I thank everyone for their answers. That last discussion really reinforces the need to think about how we get the cross-government working that Kirsty Cumming referred to very powerfully. We have had discussions about health, wellbeing and culture and the potential benefits. With the budget coming up this year, we need to think about how we make that more explicit. Witnesses have given the committee powerful information about how to make processes and KPIs more straightforward, given the differences between very big organisations and smaller, lighter-foot, community-based organisations.

A couple of witnesses have mentioned staff changes over Covid, which is also mentioned in the submissions. We took evidence about that when we talked to venues about Covid earlier in the year and I think that it is in Prospect’s evidence. The loss of young people from the sector because they do not see it as providing a long-term career seems significant. Is the sector doing work to try to retain people and their skills and to make it a continuing career option for young people?

Cabinet secretary, you refer to changes in society’s attitude, which you also referenced in your ministerial statement. How much work have you done on that issue? You just flagged that other countries delayed their censuses, but what are the comparative differences with the 2021 census in the rest of the UK in terms of low-turnout areas, and what lessons do you draw from those differences? What will the issues be going forward, because we have not had the same level of lower turnout rates historically?

It has been good to hear your powerful evidence today in addition to the submissions that we have had from lots of organisations. I cannot think of a committee meeting when we have had phrases such as “a perfect storm”, “dire financial situation” and “crisis” being mentioned by so many witnesses, not just here but in written evidence. Therefore, I am thinking about how we fix it and what evidence we need to take back to the Parliament. Quite a lot of comments have been made about the percent for art scheme and the transient visitor levy as potentially important new additional moneys. However, they tend not to be something that you could guarantee everywhere at the same time. Therefore, they might be important, but what about the overall status of culture?

In their joint submission to the committee, COSLA and the local government directors of finance said that funding in the collective cultural area in local authorities had been cut by nearly a quarter in the eight years pre Covid. Therefore, there is an issue with a reduction in funding at the local level. The committee also heard the comments about the challenge of flat funding at a time when all your costs are rocketing. Do you have thoughts on the equivalence of culture spending? It is not statutory, so should the committee recommend something on the status of funding for culture, given the complexity on the ground and all the evidence that we have seen in our work on social prescribing about the wider benefits of culture? There are benefits for health, wellbeing and the economy. How do we capture that in order to say that culture is important and needs proper funding? Does anyone have thoughts on how we ensure that it is ranked properly?

I refer members to my entry in the register of interests.

While we have waited for the Scottish National Party Government to act on short-term lets, thousands of homes have been lost in Edinburgh. Labour-led City of Edinburgh Council has implemented the new rules as quickly as possible, but more than £3 million has been lost to the public purse in Edinburgh in the past financial year alone, because of the loophole that still exists through which short-term let owners can move to business rates and receive the 100 per cent small business bonus scheme discount.

Given that the Scottish Government committed years ago to reviewing the tax treatment of short-term lets, what progress has been made on that review and when will it be completed?

In his tribute to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, President Emmanuel Macron said:

“To you, she was ‘our Queen’. To us, she was ‘the Queen’.”

In that one line, he summed up the constant that Queen Elizabeth II was for all of us in Scotland, the UK and across the world. Most of us referred to Her late Majesty as “the Queen”, as she was the only monarch that we had known and she was a constant that we were all familiar with and used to.

In the tributes over the past few days and in the chamber today, it has been fascinating to hear the many references to the Queen’s love of Scotland. At the beginning of most summers, royal week saw the Queen carry out visits and, just next door in Holyrood palace, hold garden parties to congratulate people across Scotland on their achievements and endeavours in our communities.

Due to the Queen’s incredible strength, length of service and dedication, she was an inspiration to millions of women in the UK and around the globe. When I was growing up, there were very few female MPs and even fewer female Cabinet members, but the Queen was a constant and sometimes the sole female in the public eye. Before the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Equal Pay Act 1970, she showed that the glass ceiling could be smashed and that women could hold positions at the top and succeed. There was a lovely picture that I saw last week of the former Presiding Officer, Ken Macintosh, introducing the Queen to three of our then party leaders, Nicola Sturgeon, Ruth Davidson and Kezia Dugdale. The Queen’s connections with the Parliament have been really impactful.

We have all spent time during the past few days talking to friends and family about the impact of the Queen on our lives and about interconnections. For our family, that came from looking at the photo of the general assembly of the Church of Scotland, which the Queen visited during the silver jubilee. That was personal to me because my dad and my grandad, who were church elders at the time, were in the audience there. A further personal link is that the building in which they met is the same building that the Queen returned to in 1999 to open our Parliament.

It is worth recording that the Queen showed a great understanding of devolution. When she opened the Parliament, she talked about being confident in the future of Scotland, and she made several further visits over the past 22 years.

As other members have talked about, the pace of change during what we will look back on as the Elizabethan era has been immense. As we transition to our new monarch—for those of us in this chamber, only the second head of state that we have known—it is important that we continue the bonds across the nations and regions of the UK. We must also, as other members have said, reflect on the Commonwealth. The Queen’s support of the Commonwealth enabled it to transition over the past 70 years. Let us reflect on the importance of supporting our neighbours and families, whether here at home in Scotland or across the Commonwealth. Our shared history gives us huge opportunities but it also gives us responsibilities to work with our Commonwealth neighbours.

We will continue to face a number of challenges, not least the climate emergency and its impact on our environment, which King Charles III is well versed in. Our Parliament is now well established and has matured during the Elizabethan era. I hope that, under King Charles III, we continue to play a leading role in the UK and the Commonwealth.

As we celebrate the lifelong contribution of the Queen, I hope that the collective response to her passing is of some comfort to King Charles and his family. They have demonstrated a powerful work ethic, by not just visiting our Parliaments over the past few days but reaching out and talking to people in communities across the UK, just as the Queen used to do. I hope that they now take some time to grieve. We know that that work ethic is central to them all, but everybody needs space to grieve and think about the loss of a family member.

From looking at previous census data, do you have a sense of the differences between the 2022 census and the previous census in 2011?

That is great. Will the administrative data be published separately, or is that integrated into the final census results, so that it is transparent?

Thank you, Professor Diamond, for the briefing that you sent us, which has been useful. I have follow-up questions about the post-census work to which you refer in the briefing.

How do you fill the gaps that come from the higher non-response rate than we had in 2011? How do you avoid errors in the assumptions that are made in the final stage—pillar 3, which you talk about—in order to add value to the census returns that we already have? How do you ensure that the information that you add to the census will give confidence to people who use it—particularly in the lower response rate areas, to which you refer? How do you make that calculation about the geography of those areas and the different groups of people who have not filled in the census? How do you avoid errors there? What assumptions are made and how do you make sure that there is no bias in those assumptions? You talked about that being useful in relation to what groups might have been excluded.

Professor Martin, you talked about the difficulty of access to buildings. There are also buildings that are easy to access but produce incredibly low results. What is your perspective on how to get that right for the people who will rely on the data in the census?

Professor Martin, do you want to kick off, because you mentioned the issue of access? I live in a city that has loads of tenement flats, so there are always access issues. In the big place that I visited with the enumerators, what struck me was not the access but the massively low turnout; it was less than 50 per cent, and that was in the boost period after the census had officially finished.

Professor Diamond, do you have any comment on the issue of how to avoid bias in low-response areas?

I am concerned about the E coli outbreaks that are being experienced in nurseries in Musselburgh, and my colleague Martin Whitfield has raised concerns about the outbreaks in Haddington. In the guidance notes that families received, they were told that, under the Public Health etc (Scotland) Act 2008, they were required to isolate, but the formal exclusion letter that they received 13 days later gave contradictory advice. Therefore, families have had no help, despite their loss of earnings. What action is the Scottish Government taking in response to those outbreaks of E coli? Will it look to put in place a loss of earnings scheme to support families that have borne the brunt of the debacle?