Chamber and committees

Will the member take an intervention?

The member will be aware of the likely closure of Wales’s national museum, which has been attributed to cuts in funding for the Welsh Government. Does he accept that UK Government cuts play any part in the issues that he has raised? He mentioned some words that are not mentioned. Does he intend to use the word “Brexit” or to address the consequences of it in his speech?

I am about to conclude.

If we want to have a real debate, we should all start from the same place—understanding the financial pressures and not pretending that they do not exist, or that they exist in Wales but not in Scotland. We must start from an honest place if we want the sector to thrive.

It is a point of consensus, I think, that Scotland has always been one of the world’s most culturally identifiable and, indeed, most culturally prolific countries. Because of that, huge affinity with Scotland is felt around the world. As has been mentioned, the report is the first to outline Scotland’s international culture strategy for the future, but it also outlines where we are now and it shows clearly that devolution has allowed Scotland to formalise that affinity, to turn it into a relationship between Scotland and those around the world who have an interest in Scotland, and to use it for the benefit of the people of Scotland.

Much of the debate has—perhaps inevitably—centred on funding. I give no credibility whatsoever to those who argue that we should be spending more money on culture—and spending more money on transport, health and education—but who at the same time gleefully accept cuts from the Westminster Government or attack the Scottish Government’s tax-raising initiatives. There is no credibility in taking that position.

It is also true to say—given the constrained environment that we all find ourselves in—that it is worth our while to look for ways in which additional finance could be raised. The only member who has done that is Michelle Thomson. I, too, would like to suggest a couple of things. The first is a plea to the cabinet secretary to ensure that imagination informs what we do—which is one of the points that Jackson Carlaw, I think, made. It would be useful to hear the cabinet secretary confirm that he is willing to push the various agencies that are involved—I am talking about Historic Scotland, VisitScotland and so on—to make the most of the assets that we have.

I will give a couple of examples of those assets. About 20 years ago, I was, believe it or not, responsible for taking the Wallace sword—or the “Braveheart” sword—to New York, as we sought to exploit the aftermath of the movie, although I understood that if the sword was lost I could never return to Scotland. It was hugely well received and there were queues around the block of people coming into Grand Central terminal to see it. Afterwards, the benefits from that meant that the renovation works that were needed at the Wallace monument were basically funded by increased visitor numbers because of the interest that the sword and—of course—the movie had created. I think that such things could be done in many more areas.

In the mid-1980s, I wrote to British Telecom, which had then been newly privatised and was £2 billion in profit. I suggested that it buy the house in which Alexander Graham Bell was born—which is only a stone’s throw from Bute house in the new town—and develop it. I suggested that it perhaps use telecommunications—or whatever it is called these days—students to explain to people the development of the technology that had allowed Alexander Graham Bell and Marconi to do what they did with the invention of the telephone, and that it use an international pool of people who could come to do that. There are two visitor centres for Alexander Graham Bell in Canada and one in the United States, but he was born in Edinburgh, where that has not been exploited, although it could be. The same applies to John Logie Baird and what he achieved—albeit that he did it when he was in London. There is massive potential for us to capitalise on such things.

As the committee heard, there are buildings all round the country, that for a variety of reasons, provoke niche interest around the world, including clan-based interests. I do not think that we are properly exploiting them, but if we did, perhaps by niche advertising, we could massively increase the number of visitors to Scotland and to those buildings and sites. That, in turn, could help to fund development when it is very hard for the Scottish Government find the money for that.

It might not be the done thing to say this in a debate about culture, but given the constrained financial circumstances that we find ourselves in, a more imaginative commercial approach could pay dividends. The money that would be raised could fund other initiatives and free up money to do some of the things that have been mentioned in the debate.

The Edinburgh festival and the fringe festival have been mentioned. I was born in Edinburgh and have been going to festival and fringe events for more than 40 years, but there is more to Scotland than Edinburgh and lots of other parts of Scotland also need investment. We must confront the choices that have to be made because of financial constraints. There is no point in imagining that that is not an issue. Other parts of Scotland must have their say. I want to see the festival, the fringe and the various other festivals that go along with them, prosper. We all do, but we must also acknowledge that there are other parts of Scotland.

Jamie Greene made a comparison with Ireland, but there are pretty big differences that help to explain the different approaches. First, Ireland has a budget surplus. It would be nice to have billions of pounds of budget surplus. Also, Ireland has not had to deal with Brexit, but is a member of the European Union and it is, of course, independent.

If members want to see the effect of that, they should look at the effect that Brexit has had on people from Scotland’s ability to tour across the EU. We have heard many examples already. Our space has been taken up by Irish initiatives. The committee heard that it is often the case that Scottish artists get to go to Europe only because Irish artists are willing to help them to get across—in particular, to Germany but also to venues in other countries. In my view, that shows the benefit of being part of the EU and of being independent. Some acknowledgement of that would have helped the debate.

The committee has heard evidence about the long-lasting effects of Brexit on artists whose careers have been put in jeopardy because of their inability to get into European countries, which happens for various practical reasons that we have heard about—mainly visas, but also cost and other difficulties. It will be very hard to reverse that and it will take a long time.

On the subject of being honest with ourselves, does the member agree that cheering to the echo the cuts to the Scottish Government’s budget from Westminster and then demanding more money for every area of spending would be the very definition of rank hypocrisy?

We have had quite a number of round tables, and I have found this to be the most interesting that we have had, because of the contributions.

There is a kind of false debate going on about how good or bad Brexit might be but having heard about the practical examples of additional costs, markets being closed off, firms being stopped from doing things that they were doing before or doing things in Ireland rather than Scotland, as well as the other additional costs and confusion, I think that the situation seems pretty horrendous. I am happy to be corrected, but I am assuming that all the examples that have been given demonstrate how things have changed from the base, which was pretty much seamless. Going back to the samples that were mentioned earlier, I would say that everything used to be done pretty easily; now we are talking about new costs and loss—that is, loss of control or innovative capacity in Scotland. That is really worrying.

On the question of how you actually deal with the situation, I remember going to Canada a few years back to ensure that haggis was able to go on sale there. That was not possible in the US, as the Americans would not accept it. I remember the US authorities in New Jersey and New York saying that they were fed up to the back teeth of people trying to export to the US who did not have regard to their certification and standards. People kept on saying that they had certification, perhaps from the EU or Italy for cheese or whatever. The US authorities said, “We’re not interested. We just want you to comply with what we need.”

This might be a gross simplification of what is required but, in that context, would it be helpful for industry to have somebody—whether from the Scottish Government, the UK Government or both together—who was able to explain to a firm what it could export, and to which countries, if it did all the things listed on a certain page? I know that requirements are dynamic and that they can change over time—indeed, even while your products are sitting on the quayside—but I wonder whether it would be useful to have that kind of simplified list of all the things that firms have to do to satisfy the requirements.

By the way, I do not share the optimism that the EU being subject to some of the same constraints will make it change its attitude. The EU made it plain throughout the debate that we would not feel as comfortable after Brexit as we did before—although I hope that we can. Is that sort of simplified support from Government worth having, or would that be too complex? Might the industry be required to do that itself, because only those in the industry know everything that they have to do?

Does the Deputy First Minister agree that it is also a fact that, whether we have a Labour Government or a Conservative Government, we will have at least five more years of austerity? The Institute for Fiscal Studies has outlined that the UK Government’s spending plans amount to a real-terms cut to net public sector investment of £18 billion between 2024-25 and 2028-29. Will the Deputy First Minister outline what assessment has been made of how much that equates to per person? Will she outline how an SNP Government would prioritise investment if it had the fiscal levers of other, independent nations?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. My app would not refresh. I would have voted no.

Thanks very much for your contributions so far.

I was interested to hear what Joël Reland had to say about the administrative bandwidth constraints on political ambitions. However, I think that it is also true, certainly in my experience, that politics drives those things. On the idea that the EU is a rules-based institution that slavishly follows the rules—we were discussing animal feeds and so on—Brexit happened and blew all that away.

On the accession of an independent Scotland, it will be politics that drives it, not any rules. Ukraine has climbed up the league table very quickly to accession status, which is a response to the politics rather than to anything else. Could you say a bit more about that?

Neil Bibby quite rightly asked about a Trump presidency. It would be interesting to know whether a future UK Government would stick with a Trump presidency that was encouraging Russia to attack a European state. Would the UK Government be driven to work more closely with Europe?

I will mention two other things. First, in relation to the European Parliament elections, can you see anything on the political horizon that might make it more difficult to effect changes to the TCA—for example, a particular party in any country having a very strong view on something that might impact on the TCA? I know that that will require a little bit of crystal-ball gazing.

The second matter relates to defence and security. Again, are there things in that respect that might happen that would have a substantial impact? It is obviously difficult to say how things in the middle east or further developments in Ukraine will play out in relation to the EU’s response. Can you see on the horizon any defence and security developments that might impact on the ability to change the terms of the TCA in relation to the interests of one or more of the 27 member states? That is for Joël Reland, first.

It is worth noting that Goldman Sachs’s latest report indicates that the UK’s GDP per head currently stands at only 4 per cent above its 2016 figure, compared to 8 per cent for the eurozone and 15 per cent for the US. That proves what everyone who is living in Scotland knows, which is that the UK is the stagnation nation of the developed world.

I will address some of the points that have been made. On tax, it is worth pointing out that the Tories will not acknowledge that the majority of people in Scotland pay less tax than their counterparts in the rest of the UK do. The Tories object to that—I think because those who pay less tax are the lower paid—and the Tories like to turn that on its head, as we see in their proposals. On economic mismanagement, we have the highest ever debt of £2.65 trillion under the Tories—