Chamber and committees

Yes, they were, but as you have said, that was before MUP. In a recent statement, the Deputy First Minister stated our intention to consider the matter again, and we are now in the very early stages of doing so. Indeed, stakeholder organisations such as Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems, Alcohol Focus Scotland and others have called on us to have a look at the issue again, too, and to consider whether we could raise the levy and ring fence the money raised so that it can be spent in those areas.

It is a perfectly reasonable ask, but we need to balance any such move with the impact on business. You have illustrated very clearly the difficulties of measuring the impact of that and how we ensure that we direct any additional money to the places where it needs to go. That is why I said to Gillian Mackay that I am very open minded on the matter.

If, from your experience in the industry, you have anything that you can tell us, please share it with us. I am really keen to work across Parliament and Government to get this right. It might be that getting it right means not having a levy—but it might also mean that there is a levy. In fact, Alcohol Focus Scotland and others have suggested that it should be around 16p. Some ideas are already being suggested, and we will interrogate all of them and factor them into our thinking on how we move forward.

Yes, thank you.

That discussion was really helpful. I thank Scottish Labour, Scottish National Party and Scottish Green members for their support for the policy. Everyone’s comments on the work that is still to be done, the way in which we fund the sector, and the analysis and work that we must do on a public health levy are not lost on me. I will take them all away as action points.

I want to reassure members on funding. There is record funding of £112 million. I am absolutely committed to ensuring that it will be spent in exactly the right places.

I also want to respond to Tess White’s and Sandesh Gulhane’s remarks querying who might support the policy. We have seen the letter in The Lancet and the comments of the Association of Directors of Public Health north-east that Emma Harper referenced. We have seen the views of the 80 organisations that work with people and support them day in and day out. We have seen case studies such as those that have been carried out by the Simon Community Scotland. We have also seen modelling numbers that tell us that the lives of 156 people have been saved. That is not an insignificant number; it represents 156 loved ones. We should never forget that those are not just numbers; there are people behind them.

I turn to the point about treatment. The 40 per cent drop that we have experienced here has also been experienced in England, and the UK Government is looking at the reasons for that.

It is just not true to say that nothing else has been done on the matter. I will give the committee a list of actions that we are currently progressing to tackle the issues, whether they concern harmful, hazardous or dependent drinkers. We are working with the UK Government to produce new clinical guidelines on alcohol treatment for the whole UK. There is an alcohol brief intervention review and there are national specifications on alcohol and drugs. All ADPs already offer psychological counselling, in-patient alcohol-detox services and access to medication, and most offer community detox, ABIs and alcohol hospital liaison. It is therefore just not true to say that nothing is being done, because all those measures are already in place.

As for the proposed right to addiction recovery bill, for months I have been asking to see details of it, but we have not received them. I generally do not respond to social media comments on Government business, but just last week I did so to our colleague Annie Wells, who asked me whether I would support such a bill. I said that I would be happy to meet her to discuss it. We now have a date for that in the diary. I will be happy to discuss the bill then, but we still need to see the detail to understand what it would do.

I am glad to see that many members here support consideration of a public health levy. Mr Gulhane—some of your colleagues might be a bit disgruntled about your having said that you support that, because many of them do not. I am keen to work with you on all such aspects.

All the organisations that have written to us agree that minimum unit pricing works. They also agree that it is not a silver bullet. It has achieved its aim. Gillian Mackay is right: at the heart of the matter are the people whose lives will be made immeasurably better, and that is why lived and living experience is at the heart of all the work that I will do.

I ask the committee to support the Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Act 2012 (Continuation) Order 2024 and the Alcohol (Minimum Price per Unit) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2024, which seeks to change the level from 50p per unit to 65p per unit. I thank the committee for its deliberations. None of what has been said is lost on me and all of it will inform my work.

I am sure that it did not.

Yes—I think all of that. I have seen community asset transfer used very effectively right across the whole of Scotland, mainly for community assets, but local community groups with some expertise can look after the historic assets in their communities. A properties in care review is happening right now, so extensive work has been done on that aspect. I suppose that HES would say that, if it took more properties into its care, it would mean more responsibility, including financial responsibility; in tight circumstances, that is a difficult thing to do. Again, that is why the review of the operating model becomes more important, because if we can raise more revenue and therefore more investment, it becomes more straightforward to take more properties into care and look after them. Some properties in care are in a perilous state and that is why HES has come in. It is about maintaining and sustaining those properties.

However, there is much more that we can do about community engagement. We have talked about volunteering and how that becomes important. There are lots of places in which communities can be engaged in all this, through community development trusts and historical development trusts, for example. The issue that I raised at the very beginning of the session about participation is important in relation to that too.

One of the issues that we are grappling with right now is in relation to churches. Many churches in small towns, particularly in rural areas, are the cultural heritage of those towns. HES has now engaged a member of staff who is working closely with the Church of Scotland on the challenges that it has and the proposals to dispose some of its historical buildings. An example of that—again, I will take you back to my own constituency—is the Trinity church on Larkhall Main Street, which is an amazing building with an amazing historic stained glass window. The window was removed a few years ago because the stone around it started to degrade and they were worried. There is now a consultation with the community in that area about taking over ownership of that and maintaining it, both as a historic monument and as a community asset. Therefore, it may not be about more properties coming into the care of HES but about sharing the expertise so that communities can look after what is on their doorstep.

That is about looking at how we can do more local community engagement. We will pick up that issue in the culture values summit. How do we engage communities more with what is on their doorstep? How do we get them involved and how do we get them fired up about what is there?

We hear from communities when they find out that an asset is to be closed. That has happened over the past couple of years. There was a bit of an earthquake in Larkhall when the Trinity church went on the list and people said, “We’re not having that”, so we know that we can really engage people, and not just in an emotional way, but in a really committed way. I want to develop work with HES and other cultural organisations to consider how we can do more of that. I think that you are absolutely right.

Schools have a huge role to play in how we educate young people about what is in their local communities. My lifelong interest in empire and slavery, for instance, is because of a primary school visit to the David Livingstone birthplace when I was about 10 years old. I have never lost that interest and now have the honour of taking it forward in the Government. Such things can spark something in a 10-year-old that becomes a lifelong passion; we need to create opportunities that ensure that that happens.

We have lots of wonderful young people and older people engaged in their local community. There are many ways in which we can do that. If you have ideas on how we could do it, particularly in rural settings, please share them. My mind, ears and heart are open to any opportunities that you think we are missing.

You will not be surprised to hear me say that the current budget round is incredibly tough. However, putting that aside for a second, in 2023-24, the operational budget for HES has risen by 18 per cent to £114.5 million, which shows a level of commitment. The budget for high-level masonry issues has risen dramatically, too. Again, there is a recognition that we need to invest for all of our futures.

We are coming into a new budget round. The draft budget will be published on 19 December, and I am sure that the committee, among many others, will take the opportunity to have its say on that, and I encourage you to do so.

You made a point about sponsorship. There is a bit of work to be done on that. I know that the committee has asked questions about the issue over the past few weeks and has been thinking about how we can maximise income. Interestingly, HES has suggested that it has made a very strong recovery from Covid, which is good to hear, because it has been hard for many people to recover from Covid. The amount of revenue that it is raising is coming up to previous levels again.

There is one challenge that comes from the way in which HES was set up, because if its revenue goes above a certain amount, that has an impact on the money that it gets from the Government. HES is working on a new plan and a new model for how it does its business. We are looking at ways in which we can build in some flexibility so that it can do more with revenue raising and sponsorship. Various issues can arise from that, but HES has very positive relationships around the world. The “Scottish Connections Framework” is a perfect example of how we can use the number of people who believe that they have Scottish roots—it is 40 million, 50 million or 60 million, depending on who you speak to—and therefore have a connection with Scotland. There are many ways in which we can use that network, but some of that depends on the new business model. We are working with HES on how we can build in flexibility to allow those things to take place.

You mentioned volunteering, which ties into the point that I made to the deputy convener about local communities. Sometimes, local communities are the best custodians of what is on their doorstep, although some communities might not be too sure about what is on their doorstep. When local communities are involved in looking after their local heritage assets, they become the best custodians. We want to encourage and further develop that by working with HES and others to create such opportunities, not just for folk who have a bit of time on their hands but for young people and older people, so that the places are made accessible for all groups, including disability groups.

The number of events that take place in Chatelherault country park, in my constituency, is absolutely unbelievable. Believe it or not, there was a serious issue with badger baiting, but, after we engaged all the primary schools on badger watch, the badger baiting stopped. When communities engage in looking after not just buildings but the land and landscape around them, they become the best guardians of it. We want to encourage much more of that.

It is not flawed. There are current challenges, and challenges on the horizon, in relation to the impact of climate on all our buildings. I explained the situation with Tantallon castle, including the wear on the building and the sea wall and the previous bad repairs, and I take account of that.

I agree with Alex Paterson that preservation is in the DNA of everything that we are doing. It is all about how we maintain, sustain and preserve our cultural heritage for future generations in a sustainable way. That will be different for the different materials that buildings are made from.

I will pick up Neil Bibby’s point about how important skills are for preserving our cultural heritage and taking forward those challenges to resolution. In the past 50 years or so, we have used many different materials in building. We built our cultural heritage from the ground; people built using the things that were around them in their communities. We can go back to ideas around how those buildings and landscapes were created, and we can use traditional ways to preserve them.

We also use innovation. I mentioned the fact that drone footage is used to get to places where it has been difficult to get to, but that is not the be-all and end-all. In some ways, it is not the best way to get a pair of eyes and a pair of hands on crumbling rock or whatever. Preservation is also an issue there.

Keeping buildings wind and watertight is one thing, but creating opportunities in which they can be drivers of change for future generations is another. One example of that is the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, which is in a new building and an old building. The older building was much more solid than the newer building, and challenges came with that. A new hybrid building was created, which the collection is now in. Most of the glass is energy-conserving glass. Not only were the curators excited to show me all the exhibitions—I have been to the Burrell quite a few times; it is one of my favourite places—but it was great to hear from them about how they did that work. They took me up on the roof to see the big array of photovoltaic panels, which, along with the energy-conserving glass, have drastically reduced the museum’s energy bills.

It is not just about making sure that the fabric of the building is wind and watertight and that the building is sustainable for the future; it is about taking opportunities to reduce costs and, therefore, the carbon impact on the environment, and using new technologies to do that. The Burrell won an award for that work, and it has become a bit of an exemplar for other cultural heritage buildings. It can share that experience, and is doing so as we speak.

You cannot just put things in isolation in that sense; they are all connected in different ways. Not only does the Burrell Collection now have a building that will be sustained for many years in the future, but it has also dramatically reduced its energy bills, when energy is probably the biggest cost impact for any of our cultural heritage buildings.

I agree that participation is incredibly important. You will know that the strategy was developed over the summer of 2022, and that participation was at the heart of it. It was developed by Historic Environment Scotland, but the Scottish Government, the Built Environment Forum Scotland and many other organisations and people with an interest were also involved.

There was a public consultation at that point, and HES published its “We Asked, You Said, We Did” report, which was a way of conveying to the people who engaged with the consultation process how important their ideas were. In that process, the point was raised about people not knowing what was on their doorstep and getting to know what was on their doorstep.

In my response to the deputy convener, I talked about my intention to work closely with local authorities. Many of the properties that HES looks after are also looked after by local authorities. For instance, Chatelherault country park in my constituency is incredibly well looked after by South Lanarkshire Council. That is one example, but members will all have examples from their constituencies of the partnership between local government and HES and therefore the Scottish Government, which is incredibly important.

One thing that I wanted to do when I came into my current role was to reinvigorate the culture conveners forum. We have done that, and the forum has now met. We decided immediately that we needed to have an event to look at how we work together and the value of culture in all of our lives. That will be called a culture value summit, which is a straightforward name for it, and it will happen in the new year. That is very important.

I am interested in the local authority historic environment group that Alexander Stewart mentioned. I have not heard of that and it has not been mentioned by any of the culture conveners—I think that I met them all in that meeting just a few weeks ago. However, I will pick up the point and see where that group got to.

In big cities such as Edinburgh or Glasgow, the historic environment is everywhere. In fact, most of the authorities in those places work in buildings that are part of the historic environment, because the city chambers are important buildings. However, that comes with challenges when there are issues with the buildings and local authorities are involved in their clean-up and restoration.

That partnership is important to me. I want to strengthen and grow it, but I want to work together much more dynamically to tackle the challenges that are coming down the road and we can do that only in partnership. There is no way that being separate from local government on the issue would deal with those challenges.

I will take away the issue about the local historic environment group and speak to Councillor Maureen Chalmers, with whom I work closely, as she is the chair of the community wellbeing board.

I know that that issue is close to your heart, convener, and to the hearts of many members, not just of the committee but across the chamber.

I gave a bit of an update when I answered Roz McCall’s question yesterday. Seventy buildings were impacted by high-level masonry issues. At this stage, 53 have now opened or partially opened. Historic Environment Scotland confirmed to me that it expects all the inspections and work to be finished by March next year, which is ever closer as we move swiftly through this year.

You asked about analysis. HES constantly analyses and reviews the issue. It has considered different ways to speed up inspection processes and complete more detailed inspections—and, therefore, get more detailed work done. That includes using technology.

I visited Tantallon castle in the summer when it reopened to the public and was shown some of the damage that climate change is doing there. HES has used drones to identify issues that have come up, but getting a person up there has been much more fruitful because, sometimes, the drone does not tell you everything that you can find out by getting human eyes and hands on what it looks and feels like. HES has been doing a lot of that. All the different sites have different needs and issues. HES has been working closely with us and all the sites to identify those issues as quickly as possible, find the remedies to fix them as quickly as possible and get them opened to the public safely.

That work is continuing and HES updates its website constantly with the latest inspection data. I would be happy to give you and the committee that link in order to access that information as it is updated. It is updated quite swiftly, so keeping on top of it all through communications with me is one way, but the other way is the update to the public through its website.

I would always welcome and agree to such an opportunity, but the announcements that we have heard in the past few days on the new immigration measures that the UK Government wants to take will make that process much more difficult. The earnings threshold is a barrier on its own, but the UK Government has just said that it will scrap its list of areas in which there are skills gaps. Therefore, encouraging people from other parts of the world to come to Scotland to work on our amazing assets has just become much harder.