European and External Relations Committee, 26 Oct 2004

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Official Report 251KB pdf

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Promoting Scotland Worldwide Inquiry

Good afternoon and welcome to the 17th meeting in 2004 of the European and External Relations Committee. We have received apologies from Dennis Canavan, who cannot be with us today, and John Home Robertson is on his way back through from a committee meeting that was held in Glasgow this morning. There are no notified substitutes for the meeting.

The first item on the agenda is the continuation of our promoting Scotland worldwide inquiry, which the committee has conducted over the past nine months or so. We are coming to the latter stages of the inquiry.

We have with us Ken Miller, from sportscotland; David Williams, from EventScotland; Alasdair Russell, from the Scottish Rugby Union; and Sandra Kinnear, from the Scottish Women's Rugby Union. We had invited, and had hoped to have with us, a representative of the Scottish Football Association, but we were notified at the tail end of last week that the SFA had declined our invitation to attend at this opportunity.

We have in front of us written submissions from each of the organisations and a news brief from EventScotland. I invite each of our four witnesses, starting with Mr Miller, to say a brief word of introduction before we commence the questioning.

Good afternoon. I am the head of marketing at sportscotland. We are the national agency for sport in Scotland and our main remit is to increase participation in sport at every level. We are funded both from lottery funds and from the Exchequer. Last year, we invested about £45 million in sport in Scotland. Our main areas of investment are sport and physical activity in schools; investing in medal success through our athletes and governing bodies; and investing in the governing bodies of sport and in sport facilities. We also play a leading role in co-ordinating the national strategy for sport in Scotland, which is sport 21.

I am the chief executive of EventScotland, which is a new entity and a joint venture between the Scottish Executive and VisitScotland. EventScotland was created with three main roles in its remit. One role is identifying major international events and attracting them to Scotland. Those events must have the capacity to provide international television coverage or media promotion of Scotland, or to attract spectators or participants from overseas. The second role is consideration of existing events in Scotland that have the capacity to be world-class events, and supporting those events to take that next step. The third role is creating new events that can be held annually or biannually in Scotland, again with the primary target of international media coverage or international participation.

I am the head of marketing at the Scottish Rugby Union. I have worked with everyone here, including Dave Williams from EventScotland and Ken Miller from sportscotland, which is nice.

On delivering international tournaments, we have had the under-21 International Rugby Board rugby world championships, which were held in this country earlier this year. They were enabled by our working with agencies whose representatives are around this table. It is nice that familiar faces are here. Our role is to establish Scotland as one of the leading world-class rugby nations in the next 10 years in respect of participation and interest, and for rugby to grow faster than any other sport in Scotland.

I hope that that gives members a wee update.

I am chairperson of the Scottish Women's Rugby Union, which has been a volunteer organisation since 1993. In 1999, we entered discussions with the SRU, and we are pleased to say that we are currently considering complete integration with the SRU in order to promote rugby abroad, as we have done in the past few years. At the moment, we do not have a marketing department and so on because of our human resources. Integration with the SRU would therefore help us a great deal.

The SWRU has played and promoted rugby abroad since 1993, with participation in the European championships and the women's world cup competitions. Our aspiration for the future is to become a major contender, so that we can host either the European championships in 2008 or the women's world cup in 2010.

I thank you all for your initial remarks.

As David Williams said, EventScotland is a new organisation—a new player—in the debate. One point that has emerged from the evidence that the committee has taken so far on the promotion of Scotland overseas is that a tremendous number of players are involved in that exercise. Looking at things from another perspective, it strikes me that the model of EventScotland as a single body that has an obligation to try to bring major events into Scotland provides lessons or ideas about how the promotion of Scotland might be structured in process terms. I am looking at the promotion of Scotland to other markets from the other end of the telescope. Will you comment on that proposition and tell me the extent to which your work is different from promoting Scotland overseas? Is EventScotland as a whole, by trying to bring events to this country, doing some of the work that the inquiry is focused on, in effect, in trying to promote Scotland to a wider market?

EventScotland does not operate as a silo. We have very much a co-ordinating and leadership role in securing and supporting events. We will not support events on our own. If we cannot bring local government and other funding agencies along with us—if they are not sufficiently enthusiastic about an event—we will not support it. Our role is about providing a high level of expertise on and intellectual knowledge about events, identifying the right outlets, doing the business planning, bringing together the partners and being there or supporting the event. Therefore, we work with a range of partner organisations.

You said that your organisation was not a silo, but would you characterise it as a facilitator of events?

Yes, very much so—as a facilitator or as a provider of leadership. Before our organisation was created, there was a lot of consultation among a range of agencies as to whether an organisation like EventScotland was needed. Lots of agencies were providing funding for events but there was no co-ordination and no particular expertise in, or targeting of, specific types of event. In the end, it was felt strongly that an organisation was needed to co-ordinate and lead in the area of major events, which is now a huge global industry. To be competitive, a high level of expertise is needed.

There is one thing that we will not do: if there is an arts event and the Scottish Arts Council is not supportive, or if there is a sports event and sportscotland is not supportive, we will not support the event either. We do not operate separately; we need the engagement and participation of other agencies. We provide a leadership role, although we also provide substantial financial support.

A point of difference between us and other agencies is that events provide a very good window into a country. Many countries around the world are trying to promote themselves as tourist destinations or for investment, and the costs of using the traditional means of television or the media are very high. Events provide a window into a country.

The great case study is probably Australia. Australia is a long way from anywhere and 20 years ago it was trying desperately to find an identity and a way of promoting itself. It could not afford to do so by traditional means, tourism means or investment means, so it used events as a window. After 20 years, people no longer regard Australia as just a great big dusty country—a place with nice people but one that does not register on the radar. People have seen that we have sophisticated, cosmopolitan cities, but, more than that, they have seen the high capability of Australians. I do not think that any medium other than events could have done that.

Events can change perceptions and reveal a place to be a place where things happen. There are tangible benefits, such as the measurable economic impacts and the media profile, and there are intangible benefits, such as the fact that a place can seem much more attractive. Things are always happening in a country with events. Australia is a good case study; I hope that within the next 10 years it will be Scotland.

In essence, you are saying that EventScotland has a role in attracting events to come here and in professionalising and co-ordinating the way in which various agencies work, so that agencies with discrete responsibilities can work together to be part of the promotion of Scotland overseas. That model may be relevant to our inquiry.

I am fairly new here and the organisation has been going for only about 12 months. My view is that partnership is the key to everything in overseas promotion. I have learned that lesson over many years of working with Governments that tend to set up lots of organisations that have set roles but do not talk to one another. We talk. We talk to everyone we can find. We need partners. I re-emphasise the need for partnership and co-ordination.

So, your argument is not about reducing or streamlining the number of organisations; your view is that it does not matter how many organisations there are, as long as they work effectively together.

I do not think that I can comment on the number of organisations; I have not been here long enough to do that. My view is that co-ordination and partnership, and each organisation understanding what the others are doing, will be very important for Scotland.

I have a question for Mr Williams, although I am sure that it can also be asked of the other witnesses. Your remit is restricted to sporting and cultural events. Is that too narrow? I am thinking about Scotland's ability to attract international conferences. This summer, a major conference that took place in south-east Asia attracted 19,500 delegates from all over the world. Why is your remit as narrow as it is?

The remit may change over the years. At the moment, VisitScotland has a business unit that deals with conventions; the convention bureaux and the convention centres have a role in that, too. When I occupied a previous position in Australia, the events corporation did strategic business events, but they were among the top 1 per cent of conventions, which were for more than 5,000 people, or they were for industries that the Queensland Government at the time thought would be important to Queensland in the future. We targeted such events. At the moment, EventScotland's role covers sport, culture, the arts and so on. Although that role may change over the years, at the moment it is set. Other bodies are doing the business events side.

I do not want to be hard on you, because you have been in post for only just over a year, but your written submission continually mentions two "‘icon' events", the Edinburgh festival and the open championship. That phrase is repeated to the extent that one realises that we do not have many other icon events.

I have just glanced through "EventScotland News", a copy of which you were kind enough to give us just before the meeting started. It contains mention of a large number of events that I have never heard of. If I have never heard of them, I doubt that people internationally have ever heard of them. Why is that? I have studied your remit carefully and read two or three times about what you are trying to do. Do some of those events have the potential to be built up into international events and, if so, how long do you think that it will take to do that with the Edinbane festival in Skye, for example?

We have a regional events programme. When EventScotland was set up, its primary focus was to promote Scotland overseas through international events, but the Government gave it the mandate of supporting events throughout Scotland. To an extent, that is impossible, because there are more than 10,000 events throughout Scotland, so we created a regional events programme, to which we allocate £500,000 a year. The programme deals with smaller events that take place outside the metropolitan areas of Edinburgh and Glasgow and which will drive up domestic tourism. We can support such events by giving them an allocation of between £2,000 and £25,000, if the organisers can prove to us that the event can grow. The small community of Edinbane on Skye has a population of 150 and its festival brings in 2,000 people. Our support takes the form of a one-off grant that is aimed at growing the event. Those small regional events are not our core business; our core business is international events.

My final point is about not just how you build up those small events, but what you do about significant future events. For example, do you intend to piggyback on events such as the G8 summit in early July? That is one of next year's major happenings, even though it is a political event. The focus of the world's media will be on us for about five or six days, as Perth and Kinross Council is acutely aware. The summit is being held in my region. Does the potential exist for you to piggyback on that event in a sporting or cultural way, so that we can expand the promotion of Scotland that that event will obviously result in?

One could say that the G8 summit is a big event in its own right, which has a global market. My view is that, instead of creating events, we should put together a portfolio of events that are happening while the G8 summit is on—many major events will be taking place all round Scotland at that time—and ensure that the media and the delegates all have that information. The G8 festival is not about creating new events on top of what is already there, but about putting together a package of events that are on in the Gleneagles region and in Edinburgh and Glasgow at the time. VisitScotland has a big role to play with the media.

I want to bring in Mr Russell. One of the centrepieces of the G8 summit will be the report from the Prime Minister's commission for Africa. An interesting aspect of your submission and of Mr Miller's was the business of coaching and getting sporting figures to do coaching ventures with kids in places where they have competed. I raised that issue in the debate on Scotland's international image that was held before the recess, in relation to building up our reputation overseas. I ask Mr Miller and Mr Russell to what extent they think that an opportunity exists for piggybacking on what will happen at the G8, when the commission for Africa will report. Can sporting figures in Scotland play their part in other countries, especially sub-Saharan Africa?

We are certainly getting behind such initiatives. We linked the fact that Scotland is playing Japan on 13 November this year to Perth and Kinross Council's bid to take away the international from Murrayfield, perhaps for the first time. In doing that, we had the strategic aim of taking rugby further afield and broadening the appeal of rugby by allowing for the Japanese to train in the local Perth and Kinross schools. We regard that as central to our objectives. The G8 summit coming to Perth and Kinross has enabled us to do that, with the support of the local council.

I was thinking more about what you can do over in Africa with your teams—for example, coaching.

We do that continually during all events abroad. For example, during the rugby world cup I think that we were the only British team to do any coaching sessions. We continually promote the Scotland brand abroad. There is a huge marketplace of expatriate Scots and we continually try to maximise that. We would also like to do it in a more integrated way by bringing together sporting and cultural events. For example, Scottish rugby would be interested in having a sporting aspect to the tartan day in New York.

There is always the potential for Scots who compete on the international stage to promote Scotland. However, to put a caveat on that, those who compete at a high level have strict training schedules and we would have to be able to incorporate any message promotion into their training plans. There is the potential for athletes, particularly those who receive lottery funding, to be used in promoting Scotland when they compete abroad.

People would have to be trained in how to promote Scotland abroad. It is not enough, for example, just to ask an athlete to represent Scotland in a media call. Specific training would be required for that. If we go down that route, I would recommend having a training programme for a small number of athletes who could be used over and again so that they would be used to promoting the message and would be comfortable with it. If we do not go down that route, we might not get out the right message.

To what extent is sportscotland involved in identifying lottery or state-funded athletes or sportspeople who can perform a promotional role? Is sportscotland asked to do that?

Not at the moment. However, we have a programme in Scotland called sporting champions, in which we use athletes who are achieving, or are about to achieve, on the world stage to go into schools in Scotland and encourage schoolchildren to follow their dreams, whether those are sporting, arts or whatever. The principle is similar to athletes going abroad and delivering a message. We do not encourage athletes to go out and promote Scotland per se, but there is the potential for doing so. We can ask an athlete who receives lottery funds to perform an ambassadorial role abroad, but we currently do not do that to promote Scotland abroad.

I had similar thoughts about the principle of a model. The committee has been grappling with that idea. People have said in evidence to the committee that they feel that there is a leadership vacuum and a lack of pulling things together. I am interested in the points that David Williams raised. You stated in your written submission that your budget is £10 million over three years. Can you say a bit about your staffing and the proportion of your budget that is taken up by staffing compared with the proportion that you spend on marketing and the promotion of Scotland?

The £10 million budget was divided into £2 million for the first year, £3 million for this year and £5 million for next year. Our organisation is small. We have nine full-time staff and four contract, part-time staff. We work in a small, highly specialised area. The organisation's staff and administration costs are probably around £700,000 a year, which reduces as a percentage of the budget as the budget increases. However, we need a certain minimal level of resources internally.

Can you put any kind of figure on the economic development potential that you have brought into Scotland as a result of the events that you have secured and promoted?

I have not got a total, but every event that we do has an economic impact. For example, the MTV awards had a £9 million impact and that event's media value was another £6 million. There is always a media value to events.

We have done a lot of work on adventure sports, which is a niche market in tourism in which Scotland has great strategic advantages. We have supported a number of television events because of their economic impact. For example, the Tiree wave classic, which was held off Tiree last weekend, was a fantastic event with 40 of the world's top windsurfers. A programme on the event will go out to an audience of about 200 million homes through TV networks. We have supported adventure races at Loch Lomond and Loch Tay that were made for television—they will appear on Channel 4 and on international television next year. This year's downhill mountain bike world cup event at Fort William had a huge economic impact—it brought about £1 million into the area. The event brought 17,000 people to Fort William, and it was impossible to get accommodation in the area.

With other agencies, we are developing a uniform econometric model so that we can agree on the methodology for doing economic-impact studies for future events. At present, we estimate what the economic or media impact of events will be, but I do not have a rolling total on the value of the events that we have supported. We will obviously need to have such a total.

If that information became available, I am sure that the committee would like to see it.

I want to follow up Keith Raffan's point about how you decide what to promote. Would you consider supporting an event such as T in the Park, which attracts major international bands to Scotland and is covered on television? You obviously gained a great deal of experience from the MTV awards ceremony.

T in the Park is promoted by a private promoter and sells out months in advance—it is a profit-making venture, for which it would not be appropriate to use Government funds. We support events that would not be hosted in Scotland without Government support. I have spoken to Geoff Ellis about T in the Park. He wants a more international audience—that is a big bottom line for his company—but I doubt whether it would be appropriate to use public money for that. However, I acknowledge that it is a fantastic event. If T in the Park had problems and needed a marketing boost to get people there from overseas, we might get involved, but it does not. It is an extraordinarily successful event.

It seems to me that the event has international potential, but I take your point that perhaps that should be explored in other ways.

I know that Geoff Ellis has spoken to VisitScotland about more promotion in northern Europe, which is a key market for VisitScotland.

I want to return to Mr Williams's comments about the Queensland Government and the economic impact of the events that have been set up there. Does he believe that Australia's sporting image—the country is good at many sports despite its small population—does more than anything to promote Australia worldwide?

That is undoubtedly one of the mediums for promoting the country. The change in Australian sport started in 1976, when Australians won two medals at the Montreal Olympic games. The structures of sport were changed and institutes were developed. For 20 years, Australians have performed well on the world stage. Australians feel proud of the performance of their teams and people certainly look on Australia as a sporting nation. Sport and events have been great platforms for the promotion of Australia.

I wonder whether Mr Miller has any comment on that. Greater investment in the promotion of sport in Scotland, which is not entirely within his control, could have a positive impact on our economic situation. At present, Scottish rugby is sadly not as good as we would like and Scottish football is in an abysmal state. Does Mr Miller feel that we should invest in sport?

You are correct that sporting success portrays a positive image of the nation. That is one part of portraying a successful Scotland. We have invested in the Scottish Institute of Sport—I believe that it was instituted in 1998. In Australia, it took a number of years before success came about as a result of the investment. We are at the beginning of a long-term process and we cannot expect success within four or eight years. Only after that will we begin to see the fruits of the labours of the Scottish Institute of Sport.

The other thing to point out is that we are investing in participation in schools. Again, that is not a short-term fix, because there is no short-term fix in Scottish sport. A lot of the investment that we are helping the Scottish Executive with is not just in sport, but in physical activity at grass-roots level and educating kids in basic movement. That may seem a far cry from sporting success at the other end of the spectrum, but it is essential, because without basic motor skills kids cannot move on to particular sports and increase their prowess. We have an extensive programme in Scottish schools, through a co-ordinators programme. That will bear fruit, but we will not get the benefits in the next two, three or four years. It is a long-term programme.

That is welcome. I know that you get quite a bit of support from the SRU.

I have a question for Alasdair Russell. This is perhaps unfair given the number of foreign players that we have in soccer, but it seems that rugby is still going down the line of bringing in people from other countries. Does that have an adverse effect on the promotion of Scottish sport, by depriving our own youngsters of the opportunity to play, or is it positive in that, by playing with others, our players' knowledge and experience is increased?

The second point is true. Look at a player like Todd Blackadder. He has not represented Scotland, but he has had a massive impact on the players around him. He was an iconic All Black captain who has come over here to share best practice and knowledge of what it is to be an All Black and at the height of your sport. That has had a positive effect on everyone he deals with on a daily basis. Not only do the players around him benefit, but the next generation of Scottish youngsters benefit from school visits from such icons of world sport who come to Scotland.

But by their nature such measures are long term.

Yes.

I have a question for Sandra Kinnear. Has sportscotland been effective in promoting the long-term development of your newly recognised sport over the past 10 years? Has the development of women's rugby in this country led to further international focus on Scotland?

We have received support from sportscotland since about 1998. Lately, we have been given a substantial amount of support from other organisations to help us to see whether we have the pathways for people to get from one level of rugby to international level. We did not have a strategic plan in place with a pathway for young people, but sportscotland has helped us to produce a strategic plan. It has also helped us to link in to the SRU. Like the SRU, we hope to promote rugby in schools. Young girls play rugby in schools up to the age of 12, but there is no pathway for them between the ages of 12 and 16—they cannot play rugby until they are 16—so quite a lot of girls are lost. Through the integration process, we hope to establish with the SRU and sportscotland a pathway that will lead to more international success and more people participating in the game both at full, international level and as volunteers.

But that strikes me as a long-term process.

Yes. It will take a few years, but we can establish a pathway in the first year that will increase participation by at least 50 per cent, because so many people want to play rugby. We do not have the resources to do that at the minute, but with the help of the SRU and the strategic plan that we will put in place, that will happen. In the first year, we should see results that will have a knock-on effect in future years.

I call Margaret Ewing. It is lovely to see Margaret back with us.

Hear, hear.

There are lots of questions I would like to ask. All the witnesses have mentioned in written and oral evidence the importance that is attached to television coverage; it is important for the participants as well as for promoting Scotland, which is what our inquiry is about. How do you deal with television companies? I am conscious that, in soccer, there is always a great stramash at the beginning of every season about who gets the coverage. Are there difficulties there? I think that EventScotland said that there might be funding available from it to meet television production costs. How do you see that developing? There could be difficulties in ensuring the level of coverage that we would want from the funding.

I enjoyed the reference to someone from EventScotland identifying "cool" destinations in Edinburgh for the MTV awards—that was a wonderful phrase that cropped up in the EventScotland submission.

Perhaps you will share the list with us so that we all know where they are.

Ken Miller talked about £45.4 million in 2003-04, some of which was from the Scottish Executive and some of which was from national lottery funds. What is the exact division of funds?

I was concerned to read that sportscotland is determined to use retired Scottish champions such as Allan Wells, Sir Jackie Stewart and David Wilkie. Sportscotland, the SRU and the Scottish Women's Rugby Union are all interested in bringing young people into sport. How can they link in with more recent excellent participants, such as the young man from Dunblane playing tennis in America and the young man from Elgin competing in ice-skating? Also, how do the witnesses envisage us maintaining a specific Scottish identity when we participate in international events under the banner of the United Kingdom or Great Britain?

I will deal with each point in turn. On the division of funds, last year we invested £31.6 million of lottery funds and £13.7 million of Exchequer funding. Those totals vary year on year, but that is what we invested in 2003-04.

We use athletes who have recently retired purely to counter the fact that athletes who are currently competing sometimes have tight schedules and are focused on their events. Our experience so far in the sporting champions scheme in Scotland is that it is difficult to work around athletes' training and competition schedules. By using athletes who have recently retired, we can get the best of both worlds. They are still well known, because they have retired only recently, and their time is slightly more readily available. You asked how we can use young talent. In promoting ourselves abroad, we have to face the fact that the people who will be more easily recognised are the people who are established. We have a better chance of getting air time with athletes who have already achieved and who have a greater reputation. However, that is not to say that we cannot train our up-and-coming athletes to be able to represent Scotland when they are in front of a television camera or a radio mike.

Are there other comments on the points that Margaret Ewing raised?

One of the biggest challenges for any sport or event is getting television coverage. It is rare for television companies to pay for coverage unless it is of football or rugby, so most events have the challenge of paying for it. We see events as one of the windows into Scotland, so quite often we pay for independent TV production of events as long as the coverage is being picked up by another network or being distributed overseas. A good example is the world bowls championship, which was held in Ayrshire just before the Olympic games. The organisers had a real problem because even though they won the event four or five years ago, they scheduled it for one week before the Olympic games, so none of the TV networks were interested in televising it. In the end we brought in consultants and a private TV company and we got the finals covered in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, which are major markets.

Many of the events that we do, such as adventure racing and the Tiree wave classic, are purely television events. We pay for the television. Indeed, one of our fundamental roles is to ensure that we get television exposure for events.

Is that a drain on your funds, though? Are you breaking even?

It is a core function. There is no money in television rights unless we are talking about football and rugby. Outside such sports, people pay for coverage. Coverage from BBC Scotland, ITV and so on costs a large sum of money. Independent television production companies are quite good and much cheaper, as long as we can place events on networks or secure international distribution of the harness packages.

When you arrange television coverage for an event such as the Tiree wave classic surfing championships, what efforts are made through the television package—if we can call it that—to promote a strong identity of Scotland and its attractive features, other than by showing the area's fabulous scenery? For example, would the coverage include adverts from VisitScotland or other organisations?

If we are paying for television coverage, we talk to the companies about showing not just the event but the highlights of the region in which the event is taking place. To secure more media coverage at the Tiree event, Miss Scotland and Miss UK were brought in to add to the attraction of the event and to make it more interesting to the networks.

I hope that they were warmly wrapped up.

They would have to be.

At the European cross-country championships in Holyrood park, we tried to ensure that cameras panned out to show not just the park and the event but Edinburgh. We pay for television production—

So you can control it.

We can control it and ensure that the assets of the region are shown.

Will the witnesses comment on the infrastructure to support major, world-class events? When a large number of people are attracted to an area, it is always a worry that although the event might be wonderful, if people's experiences of transport and accommodation are appalling, they drag everything down. David Williams said that during the mountain bike world cup at Lochaber people could not find accommodation for miles around. Can organisations such as yours liaise with Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the Executive to try to plan in the medium and long term, to ensure that the infrastructure for transport and accommodation is developed in strategic areas to support events?

That is a supply and demand issue. There must be sufficient demand. Events can create demand year round. The challenge for organisers of events in remote locations is to provide efficient transport so that competitors and spectators can get to their accommodation. The world mountain bike championships in 2007 will present a real challenge, because the event is already twice the size of the world cup. Very good transport infrastructure will have to be in place to ensure that people can get to and from their accommodation. Obviously we cannot create new accommodation unless there is a demand for it, but we can help organisers to consider transport planning for events in remote locations.

In general, the major cities host the bulk of the major events. Major events that require major infrastructure obviously have to take place in significant population centres that have enough hotels to support them. We have certainly been involved in events outside the major metropolitan areas and the challenge is to supply effective transport and to locate accommodation. We cannot create accommodation without there being a huge demand, but events—especially annual events—increase demand.

I am thinking about your ability to market Scotland effectively as a location. To what extent do you have to pass a tick-box test of the infrastructure that is in place? When you are trying to secure an event, are you asked whether people can catch a train from Edinburgh airport directly into the city centre?

There is no question about it. If several cities are competing to secure a major international event, the international federation that owns the event considers all sorts of matters, such as the different classes of accommodation that are available, the accommodation's distance from the venue and transport links. Direct air services are key for Scotland, whether we are talking about business events or tourism, and there have been substantial improvements in direct air links during the past few years. All those matters count.

Another important matter that counts is the capability of the country that hosts the event. We have a great advantage in Scotland because we have fantastic cultural events. The Edinburgh festivals, Edinburgh's hogmanay and the open championship are run as well as events are run anywhere in the world. We host the biggest arts and cultural events, so we have a level of expertise that is a real selling point. However, we must be competitive on venues, accommodation and transport.

Based on your international experience—perhaps your colleagues could comment, too—is Scotland's infrastructure a disadvantage in securing major events?

No. We think outside the box. We would not go for an event that requires a 15,000-seat indoor venue, because we cannot do that. We focus on activities for which Scotland has strategic assets or advantages. Adventure sports are a great example of that. We probably have some of the greatest natural assets in the world for adventure sports, which represent a growing niche market. On a drive up to the Highlands, many people will be seen with mountain bikes on top of their cars. We consider those of Scotland's strategic assets that allow us to run events for which we have advantages over other countries.

Sometimes a major event is the catalyst for new infrastructure, as for the Commonwealth games. If that bid succeeds, we will have some fantastic new infrastructure. I know that sportscotland has invested substantially in infrastructure. In the next few years, radical improvements in sport infrastructure will be made.

I will comment on the infrastructure that David Williams talked about. Under a partnership that involves the Scottish Executive and local authorities, the Scottish Executive and sportscotland are investing about £50 million in infrastructure. When that is combined with local authority investment, about £230 million is going into a network of regional sporting facilities, which include indoor football and rugby training areas and municipal stadia. A fair amount of investment is going on.

What was that figure?

It is about £230 million.

Over what length of time will that amount be invested?

The facilities are planned to be developed by 2007.

Do you have any analysis of how that scale of investment compares with that in any of the peer countries against which we might compete for some events?

I do not have that analysis at the moment—perhaps some of my colleagues do.

My question relates to infrastructure and the ability to market a country worldwide. With the exception of the world cup finals, the Olympic games are arguably the biggest opportunity to promote a country. The experience from Greece and Australia is that the Olympic games are a catalyst for massive infrastructure investment. How are you tied into discussion of the exciting efforts to secure the Olympics for London, the trickle-down effect of securing the Olympic games for the UK and London and how Scotland could pitch into that?

I will say a little about that. First, all our competing athletes would treat Olympic games that were held in London as a home game. They would regard a London Olympics as the equivalent of being on their own doorstep, in comparison with some international events, so we would very much welcome the games to the UK.

As for investing to support the bid, we have given guidance on what we should invest in to support the games. We are already investing in those matters, which include supporting athletes in the build-up to the games and helping governing bodies with infrastructure to put coaches in place to help to develop athletes.

Athletes and—I hope—performances would benefit from a successful London 2012 bid. I am probably speaking about a subject that I am not entirely sure about, but tourism benefits would certainly accrue from people who attended the games. I hope that they would come to Scotland and that we would have an opportunity to promote Scotland to visitors to the games.

We have a steering committee in the Executive, which I am heading at the moment, that is liasing with London 2012. We want to secure as much support as we can for the London bid. My personal view is that, when it started off, the bid was very London-centric and that London was failing to articulate the benefits of the Olympics to Britain. When Australia won the bid for the Olympics in 2000, I was the director general of tourism, sport and a number of other portfolios in Queensland. Straight away, we created an Olympic task force and installed a full-time secretariat. We developed strategies for pre-Olympic training, business, tourism and culture. At the end of it, we estimated that the benefits to Queensland were about 1 billion Australian dollars.

We opened an office in Sydney to ensure that every Queensland company in an arts industry was aware of the contracts that were being put out by the Sydney organising committee. We got 400 million Australian dollars in contracts alone. We hosted Olympic soccer—pool games and a quarter-final—and the tourism benefits were astronomical for Australia and Queensland. The Olympics are a four-year cultural period, and we wanted to ensure that Queenslanders were well represented in the four years of cultural festivals. The performers from overseas came to Queensland as well.

I think that there will be enormous benefits to Scotland if London secures the games. The investment in the development of sport in the UK will be enormous. A key issue is that, although a country might host a successful games, if that country is not successful on the field, the games are seen as unsuccessful. I think that we will see unparalleled investment in elite development, followed by greater participation and the improved profile of sports. My view is that we have to do everything that we can in Scotland to support London's bid to maximise the benefits to Scotland.

What is being done to promote Scotland's strategic assets—to use your phrase—in relation to the 2012 bid?

We are collating a list of all the venues in Scotland that can be used for pre-Olympic training. The London bid committee is putting together a dossier for the International Olympic Committee on international-standard venues for pre-Olympic training. We are talking a lot about how we can assist the London bid, although it is unclear what the organisers want. There are some great Scottish sportspeople who could be ambassadors for the bid. We hope to get Sebastian Coe up here sometime to make presentations to industry and political leaders here about the benefits to Britain—not just to London—of the games. If London wins the bid, we must be ready straight away to start ensuring that we have developed those strategies and that we are active. There will be huge benefits to the UK and Scotland if London's bid wins, and we must publicly be very supportive of it.

I have three brief points. First, have you done any kind of comparative study? Catalonia and Barcelona have been very successful at building, attracting and developing indigenously sporting and cultural events. I am thinking especially of what Barcelona did this year for the Forum festival. I am not sure how successful it was, but there was blue-skies thinking and people from all parts of Europe were brought in on a range of cultural, scientific and other issues. There is the potential to do that here, in the capital of the Enlightenment.

Secondly, when you see Edinburgh being designated as a city for literature, do you begin to ask how that can be built on—apart from through the Edinburgh international book festival—especially outside the high season? I see that that is a specific task of yours, yet few of your events are held outside the high season, according to the list that we have.

Thirdly, a sport at which we have become quite successful recently is sailing. One of the things that put Australia—where you were based for so long—on the map was the Sydney Hobart race. Do you see potential for Scotland in that area?

On the question of cities, Barcelona is a very different city from Edinburgh or Glasgow.

That is why I mentioned Catalonia. I was talking about the development in the region, which I admit is centred on Barcelona.

We consistently look globally at what cities or countries are doing in respect of events. However, you must bear in mind the fact that we are a small organisation that has only just been set up.

Are you at a disadvantage because EventScotland does not have the resources that Barcelona has?

No, we have other resources that give us advantages over it. It has the high upkeep cost of the major venues that they built for the Olympic games, which—although they are fantastic—have major usage, maintenance and operating costs.

I was asked for some blue-skies thinking. My view is that events are about blue-skies thinking. The only possibilities that we have ruled out are the Olympics or world cup football bids—they are too big for us. We engage in blue-skies thinking all the time about what is possible. One of our problems is that everything that we do has to be done in a confidential environment. We are discussing a range of possibilities at present, but I would hate to make any of them public—I do not want to let anyone down. Although I cannot discuss them, I assure the committee that blue-skies thinking is going on.

I was thinking of the blue-skies thinking event that was held in the summer in Barcelona, as part of Forum 2004. It was held in a new arena down by the bay. The event, which opened up the subject to the public, brought together academics and writers from all over the world to talk about the future, not just the next 15 to 20 years but the next century. I thought that a blue-skies thinking event like that would be an obvious idea for Edinburgh with its historic reputation in economics and every field of academia.

I will move on to sailing. North Ayrshire Council is keen on sailing—

Yes, we are.

It has the sailing institute. The problem with major sailing events is the on-land infrastructure that they require. The Genesis Consulting Group is currently preparing a sailing strategy into which we have input information on infrastructure and potential options. Sailing is a big opportunity area and we need to identify the right events. It would be nice to have a major international sailing event each year in Scotland. Hobart is a small place and yet the Sydney Hobart yacht race has been a great success. We will wait for the Genesis report to come out before we develop the possibilities for sailing events.

I return to the question of the Olympics. What level of Scottish involvement do you expect there to be in the London Olympic bid? What is the likely impact on Scotland of a successful bid? Will it be seen in terms of infrastructure or in the potential for certain events to be run in Scotland?

As I said, more money will go into sports development than ever before, especially elite development—

Perhaps that is because investment in the development of competing athletes will ensure domestic success.

Absolutely. As a country, we want to see as many Scottish athletes as possible in the British team. There will be a huge focus on the investment in elite development and sport participation.

Edinburgh will be the major winner in tourism terms after London. When people from overseas think about the places in the UK that they want to visit, they think of London and Edinburgh. Coming from overseas, I can say that those two cities seem to be the natural cities of choice for overseas visitors to the UK. When people travel to events, they rarely go to the event, stay in the one place for 10 days or two weeks and then go home. People tend to use events as a catalyst for their holiday planning. Scotland would be a major winner in tourism terms.

Surely we must prepare for that in our planning. I do not disagree with what you say, but surely we have to ensure that the media and marketing campaigns and initiatives are in place to make that a reality.

Absolutely and, if London wins, we would move straight to an Olympic strategy for tourism.

The business case was also raised. If London wins, billions of dollars would go into the contracts for construction, services, produce, consultancies and so on. We would want to ensure that Scottish businesses were aware of all of the tenders. There is enormous potential in that area.

Scotland has one of the strongest cultural histories in the UK and we would want to ensure that we were to the fore of any cultural festivals that might be planned. Given that there is a four-year festival period in the pre-Olympic period, the cultural side is bigger than the sports side.

If London wins, we would develop strategies around sport, pre-Olympic training, tourism, business and culture, and we would implement them to ensure that the benefits for Scotland were maximised.

Do you think that EventScotland should lead that preparatory work?

Yes it should, but with other agencies. For example, the sports strategy would be worked on with sportscotland, the tourism strategy would be worked on with VisitScotland and so on. The key agencies should be brought together on a steering committee to develop the strategy and we should have a small, full-time secretariat to work on the development of the strategies and their implementation.

From a sportscotland perspective, what is the likelihood of enhancing sporting infrastructure in Scotland as a result of any Olympic bid?

Significant investment is already being made, but I envisage our making a case for increased investment in athletes in particular.

Is there any question of existing sporting infrastructure plans being scaled down?

We were originally concerned about lottery funding going towards a London bid and taking away from our existing resources, but subsequent communications from London about the 2012 bid have assured us that we would not lose funds, because the areas to which we would be expected to contribute are areas to which we already contribute, such as athlete support.

How definitive are the guarantees that you have received on that point?

I cannot answer that because I have not been directly involved. From the communications that we have had so far, I am confident in the guarantees that the plans would not be detrimental to our current funding sources.

If there are no final comments from the panel, I thank the witnesses for appearing before the committee today. You have helped to inform the conclusions that we will arrive at and I am grateful for your input.

I suspend the meeting for 10 minutes.

Meeting suspended.

On resuming—