Cultural Review
Good morning. The first item of business is a statement by Frank McAveety on the cultural review. The minister will take questions at the end of his statement and there will be no interventions.
I thank the members who have made themselves available at this early hour.
Today is the start of a new era for Scotland's culture. I know that both the cultural sector and my parliamentary colleagues have been waiting for the launch of our review of culture: it begins now.
The review of the cultural sector is, in my opinion, a once-in-a-generation opportunity. It is a precious opportunity to consider seriously and maturely the place and provision of culture in Scotland and to decide the best ways in which to ensure its future support.
On St Andrew's day last year, the First Minister, Jack McConnell, set out a vision for cultural provision in Scotland. The core vision was of each citizen securing the right to access to and excellence in our diverse culture and the right to pursue the means of fulfilling whatever talents might be within them.
The message of his speech was greeted warmly by those within and outwith the cultural sector, and we intend to deliver on the aspirations and inspiration behind the speech. Politicians had spoken before, extolling the importance of culture for its own sake and its ability to inspire. However, in that speech, we had for the first time a reflection on the essential nature of cultural activity and on the fact that there is not a single part of our physical, intellectual and emotional lives that cannot be touched in some way by exposure to and experience of cultural activity.
The First Minister said:
"Let's agree the centrality of cultural activity to all aspects of our lives – why it's important and how it can revitalise us individually and as a national community."
Since that landmark speech, we have been giving careful consideration to how we can make that vision a reality. We had established a partnership commitment to deliver a review of the cultural sector within Scotland and we have had to consider the best way to ensure that the review can have maximum reach and impact, engage the greatest number of citizens in Scotland and benefit from the immense experience and brilliance of our creative communities. How can we ensure that people from all branches of the arts, heritage and creative industries, and from national bodies, local government and the private and voluntary sectors, can take part?
Instead of just doing a standard review, the purpose of my discussion and deliberation has been to think of a more effective way to engage in the review and to consider the form and process of the consultation. Consultations are often engineered or developed and they have their place, but sometimes they fail to penetrate beyond the usual people whom we would expect to make a contribution. Given that we have this once-in-a-generation opportunity, it would be unforgivable to make that mistake when it comes to something as intrinsically important in the lives of the people of Scotland as culture, which is fundamental. I strongly believe that the opportunity to make a change in how we view cultural provision deserves a far more innovative approach.
I want those whom we would expect to make a contribution to respond and to take part, and of course they will do that; they are some of the brilliant people that I mentioned earlier in my speech. However, they are not the only ones. There are many others who have tried to make their voices heard in the recent past and who have not always felt that they have achieved that. We would like many other voices to be heard much more effectively on cultural activity and development in Scotland.
I share the commitment that the First Minister identified to see culture as a rich source of inspiration and enjoyment. Therefore, I have decided that we should establish a new independent body, a cultural commission, which will undertake the review in full consultation and partnership with the people of Scotland. I have asked James Boyle, who is currently chair of the Scottish Arts Council, to chair the commission. He will be remunerated at the same rate as attaches to his SAC post. I know that James is respected by many in the cultural community—his experience and background indicate that. I have also been impressed by the work that he has undertaken so far with the SAC. He has decided—with me, and rightly in my opinion—to stand down as chair of the SAC on taking up his post at the commission. We shall take steps quickly to fill that vacancy.
The other members of the commission will also need to be selected carefully to provide the right blend of expertise and knowledge. I expect that there will be a small core membership, which may establish sub-groups for specific strands of business.
The other appointments will be made once the commission's chairman has been able to scope its full work in further detail and to consider the available candidates. We will aim to make a further announcement in time for the commission to get down to business from the beginning of June.
People may ask why there is to be a commission and how it will work. I see some clear advantages in establishing a commission to carry out the cultural review.
The commission's members will be highly experienced people who understand Scotland's rich and complex cultural landscape. An external commission, drawn from the wider community, will be best placed to listen to the cultural sector and to understand what it tells them. Its members will also know who the many different stakeholders are—they are not always those who occasionally see themselves as the singular stakeholders in Scotland's culture.
In my opinion, the commission will be able to look beyond and to confront stereotypical notions of culture. It will be asked to employ innovative and radical thinking in the work that it undertakes. I will look to the commission to use some of that innovative skill to develop new ways of involving more people in cultural activity in Scotland. When they have done all that, by June next year, I will welcome their recommendations on how we can deliver the St Andrew's day vision for developing access and excellence in Scotland's cultural life. I want to look forward to a positive 21st century solution for a sector whose governance, in many cases, developed over many decades in the previous century.
Our future support for culture must harness all the available resources in ways that deliver best value. In this context, best value means trimming unnecessary bureaucracy and ensuring that the maximum possible level of resources is directed to cultural activity and to unleashing the innate creativity of people throughout Scotland.
When I served in local government, as a convener of arts and culture and then as a leader of a local authority, maximising resources was always a challenge and collaboration, co-ordination and co-operation were vital. There are many excellent examples of how local government has faced that challenge in the cultural sector. I expect the commission to draw on and to benefit from the wealth of knowledge and experience in local government.
The creativity of Scots—from the classroom to the boardroom—is the edge that we need in a competitive world. Our duty as an Executive is to enable the conditions to be developed to allow creativity to flourish—whether in arts, science, commerce or industry.
The First Minister said:
"If we can all work together, it could result in the most extraordinary release of talent and, crucially, a stronger, more vibrant and confident country."
That is an aim that I think everyone in the chamber shares. He continued:
"We would be recognised around the world as a creative hub – a powerhouse of innovation."
That is a bold aim, but it is achievable if we have the right infrastructure to deliver it.
The commission has an important task to perform; I am confident that James Boyle and the members who are appointed in the coming weeks will be equipped to deliver. Today I will also publish an Executive statement that sets out the policy framework and the terms of reference for the commission's work. Those should be available today and I urge members to study them. We are embarking on important business, which may well lead in due course to the introduction of legislation for the Parliament to consider.
We will consider all the action that we must take to bring our arrangements for cultural provision into the present century. We will do that from a position of first principles. We need to be clear about where we want to be and how we can get there. Therefore, in my opinion, we first need the review: to take stock, to look again at our cultural infrastructure and to ask whether it is fit for purpose. I believe that we can do better with what we already have.
On the principles, we must foster the innate creativity of our young people and energise a new generation by creating the conditions that encourage them to realise their cultural potential. Many members of the Parliament go to schools in their constituencies and regions on constituency and parliamentary business. They see the benefits that young people get from creativity. I want the commission to consider ways in which good examples of that can be made more widespread throughout Scotland.
The review of the cultural sector will take as its starting point the premise that each person in Scotland has rights of access to cultural activity. I want us to work towards more equitable cultural provision for people in Scotland regardless of where they live, how old they are or how much money they have.
To achieve that, I believe that a basic shift may be required in our cultural, political and administrative agencies to change the way in which they approach and deliver what they do. As I mentioned, collaboration, co-operation and co-ordination are strengths that we must learn to maximise in all sectors of government and across the cultural sector.
I have already had a series of discussions with many of my ministerial colleagues about the way in which investment in culture can improve Scotland. I hope that those discussions will result in positive developments. There needs to be a similar dialogue across the private and voluntary sectors, which bring so much to our cultural infrastructure in Scotland.
Make no mistake: the work that I have launched today ranks as one of the most crucial undertakings of this Executive's partnership programme. I have briefly outlined our policy; the commission will now provide practical recommendations on how we may implement it. If legislation is required, we will publish a culture bill by 2007. Throughout all the above—policy, practice, legislation—the key values of access and excellence will be the guiding principles. No longer do I wish to have the tired debate that access is traded for excellence, or excellence for access. We have the capability in Scotland, among the agencies, institutions and individuals that make up our cultural sector, to ensure that both of those principles are enshrined in what we do.
The Scots writer Thomas Carlyle summed up many of our intentions when he wrote that the great law of culture is,
"Let each become all that he was created capable of being."
That is what we want for all of Scotland's society, for this generation and generations to follow.
As one of our best young playwrights, David Greig, a recent winner of the SAC creative Scotland award, said when asked about his work:
"the real effects begin to emerge 10 to 15 years down the road … you keep emitting your message or calls like a whale swimming in some vast ocean … hoping that someone somewhere, will get the message."
Our message is that we can make a difference to Scotland's cultural future. Each of us in this chamber and beyond has a responsibility in shaping Scotland's cultural future.
The minister will now take questions on the issues raised in his statement. I will allow around 20 minutes for that process.
Presiding Officer, I apologise for arriving 30 seconds late. Unfortunately, that came about because we were still waiting for a copy of the statement at 9.20. I have had a bit of speed reading to do, so I hope that the minister will forgive me if my questions are a little broad-brush as a result.
How does the minister see the review relating to the cultural strategy of a few years ago, about which there was a great deal of debate and some criticism? It would be useful for us to understand how the two are to mesh.
We need some blue-sky thinking, but I am not entirely clear how the review will deliver that. How will the minister ensure that the members of the commission are not just the usual suspects? We do not want to see coming out of the review a repeat of some of the things that we have always seen. We need something new.
On membership of the commission, I make a personal plea that the traditional arts and music be directly represented on the commission, because in the past they have often missed out on cultural discussions in Scotland.
There are two specific issues in creating a truly effective cultural medium in the country. There is the process of creating in the first place what might be called the cultural artefact, and there is the process by which access to it is delivered. Is the review to be about both those aspects of cultural life? If we end up concentrating on only one, we risk there being a severe imbalance in the way in which things are delivered. I suppose I am asking the minister to be clear about whether he can guard against the review just becoming an exercise in moving furniture, and instead ensure that it becomes something far more serious and long term for the future of Scotland's cultural life.
I apologise for the late delivery of the speech, but I thought that it was important to get the David Greig quote into it, which I came across earlier this morning on the train.
Roseanna Cunningham asked some important questions about the core issues. I want to identify ways in which I can respond positively to them. The commission's work needs to be rigorous and far reaching. The commission must examine critically those sectors that feel that they have not in the past been brought to the table and heard on an equal basis with other diverse voices. I do not want to say that particular cultural sectors will be represented on the commission. The work of the commission is to reach out, invite submissions, engage with individuals and examine innovative ways in which voices can contribute.
I assure Roseanna Cunningham that I expect that the work that the cross-party group in the Scottish Parliament on Scottish traditional arts has done will be part of the commission's consideration. There are individuals in that group, as well as in the cross-party group in the Scottish Parliament on the Scottish contemporary music industry, of which I have been a member, who can be involved in a dialogue to raise aspirations. There is no doubt that there are real opportunities for traditional music and arts in terms of not just broader cultural sustainability, but positive economic and tourism outcomes. One of the key themes that the commission will examine is how we connect culture and creativity and develop enterprise, and how we maximise the benefits from that.
On the difficult philosophical question of the role of the review—is it a structural review or is it about creating space for artists to develop and flourish?—I do not want to prescribe to the commission how the review should develop. I hope that the commission will examine critically that important question because, like Roseanna Cunningham, over the years I have become tired of the way in which debate on the arts in Scotland becomes polarised and of the fact that we cannot encourage innovation, radicalism and the challenging aspects of individual artists or groups of artists while also having a structural debate about institutions such as the Scottish Arts Council and national organisations and bodies.
I want the commission to get to the heart of questions that have not been asked or examined enough in Scotland over the past 10 to 20 years. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change the situation. I hope that that principle can shape the commission's work over the next year, so that it addresses many of the issues that Roseanna Cunningham and I are concerned about.
I thank the minister for the statement. I got it only five minutes before he delivered it, so I have done my best.
I agree with the minister when he says:
"Our future support for culture must harness all the available resources in ways that deliver best value … best value means trimming unnecessary bureaucracy".
However, I question whether setting up a new commission will trim that bureaucracy. Where will the minister trim bureaucracy?
Will the members of the commission consider new methods of funding arts companies such as Scottish Opera, so that that icon of Scottish excellence can flourish and continue to delight, rather than lurch from crisis to crisis?
Will the minister do more to encourage Scotland's visual arts sector, by attracting more of the international arts world to Scotland? Does he accept, as he has already mentioned, that traditional music is a thriving area of Scottish culture? Will he give more recognition to the excellent accordion and fiddle clubs that play a huge part in Scotland's culture? In particular in the Highlands and Islands, they are keeping traditional Scottish culture alive. Will he do more to attract film makers to Scotland, so that more films and television programmes can be made here?
It would be wrong of me to prescribe fully what the commission should examine, but I expect that over the next year some of the big questions that Jamie McGrigor asks will be examined critically. We have to get beyond the issues of individual organisations or companies not being able to meet their aspirations with the resources that they have, or issues about how they handle those resources. Sometimes the handling of those resources has a knock-on impact on investment in other cultural and arts sectors. We need to achieve fairness.
I expect the commission to examine ways in which the heritage, visual arts and screen industries can all be developed more effectively to ensure that we can make a genuine difference for the future. It would be wrong to lay down prescriptions on those issues today, but I would expect the commission to undertake a rigorous assessment and to invite views not just from those who are already in the sector, but from folk who want to have a greater role in cultural development in Scotland.
How can we grow the cultural sector by using better links between sectors? Too many of our institutions and organisations still operate in silos. We need to break that down and see how they can collaborate and co-operate more effectively to deliver a much better future for the sectors about which they care most passionately.
Like all back benchers, I did not receive an advance copy of the statement, but I too will do my best.
Does the minister agree that many creative pursuits are businesses, as well as cultural activities? I highlight the Scottish music business as one example. The music industry has suffered in the past from either no Government recognition or support or, more recently, from that support being channelled through arts rather than enterprise funding.
Given the hesitant steps that we are making to address that deficit, will the minister ensure that the cultural review considers the economic impact of our creative industries as well as their cultural benefit? Will he ensure that he continues to work with ministerial colleagues from the Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning Department to further policy on that issue?
I commend Ken Macintosh for his work in the cross-party group in the Scottish Parliament on the Scottish contemporary music industry. With Pauline McNeill and other colleagues, he has been raising big questions through that group.
I have two immediate answers. First, I continue to discuss with Jim Wallace, the Deputy First Minister and Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning, the crossover with enterprise issues and ways in which we can work more effectively. I will certainly raise the issues that Ken Macintosh raises at a forthcoming bilateral meeting. Secondly, we need to engage and interface more effectively with the music industry. The issue is not only about performance, but about producing and sustaining talent in Scotland. We need to create an infrastructure in Scotland that will allow people to survive here longer rather than journey to London or the United States, although that can be a welcome move economically for the individuals who do so. As I said in response to Roseanna Cunningham on the issue of traditional music, I would welcome the commission's engagement with key people, including the cross-party group on contemporary music, which has been working hard on the issues.
The commission will not have all the answers, but it will try to get underneath the issues and to examine in detail not only questions that have been asked before and not fully answered but questions that have not been asked before. The Executive will continue to support the sectors that we have supported until now. I give a commitment to continue to engage with Ken Macintosh on the issues, as I have done in the past.
The setting up of a commission is a good idea that will receive wide support. I welcome the concept of individual rights to culture.
Will the minister ensure that the commission listens to and responds adequately and imaginatively to the wide range of community or grass-roots arts activities? Will he ensure that the commission takes into account dozens of different art forms from throughout the country, such as local choirs, orchestras and operatic societies and community drama, folk-singing, dance, art and craft groups? There is a wide range of activities, so it will be difficult to get a grip on the diffuse problems, but in many cases, a little bit of help, such as liaison with schools or a small amount of money, would be effective. Will the minister consider the approach of the Edinburgh festival fringe, which is hugely successful because the minimum amount of organisation enables everyone to do their own thing?
I expect the commission to address many of the issues that members have raised. The Enterprise and Culture Committee is considering the role of community and grass-roots arts organisations in developing cultural activity in Scotland. I am sure that the committee will make a positive contribution that will feed into the commission's work.
An incredible wealth of experience exists among individuals and communities who have worked together to develop arts projects throughout urban, rural and island Scotland to try to retain cultural identity and history in communities. I stress the positive, enterprising and interesting developments in the folk festival in Shetland and in the fèis movement in the Highlands, which I hope to experience next weekend. The critical issue is how we can harness the incredible energy in the voluntary arts sector to ensure that it shapes and influences the future direction of cultural policy. The commission will get more to the heart of that issue than a conventional consultation exercise would. I hope that the process, which will take more than a year, will produce positive recommendations for ministers to examine.
I draw members' attention to my entry in the members' register of interests: I am a playwright member of the Writers Guild of Great Britain and a board member of Borders Youth Theatre.
Many of us welcomed Jack McConnell's statement on St Andrew's day. We need a cultural strategy that provides international-standard artists, arts organisations and institutions and we need to give everyone in Scotland the chance to get involved in the arts. However, that cannot be achieved with standstill funding to the Scottish Arts Council, which is the current situation. Will the minister give an assurance that the cultural review will have as part of its remit an examination of funding levels for the arts?
Scottish Opera has been mentioned. Will the minister consider seriously the suggestions by Equity and the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union, which would enable Scottish Opera to continue to employ Scottish artists and to bring opera to the maximum number of new audiences in Scotland while paying off its deficit?
I await with interest the commission's recommendations on resource allocation. I cannot pre-empt the commission's work or the discussions that the Executive will have as part of the spending review. We are investing in Scottish arts and providing more resources than ever before. The annual grant for the Scottish Arts Council will be almost £40.2 million by 2005-06. In addition, we are providing extra resources for the development of the national theatre, a move which Chris Ballance welcomed when we announced it. The Executive has a good record on resource allocation and commitment to the arts and culture.
The key issue that the commission will consider is how we can maximise existing resources more effectively throughout the sector. That can be done, and the commission will examine the matter in detail. If our national institutions collaborate and co-operate more effectively, resources will be found for the front line. We can reorganise how we do business. The statutory basis on which many organisations are established is rooted in a pre-war model of governance, which is not suitable, given the demands that the Parliament has placed on institutions during the past four years. That is understandable, as the Parliament is a new democratic channel. We must also take into account the expectations of the public, who are much more aware of what their rights and entitlements should be. Our institutions should try to respond to that.
If Chris Ballance will forgive me, I cannot give a categoric assurance on Scottish Opera, largely because we are still examining the business plan that the Scottish Opera board has presented to the Scottish Arts Council, which is the holding body under the grant mechanism. I have responded to a number of letters from members about the submission from the representative unions. I assure members that I have had an honest and clear discussion with trade union representatives about the long-term future. The two immediate principles are that we need a sustainable future for opera in Scotland, but that Scottish Opera must recognise that many other companies have been given resource allocations and have met their obligations from within them.
We must ensure that we have a variety of art forms in Scotland. I value the role of Scottish Opera, not only in producing stage performances, but in the development work that is done in schools and throughout the country through which opera is brought to youngsters. We aspire to maintain that situation, but how we can do so is a matter for serious and tough discussions. I assure Chris Ballance that I have at the forefront of my mind the sustainability of opera in Scotland.
From now on, we will need snappier questions and answers to try to get in most members who have requested to speak.
I welcome the minister's statement, particularly the strands of increasing access and equitable provision and maintaining excellence. I have received several letters about Scottish Opera. Will the minister say more about how we will increase access to cultural provision in Scotland? I am thinking of galleries and museums throughout Scotland, such as the Smith Gallery in Stirling, which do a lot of work in schools to introduce pupils to the cultural life.
One of the messages in my statement was that national organisations need to think much more about their responsibility to citizens and the wider public. That issue must be at the forefront of the deliberations. Scottish local government has a critical role in that. Many people have good experience of challenging assumptions about how services should be delivered. We must try to consider ways in which customers or individuals who receive services can be much more involved. Certainly, the work that is being done by galleries is trying to ensure that there is an engagement with that process. Again, some of the individuals who will be involved with the commission will have experience that can make a contribution in that regard.
I am delighted that the minister is pushing to ensure that culture has as central a position in the Government as it has in our lives.
How the members of the commission are recruited is of concern, as we must ensure that the commission comprises a wide range of people. The minister will recognise that, before the commission can report, it must be understood that the major concern in the arts community is the shortage of cash in many sectors and that, therefore, some form of entry to the budgetary process before 2007 is necessary to make that work. Does the minister have any comments to make on that point? How does the commission's work relate to the cultural strategy that was published by the previous Administration?
I envisage the commission comprising a relatively small number of people. As such, it cannot be absolutely representative of the diverse cultural and non-cultural strands in Scotland. As the position statement says, we want it to engage effectively and thoroughly with many of the organisations, people and areas that Mr Gibson has identified in his previous contributions on the subject of culture. People's credibility and quality will be the primary reason for their selection for the commission, rather than their background or geographical location.
On the question of resources, I say that, like Rob Gibson, I have a passion for arts and culture. I will argue the case in the Cabinet and the chamber about the centrality of arts and culture in our lives and the way in which it impacts on the quality of our lives. There will always be demands for resources from other areas of public policy; all I can do is make a contribution to the debate about resources and attempt to influence, inspire and persuade colleagues in that context.
Since the 2003 election, we have made progress on many of the issues that Mr Gibson has raised. The commitment that the First Minister gave in his St Andrew's day speech was a strong signal of the political support for this area. Obviously, that has concomitant demands on the arts sector, as Mr Gibson and I are well aware. However, we will try to develop our ideas in that regard in the coming period.
A few members have made points about the cultural strategy. The cultural strategy was a summation and an examination of where we were in 1999-2000. In the three or four years since then, the Executive and the Parliament have identified a number of issues that the commission can genuinely examine. Already, we have made shifts in the nuance of the cultural strategy in relation to traditional and contemporary music, because of my personal interest in those issues, and in relation to literature and writing, which we are trying to utilise more effectively in Scotland. However, that is a continuation of what we have already done.
The cultural strategy resulted in some substantial achievements, but we want to move on and undertake a dramatic, innovative and radical examination of what we do over the next 15 to 20 years and beyond.
I give a cautious welcome to the proposed new cultural commission. However, I am not exactly sure how the new body will differ in scope and role from the Scottish Arts Council. If the SAC is to remain in place, will there not be a doubling-up of effort that will lead to still further bureaucracy in what some see as an already over-bureaucratic system of administration in Scottish culture?
I support the notion of having a culture bill, but I question why it should take until 2007. I would expect that it would be possible for us to have some sort of results and some sort of bill before then.
I have achieved something this morning if I have received a cautious welcome from Ted Brocklebank, and I thank him for that.
The commission is time limited. It will operate for the next 12 months in order to deliver some serious and critical recommendations about the overall structure, organisation and processes of cultural development activity in Scotland. It will not sustain itself beyond that year. The critical issue is to identify the ways in which existing arts organisations—the Scottish Arts Council, which is responsible for the key development of cultural strategy as well as grant disbursement, and our other national and local cultural agencies—carry out their work and to engage with them.
The commission does not represent a doubling-up of bureaucracy. It will be a time-limited, tightly focused team of people who will ask serious and far-reaching questions that have not been fully examined in the past 10 or 15 years. The commission will probably say some challenging things—we will have to wait and see what the outcomes are—but I welcome the work that will be undertaken over the next 12 months. The experience that James Boyle brings from his work in the Scottish Arts Council and in public sector broadcasting will help us to identify ways in which we can deliver a different type of cultural structure that fits the needs and demands of this century rather than last century.
I welcome the establishment of the cultural commission under James Boyle. It is time for the initial work of the cultural strategy to be taken forward.
The minister will be aware of my interest in culture in education. The importance of culture in raising pupils' self-esteem and attainment levels is shown by the fact that creativity is now enshrined in our national priorities for education. Could the minister comment on the success of the school cultural co-ordinators programme and state whether the intention is for that programme to be rolled out? Will he be making a contribution to the current review of the curriculum in Scottish schools? Does he agree that it is important that, as well as getting additional money for culture, we should ensure that funding for culture is embedded across the spending of all the various departments of the Executive?
Like Rhona Brankin, I am passionately committed to the role that culture, arts and creativity can play in the development of young people. The speech that the First Minister made on St Andrew's day and the speech that I have made today contain principles that will be thoroughly examined through the commission's work.
The work of the cultural co-ordinators programme, which was pioneered by Rhona Brankin and others in the culture sector, has brought substantial benefits to the schools and local authority areas that have engaged with it. We would like the programme to be one of the key features of our development of cultural activity across schools in Scotland.
I am currently involved in bilateral discussions with the Minister for Education and Young People on the role that culture can play in the curriculum in terms of attainment, achievement, self-confidence and other issues that we have identified in many debates in this chamber. We believe that the commission will make a helpful contribution in relation to those issues. Like Rhona Brankin, I believe that it would be welcome if the commission's inquiry resulted in additional resources for culture in schools.
My regrets to members who were not called. I have allowed an extra six minutes.
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. Yesterday's Business Bulletin did not say that there was going to be a statement on this subject and I found out only late last night that there was going to be one. I have an interest in this issue but did not have an opportunity to notify you of that fact. I would have thought that we should have had a wee bit more notice that there was going to be a statement this morning.
I will make inquiries on that point and come back to you when I have further information.