Chamber and committees

Absolutely. I need no convincing to visit Caithness; in fact, I often say that Latheronwheel harbour is the closest place to heaven on earth, as far as I am concerned. I would therefore be very glad to make that visit.

I would extend that to the constituencies of all committee members. If members want to ask for some Government support for local projects, I am always pleased to engage on such matters.

I have emphasised the need for increased funding and certainty, and I understand that that, in many ways, is the combination for success. That question has been part of the work that Jamie MacDougall has been doing, engaging with the NPCs, and, as he says, advice is due to be given to ministers on what is possible. Once I have made a decision on that, I will be very pleased to speak to the committee, but I will not pre-empt any decision today.

Scottish Government funding to Screen Scotland has certainly increased—again, like other budget decisions, that is a separate negotiation to be had. It provides flexibility in a range of ways, and I have great faith in Screen Scotland that the organisation will seize the opportunities that it needs to.

It is also worth saying that Creative Scotland deserves significant credit for having supported Screen Scotland since 2018 and getting us to this place. Nevertheless, there is change across the board in respect of both bodies, so I hope that we can have more examples of industries such as screen growing at that pace—I am thinking about the games industry and others. That has certainly been part of my discussions with the creative industries leadership group.

I will be brief, but the fact that your session overran was no problem for me, as I have just come from a long evidence session at the Education and Gaelic Committee.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss the Government’s priorities in the culture portfolio. As MSPs, we all know that culture has significant intrinsic value in our society and, in our constituencies, we all see the transformational impact that it can have on people’s lives. Our culture strategy, which we developed and published in 2020, speaks to that core value, and its ambitions still hold true. The strategy’s three interconnecting ambitions were strengthening culture, transforming through culture and empowering through culture.

First, on strengthening culture and cultural infrastructure, if culture is to flourish, it must be sustainable. That is the case regardless of where it draws its support from, so we are committed to supporting the sector to fulfil its enormous potential. We are making significant increases in culture funding and coupling that with multi-annual certainty such that we have never been able to provide before. We are also spreading the funding across a greater number of recipients than ever before, with the number of organisations now receiving Creative Scotland multiyear funding at more than double the number that previously received grants.

On transforming through culture, we recognise that it is not separate from our prosperity and wellbeing and the First Minister’s four priorities. As far as we are concerned, it underpins all of them, so we want to ensure that more and more people can participate in culture locally and nationally.

Finally, on empowering through culture, it is not the Government’s job to dictate how people engage with culture, but it is our job to make sure that the opportunities are available for everyone to do so, because culture, as we know, belongs to everyone. That is reflected in the priorities in our programme for government and in my letter to you, convener, which I was able to get to you over the weekend.

The main priorities that I will speak to, and which members will see in the PFG, are increased culture funding annually, in line with our commitments; a review of Creative Scotland; supporting the recovery of Historic Environment Scotland; allowing Screen Scotland to flourish as an independent organisation; piloting a minimum income for artists as a key plank of our fair work aspirations, while employment law remains reserved; establishing a national performing company for traditional music to sit alongside the existing NPCs; and, among other things, introducing a culture pass to underline that culture is for all.

Broadcasting remains reserved and, of course, editorial decisions are for broadcasters, but I will continue to press, in particular, the BBC to ensure fair investment in Scotland relative to our licence fee and relative to other countries in the UK, and to support indigenous language broadcasting in Scotland to the same extent that it supports the Welsh language.

All of that and more are my priorities, and I look forward to discussing them with the committee.

I begin by restating that there are serious governance problems. There are excellent staff, but we all know that leadership difficulties can create difficulties throughout an organisation. As I said to the convener, my priority has therefore been to ensure that the Government does everything that we can to get stability in leadership. I hope and expect that from that will flow exactly what Mr Brown is talking about: the optimum care for and perhaps not exploitation—that is not the right word—but advertising of our built heritage throughout Scotland and encouragement of our population to enjoy it.

I expect Historic Environment Scotland to work to ensure that the people of Scotland can enjoy, understand and learn from our heritage. We all know that, to get the optimum from that, we need to sort out leadership, structures and governance, and that is exactly what everything that I have been doing is intended to achieve.

I will be glad to engage on individual constituency-level issues, and I expect HES to do so as well.

Jamie MacDougall has indicated that he wants to come in.

Well, it ought not to happen again. We have sponsorship teams throughout Government that are the link and liaison between Government ministers and organisations. As you would expect, their job is restricted to the areas in which ministers have locus. In the case of Historic Environment Scotland, that means the chair, the board and their functions, as well as funding; it does not extend to employment matters, for example, in relation to the chief executive.

However, with the support of the Auditor General and the section 22 report that Audit Scotland produced, I have made it clear that the accountable officer issue was an error, and it has already been rectified. The Government learns from all such incidents. I cannot say that mistakes will never be made again, but I can say that we will work determinedly to learn every lesson and ensure that HES is back on a stable footing and that sponsorship teams across the Government learn from these issues, such as that involving the HES accountable officer, when they arise.

The fact is that the core of the issue arose within an organisation over which we have locus but not complete control. I have no control over certain aspects of it.

Just as it does in wellbeing, culture has a hugely important part to play in community cohesion, particularly now. We talked about the separateness that we can experience as humans behind screens, losing connection from one another and an understanding of people in different cultures. That work, and all the wonderful people who are delivering it throughout Scotland, can help to overcome a lot of that.

I certainly do not intend for it to be strictly within Screen Scotland—I think that it will come under Creative Scotland.

It is undoubtedly a broad portfolio, and I am certainly feeling that this morning, having just been in front of the Education and Gaelic Committee. However, the synergies between education, culture and the languages, as I refer to the role—it covers Scots and British Sign Language as well as Gaelic—are obvious. Those synergies were obvious from the start, and I am increasingly creating and looking for opportunities to bring each area together.

When I was appointed, I said that the areas in the portfolio are a precious combination of our past and our future. There is no better articulation of our future than our education system, while culture and languages help us to understand our past and forge our future. I consider the portfolio to be very broad but interlinked.

The commitment is intentionally that we will consult on the content of a culture bill by the end of this parliamentary session. That is, very deliberately, a commitment that spans the whole five-year term. Equally, although I know that there are organisations that have certain views on what could usefully be included in the bill, I do not have a predetermined view of what exactly that is. I view the bill as an opportunity to spend the next however many years, in all the engagement that I have with the committee, stakeholders and the Parliament, looking for and shaping the ways in which legislation is required to move forward with our objectives in the culture portfolio.

We do not need primary legislation to do a lot of what I want to do in this parliamentary session. Equally, in the coming years, I will look for the key objectives that require a primary legislative vehicle and gather those into a potential bill.