Chamber and committees

The first step is to have intense points of contact with both communities. As members will be aware, the First Minister has visited the synagogue in Giffnock and has also been to a number of mosques. Initiatives are being supported via Interfaith Scotland to bring together not just the Jewish and Muslim faith leaders but those of Christian and other denominations. We are communicating with them intensively to work out what can be done.

As I have raised with my colleagues, I am mindful that various faith communities’ high and holy days are approaching in the weeks and months ahead. We must ensure that our communities are able to celebrate important days in their religious calendars without any fear or concern. We must therefore ensure that we talk to them as much as we can do—as a Government, but also as parliamentarians and community leaders in our own right. I look to all committee members, and all colleagues across the parties in the Scottish Parliament, to play a role in that. Notwithstanding the severity of the situation, and the challenges that we know people face, we must remain focused on doing everything that we can to maintain the best community relations that we can achieve. Sadly, current international examples illustrate such relations being tested very sorely.

You are absolutely correct that the international community is concerned about the potential for widening an already appalling situation, and you are right to point to the risks of escalation in Lebanon and Israel. The feeling is that, every day, the shooting between Hezbollah and the Israeli Defense Forces is ratcheting up. Yesterday, the Yemeni armed forces launched missiles in the direction of Israel, and other organisations in and around Israel will be close to the Iranian Government. International Governments—not least that of the United States of America, which is able to exercise significant diplomatic and military presence—are focused on ensuring that the conflict does not escalate more widely. The Scottish Government does not have a direct locus in that: foreign affairs, defence and security are matters for the United Kingdom Government.

Our position would be to support UK diplomatic efforts and those of the international community to do everything to ensure that there is not a widening of the conflict. I do not need to tell this committee, nor anybody watching the proceedings, that the situation in Gaza, the west bank and Israel has been long and troubled and previous wars have involved neighbouring countries. The risks are in plain sight.

We would support anything that can be done to help avoid an escalation and we encourage those with a locus and an ability to do so to emphasise restraint on all parties. We would welcome that.

I would have to discuss the detail of which organisations we have had and continue to have links with beyond the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is the principal agency for the international community.

We all appreciate that, because of the extreme nature of the circumstance and the extreme distress in which people in Gaza find themselves, it is primarily UNRWA, the UN agency, that has the capability. We should put on the record that UNRWA is also having to pay an incredibly high price for its efforts on the ground. I think that I am right in saying that, since the beginning of the recent conflict, more than 70 members of UNRWA staff have died trying to maintain the places of safety that they have and to get supplies to the warehouses to be distributed. That is why our principal focus is on UNRWA, which has launched a flash appeal.

However, we will keep under constant review our relationship with other charities and third sector organisations, in particular those with which we have an established relationship. We will try to ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent as well as it can possibly be spent in such circumstances. I am sure that people will welcome the fact that we and others are doing what we can to support the UN and other agencies to do what they can on the ground to help people who do not have food or drinking water, who often do not have shelter and many of whom now do not have hope. We need to do everything that we possibly can and we intend to continue doing so.

The First Minister wrote to the ambassador of Israel on 11 October and wrote to the Palestinian representative to the UK on 13 October. Channels of communication remain open. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians have a consulate general in Scotland, but routes of communication with both the Israelis and the Palestinians are open, and I have no doubt that there will be further communication.

I have not been privy to those conversations, and Mr Cameron will be aware that that is not my direct area of responsibility. He will also appreciate that operational matters for the police and the security services are for Police Scotland and the security services. I have no doubt that they are assiduously assessing the situation and making the necessary decisions.

However, there have been conversations where I and colleagues have a locus—indeed, I think that we all do—with regard to doing everything that we can to support the best community relations possible here. Unfortunately, we have seen that those community relations are being sorely tested in some other parts of Europe and the world.

We must do everything that we can to support Scotland’s Jewish community and to work with our Muslim community, especially people of Palestinian descent. It is very important that we do everything that we can to ensure that, although what is happening in the middle east is a tragedy, it does not lead to a worsening of community relations here.

Mr Ruskell is absolutely right to say that we should not lose sight of the very testing and difficult circumstances in the west bank, which is occupied Palestinian territory. That does not just concern the displacement of Palestinians; it has involved the deaths of Palestinians in recent days. The circumstances for people there are extremely difficult.

The Scottish Government’s position remains as it has always been: the west bank and the Gaza strip form the basis of Palestinian territories that we believe should be part of a two-state solution—a solution that can help to provide both security for the people of Israel and independence and security for the people of Palestine. We will use whatever influence we can.

This is perhaps an opportunity to underline the points that Mr Ruskell and I have made. We should not lose sight of the fact that, notwithstanding the very understandable focus on Gaza, the challenges for people in the west bank continue to be substantive. The Israeli authorities, as the occupying power, have a responsibility to ensure the life, liberty and security of Palestinian people in the west bank, not just of Israeli citizens. We will definitely continue to monitor that.

Goodness—there was a lot in that.

First, with regard to the regularly funded organisations, I can do no better than quote Creative Scotland’s Iain Munro who, in his evidence to you, said that the use of reserves by Creative Scotland

“will enable us to maintain the payment for the RFOs as planned, without the cut being applied.”

He went on to say:

“given that this £6.6 million is a one-off and that we are using our reserves to offset it, we are protecting the balance of the reserves position to enable transition support, as far as we reasonably can.”

He then said:

“It stabilises the situation.”—[Official Report, Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee, 28 September 2023; c 2, 3, 4.]

That is Creative Scotland’s perspective, and I am immensely grateful for the collaborative approach that we are taking to dealing with the funding pressures that we are all having to manage. In effect, we have been able to ensure that there is no impact on Scotland’s cultural organisations as a result of the funding decision. There will be discussions about the finances for next year and the year after that; however, the commitment has been given with regard to the £6.6 million from this year, and it will be paid during the next financial year.

To those who might have been given the impression that a cut was going to be imposed on cultural organisations as a result of this decision, I have to say that that is factually inaccurate. Indeed, I do not think that such a view is particularly helpful, given the wider concerns that quite rightly exist about the financial pressures on the cultural sector.

On the wider point, the first thing to reflect on is that the particular challenge right now is that we are coming to the end of a financial year in which there have been unprecedented additional cost pressures, which I have outlined and which included the funding settlements for pay. That means that money must be found elsewhere, but one has already allocated a significant part of the annual spend earlier in the year, so one is looking at a far smaller part of the budget and a reduced amount of money for the end of the year. That is why we are in a particularly challenging situation with in-year budget finance.

As you would expect from someone in my position, I must look at that and work out what the options are. The best way to explain that is to say that there are three dimensions to the funding challenge within the portfolio. The first relates to major events that are part of the portfolio, including, this year, the UCI cycling world championships. The common consensus is that those were an amazing success for Scotland, but they led to extra costs. The second part of the funding challenge relates to the £6.6 million final payment made to Creative Scotland within this financial year. The remainder of the challenge comes from the uncontracted remaining spend on culture. We must find solutions to all three things because they are not going to go away and we must face them. What are we going to do about that?

On the first part of that equation, although the final figure remains to be worked out, I have acknowledged that something in the order of £8 million will be required in relation to the UCI cycling world championships. Those events brought benefits across Scotland and across Government, and the Scottish Government has agreed that the cost should be borne across Government, rather than simply within the portfolio. That is a hugely significant decision for the portfolio, which is the second smallest in the Government, meaning that that amount would be very significant for our budget.

The second challenge relates to the £6.6 million end-of-year finance payment to Creative Scotland. The fact that Creative Scotland made the decision to use reserves means that that challenge on the Scottish Government budget, which is under significant pressure, is obviated, and that the challenge is also obviated from the point of view of the regularly funded organisations that expect imminent payments. I understand that Creative Scotland is in the process of informing and assuring those organisations that they will be paid as they expected to be.

That leaves the final amount, which is the uncontracted spend for the rest of the year. Although there will be challenges, I am confident that, as a result of decisions made in the three areas, we will be able to ensure that we can fund areas across the culture portfolio that would otherwise have been under threat and where there would not have been the opportunity to use reserves.

That is the key thing to understand about trying to find a solution to funding pressures. None of this has been easy: it has involved colleagues in the culture sector working with Government to ensure that we can get ourselves into the best possible situation in a very challenging context. Given the pressures, I think that we have achieved a very good result.

Did I answer all your questions, which were packaged together?

My key reflection on Mr Cameron’s observations is that, to use his own words, the evidence was given before last week. It was given before the assurances by Iain Munro of Creative Scotland on the use of reserves; it was given before the assurances that have been given to the regularly funded organisations; and it was given before this evidence session, in which I have repeatedly given clarity on the zero detriment point in relation to Creative Scotland’s funding.

I view that issue separately from the particular concerns being expressed about the significant challenges that are faced by venues, of which theatres form a big part, and I know that Creative Scotland is working with venues and theatres to ensure that we are able to do everything that we can so that they can continue to operate into the future. There are some aspects of that that do not fall within the powers of the Scottish Parliament. I worked very hard with the theatre sector on the issue of tax reliefs for venues, which is a UK Treasury matter, and we were successful in increasing the timescale for the operation of tax exemptions for venues, including theatres, which I know is materially important to venues’ ability to continue trading. We must be alive to that pressure and to others, too, and I look forward to continuing to work with the theatre sector in that respect.

The key point in Mr Cameron’s question, though, was that the evidence that he cited was given before all that. It is important that we reflect on the assurances that Creative Scotland and I have given, and the self-evident fact that there is no detriment to Creative Scotland’s ability to fund the regularly funded organisations, which will be receiving the funding that they were expecting in the next weeks.

I completely agree with Mr Stewart, in as much as he says that things cannot remain the same. Things around us are changing and we need to react to those changes and ensure that our cultural organisations and our cultural funding organisations are best placed to deal with those changing circumstances.

I am sure that Mr Stewart would not want to create the impression that changes are not taking place in cultural organisations or their funding. We have discussed multi-annual funding this morning, which is a demand from the sector, is supported by the Scottish Government and is being introduced by Creative Scotland. That will lead to a set of wider questions about how bodies that are not part of the multi-annual funding system can have the stability that they want.

What I am trying to say is that change is the only constant in all this and we have to find the best way through that. I am gently trying to make the point that, given the anxiety that exists out there, it is really important that, where there is certainty of funding and finance is assured, we do everything that we can to help people to understand that that is the case.

I have provided evidence to the committee this morning about particular funding challenges with major events. We have been able to secure progress on that issue, but we will have to return to it and find the right funding mechanism across Government for it. Scotland has an excellent reputation in that regard. Mr Stewart was right to talk about Scotland being world leading, and one area in which we are world leading is major events, as we saw with the cycling world championships. We have other events coming up, including major footballing events, so we must ensure that the funding mechanism across Government is in place.

Creative Scotland is assured of its funding situation through the use of reserves, and the regularly funded organisations are being informed that they will get the support that they expected to get. There is no detriment there.

On wider non-contracted spend, we are now in the significantly better place of being able to provide the stability that Mr Stewart has quite rightly underlined as being so important to the sector.

I absolutely acknowledge that that is where the concern lies. For those who are watching our proceedings who are hearing all this terminology around culture funding, the importance of multiyear funding is something that we all understand. It is a new approach that I think has cross-party support as the best approach for cultural organisations, and there is a wish to roll that out more widely to the third sector. It is a way of helping organisations to not have to apply every single year for funding and, instead, when a strong case is made for financial support, an organisation would receive it for, in this case, three years. That will be to the benefit of cultural organisations.

As Mr Ruskell has indicated, that is a change from the current situation, and there is an expectation that many of our leading cultural organisations will be in receipt of multiyear funding. However, some organisations are concerned that they will not receive that, and Creative Scotland has been working hard to ensure that those organisations are still financially supported. That is the requirement for the use of Creative Scotland’s reserves.

That is just the background to Mr Ruskell’s point—