Chamber and committees

Forgive me, convener, but we could spend a whole session on that. As part of my broad range of portfolio responsibilities, I chair the Scottish Government’s population task force. I acknowledge that Mr McMillan will have a particular interest in the issue, given that the population statistics for Inverclyde in particular are of great concern for elected members there.

I will answer the question in a number of ways. First, the Scottish Government is very seized of that issue, as are, understandably, local government leaders in authorities whose areas have suffered historical population decline especially. Traditionally, we in Scotland would have looked towards the north-west of the country—the Highlands and Islands—as an area in which there has been particular population decline challenges in the past, but we are now seeing those in other parts of the country, not least in Inverclyde.

That was observation one. Observation two is that we are heading towards population decline in the whole of Scotland. That is a huge challenge—and, frankly, totally unnecessary. Sadly, it is in significant part to do with UK Government policy and the restrictions foisted on us by the type of Brexit that we have, which has ended the free movement of people. Indeed, it is the single biggest contributor to our facing population decline. It could—and this goes to the heart of Mr McMillan’s question—be changed by Government policy. Our views are very well known and understood in Whitehall and Westminster and are totally ignored. The UK Government has shown no willingness thus far to be imaginative with different approaches to immigration policy or, indeed, taxation policy. There was, for example, the approach that we favoured to deal with refugees from Ukraine, which was not the same thing as immigration but was about giving people a place where they could stay and live. As we know, people in such circumstances often make a life decision to stay in the longer term, but we have a UK Government that is pursuing a refugee crisis as an immigration issue.

On all those levels, the UK is taking the wrong approach. Of course, the simple solution is to put Scotland’s Parliament and Government in charge of immigration in order to make better decisions and make Scotland an attractive place to come to and to live, work and study in. We are doing what we can. We are setting up a migration advisory service; we are doing everything we can to join up government at national and local levels to work out what we can do; we are running international marketing campaigns; we have policy ideas that we are trying to understand better; and we are working with other countries on these matters. Not long ago, I spoke to Spanish colleagues about this challenge, because it is being felt in parts of Spain. Lessons can be learned from other countries, perhaps primarily Norway, given what the Norwegians have been able to do to support population numbers in the west and north-west of their country.

There is a lot in your question, and I could give a lot more answers. Indeed, I think that the issue would be worthy of an entire evidence session. I am keen to keep up my attendance rate at the committee, convener, because it has been pretty good thus far and now that other colleagues from Government are attending with me, I do not want to slip down the batting average. I would want to have an exchange on where things are with population decline in Scotland, because it is such an important issue that brings with it very damaging economic and social consequences.

That is an apposite question, because it is a consideration for not only the Scottish Government but National Museums Scotland and the National Galleries of Scotland, whose trustees I met yesterday. That is one of the matters that we talked about, and the trustees made observations about the changes that they have seen over the past 25 years. There has been a change towards a much broader representation of people attending the national museum of Scotland and other museums. However, there is still a gap to be bridged.

I echo what my cabinet secretary colleague said. Embarking on the resource spending review approach will encourage all of us to ensure that we think about those things. One of the potential ways to deal with times of constraint is to increase the number of people of all backgrounds who attend and use our cultural institutions. How do we ensure that there is more school participation in museums, galleries and other cultural institutions, which could help to increase the attendance numbers of children from deprived backgrounds, for example?

Those considerations are very much on our minds in the Scottish Government and on the minds of the institutions, which see it as part of the task in the years to come. We will work collegiately to try to work out how we can help and how they will be able to manage to do it themselves.

I underline the distinction that my cabinet secretary colleague made between a resource spending review and a budget—they are not the same thing. That is point 1. Point 2 is that Historic Environment Scotland is an organisation that is significantly better funded in global terms than other parts of the portfolio, and it is fair to say that everybody has to play their part in making sure that we are able to live within our means.

I am the first to acknowledge that HES is an organisation that has particular responsibilities. The specific nature of the estate that HES has to look after is an area of significant challenge.

Point 1 is that this is a spending review and not a budget. Point 2 is that this is the beginning of a process of working with all organisations, including HES, to work out how we can manage through the next years. We need to be imaginative about whether there is the potential for additional and parallel funding streams—I am extremely keen to explore that area—so that, we hope, not everybody will have to deal with the constraints that the resource spending review points to, as an envelope. I am highlighting the point that it is not a budget projection.

Yes, that is certainly part of the consideration. Committee members will realise that all our institutions that have a high throughput—a high number of visitors—have in recent years seen that income fall off a cliff. I do not have the HES numbers at the forefront of my mind, but I can share an example that I can remember. Yesterday, I was at the national museum of Scotland. Before Covid, its annual visitor numbers were 3 million, and in the past year, it managed to recover that figure to 1.5 million.

That is an illustration of the fact that there is still a way to go, but there is a huge opportunity if we—I say “we” in the royal sense, meaning the institutions, Government and everybody else that is involved in the culture and arts sector—can give people confidence to go back to museums, galleries and events. We should do what the convener highlighted, which is to make the most of the untapped and thus far not-included parts of the population who have not been able to make best use of things. Doing that will have an impact. I hope that for those whom the sector is an income stream, doing that will put them in a better financial position than they would have otherwise been.

I thank Sarah Boyack for her questions on the statement and the many positive points that she made. I also thank her personally for being the only Labour member who went out with the NRS to see how the census was being conducted.

In terms of having confidence, if she is not prepared to listen to what the NRS has to say about things, I point her in the direction of the international steering group, which is made up of experts on the census. For those who are unaware of who is on the group, I can say that it is chaired by Professor James Brown, the Australian Bureau of Statistics professor of official statistics at the University of Technology Sydney. He is joined by Professor Sir Ian Diamond, the UK’s national statistician, and Professor David Martin, professor of geography at the University of Southampton and deputy director of the UK Data Service. I could go on, because it includes other colleagues who are eminent in their field of conducting censuses.

I am confident that the exercise that is starting on the 13th of this month will add tremendous value to the work that took place in the census collection period. I know that Sarah Boyack—and others in the chamber who are members of the committee that oversees my portfolio area—will be speaking to the NRS and I am sure that they will be speaking to some of those experts. I hope that Sarah Boyack gets the reassurance that I believe that I have had from the NRS and other experts. Yes, there are lessons that need to be learned, and, yes, we need to make sure that all of Scotland’s communities are reflected in the census data at the end of the process.

That is absolutely mission critical. Yes, we did not reach the 94 per cent target that the NRS wished us to reach—we have got to within 6 points of that target—but that does not call into question the returns of the census. To those who wish to amplify the messages from certain corners of the media—which, sadly, do not understand how censuses are conducted in the 21st century—I say that there are lessons to be learned, but that overexaggeration will not help us to reach the conclusions that we need to reach at the end of every census.

I will begin by saying—because it is important to state it on the record—that it is not the Government that completes individual census returns: doing that is a matter of personal responsibility. I find it passing strange that the party that believes in personal responsibility has drawn absolutely no attention to the fact that it was the decision of people, for a variety of different reasons, not to return their census responses. That is key to understanding the issues that we have faced with the census.

Although 2.3 million households did complete the census, sadly, 316,000 households did not. That is despite 8.8 million letters and reminders—and I am not even counting the public relations campaigns that built on that. I will update Parliament, because I think that the figures are quite enlightening, in order that members better understand the challenge among the parts of the community that did not take part in the census.

Towards the end of May, the census field force asked just over 1,200 people, who had not returned a census form, what their main reasons were for not completing it. There was a wide range of reasons. The headline responses were as follows: 35 per cent of those who were asked stated that their being too busy was the reason, or one of the reasons; 17 per cent stated that they were not aware of the census; and 14 per cent stated that they did not realise that they had to complete it. Concerns about privacy, trust in Government, the nature of the questions and access to a paper copy all came out at 5 per cent or less.

Yes, there are lessons to be learned, but I totally and utterly repudiate Donald Cameron’s assertions about writing off anything in the census. They are false, ill informed, misleading and, frankly, beneath him, because he should know that census experts say that it has “a solid foundation” on which to build.

Sadly, only one Conservative Party MSP could be bothered to turn out for an NRS visit to see how the census was actually being conducted, but I hope that, in time, they will learn from what happened during the census. We all have lessons to learn, but the slightly pathetic party politics that we have heard from the front bench of the Conservative Party add little to the understanding of what has worked well in the census and what needs to be learned from it.

It is interesting that we got to question at the end of that speech. [Interruption.]

Do I believe that the census was adequately communicated in Scotland? Yes, I do. Why do I think that? I did not have time earlier, so perhaps I will take the opportunity to go through this now. These are the lists—these are all the core publications that were sent to households across Scotland in the multiples of millions. Is the member suggesting that people did not receive the letters? Is the member suggesting that they were not visited by enumerators? Is the member suggesting that people did not call and encourage participation? Is he suggesting that the National Records of Scotland did not participate in events the length and breadth of Scotland to encourage people to take part?

If that is the case, the member does not understand the heart of the challenge about the difference between the return rate at the end of the extension period and the 94 per cent target that the NRS wished to achieve. If he is going to continue down that lane, he will not learn the lessons of why a disjunction took place around people receiving the letters—because they did receive letters, postcards and encouragement to take part—but then not taking part. The question why they did not take part is at the heart of the challenge that we will need to meet in future censuses.

Given that the member represents a party that thinks that personal responsibility is an important part of the equation, he, again, has failed to even address that—

I say very gently that the member clearly does not understand the process by which the NRS moves on to the next stage of working out who has not returned a census. Prosecution and the involvement of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service impact those who have expressly refused to take part in the census, not those who were unaware of it—there is an important distinction between the two, and it is important that everybody in the chamber understands that.

I can assure the member about the lengths that the NRS has gone to. We do not have time for me to go through the amount of correspondence that has been issued to people and that specifically targets certain parts of the community, including the aged, because the point that the member made is correct. It is mission critical to get the results from that part of the Scottish community. The NRS has been extremely focused on that, as have the enumerators, and I am clear that the returns that they have been getting will be adequately capturing that important part of Scottish society.

One thing that happened during the extended period of the census is that hundreds of thousands of paper copies of the census were sent to hard-to-reach households that had not returned a census online. That was in addition to the paper copies that were sent to those who had rung up and used the service to order them.

To answer Christine Grahame’s question, there were a variety of ways of trying to make sure that gaps could be plugged, if one wanted to assume that issues with digital access were prohibiting people from taking part. Measures were undertaken to try to make sure that people had alternatives. Those included providing paper copies, as well as enumerators turning up at people’s doors and offering to help fill out the forms on paper or online. Great efforts were undertaken, particularly in the extended period of the census, and especially in parts of certain local authority areas and parts of the country where there were much lower returns. Great efforts were made to try to make sure that people could take part in the way that was most appropriate for them.