given that this is all on the record, are members happy with the recommendation in the paper?

Members indicated agreement.

We will move quickly on to tourism, culture and sport. The committee has also expressed a desire to focus on an early inquiry in the field of culture. The Scottish Parliament information centre has identified more than 20 bodies that it thought could reasonably expect to be involved in such an inquiry. A number of issues that we might wish to consider as inquiry topics are included in the paper.

Given the breadth of our responsibilities, it might be sensible to have a fairly broad-based culture inquiry, so that we do not close off our options before we start. A review of the Executive's cultural strategy, which is now some years old and therefore up for review, was an idea that presented itself to me. That strategy covers most of the areas in our culture remit—we could always ask why the strategy does not cover those areas that are not included. That could give us the broadest possible perspective, without involving us in having to make any difficult decisions before we start the inquiry. I invite members' thoughts.

That points to the problem—the fact that the cultural strategy is so broad and covers so many different topics means that an inquiry into it will skim the surface of everything to such a shallow degree that it will be virtually pointless or will end up focusing on one or two things. In my view, it would better to focus on one or two aspects and to examine them in detail. The cultural strategy covers so many different aspects that to consider it in an inquiry would be meaningless, because we would not be able to get any depth.

I have a similar view. After three years, it is appropriate to examine the strategy, but an annual report on the strategy is published—the third one should be out now or very shortly, as in the past two years the report certainly came out in October. As part of a review, we might want to consider the annual report as a sign of what has been achieved.

Although assessing the strategy as a whole would be a major task to undertake, it is not something that we could not undertake. However, to avoid the pitfall of being rather superficial, which Murdo Fraser rightly identified, we would have to have a major inquiry that involved all the players. Even though the paper does not mention it, we should not forget that the cultural strategy covers sport as well, if not sport in its widest sense. For that reason, it would be better to focus on what the strategy's achievements are, which are supposed to be outlined in the annual reports. We could then examine an area in the strategy other than those that are the subject of review by the Executive, which are highlighted in our paper. If we were to have as broad a brush as the convener suggested, it is inevitable that we would not be able to draw any firm conclusions.

I agree whole-heartedly with what Mike Watson and Murdo Fraser have said. That gives rise to the question of what we should focus on, which is a subject on which I have expressed my opinion in previous meetings.

I would very much like us to examine that dimension of the national cultural strategy that addresses activity at local and community level, whether in communities in the broadest sense, in schools or through voluntary activity and so on. With the greatest respect to the national arts bodies, such as the national performer arts companies, whose huge contribution I genuinely acknowledge and respect, there is considerable debate in the wider media and in public life in general in Scotland about those bodies, their problems, their challenges and their funding. It is much harder to get a platform for much of the work that takes place locally, which is at the heart of the national cultural strategy.

I know that that would make it harder for the clerks to find appropriate witnesses and so on, but I would like us to try to get behind that issue. Part of that would involve speaking to the Scottish Arts Council about how it is bending its funding support to support the kind of community-based endeavour that is strongly rooted in the national cultural strategy. I make that proposal as a potential dimension for us to pursue. I note the connection with our enterprise remit vis-à-vis the wider issue of the development of confidence and so on among young people. We touched on that at one of our first meetings.

I completely back what Susan Deacon said. If we go down the national companies route to excess, we will unwittingly fall into the high arts or elitist arts aspect of the subject. I agree with Susan Deacon. Art can touch and change young people in communities that are the poorest of our society.

I hope that we are going to look at the delivery of arts to young people in our schools. I very much hope that we will take a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach to the subject. I know that it is complicated for the clerks, but we should get into issues such as the fèisean movement and what is happening in terms of language, song and music. We should be getting into those organisations—they do exist—that get up shows for kids who take great pride in taking part in them.

One of the most enlightened appointments made in recent times was that of Bryan Beattie as adviser to the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport, Frank McAveety. I am not sure whether civil service rules preclude our doing this, but if we had an informal chat with Bryan Beattie, he could steer us in a tidy direction towards the witnesses who could be called and who could tell us what happens.

We can take informal briefings from anyone we want, but it is perhaps going a bit far to take an informal briefing from a minister's adviser to tell us what we should investigate.

Bryan Beattie has a great knowledge of the arts. He knows what is happening out there at the level that Susan Deacon and I are talking about.

I entirely support what Susan Deacon said. It is appropriate that we consider this area. I recall from my time on the Scottish Arts Council lottery committee that the groups that operate in the communities are the most difficult to get funding to. Generally speaking, their revenue support streams are so poor that they cannot put forward a good economic case. The minister said that those groups are the groups that he wished to see being closely involved in the new national theatre strategy. As long as whatever we do complements or informs what the minister does in implementing his strategy, that can only be a good thing.

There is a considerable amount that we could look at in the area of community cultural activity. The Scottish Arts Council has done a lot already: it has staff dedicated to that kind of work and it puts funding streams into that activity. There would be no difficulty in finding people to give us evidence.

It would be difficult and a bit unusual to have Bryan Beattie before the committee in his role as a special adviser. Nonetheless, Bryan is a special adviser because of his vast experience in the arts and particularly in community arts. If he were to be allowed to take off his special adviser's hat for the session, which I am sure that he would be well capable of doing, he could advise us in general and specific terms about some of the organisations that we are going to look at. What I am talking about is an informal session.

There is a lot that we could do. I feel that we could get a lot more out of an inquiry into what is happening in the community than we would by looking at the national companies or institutions. I do not advocate that we do that. This sort of inquiry could be much more worth while. We would be looking at an area that I do not think a committee has looked at before.

We seem to be heading down a particular direction. Do members have any reservations about that?

Members indicated disagreement.

I am conscious that we have talked about culture before. We return to the subject and then we seem to go off in another direction. In any event, there is another fortnight until our next meeting. We do not have a formal meeting next week. The clerks and I will try to come up with a draft remit that encompasses what we have been talking about. If any member has any further ideas or wishes to amplify anything that they have said, I ask them to e-mail the clerks within the next seven days. We will be considering tourism once the ministerial group has reported. I note what Mike Watson is saying about the national cultural strategy including sport—is "including" the right word?

It should encompass sport.

Clearly we have to consider sport on an on-going basis.

The final major part of the paper has to do with our consideration of the budget. One problem is that formal consideration of the budget is a fairly time-constrained process. Given that almost everything in the remit of the Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning and absolutely everything in Frank McAveety's remit is to do with the budget of another body, it is quite difficult to investigate the budget in such a short time. Should we adopt a longer-term process whereby, over the next four years, if we are all spared or at least not promoted—

Or worse.

—we try to examine most of the bodies that we have been talking about? By the time we get to the end of that process, we will know a fair bit about what those bodies do with the money that the taxpayer so generously gives them. Are there any comments?

I have a comment on a general issue although it impacts on the heading of business growth and entrepreneurialism. As you are aware, the Finance Committee has initiated an inquiry into economic development. It seems to me that that is queering this committee's pitch. I speak as a former convener of the Finance Committee and of course our convener was a member of that committee for some time. I find it strange that the Finance Committee has gone into that area. I do not know whether that is something that you and the convener of the Finance Committee might discuss, but it seems to me that we should avoid any duplication. We will have to ensure that what we do does not get into the areas that the Finance Committee is considering.

I had a conversation with Des McNulty about this and I am fairly happy that he is not going to stray into our remit any more than is almost essential for a committee such as the Finance Committee, which we could say has an interest in almost every aspect of government. I do not believe that there will be a problem and I am determined that we will not overlap. Committees are busy enough without duplicating what other committees are doing. We are aware of that and I will keep in touch with Des McNulty so that I know what is going on.