I have two brief questions. The first follows up on the issue of renewables regeneration. Mark Ruskell talked about repowering onshore wind. There are massive opportunities for offshore wind, but we have had many of those opportunities for 20 years. How can we take a circular economy approach, reusing existing infrastructure and making it last longer? You talked about ScotWind. There are huge opportunities, but how do we actually deliver opportunities for green industry in Scotland? What are your thoughts about that actually happening, rather than being just a good opportunity?

My second question concerns the local authority targets in the bill, which will mean a huge amount of new investment in things ranging from vehicles to infrastructure to waste processing. The SNIB is not allowed to invest in public bodies, but to what extent does the bill present us with an opportunity in terms of infrastructure investment, so that we are able to see that acceleration of projects, particularly when some local authorities are doing a mix of public and private investment, with the local authority providing part of the investment and working closely with the private sector?

That was very interesting. My final question is about heat and power networks. You mentioned energy from waste. What about the potential for more community-oriented projects, given the infrastructure of water heat networks that Scottish Water has, and which are currently being developed by local authorities?

Yes, I would. Thank you, convener. I much appreciate being able to ask a question in an interesting session.

Earlier, there was a discussion about resilience and the impact of loss-of-power emergency generation investment, and there is also the renewable power generation programme. I wondered if you would talk a bit about those. There is obviously a benefit in the lowering of climate emissions, but is there also an opportunity for resilience and income generation?

Witnesses have talked about hydro, wind, solar and combined heat and power using organic waste. How does all of that fit into Scottish Water’s overall strategy? Are they income generators?

That is useful feedback, because I have had feedback from the local authority side that there are worries about supply chains in terms of, for example, new vehicles that could be required. There is also an issue about accountability with regard to the benefit of having local authorities owning infrastructure as part of this process while also using private sector investment and expertise. It would be good for the committee to get feedback on what you think comes next on that, because it is a now issue.

That sounds good. We will keep our eyes open for that second element happening, because it is not only the new construction that is important, but the reuse of existing equipment. That would be exciting.

—that that money should be allocated and budgeted and the timescales revealed?

Thank you, Presiding Officer—I should not have to shout.

The Filmhouse team has two weeks to go to meet the fundraising target that it has set. It has done phenomenally well, but again, the problem is uncertainty.

Comments have been made today about the Scottish Government proposing to use Creative Scotland’s reserves. That is a huge reversal of the Government’s approach. The whole point of reserves is that they are meant to be there for crisis situations. It is an irony—is it not?—that a crisis is exactly what the Scottish Government has itself created.

We know that we have a cost of living crisis, and about the challenges that have followed the Brexit vote. The Scottish Government needs to address those challenges—it does not need to do U-turns year after year and make cuts to Creative Scotland’s budgets.

Only this week, National Museums Scotland—a nationally funded organisation—warned that it is having “a struggle for survival”. The national performing companies have been mentioned several times today. Their budget has been frozen since the financial year 2016-17. That is how bad things are.

We note the £100 million that has been suggested, but we have not been told in either of the Government speeches how that figure has been arrived at, how the funding will happen, how it will be distributed and how we will see decent funding for our local authorities. In that regard, we hear that discussions are on-going but, as we saw recently, the Verity house agreement is not exactly respected in detail.

How do we know that every school in Scotland is going to have the music, arts and dancing tuition that every young person should be able to access? We need the funding; if the Scottish Government was serious about the matter, we would have heard about that today. As ever, though, there is no certainty. It is particularly disappointing that we did not get that clarified.

I would be very interested to hear the detail of Alexander Stewart’s proposed arts bill. As members have commented, we have been hearing about the bill for some time, so we would like to see the detail.

In closing, I note that I hope that colleagues on all sides of the chamber will do the right thing and call on the Scottish Government to reverse the proposed 10 per cent budget cut for Creative Scotland with immediate effect, and to set out in detail how it intends to increase the arts and culture budget. The timescales are critical for organisations that must invest in staff. As Pauline McNeill said, fair terms and conditions and longer contracts mean a longer-term financial commitment—

—that is actually funded properly.

I thank the minister for advance notice of her statement. We in Scottish Labour also send our condolences to the families who have lost a loved one. The floods have had a devastating impact on people’s homes, on businesses and on farming communities.

I also thank the emergency services and communities for coming together to support people in their time of need. I welcome the fact that the Bellwin scheme has been activated to support local authorities, given the scale of the damage that has been caused, but lessons must be learned urgently.

The Brechin scheme was built only seven years ago and was designed to deal with a one-in-200-years incident. We urgently need to understand why it failed to protect the communities that it was designed to serve. That will be critical to planning for new infrastructure. Can the cabinet secretary say what the timescale is for publishing an analysis of why the damage was so severe? What work is being done to review existing and planned flood prevention infrastructure? What will be done to accelerate flood resilience to support communities, businesses and farmers?

Finally, I agree that the climate crisis will lead to more extreme and unpredictable weather. How will we make sure that all our transport infrastructure—road and rail—is resilient and equipped to deal with the more extreme weather that we will face?