Are there any practical ways that we could do that across the Council of Europe or by talking to different countries in the network?

Cabinet secretary, you mentioned the issue of where the money will come from. I note that solutions have been suggested, such as the tourism visitor levy; a percentage for the arts scheme, which your manifesto said could generate £150 million a year; and social prescribing. However, as with multiyear funding, those are not here now; potentially, they are years away. Does that not take us back to the perfect storm and the need to save organisations now? That came across incredibly strongly from Creative Scotland last week, and it has also come across from many organisations that have lobbied us individually.

I know that you will not be able to comment on the Filmhouse. However, to look at the issue, there were enough investor organisations to keep the Filmhouse going, yet it went straight into administration, with no public discourse and with nobody knowing about it. There is something about keeping our organisations open—keeping the “doors open”, as Sir John Leighton said to us in September. How do we support Creative Scotland now, rather than cutting it? There might be cross-Government support, such as business support and economic advice to organisations now.

Creative Scotland made clear to us that organisations will potentially go under without support now. Therefore, it is about two things: not only support now, in terms of funding through Creative Scotland, but advice and support to avoid that culture of doom that was talked about last week. How do we keep organisations going when there are potentially donors, funders and local organisations that, when faced with a crisis, would come together?

I know that you cannot talk about the Filmhouse but, with two weeks to go, there are people out there who have resources and would be up for saving that organisation. That issue is not just local but international, because of the Edinburgh international film festival. What do we do now?

I welcome that response. I saw the announcement that you spoke about.

It would be good if there was something that we could look forward to, such as the acceleration of the tourist visitor levy or the introduction of a percentage for the arts scheme. However, the most recent response that we had from you on the budget said that that is years away, in 2025-26, so it is not a current solution. There is pressure on Creative Scotland’s budget this year.

I have a brief follow-up question, cabinet secretary. It was good to hear that you talked to local government representatives. Every time that I do that, they just remind me of the cuts that they have experienced over the past decade and of the fact that culture has taken the biggest cut. It would be very welcome if new items could be put on the agenda to support culture, and to support people in the cultural sector, and—reflecting on your last comments—artists in particular, to work in schools.

It is excellent to have you with us today. I have a follow-up question. In June last year, we had a very good visit to Brussels. We need to follow up, rebuild and reset our relationships. You have your top priorities, and I wonder about the other softer power issues, such as culture, education and tourism—you also talked about trade. Are there ways that we can re-establish connections or not lose those connections with the range of members that you have in the Council of the European Union?

Following on from that, it is about what practical support could be available now. There is support for organisations through Creative Scotland. It is clear that it is difficult for organisations that are using reserves, because they have those reserves for very good reasons—they could be about the organisation’s legal obligations, for example. The issue is about support for them now. Going back to the cuts to Creative Scotland, it is about that message of health and wellbeing, jobs, economy and tourism; it is about not only the cultural aspect but the wider impact on the economy.

I will broaden that out to look at our big five cultural organisations: Scottish Ballet, Scottish Opera, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the National Theatre of Scotland. They have had standstill budgets since 2016-17. How do we support our organisations now? Part of that is through funding, but part of it is through challenging Covid hesitancy, which Donald Smith spoke about last week. What is the Scottish Government doing to get people back into culture? We have a cost of living crisis, but what more could the Scottish Government do now to get people back into culture and to support those organisations now?

Our NHS is in crisis, and we urgently need an NHS recovery plan, as Jackie Baillie has said. I agree that Covid has had a massive impact right across public life, including on the NHS, but we cannot pretend that the problems in our NHS are not long term and deep seated.

In Lothian, up until the first lockdown, the Scottish Government’s target to have 95 per cent of patients admitted, discharged or transferred for A and E treatment within four hours from arrival was last met in October 2017. This is an on-going challenge and we need to look at the issue of staff investment in terms of doctors and nurses and, critically, in terms of care staff, who will not be attracted to a profession where not only is the salary lower than many in other jobs but the job is significantly more stressful. It can often require people to pay for their own travel costs to support clients, and carers are not getting the career development opportunities that we should be giving them. That is why we need the national terms and conditions and decent career opportunities that Jackie Baillie talked about—not a bureaucratic, centralising organisation that will strip yet more investment from our cash-strapped local authorities, which are on the front line, trying to provide care for our communities.

When we look at NHS staff, we need to focus not just on this year’s pay negotiations, although those are critical to making sure that staff get a decent reward for their work. We also need to ask what more can be done to support staff retention. The pressures in the NHS in terms of understaffing and the stress that many staff are facing need to be addressed now.

The eye-watering length of time that people have to wait for treatment is not just affecting members of the public; it is also affecting those staff who cannot continue working for the NHS because they are waiting for an NHS operation or treatment.

When I recently met NHS Lothian staff members, it was heartbreaking to hear about their personal situations and to pick up on their anger about the use of agency staff when they would rather have full-time, permanent NHS staff doing that work. There are key challenges that we need to address.

I want to say something about the long-standing backlog of challenges. In NHS Lothian, a lot of our problems are due to systemic underfunding. The national resource allocation formula has not been delivering sufficient investment for years and, in Lothian, we have a growing population and we will continue to see more people needing support in the future. Our projected net population growth is 84 per cent of Scotland’s projected net growth. We need a discussion about that now, because we will get more young people, but we are already getting an ageing society, as Christine Grahame has just mentioned.

NHS Lothian needs that support now because, as I understand it from the helpful briefings that we get from the staff who are running those services, the services in Lothian are already at capacity. That is before that population increase, so we urgently need investment in staff to keep the services going. We also need new buildings, such as the eye pavilion, but there are other key investments that we need and which need to be factored into an NHS recovery plan to create the investment, to tackle the projections and to make sure that we can provide services now and that we have confidence for the future.

A particular issue that Jackie Baillie rightly finished on is the need to focus on preventative care, because access to our GPs and to community healthcare services is critical but, last year, our GPs saw significant cuts from the Scottish Government. That does not help because, in Lothian, we need capacity increased not just in our hospitals but in our communities.

Day after day, people phone my office who are struggling to get GP appointments and there are lengthy phone waits. They have to phone day after day, because there are simply not enough appointments available. That means that underlying health problems go untreated, which is a disaster for people as potentially dangerous symptoms do not get picked up. For example, symptoms of cancer do not get treated. As we know, swift treatments, with the fantastic services that we have in the NHS, can save people’s lives and give them different outcomes. That is why people are going to A and E, because they are desperate to get help when they need it, especially when they have experienced pain day after day and have waited weeks to get access to support.

We need more information. Last week’s briefing on the survival of cancers was impactful. Making sure that people get access to our GPs is critical; we can then get them access to operations and the treatment that they urgently need.

In his summing up, I want to hear from the cabinet secretary what action he is taking to prioritise additional investment in GP services across the country, particularly community access, with a focus on Lothian, not forgetting the current crisis in that region that is getting worse. Day after day, people are frustrated and upset; they are stuck in hospital waiting for operations that they urgently need. This week, someone approached me who needs to go to another health board for an operation. However, they are stuck in a bed in NHS Lothian, which is not what they want. They do not just want the operation; they also want not to be blocking someone else from getting access to their bed. People cannot go home, because the care that they need is not available, and there is not enough step-down care in care homes either. We urgently need action. Investment in preventative care is critical.

I would push back on the SNP members’ comments when they say, “We are not being party political.” The SNP has been in power for 15 years. The crisis in our NHS is of long standing and is due not only to a lack of investment but to a lack of correct priorities. Prevention is better than cure, but we are getting the opposite of that. We do not need social prescribing in three or four years’ time when we do not have the cultural organisations—

We need action and investment now.

This has been an excellent discussion. I took out of our previous round-table discussion the phrase “the perfect storm” and the challenge of keeping the doors open and the lights on. Today, I have heard that culture and heritage are in our DNA but that we need to avoid the culture of doom.

Given the cuts that you have talked about from the start of our discussion today, is there a need to have rescue plans to keep organisations viable? I give the closure of Filmhouse as an example. Nobody saw that coming. It came as a total shock. The organisation went into administration and there was no space for a potential rescue plan. There are still discussions, but the moment an organisation is in administration, there is a very different trajectory.

Given that it is much easier to save a project than to deal with the wider negative impacts of loss, and given that everybody has talked about the benefits of culture, is there something that we need to do, such as creating crisis plans, in order to get wider cross-Government support? In the case of Filmhouse, we will potentially lose two cinemas, with a massive impact on the Edinburgh international film festival, and there are impacts on jobs, the economy, culture and education.

Is there something that we need to do now to avoid walking into further crises? Should we be asking Government to provide support and stop the cuts? From what you have said, particularly in your opening contributions, it seems that many organisations across Scotland are moving into a very difficult position. I am looking at Iain Munro, because we started with him and he has the big cuts coming up.

That the budget cut will have real impact is a really powerful warning to us. Many of those venues have already started to dive into their reserves, so there will be no spare cash left for organisations to keep going, never mind invest in buildings. That is really powerful evidence.

I will follow that up with Moira Jeffrey. In your submission, you gave us powerful case studies, which cover the matters of wider community benefits, impact on the economy and loss of jobs—if we lose people from arts and culture, we do not get them back. Do you want to say a bit more about that?