I welcome to the 22nd meeting of the Constitution, Europe, Excel, Affairs and Culture Committee in 2023. We have received apologies this morning from Maurice Golden MSP. At the top of the meeting, I would like to express my thanks to Maurice Golden, to Ben Macpherson and to Dr Alison Allen, who have served on the committee in this term. I am moving on to new parliamentary duties, and I wish you all well for the future. I thank you for your incredible contribution to the work of the committee. Our first agenda item is to look at how devolution is changing post-EU. Our inquiry has been on-going, and our final evidence session is with the cabinet secretary. We welcome to the committee this morning Agus Robertson at MSP, cabinet secretary for Constitution, Excel, Affairs and Culture, Gerald Byrn, head of constitutional policy and Yun Page, head of UK frameworks with the Scottish Government. Cabinet secretary, can I invite you to make an opening statement on this inquiry? I begin by echoing your thanks to committee members who are moving on and the welcome to committee members who are joining the committee. I am a pretty regular attender, so I look forward to spending more time with the new committee members and wish those who are departing all the best of luck with their new responsibilities. I thank you very much for the opportunity to join you today. I am also very grateful for the committee initiating this important inquiry. As the committee has been hearing, there are widespread concerns about the future of devolution given the approach of the current UK Government. I believe that anyone who supports devolution to this Parliament should be very worried about those developments. We as parliamentarians should be particularly alive to the threats to this institution. After all, we are here because the people of Scotland voted for this Parliament. It is their democratic mandate that has given us democratic self-government in Scotland, and there is no mandate for the steady erosion of the devolution settlement that we have seen since the Brexit referendum. I believe that you will have seen in our paper that sets out how the UK Government has undermined the devolution settlement since 2016. In brief, Westminster has passed without the Scottish Parliament's agreement the Internal Market Act, which reduces our effective powers and allows UK ministers to make further changes unilaterally. The Sewell Convention has, in the words of Mark Drakeford, the First Minister of Wales, withered on the vine. From no breaches in between 1999 and 2018, the Convention will have been breached 10 times when the rule bill receives royal assent. The Secretary of State for Scotland and the UK Government has blocked legislation on devolved matters passed by the Scottish Parliament for the first time, using powers intended as a, quotes, last resort, and has done so without following any of the agreed processes intended to avoid such an action. The UK Government is taking a direct role in devolved policy, including decisions on public spending on devolved matters, bypassing the Scottish Parliament. It has tried to redesign the Scottish deposit return scheme, changing the model agreed by this Parliament to fit its own plans. The levelling up fund has been used to pursue UK Government aims in areas of our responsibility—and by our, I mean all of ours, as a Parliament, not just the Government—in areas of our responsibility, instead of funding the priorities of this Parliament. The levelling up bill currently at Westminster will put on a statutory basis the UK Government's quotes levelling up missions that purport to set targets for Scotland and the rest of the UK for devolved matters such as health, education and crime. Those matters and any objectives and targets are for this Parliament and for this Government. The UK Government simply has no business setting such targets and to do so cuts at the very purpose of devolution, namely to allow Scotland's self-government and autonomy in areas of devolved responsibility. It is incumbent on all of us as Parliamentarians, as supporters of devolution, to recognise the threat that those actions pose to devolution and to take action to address them. I very much look forward to hearing the committee's conclusions and recommendations. Let me finish with a few suggestions, if I may. The preeminence of this Parliament to decide on devolved matters should be restated, although we still have to acknowledge Westminster's continued claim to sovereignty on all matters. There should be a recognition that there is no hierarchy of Governments. Each has its own powers and each has its own responsibilities. There should therefore be a commitment working together with mutual respect and co-operation among the Governments of the UK as equals. Flowing from that, the Government should co-operate through negotiation and consensus using agreed intergovernmental processes, like common frameworks, rather than the UK Government centralising and imposing its views using the formal powers of the Westminster Parliament. There should be a return to the previous constitutional norm that the Sewell Convention is always followed underpinned by proper legal duties on the UK Government. I think that those are minimum necessary steps to restore confidence in the devolution settlement. I recognise others who will have their own ideas, and I look forward to discussing those with the committee. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary, for your opening statement. Also, I thank you for your letter in response to the committee's questions arising from inquiry on how devolution is changing outside of the EU. If I could maybe ask a very topical question, cabinet secretary, yesterday we saw in the news the success of the minimum unit alcohol bill, a 13 per cent reduction in alcohol deaths in Scotland, which is proven to be a policy that has worked in that area. I request that that minimum unit value be increased. That is one of the things that we have covered in the committee as being a potential grey area following the internal market act and withdrawal from Brexit. Is that something that the Government is considering at the moment, and is it something that you are concerned about as well? Well, the Government is always considering public health measures and how to make sure that we can, amongst other things, reduce harm. That is the intention of the minimum unit price for alcohol in Scotland. You are absolutely right, convener, to put on record the success of that measure introduced here. Policy divergence, of course. It does not exist anywhere else in the UK. I would reflect just for a second, because I think that it is not unhelpful to do so, that the introduction of minimum unit alcohol pricing occurred when Scotland and the rest of the UK were part of the European Union and were subject to the norms of the single European market. Notwithstanding that, a devolved policy power in relation to health then was able to be used to introduce minimum unit pricing for alcohol. The Scottish Government of the Time was confident that it was acting within its responsibilities and powers, legislated, and we now have a public policy looked on from other countries as being a success and, indeed, in our own country as a success. Given everything that we have seen since Brexit, I believe that the United Kingdom Government would have intervened by now to stop it. It has done it for other things. It would do it for this. The second thing that I reflect on is that I spent 10 years as some committee members know on the European Scrutiny Committee of the UK Parliament, where, week in, week out, I listened to anti-European pro-Brexit members of that committee railing against article 308 of the EC Treaty, which relates to the efficient workings of the single European market. That, they argued, was a trojan horse against UK sovereign decision making power within the European Union. Notwithstanding that, we were able to legislate in Scotland at that time, notwithstanding article 308, to have a policy as we do on minimum unit pricing for alcohol. So, it was possible within the European Union that it is becoming increasingly difficult within the United Kingdom outside the European Union. My point is that we had flexibility whilst we were part of the European Union, but now, with a UK Government that is sought not just to take back control from the European Union, but seeking to take back control from Scotland, from Wales and Northern Ireland. It is doing so without a democratic mandate. No doubt, we will go into this, convener, so I will stop at this point. It is doing so using a range of ways to intervene and undermine both the devolved settlement and what is supposed to be a working arrangement between the Governments of the UK to avoid those sort of circumstances. There is an ideological, anti-devolutionary, anti-self-government force at play within the Scotland office of the UK Government and a UK Government that is perfectly happy to play along with that. I think that that should concern all of us who support Scottish self-government, regardless of what party we are in. Thank you, Mr Cameron. The title of this inquiry is, How is devolution changing post-EU? It is not what is the state of devolution at present. I am genuinely interested. I know your views on this well in terms of the general points, but there are some aspects that you mentioned, like the use of section 35, the use of UK Government funding areas that are devolved, none of which I think could be argued is against the devolution settlement. Some might say that it is intrinsic to the devolution settlement. To what extent do you think Brexit is the catalyst for changes to attitudes or not? It is a very good question. I tried in my previous answer to explain some of the difference between the pre-Brexit reality in relation to devolved divergent policy making in Scotland within an EU context, within a single market context, and now post-Brexit as a by-product of legislation that has been passed, but also in relation to conventions, and we will come back to the sole convention as well, no doubt. In particular, the evolution of the common frameworks as the first attempt to try and find a way of how can Government work together, given the fact that there are different Governments, that one does have to make sure that legislation can operate side by side. That approach was, I should say, common frameworks based on an understanding of how does one work together, how does one work through problems, mutual respect, all of that kind of stuff. That was supposed to be the primary driver and then was overtaken with the passage of the Internal Market Act. To my mind, a Trojan horse that has been driven into the devolution settlement, why? Because it allows the UK Government, using the very narrow parameters of the Internal Market Act to argue from its point of view that pretty much anything that it doesn't like to look of is not permissible, and they alone are the arbiters of this. Mr Cameron asked about, or made the suggestion, that some of the changes post devolution, so UK Government spending in areas that are devolved, the use of different sections and so on. That shouldn't necessarily be a matter of concern. If one believes that this Parliament and the Government that answers to this Parliament has responsibility in these areas of devolved policy making and you are able to hold the ministers to account for what we decide, suddenly you are not in relation to decisions that are being made in devolved areas by UK ministers. I could make the political point by a party that hasn't won a single national election in this country since 1955, 68 years, and are using a number of methods to get round the Parliament elected by the people, the Government answering to that Parliament. In effect, it's a subversion of the devolution settlement as we understand it. It should concern all members who take their responsibilities, as I know they do, holding the Government to account, making sure that we do what we were elected to do, but what we have seen since Brexit as a byproduct of the ending of European legal frameworks, European decision making, incidentally, which also included co-decision involving member states, involving members of the European Parliament, involving direct discussions and negotiations pre-Brexit between the Scottish Government and European institutions, has now been overtaken by the UK Government that not only is working on another legal basis, and I acknowledge that there were changes necessary to the legal frameworks post-Brexit, whether we wanted it or not. Of course, we didn't vote for it in this country. Nevertheless, new laws, new frameworks were necessary, but even where one comes up with arrangements to try and work one's way through policy divergence, difference of views and so on, to then disregard the rules that one's agreed. For the first years post-Brexit, those were things that we were observing because, take as an example, the breaches of the Sule convention have now been happening for some time since Brexit. We'll perhaps come back to that. But for some people there was a sense that it's kind of dry. What does this really matter to people here? But I think that we've now come to a point where people are realising that when you add together what is happening across the piece by the UK Government in relation to the devolution settlement, it amounts to something that is profoundly bad. That is the undermining of our democracy and our democratic institutions. We need to understand that that is what's happening. It's a wake-up call, and we need to call out what's happening. Thank you. Can I bring in Mr Ruskell, please? Thank you. You talked about the need to return to a constitutional norm and the evidence that we had from retired former civil servants suggested that the situation that we're in right now is anything but normal. What does that sort of path look like practically? Going forward, what does a renegotiation or a new basis and new understanding look like? How would you get to that point? I could give a very sort of structural legalistic answer about whether this change or that change might be worthwhile. There are different ideas out there, and we might come back to that. But to a certain extent there's a more profound problem with all of this, that when you are dealing with a relationship with a Government that views and says so openly that the Government of Scotland, elected by the people, is quotes a hostile Government, and that antagonistic attitude infuses all of the intergovernmental work from top to bottom that is undertaken. I underline to colleagues who sometimes might be tempted for political reasons to describe the dysfunctionality around evolution as two Governments not being prepared to work together. I say that it's a total fiction, and I say that as somebody who is in the boiler room of trying to make this work. To Mr Ruskell's question, the most important thing to making intergovernmental relations work, to make governance operate as it should, is a state of mind in the UK Government that is respectful of devolution and is prepared to work with the Government and the Parliament of Scotland. At present, we do not have that. We run the risk. We could see changes in Government, but that does not guarantee that there is a change in attitude. Yes, we could see some changes in structures, so we might come back to that. Perhaps we could see the Soul Convention put on a statutory footing, for example, but it really does need to be on that kind of macro level rather than shunting it off to the House of Lords to play a role in adjudicating over our own democracy, which seems a profoundly odd suggestion to get ourselves out of the situation that we find ourselves in. There are changes that can be made to make the Soul Convention to put it on a much more solid footing, which would be a significant change, and there would be others. However, at the heart of things, there needs to be an understanding that devolution is about being able to make different policy choices. It is about divergence. That need not be a bad thing. That was possible in the European Union. It is now increasingly not possible in the United Kingdom. If we have an activist, ideologically driven UK Government that is taking this confrontational attitude, which it is, describing a partner Government in the UK as a hostile Government, I should say incidentally, on this, our views are shared by Welsh colleagues, a Government led by the Labour Party. The idea that this is simply, I do not know, bad blood between an SNP-led Scottish Government and a Tory-led UK Government is for the birds, because the concerns that I am outlining today could equally be made by Mark Drakeford, McAntony and other colleagues in the Welsh Government, with whom we have an excellent working relationship, because we both agree about exactly what is happening at the present time and we share concerns, although we have a different vision of where Scotland and Wales should be going constitutionally when you are in the boiler room of trying to make devolution work and you see the way in which, in particular, this UK Government, because it was not always so, even with a Conservative Party and Government at a UK level, they did not always take this confrontational approach, but they are most certainly now. The most important thing to answer Mr Ruskell's question is that we need a change of attitude in the UK Government. Yes, no doubt, and we can go into the details of what changes one might think about in terms of how to make common frameworks work better, how we could help the UK Government to rethink its approach to the internal market act and so on, but it takes a different attitude, which is respectful of devolution. The political will is a precondition here, and that does not exist. Can I pick up a couple of specific issues then? On the deposit return scheme in your response to the committee, you were saying that the Scottish Government was following the agreed and published process to obtain an exclusion from the internal market act, and then the UK Government ministers intervened and created new procedural steps that were not part of that process. I just wonder if we could get into a little bit more detail there. I will give colleagues to my left and right the opportunity to come in if they want to add anything. I think that most people in the committee are aware that the UK's specific objections to glass included in the deposit return scheme appeared very much at the 11th hour. We know that there was not an objection to the Welsh Government including glass in their approach. Coming up very much in the rear view mirror was a UK Government incidentally run by a party that had advocated glass being part of the deposit return scheme. Then, at the 11th hour towards the end of the process, coming in and using the internal market act as a way to stymie the policy's introduction, because, of course, there would have needed to be an exemption as part of the internal market act to allow Scotland to proceed with a deposit return scheme. The UK Government sat on that request, did not process it as it should, and then pulled the rug out from under the scheme. That is the long and short of what happened. Is there anything that the colleagues want to add? I am interested in that detail about how the procedural additional stats were brought in, because I do not think that that has been examined. I have a few context to this that might be useful in setting out some of the process issues to be faced with DRS. One of the many concerns that the Scottish Government had with the internal market bill was when it was going through its parliamentary process in 2020. It was not just its general effect on the operation of the devolution settlement, but it was very hard to reconcile the approach that the act took with the approach endorsed by through common frameworks. It agreed GMC's statement of principles on how common frameworks should operate, which was agreed by all Governments in October 2017. Very late in the bill's passage in the second half of December 2020, through pressure from parliamentarians in both houses, work around, I suppose is the best way to describe it, was introduced to the bill whereby UK ministers could use their delegated powers under the act to give an effect and an exclusion where agreement on policy of the governance had been reached through a common framework. A ministerial statement was laid in the parliament to that effect a year later, following work to agree a process to give effect to that commitment. We used it successfully after some teething problems, but that is understandable. You are introducing new processes to give effect to an exclusion for single-use plastics and the first successful use of the process. Initially, we had proposed that the exclusion would be wide enough to cover other types of resource and waste issues, including DRS, to avoid having to go through the same process again. If you were agreeing in principle that there was virtue in pursuing divergent policy, even if it carried a market impact because of the wider social and environmental benefits, we felt that argument, that principle would be established so that it would make sense to have a wider exclusion. However, we ended up with UK ministers determining the scope of the exclusion very tightly around the devolved SUP regulations. With that learning in mind, although we have been discussing with the UK Government and the devolved Administrations the need for a DRS exclusion since the summer of 2021, we embarked in the autumn of last year on a bespoke process to secure an exclusion for DRS on the basis that gave plenty of time to work through the issues through the common framework to consider the evidence, including direct and indirect market impacts, with a view to agreement being reached and the necessary regulations being laid in Westminster to allow the Scottish regs to proceed as planned. Our experience was that there was a lot of delay. That information that I have thought had to be provided had to be re-provided. We were surprised at repeated reference to a formal ministerial request process that is part of the exclusions process when no such requirement exists. My observation would be far from learning from the first SUP episode. What we saw were amplification of delays and misunderstandings as to how the process operates. That is where we are. I think that next steps will be taking this back to discuss at official's level how we can revisit the process to remove any of the scope for misinterpretation that we saw with the DRS and being clear about what the steps are and the respective roles of our Governments are to give effect to an exclusion. If I could move on to just another issue that we have looked at as a committee, that is the retained EU law bill. You have already come in front of the committee and voiced your concerns about the laws that are in schedule 1 of the bill that might be thrown off the cliff edge. One of those concerns is air quality. We had the Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero into committee this week where she said that the director general had declined a request to remove the relevant laws in relation to air quality from the schedule and that she would be seeking to escalate a further request to ministerial counterparts. However, she did point to the fact that you will be leading the work on that. Can you give us a sense of what that process now is? You have made a request to retain the laws that are important that you do not want to see within the schedule, but where do you go now so that you have had that flat refusal to retain those laws? What does that process now look like? First, the context for the non-efficient addo is what we are discussing at the present time. It is worth just briefly explaining what is the process that we are now involved in. The retained European Union law bill has evolved quite dramatically and differently from the way in which it was intended. The UK Government wanted to change the status of law inherited being part of the European Union into the UK statute book. It originally wanted to have everything fall off a cliff edge, so either legislate to retain those laws before the end of this year was a proposed date. Then there was a realisation within Whitehall that there were all kinds of risks involved and there were capacity issues about managing. It was not sensible from the first place. Devolved Governments had said that this was not the right way to go about things. There was a very significant opposition from the House of Lords. The UK Government changed its way around approaching the process. Instead of allowing everything to fall off, it was going to identify specific measures that were going to be legislated out of existence. The Scottish Government was not consulted on the content of the schedule prior to the UK Government's amendments being tabled. We carried out a rapid assessment to inform the supplementary legislative consent memorandum, which was lodged on 24 May 2023. That was debated in the Parliament. There are a number of members in the committee who took part in that debate. It is fair to say in our view that the vast majority of the laws on the schedule are no longer operable, in that they are deemed to have served their function, their spent, and a proportion of the statutory instruments are England only. Mr Oskell has brought up one particular measure, which is an issue of concern, which has impact in Scotland. At present, we are trying to go through formal processes. I remember listening very closely at the debate to Mr Cameron's point where he was suggesting that there is a process and that the process does not preclude items being withdrawn from the schedule. We are seeking to do that, so let's see. We are working with the UK Government to see whether they are indeed prepared to listen to the views of devolved Governments in relation to the schedule. What is the process then? What we have just heard in relation to deposit return, it feels like the process was effectively being made up as we were going along, not by the Scottish Government but by the UK Government. Is there any certainty as to what the process is now? Is it about repeated meetings between ministerial counterparts to try to win the argument? Where is there a point where this can be escalated to? It feels that, with this bill, we are already running out of time. September really is the real deadline, isn't it? That goes to the heart, to my mind, of the concern about inter-governmental relations, which is, as you can say, while there are common frameworks. One can say that there are inter-ministerial groups that bring together, and that is the third of the third level. That makes sense of IGR interaction between devolved Administrations and the UK Government. Things are communicated at that level, and civil servants are regularly in discussion with one another, so those points are discussed. My sense of this is that this will go to the lead minister dealing with the bill and a political decision will be made, and that will determine whether the views of the Scottish Government and, by wider extension, the Parliament are taken into account or not. It is wholly unsatisfactory, of course, but that is the reality of how things are currently proceeding. For its own reasons, the UK Government will take a view that this legislation needs to go through quickly, et cetera, et cetera. We will then, no doubt, suggest that it is up to the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government to use powers that will be conferred on it to deal with this. We are back to the same problem of things happening to us that we have not agreed to, and disregarding the Sule Convention again would be the tenth time. Thank you very much. I have two questions, one on Sule and one on IGR. If I could look at IGR first, there is a dispute mechanism within the current IGR system. There was a consensus, I think, from witnesses before the committee, that that remains untried, and I don't think that the Scottish Government has sought to trigger the process—you'll correct me if I'm wrong—but can I just ask the cabinet secretary about his views on the efficacy of the IGR system, both at ministerial level and official level? That's a very good question. I would observe just in terms of that. If we are dealing with processes, and so far in the committee this morning we've talked about the deposit return scheme and the last-minute nature of the UK Government intervention, and now we're talking about the rule bill again at the 11th hour, we are currently trying to work through a process of saying to the UK Government, in the case of the deposit return scheme, as we heard, all kinds of communications going back and forth, trying to explain, this is the objective, this is what's trying to happen, and then at the 11th minute the rug being pulled out of it, and then how is a dispute resolution process supposed to work at two minutes to midnight, when you get a ffeta complee? I don't know how that's supposed to work. Is your view that it's not even worth trying? Listen, I hope that the minister knows that I am very pragmatic when it comes to these things, and I have said to this committee in evidence before that one of the first things that I did in taking on the position that I did was to try and kickstart the common frameworks process together with Chloe Smith then a minister at the cabinet office, and we both agreed that it was worth doing, we both agreed that it needed a shove, and we instructed officials to make progress on all of that, and that worked. Without the 11th hour time constraints about specific issues in general with good people, with good will, it was possible to deal with some of these issues pragmatically and move forward. So what I'm saying to Mr Cameron is what I'm not sure about is, and that's why it's been untested, is if the approach of the UK Government is to kind of go through the formal processes, but then right at the end of the process kind of put down its trump card to say, we're invoking this measure or that to stop something, what does the dispute resolution resolve in that case? The UK Government has simply ruled it's not happening, so maybe there will be circumstances where my Chloe Smith cabinet office example would hold that in dealing with something that doesn't have tremendous time pressure and it is not satisfactory that things might be escalated that way. I mean I'm sure Mr Cameron knows that in terms of the intergovernmental, the updated intergovernmental relationship that there are three tiers of interaction, First Minister to Prime Minister and then so on. I had a meeting this week in relation to European Union in terms of European Union business. It was the fourth that had taken place between the UK Government and the Scottish Government since the new intergovernmental relations. It was the third out of four of those meetings that involved a late minute, last minute notice of meeting taking place, last minute notification of the subject, last minute notification of what the subject was about and then a very much, let's get on with this and get through the thing. So there are a number of ways in which the formal process suggests that there are ways to meet, there are ways to seek resolution if there's a dispute, let's escalate things in that way and we have a process which in terms of the day and daily, the week in, week out is supposed to operate and on a formal level, I suppose that's what I'm saying to put it pithily, the formal level there are ways in which one should be able to avoid the kind of examples that we've talked about so far and evidence of more. The problem though is if the UK Government which holds the whip hand because of the nature of legislation, the nature of Westminster parliamentary sovereignty and so on is exercised, is it doesn't matter really what frameworks, what structures are in place because if one is prepared to go round them, which the UK Government has, then a dispute resolution process is not going to solve things. Is there anything that colleagues want to add to that? I think just that the section 35 order on the gender recognition reform bill also came right at the end of the process and we've set out that the main round of understanding on the use of that power wasn't perhaps followed in a way that you'd expect for the first use of that power as well. I think that's just another example that we set out to have in the letter to you. Obviously you can't say much about that because there's litigation, but it's certainly in a similar space to what the minister has described. The thing that I'm trying to convey to colleagues on the committee is, and obviously it's easier for a Scottish Government minister to say this because we take part in the meetings, we observe how things work in the observance and in the breach in the attitudes in the approach that is taken. I appreciate that it's not straightforward to think yourself into a process to understand how it actually works as opposed to the formal here's common frameworks, here's how that's supposed to work, here's a sole convention, here's how that's supposed to work. What I'm trying to convey to colleagues on the committee, being in the boiler room as I am around those things, is that because of the people who are involved and because of their ideological approach to devolution, those things are not working as they are supposed to, even in relation to the agreements, the systems, the safeguards that are in place, they are not working. I make the point again that this is not just our view, this is the view of the Welsh Government as well, they are subject to exactly the same approach by the UK Government and instructive to see what has happened to them in relation to the deposit return scheme. No objection to glass being included from their point of view, now suddenly they are facing the same approach that we did here from the UK Government. Thank you. I'd like to touch on Sule because it overlaps with some of what we've just been discussing. This committee has taken the view, in fact, the unanimous view that the sole convention is under strain. There have been some very high-profile examples of post-Brexit of this Parliament not consenting to legislation. There have also been several examples of this Parliament consenting to legislation in post-Brexit areas such as fisheries and farming. In 2021, the Parliament gave consent to eight UK bills, and only this week, last night, we voted for an LCM on economic crime and corporate transparency. Your Government's legislative consent memorandum to that bill said that the Scottish Government remains supportive of the intent of the bill, believes that engagement has been good overall between officials. With all that said, there are clearly tensions and clearly strains in the use of the sole convention, but do you agree that this is about politics and personalities and that, at official level and day-to-day, the sole convention still works? The first thing that I would say is that one of the great joys of ministerial responsibilities is my total admiration for the civil service, for the neutrality, for the advice that they give. I assume that there are people out there who don't appreciate that there is a singular civil service in Great Britain. There is not a Scottish civil service per se, and there is not an English or an English and Welsh civil service. There is a civil service that works across Great Britain. There is a Northern Irish civil service, which is different. For that reason, one of the benefits of that is that officials are able to work together, often very well at a technical level, but that presupposes a number of things. If ministerial guidance—because, of course, civil servants work to ministerial guidance on things—is such that, in relation to the sole convention, one is prepared to make legislative proposals that require legislative consent motion. That is communicated on a Friday and then the next Monday, so less than one working day. The pursuit of that legislative consent motion is disregarded. That is what happened only a few short weeks ago. It shows how bad things can be. Regardless of whether civil servants are working well together, Donald Cameron is absolutely right to identify. There are good examples. There is legislation where there is co-operation. There are areas where it makes sense to use legislative consent motions and to be pragmatic where that serves public administration and best policymaking. No doubt. He used the formulation that the sole convention is under strain. Mark Drake for the First Minister of Wales described it as withering on the vine because there is an acceleration in the disregard of the sole convention. That is the thing that I think the committee should take particular cognisance off. What we are actually seeing is that we are seeing a UK Government that is prepared to increasingly, and at an accelerated pace, disregard the likes of the sole convention. I know that the committee knows that, but just so that it is on the record, the disregards of the legislative consent motions started with the EU withdrawal act of 2018, then the EU withdrawal act of 2020, then the EU withdrawal future relationship act 2020, the UK internal market act 2020, professional qualifications act 2022, subsidy control act 2022, nationality and borders act 2022, trade Australia and New Zealand act 2023 and genetic technology precision breeding act 2023. Have a look at the dates and see what is happening. It is happening in plain sight. What is happening is that the UK Government is increasingly choosing to disregard the convention. Many, perhaps Mr Cameron himself, has taken the view in the past that simply having a convention that can be disregarded is something that should be of concern. It is increasingly of concern because what is happening here is a fact. I know that the Secretary of State for Scotland has a difficulty when he is confronted with the facts about what he and his Government are doing in relation to it. On sole, those are not minor pieces of legislation. Some of them are extremely important. The internal market act is a good example of that, a profoundly important piece of legislation. Scottish Parliament voted not to give legislative consent, but the UK Government disregarded it. Donald Cameron's point is that, regardless of the willingness of civil servants to work with one another often very well, if the UK Government ministers choose to disregard the devolution settlement, they will do that, and that is exactly what they are doing. Thank you. Mr Pippey, did you have a supplementary question on that area of question? Yes, I did. First, I share many concerns. I agree that the approach from the UK Government has been unacceptable, and it is not a line of our views on devolution. We have a new IGR model, but this has pointed to hearing from the cabinet secretary that there has been no meaningful change. I heard his frustration earlier about two Governments uncooperating and his refuting of that suggestion, but I also acknowledge what he said about the Welsh Government and Mark Drakeford's comments on this area. Does the cabinet secretary not withstand the challenges facing Government in this? It is notoriously difficult for the Parliament, let alone the public, to fully understand and appreciate how IGR meetings go, how these common frameworks discussions are going. Does he accept that we need more transparency? How would we achieve that more transparency? Do we need more reporting? Does that reporting need to come from UK Government ministers? Does it need to come from Scottish Government ministers? Because if the public just see two Governments arguing all the time, they might just come to that conclusion unless there is greater transparency and greater information in the public domain about those discussions. Some people amplify that particular perspective incorrectly as well. Neil Bibby's question is a very good one. There is a tension involved in intergovernmental relations and transparency. That will be understood by committee members, which is that the Governments are not supposed to keep a running commentary on the issues that are discussed at meetings. I might characterise my unhappiness about the general approach, but I have not been keeping a running commentary on the substance of what was being discussed at the meeting. It is important for there to be trust between Governments about how one proceeds with different policy areas. I understand that and I respect that. How can parliamentarians and committees that have the responsibility to hold Government and Government ministers to account, how can we best report that back in a way that you can take a view on? I have given evidence to this committee now a number of times where I have said, and we will be saying again on record now, convener, that I am extremely keen that my officials work with the clerks of the committee to find the best way in which we can, whether it is on retained EU law, whether it is on Scottish Government alignment with European Union legislation and policies, and on intergovernmental relations. What is the best way in which we can report that back to the committee? That is a work in progress, because those discussions are taking place on how does that happen in relation to retained EU law and European alignment. On intergovernmental relations, we need to think about how we make clear how things work and how things do not work. If it is not already in the public realm, it is not unhelpful for people to be aware that it is a matter of record. The Scottish Government keeps records on intergovernmental relations. The experiences, good, bad and indifferent, are things that we try to have an institutional memory around. I find it curious that a lot of this revolves around the extent to which UK Government ministers and UK Government departments understand devolution at all. If they do, the extent to which they are prepared to have a pragmatic relationship or whether it is a sort of tick box exercise, I get the feeling quite a lot that meetings are held to simply say that consultation took place. There was discussion on the issue of whatever. As opposed to genuinely taking away, right, I was not aware of that or that is a good suggestion or no, I do not think that we are likely to agree with that, but let's find a pragmatic way forward with all of that. I think that there is a public interest in understanding how things are not working. I agree with Mr Bibby on that point. I will definitely take away how we can help committee members and the wider Scottish Parliament and through that the public have an understanding of how things are not working because it's pretty stark. The cabinet secretary mentioned the issue of the state of mind and the need for a different approach and different culture. We have also heard about the personalities and the people taking the decisions at a UK Government level not wanting things to work. You mentioned also that the sole convention has been breached 10 times since 2018, but, of course, from 1999 to 2010, when there was a Labour Government in, it was not breached at all. Would you agree that there is an opportunity to change the mindset and change the approach with a change of government, with a Labour Government?  Regardless of whether it is a new Government, ministers come and go and perhaps with some new ministers and departments, whether that is with a current Government or any future Government, that might get better. I suppose that my political answer to Mr Bibby's question in all of that is the ultimate solution to this problem, is that we don't have another Government elsewhere making decisions about this country and then it will simply be the ministers here who are responsible to you, the committee and the Parliament. Should we really leave it to chance that once every few years there might be somebody who is a bit better? Why don't we get it right all of the time in terms of the process that is at play? I have to say, and I have looked very closely at the suggestions that have been made by the former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, in relation to devolution, which is pretty underwhelming really given the scale of the problem that I have outlined and others have outlined and academics have underlined and no doubt you will be considering when you come to publishing your own report. When measuring against the problems that are there for all to see, I don't see how the suggestions that have been made change any of that. With new people in post, might there be changes? Yes, there might, but I think that the temptation will still be there by a UK Government that still retains the view that the Westminster Parliament is ultimately sovereign in everything and that is the position of the UK Labour Party as well, that that gets us away from the problem that we have found ourselves to be in, which is the mindset that there is a hierarchy of parliaments in the UK and one is more senior to others, and that's also the view of the Labour Party. Changes of Governments as changes of ministers may bring some short-term relief, but they don't actually solve the problem at the heart of the problem. I want to encourage people to think great thoughts, and if Mr Brown wants to go away and actually think of some measures that might obviate those problems, I'd very much welcome that or Mr Bibby's party more generally. I think that Mr Macpherson has got a supplementary on this area as well. Thanks, convener. Just going back a bit, Cabinet Secretary, with regard to the inter-governmental relations, reflect on my own experience in Government dealing with UK ministers in different portfolio areas and would endorse what you said about how reliant the functioning of that system is on having UK ministers that, one, understand devolution and, two, care about it. You mentioned Chloe Smith earlier. I would say that she was somebody who understood devolution and cares about it, but I just wanted to give you the opportunity to reflect more on just how important having a personality in the UK Government chair, whatever policy area that's in in terms of inter-governmental relations, is important. Without that, you get the experience, as you set out, of it just being a tick box exercise that is badly informed and certainly not meaningful for the Scottish Government or the Welsh Government. The characterisation is correct. It is significantly personality driven. It is about UK ministers who don't really understand devolution, don't really understand where other Governments may have different views, whether that's the Scottish Government or the Welsh Government or when it's up and running again the Northern Irish Executive. I just reflect on so many of the meetings that take place, take place so late in the day that you can't actually meaningfully influence anything. That goes back to the tick box nature of things. That is a problem that there is right across Government. One definitely gets a sense of the UK Government that Michael Gove is viewed within the UK Government as one of those that they think gets devolution. He's the one who's sent out to bat on these sort of issues. I just observe in passing—I think it's quite interesting—you look at when there are fora where the different levels of Government get together. We see that often in the British Irish context. Just observe how often I see the Irish t-shirt present and the UK Prime Minister not. It makes my point that it's not even taken that seriously by the Prime Minister. Obviously there's an improvement with the current Prime Minister on the last that couldn't even be bothered to meet the head of Government in Scotland. The new Prime Minister, one of the first things that he did when coming into office, was to meet. That's an improvement on something that was really not good. However, unless leadership in the UK Government takes this sort of problem seriously, I don't think it's going to change much. It's viewed very much as Michael Gove can deal with it. He gets the nuances. The rest of the cabinet see it as being a thing that needs to be managed—the boxes ticked. There is another dimension to all of this, which no doubt some constitutional academic will write about in time, which is the difference in UK Government departments that have better understandings of devolution. How, for example, DEFRA as a Government department understands devolution better than quite a lot of other Government departments in the same way as farming today on Radio 4 would be one of the programmes on BBC Network that actually gets devolution better than many others because you have to. There is a personality dimension to this. There is also a departmental dimension to all of this as well, and at some point people will delve into what was the different departmental view, for example, on the deposit return scheme, because I'm not so sure that every UK Government opposed Scotland proceeding. It was the Scotland office in particular, and it was doing so for political reasons. It certainly wasn't for environmental reasons. You began, cabinet secretary, by listing what essentially amount to new systems of veto, subtle though they might be, and new ways of encroaching on this parlance, budget and activities and powers. At the heart of all that, obviously, as Mr Ruskell alluded to, is the fact that one party in this conversation, the UK Government, ultimately, if it chooses to legislate, has the power to make up the rules as it goes along. We never really talked about this very much in or the UK certainly never really talks about this very much, but is there any way through this for so long as the doctrine of Westminster sovereignty prevails or does it have a toxic effect? It certainly infuses Westminster politics and is agreed by both of the main UK parties. There's no proposal from the Conservative party and no proposal by the UK Labour party to change the nature of Westminster sovereignty. There are no plans for a UK constitution that would make sure that all of this was there to be clearly understood and recognised. In part, although I digress somewhat, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the UK is a multinational state where more than 80 per cent of the population live in one part of it. That also infuses people's mindset about decision making and democracy and democratic institutions. In Westminster politics, and colleagues in the committee will know, I spent 16 years there, so I have a pretty good idea of how it works. Even by those who have a more benign view of devolution, the UK Parliament and the UK Government are still responsible for the important stuff. The restless natives, be they in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, are dealing with lesser matters. That's why, as a recent example, the foreign office guidance encouraged by the UK Government Scotland office in relation to external affairs conducted by the UK Government is just a very, very good example for that phenomenon. Sit on the naughty step. Don't get above yourself, even though the rules are very, very, very clear about what different Governments can do. There is nothing to preclude the Scottish Government holding views on absolutely anything and sharing those with others, but it's a good reflection on that Westminster mindset, which is that it is sovereign. It can decide on whatever it wants, and it will order devolved Governments around however they like. An utterly foreign concept, if you were meeting with, I don't know, German Parliamentarians or German Government ministers or people from any other country that actually had a constitutionally ordered and guaranteed system. The whole thing about the UK's unwritten constitution is that it's a licence to do whatever it likes. If the convener will indulge me on my last day in that case, how wide an understanding do you think there is politically and publicly on what can be done to perhaps improve that debate about how abnormal the situation is internationally? I think that Israel and possibly, arguably New Zealand, do not have a constitution. I don't think that there are other examples that one can point to in the world of countries that don't have a basic law. We always talk about this as a problem that can be solved some other time, but does that debate even take place in the political world in Westminster? No, not at all. Even with a forthcoming UK general election, I'm seeing absolutely zero debate involving the two main UK political parties about significant constitutional reform in the way that Alasdair Allan outlines tinkering, no doubt. Changing this or that around the edges might improve some things, but there's no ambition to approach things at the level that Dr Allan outlines. Even here, where we had a debate this week about Scotland potentially having a constitution where we found different parties with their different views on Scottish independence, finding it impossible—by that I'm talking about the parties that oppose Scottish independence—to be able to think themselves into a situation where, if it happened, we understand that parties quite legitimately do not want Scotland to be an independent country but could not think themselves into a circumstance where, unlike others, because, as I mentioned in the debate, Baroness Helena Kennedy, who is one of the country's foremost constitutional lawyers and thinkers, was perfectly able to say, I'm not in favour of Scottish independence, but if you're going to do it, this is a good process to go through and it is a good thing to do. There's always a view that aren't there all of these other serious issues of the day that Government needs to be getting on with, so we'll just not bother dealing with especially constitutional issues. Incidentally, an argument used in the 1970s by the Conservatives against devolution was that I was hearing the same arguments this week in relation to Scotland's future and a constitution. I know that it's a dry subject for some people, but how we are governed, how our rights are safeguarded, how we hold Government to account and so on and so on, these are things that really matter as much as health, education, justice, transport, environment and all the other things that Government needs to do, and surely we should all aspire for it to be as good as it can be. However, in this specific context, for this specific inquiry, Dr Allan, I think that when we're dealing with an opposite number that regards the democratically elected Government of Scotland as a hostile Government, it tells you everything you need to know about why things are as dysfunctional as they are and they are because the UK Government and foremost amongst it, the UK Government Scotland office that has so little else to do is spending its time finding ways to undermine devolution. Just going back to Alistair Allan's first question about Westminster's sovereignty, we all know each other's constitutional positions on it, but ultimately devolution is what it says. It's not the surrender of power, it's the devolving of power and it's intrinsic in the 1998 settlement. Is this understanding that, for instance, the UK Government can still legislate in devolved areas? I suppose that my question is ultimately that devolution entails some reservation of power. However much you want Scotland to be independent, as it is set up, that's just the nature of the beast, that there is a reservation, there is a withholding, if you like. I understand that and that's a statement of fact by Mr Cameron and that is indeed why I think that the best former Government for Scotland is the ultimate self-government, which is Scotland being a sovereign state. Short of that, I listened to a briefing by David Rogers, who is one of the most experienced civil servants in the Scottish Government. I'll take the opportunity because he's just about to retire to put on my record my personal appreciation for his long service and the appreciation of other Scottish ministers and the First Minister, which was shared with him directly when he spoke to the Scottish Government Cabinet last week. He is one of those people who is long enough and experienced enough to have been involved going right back to pre-devolution and the debate at that time about the purpose of certain policies being devolved and others being reserved and the spirit in which that was then legislated and then was approached by UK Governments. The context of that was that there should be Governments that would be viewed as important as one another, which would have different responsibilities, namely those exercising those issues that are devolved and those issues that were reserved. The idea that we would, 23 years later on, be seeing, and this is the context for the inquiry, of course, the impact of Brexit, then seeing the UK Government use that context as a way to involve itself directly in areas that are devolved, whilst at the same time having no democratic oversight from this Parliament is definitely not something that was foreseen as the norm of devolution and devolution working. I cannot think of a single politician or academic who at the outset of devolution was painting an image of this being how things could or should work. We are going to go on to the next evidence session where I will replace myself with my culture hat on shortly to talk about how do we approach culture, a devolved policy area in Scotland, where we now have a UK Government, not answerable to this Parliament, that does not consult the Government elected to do it, making decisions about things relating to culture here, which are devolved. It is not joined up best, it is not joined up. At worst, it is subverting your ability to hold these ministers to account. Do they come here? Do they explain how they do all of this more often than not? No, they don't. Section 35 was legislated for and the equivalent of section 48, the Government equivalent. At that point, the Labour Government thought that there was a need to enshrine that. I am sure that there has been a change of views, practice and so on for 25 years. At that point in time, someone believed it. I understood it, but Mr Cameron is making my point about the approach of the then Labour Government, which is now shared by the UK Conservative Party, which reflects the attitude towards the ultimate sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament and the ability to intervene in areas of devolution. Those were supposed to be last resorts, they were. Now we are seeing them not being last resorts, we are seeing them increasingly being used. I acknowledge that some of those are measures that are in legislation, which were not used. Now they are being used in a post-Brexit context in ways that then subvert the role of this Parliament in holding ministers to account who have been elected to make decisions in these policy areas and see them made by Governments in a Parliament that are not answerable to the people who have been elected to do just that. That is not the appropriate working of devolution or of a normal understanding of a self-governing country, whether devolved or independent. From slightly over where I was hoping to be, cabinet secretary, but I think that that is exhausted questions on that area. Thank you. We will suspend briefly while officials change over. Welcome back and we now turn to our second and hopefully pleasant inquiry into culture in our communities. We welcome back Angus Robertson, MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Constitutional, SNF and Culture, who has joined by Lisa Baird, Deputy Director of Cultural Access Organisations at the Scottish Government. Cabinet Secretary, can you give an opening statement on this inquiry? I am delighted to be back, convener. I thank your invitation to contribute to the committee's inquiry on culture in communities and for the opportunity to make some opening comments. I am delighted that this inquiry is giving voice to the talented individuals and inspiring organisations that make up our distinctive cultures in communities across Scotland. One of our ambitions in Scottish Government is to meet communities, economic, physical and social needs, ensuring sustainability and supporting wellbeing. Culture and creativity are central to this and our culture strategy sets out our ambition for everyone to experience the transformative potential of culture. It is no secret that we are operating in a challenging fiscal context as a result of sustained high inflation caused by the economic shocks that Scotland has faced, including the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the on-going cost of living crisis. In light of the challenging context, we have been reviewing the actions that support our culture strategy. While we recognise the aims and ambitions of the strategy are still very relevant, we will be publishing a refreshed action plan later this year, setting out what we will do to respond to those challenges and those will include actions on how we will support culture and creativity in our communities. I should say that I very much look forward to this report being able to inform that updated approach. Notwithstanding the challenging financial picture, we are proud that our culture funding reaches grassroots, local, regional, national and international communities. We do this through our support for initiatives like the Culture Collective, System of Scotland, Youth Music Initiative, support for independent museums, funding of our national public bodies, support for the national performing companies, support for the Edinburgh International Festival and many others. This support demonstrates the value that we place on cultural and creative organisations and their contribution to the wellbeing of the country, promoting the arts, providing employment and working with communities across Scotland. You have heard of the incredible work that our national bodies and local authorities do in support of our communities. I look forward to hearing the committee's reflections on the extent to which cultural need and good place-based cultural policy exists across Scotland. As Creative Scotland says, good place-based cultural policy recognises the individual needs of people, communities and places, recognises the unique culture and heritage of individuals and communities and responds to the ambition, need and challenges of each place. That aligns well with the ambitions of our culture strategy and we remain fully committed to delivering at this standard for everyone in Scotland. I might say again just putting something on the record because it's something that I haven't had the opportunity to do before is to say a huge word of thanks to the Scottish Parliament's information centre colleagues. I like your good selves. I too have read the briefing that was prepared for today's session and I found it extremely helpful and I would like to put on record my appreciation to colleagues in Spice for the work that they put into that. The committee has visited many areas of Scotland in the process of what we are doing. The community-based, place-based aspect of that has been very important. I have to say key to the evidence that we have taken on all those visits has been the input of the cultural collective at that level and how successful and how well that has been. It would be interesting in knowing what the future of that model might be. The elite artists are in a different racket and the national performing companies from what might be delivered on the ground in local communities and within communities. Part of the model that has been suggested should be a Sport Scotland model where you have the elite activities and then the grassroots cultural activities have been funded at a different level on a local basis. Have you given any thought to how you might change that dynamic and is that something that you have looked at or how well do you think it is working at the moment? The first thing that I would say is that the funding and support of culture in Scotland operates on different levels. You understand this very well. You have had some excellent evidence that explains how that works. For me, a really important dimension to all of this is that it is not the Government that decides what cultural requirements there should be for individual communities. It is for communities themselves, people and society to decide and co-decide on what they want to see in their communities in their place. Where they live, where they work—perhaps it is, to an extent, confusing, because we operate on different levels in this country, but that is pretty common where we have national government in the Scottish Government that has an arms-length organisation to disperse and support cultural organisations in Creative Scotland who work very hard to make sure that they are understanding of different cultural perspectives and needs-interest concerns and expectations throughout the country. We also, of course, have the really important role of local government and their responsibility in cultural provision. We have self-funding artistic or cultural organisations that plug into and through local government, Creative Scotland and the Scottish Government, so it is something that is supposed to work in both directions. I know that you have visited a place that I have as well in Westerhales, in terms of the Wales community arts project, which has been absolutely transformational for people who live in that community. I cannot praise it highly enough. The locus of your interest is in a committee in making sure that communities are able to self-define their cultural ambitions of what they want to see in their communities or close to their communities and how they want to organise that with the support of local government, Creative Scotland and the Scottish Government are priorities for all of us as partners. The final view that we will take on delivering that in a sort of updating, the committee's sense is, for reasons that will be obvious, forgive me, I can't give a sneak peek if the updated strategy that we will be publishing, but as a convener and colleagues will know, I will be the first to be back here to be asked about how all of that is going to work. I would want to highlight, though, that there is a genuine effort by everybody involved to try and make sure that we are working with one another. Whether it is Scottish Government ministers meeting with local government colleagues, whether that is through the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, whether that is through those who have responsibility for culture, and I know that Christina McKelvie is having one of those meetings in the near future, and the on-going dialogue that takes place with Creative Scotland. The round-table events that we did a lot of during the lockdown, but have continued to do, I think, are all contributing to us as a small country, because we are a small, manageably sized country of five million people. It means that we can try and make sure that we are delivering the best for culture right across the country. I invite members to go to Mr Ruskell first. I am glad that you mentioned well arts, because one of the themes that has come through this inquiry is just the power of those community creative organisations that are really driving community, they are really developing community, and they are hitting a lot of objectives around regeneration, education and inclusion. Objectives that would sit well within community planning partnerships, but I think that another aspect of the inquiry is that we found that there is a bit of a mismatch there, so not cultural organisations, cultural sector, creative sector are not always represented within that CPP-type structure. Do you recognise that? If you see creative organisations as being critical to the delivery of community in place and all those wider objectives, how do we embed what the creative sector does much more into that planning structure, where discussions about funding, outcomes and partnership working can be taken at more of a strategic level? There is a lot in Mr Ruskell's question there. It is fair to say that there are really good examples of decision making that involve culture and the arts as a mainstreamed and valued part of community planning, local place plans and so on. In the evidence that you have received, there has been mention made of disconnect in certain parts of the country. We know, for example, that in some parts of Scotland, I remember it well in Murray, for example, when there was the ending of arts development officers, which had been funded by the Murray Council, meant that the locality lost the interlocutor, the go-to person who knew what was happening in certain communities and certain bits of the arts and culture scene from the council and then by extension to national organisations. I am aware of the reality that sometimes culture and the arts is not afforded the prominence that it should in terms of planning. I am also aware that there have been decisions made in localities that I think relegate the importance of culture and the arts in decision making and in delivery. We then open up a wider conversation, no doubt, given that there is a very strong theme around the empowerment of local government to be able to make decisions about local priorities. At the same time, I acknowledge that there is a concern from some that that may lead to culture and the arts being less supported in some parts of the country if one is prepared to get rid of arts development officers in certain places, then one might not give the priority to what is a responsibility for local government in some parts of the country depending on some people's priorities. I acknowledge all of that, but there is co-responsibility for delivering in culture and the arts space. I would prefer to take the approach, as I have said in previous evidence sessions, of being a glass half full. Minister in this area, and work with colleagues and other decision makers to underline the importance of mainstreaming culture and arts priorities in local decision making and in local plans, because when one does—and the Westerhales example is a really good one of those—the wider benefits that that brings to communities, particularly those socially and economically excluded communities and the benefits that that brings across the areas of responsibility of local government and national government, health, education and so on, is absolutely profound. I look forward to working with colleagues in local government to make sure that we are doing everything that we can. Is there more that we should be thinking about to protect the vital offering that culture has? Yes, we need to—I can look at recent examples where decisions were made around systema, for example, in certain parts of the country, as a warning sign around certain parts of cultural offering, which are very important being questioned. We all need to work together to make sure that no parts of the country and no part of the cultural and arts offering that we want to make sure communities have is lost. That local autonomy, that local partship working is obviously very critical, but as a principle, the creative organisations, culture organisations should have a voice within community planning partships. That should be the rule in terms of individual decisions about what programmes are run locally, about how funding streams are developed. That is for local decision making, but do you think that cultural organisations should be bakes into community planning partships? I think that it would be an entirely sensible approach. There are obviously some parts of the country that are better than others. I am encroaching in the territory that I have shared with colleagues before. Intellectually, it is difficult on the one hand to say that I am in favour of local autonomy and decision making, but on the other hand I want to tell local authorities that they must do this and they must do that and they must work in this way. There is a tension in there that I am sure that we all recognise, but I would have hoped that the truths are self-evident, that if we can include cultural and arts consideration in planning and in place planning, that will be of benefit to all. In some ways, that is happening already. Maybe some of it is more ad hoc. Last week, I was asked a question by Willie Rennie, the MSP for North East Fife, who was wanting to raise cultural provision in Fife and to what would the Scottish Government become involved in all that. I am all in favour of arts and culture in Fife, but I wanted the locality to be working directly with the agency that is responsible for that, which is Creative Scotland and the Fife Council, and that, if I could be helpful and supportive, I would be. I am just trying to respectfully say to the committee and to partners out there that I want us to be working in partnership. Mr Ruskell's point about making sure that people are included is an entirely sensible one. You mentioned arts development officers, or they may be called different things in different places, but it seems to be a situation where Creative Scotland has had to step in to provide some of that development work on the ground and the culture collective being an example of that. Where does that balance sit now? Do you see more of a role for national organisations to be providing that glue, to be providing that link between opportunities and what exists on the ground? Do you think that this should be something that local authorities or partners in a local level are funding and supporting? Is there a balance there? Yes, there is a balance. Local authority has responsibility for local cultural provision, libraries and so on. At the same time, Mr Ruskell and others could point to certain parts of the country where there has been a diminution of that. If there is a diminution of that being delivered by local government, then there is the potential for displacement, as in the cost needing to be borne by others, whether that is Creative Scotland, whether that is the Scottish Government directly. I am signalling to the committee that I am very alive to that as being a current issue. I am keen to work with our partners in local government to make sure that there is not a sense that we have a lot of other priorities. The first thing that we are going to economise in, given the financial constraints that we are all having to live under, is culture and the arts. Yes, there is a balance to be struck, and no doubt that will always come under pressure. However, by making more of the importance of local government in the delivery of cultural provision working in partnership with cultural organisations, agencies and the Scottish Government, we can get to the best place. I touched on learning about local community planning. I want to ask about Scottish Government planning on a national level, because it follows from that. The themes of the inquiry have been very cross-cutting. Obviously, a lot of issues that we have considered do not sit necessarily within your portfolio. For example, the local government budget and local government funding have a huge impact, so does public transport availability, which has been something that has come across on a number of occasions, particularly raised by young people in Dumfries, the importance of people getting around and accessing cultural opportunities. How do you, as a minister, and your department engage with other ministers and other departments about addressing those issues? There is joined-up thinking, not just at the local community level but at national levels. I will give Lisa Baird some advance warning if she wants to ruin, after what I have had to say, that she can if she wants to add anything to what I have said. First of all, there is always a danger in government or in any other public administration that there is silo thinking. What I do know is that, in the Scottish Government, there is a very keen interest in trying to make sure that, in this and others, but I am talking here about culture, that it is something that is taken seriously across government. That was subject to a cabinet discussion and agreement. I brought forward a paper to the Scottish Government cabinet on this very subject, which was to underline the very point that Mr Bibby makes about yes, the responsibility of other government departments in terms of thinking about how that interrelates with culture, but then, in the other direction, the opportunity that culture offers in other departments to deliver on their aims, whether that is health outcomes and so on. That, no doubt, would get us back into it, although it is not the subject of this inquiry, so I will not speak at length about the issue, for example, of social prescribing. Are we there yet? No, we are not yet. There is an understanding that this is the right thing to do, so working across government. There is an understanding that it is the right thing to do to think about culture, the arts, social prescribing in a wider governmental sense. Do we have all the mechanisms in place? No, we do not yet. Do we have a unitary model that is likely to be rolled out? No, we do not. It is a work in progress. It speaks to the point that Mr Bibby raises, which is that we cannot just think of culture in the sense of the director at the culture directorate and the Scottish Government, and that does what it does in isolation to what that means in different communities and in different parts of Scotland. Is there more that can be done on that? No doubt. Am I alive to it? Absolutely. If there are issues that committee members have, I would be very welcoming of all of that. That is why I said before, convener, that the timing of this particular inquiry is very timuous given what we are going to be publishing shortly. It will certainly influence my thinking and departmental colleagues about all of this. I think that there are two issues that I would like to highlight. One is further to the transport issue. One is childcare. Childcare came up as a barrier to participation, but if the Scottish Government has plans to expand any sort of childcare, particularly out-of-school childcare, we have heard from academics the importance of getting people young in terms of cultural participation and the opportunity not just to provide childcare for people but to have cultural and sporting tasters and opportunities as part of that. That would be important. The other issue that we have heard quite a few times is about the impact of church closures. I know that that is not Government decisions. Churches have to make their decisions, but we have heard from a number of witnesses about the concerns about church closures and how they are unique facilities for unique acoustics to provide cultural activities and the need to support groups and organisations to perhaps take over those churches into the future. Any reflections on those two issues? Speaking as a father of a four-year-old and a two-year-old, Mr Bibby will appreciate that issues relating to childcare are very much at the forefront of my mind. Is there more that needs to be done? Absolutely. For a number of different reasons. Self-evidently, if mum's, dad's carers are not able to access childcare when they would want to participate in cultural events, that is not a good thing. I am similarly thinking about the offering that is there that includes children as well is an important thing. There are certain countries in the world that are further down the road than we are, no doubt, around all of that. Are there specific proposals that I will have to defer to my ministerial colleagues who have responsibility for that area? Is there much more that we need to do? I reflect that we are in a Parliament that has just managed to reopen its crash, a crash that is available for four hours in the day when I look at members who work a lot more than four hours in a working day here. We all understand those of us who have parental responsibilities of one form or another that there is more that needs to be done. Unambiguous, yes, to Mr Bibby's question. Is there more that needs to be thought about? I also reflect that there are a lot of cultural offerings in Scotland that are tremendous for young people, for kids and even very young children from our festivals, through to our museums, through to our built heritage. A lot of thought goes into how access can be thought about for different age groups. Yes, there is more to be done, but there is a great offering, so anybody watching these proceedings from elsewhere, please avail yourself of Scotland's cultural attractions because there is much for children to enjoy here. On the closure point, one of the most significant contributions that local government makes to local culture is the likes of access to schools and school buildings for cultural groups to be able to use after teaching times. We need to understand that what different levels of government do is that they can often provide different kinds of support for culture and arts organisations. To recognise and put on record the appreciation for a lot of those local facilities being part of the local government, I know that Mr Bibby is right to highlight and I know that you have received evidence on that as churches reduce their historic estate. Often church halls and churches themselves are no longer available, so that underlines the importance of local governments facilities being available to cultural and arts organisations. Where those do not exist, there is thinking that needs to go in at a local level about what are the alternatives. I acknowledge that it is definitely an issue in some parts of the country, but that is a reflection in part of church attendance, the nature of how we live our lives now compared to the past. I think that it is in everybody's interest to make sure that there are facilities that are available everywhere in the country for people to be able to pursue their cultural interests, whatever those might be. Just picking up on a point that Neil Bibby made about transport and a lack of public transport, some of the committee travelled to Dumfries to meet various cultural organisations there, one called The Stove, which is a tremendous organisation based in the centre of Dumfries. One of the issues raised was the difficulty of getting a bus if you lived in the countryside nearby into Dumfries to attend to whatever event they might be holding. What can government do to drive change in that area so that we can remove, particularly in rural areas, one of those barriers to cultural participation? There are a number of ways of looking at this. On a macro level, I think that one of the things that we, and no doubt you have looked at this or you are aware of it, that a lot of Scotland's cultural organisations and performers tour and go to different parts of the country. That is for the very particular reason that people should have access to seeing everything from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra through to individual performers and everything in between in different parts of the country. I observe that today's Creative Scotland launch its latest application round for funding, for touring, for theatre and dance companies today, worth £2 million. Again, if there are any performers out there who are wishing to go on the road around Scotland and get into those communities, whether in Dumfries or elsewhere, that is a way of obviating some transport issues. The other ways in which it can be obviated is where there are local cultural institutions who again go out to communities. Having spent quite a lot of time living in the north of Scotland, I know just how much the likes of the Edencore Theatre in Inverness do to reach out throughout the highlands and islands, offering both performances but also participation in cultural events across the highlands and islands. That does not solve the problem for everybody because buses do not run everywhere and they do not run all of the time. That is part of the challenge of making sure that we have the proper transport infrastructure in place. I used to live in a village where, if you were lucky, the bus was there only two or three times a day. I am very alive to those challenges. We want our rural and more remote parts of the country to have as much opportunity to access culture and the arts. To our local authority partners, to those involved in transportation, to make sure that we are offering the best service that we possibly can. At the same time, we also need to encourage people to make the most of the services as well when they are in place. Together with other measures, I think that we will make sure that we are able to provide the level of cultural offering that people want right across Scotland. I think that there are many things that do work well. Is there more that can be done absolutely? Should we work in partnership with others to make sure that we are delivering that? Yes, most certainly. Can I ask about venues? As has already been touched on, there are many cultural venues that are under threat and for many have been closed. There are lots of reasons for that. Some community groups that we have heard from feel under pressure to save the local church hall or community building. There are difficulties in that, but there are also difficulties in running and maintaining those community assets. That is a great challenge for many community groups. Again, what is the Scottish Government doing to assist community groups who are taking on or have taken on assets to help to keep them open for local communities? That is definitely an area where I will ask Lisa Birt to follow up on what I have to say. I absolutely recognise the pressure that venues have had from before Covid, accelerated during Covid, more often than not having spent reserves since to try and maintain bricks and mortar at a time when fuel bills are now where they are at. Facilities have been closing. Some of them are very much in the public realm, some less so. There are all kinds of efforts that take place to try and maintain facilities. Asset transfer is one of those areas. I am right in saying that that is not really the responsibility of the Scottish Government specifically in relation to asset transfer. As a general point, there is a question about how communities—often in communities, those kinds of responsibilities fall on a very small group of people who are particularly community-oriented. We all know in smaller places that you often see the same people in the community council and involved in this committee and involved in that group. Those are big undertakings. That is part of what Mr Cameron was alluding to. It is a big responsibility. There is the added challenge of whether one might have the people in place now but might not have that in one year, or two years or five years. I am not sure that I have an answer to that, but there is definitely a question around how people can be best advised around the likes of asset transfer. Lisa, is there anything that you want to say about that? The only thing that I would add is that we are going back to what we were talking about, planning legislation. The 2019 act included a new power for local authorities to be able to produce local police plans, which was enacted earlier this year. That is an opportunity for local people to set out what they want for their places and how they should be developed. That has to be taken into account by planning. That might be a way for local people to have a voice in maintaining some of those treasured places. I am sure that that is correct, but the issue is more immediate for people. They have the village hall that they are trying to keep going. They need advice and assistance and support, but I appreciate what you have said. The committee has taken evidence about that, and there are examples of how the system does or does not work. I would be most certainly interested to understand all that, and the extent to which there is a role in working with local decision makers. I go back to the point that I have made now a number of times about not wanting to take responsibility from local decision makers in this area. However, if the committee has identified that there is a gap, given the current pressures that we now know that there are and the current threats that there are to the viability of venues and facilities, it is something that I definitely would want to better understand, so I would be happy to receive any information that the committee has on that. Cabinet Secretary, I could ask a supplementary question about the issues that Mr Cameron has been talking about. One of the themes that has arisen is how, during Covid, a lot of the organisations working in the cultural sector felt that, all of a sudden, they became trusted organisations from Creative Scotland and from other funders, in that they could no longer deliver on projects that had been funded and delivered, but they were given the freedom to do something appropriate during Covid for the communities, and they felt really trusted in how that is. The overhead of applying for funding, not just from Creative Scotland but from the local authorities, from other funders, big lottery, all of those organisations, they felt the realms and a treadmill of having to do that. In Western Hills, we heard the theme of donut funding, which said that the core costs for organisations were never being funded, but because it was project-based, you might get a project adviser coming on for a certain amount of time, they would get members of staff, but getting the place cleaned, swept, the administration of bookings, all of these fundamental core costs are really, really hard to get to funding mechanisms for those. Is this something that you have been made aware of? Is it something that the Scottish Government is considering? I think that most certainly aware of, and I think that in part, it does not solve all of the issues, but in part, this goes to the heart of why a multi-annual approach to the funding of cultural organisations is seen as being so important by cultural organisations and is also a priority for Government and Creative Scotland, because it is understanding exactly the point that you have made about giving people the ability to get on to do what they are supposed to do. It is only fair to point out that there is a responsibility on those of us who are helping to apportion taxpayers' money that the money is going to support through a process what it is supposed to support. That is why there are safeguards in place, that is why there is administration, that is why there are hoops that need to be jumped through for very, very good reasons. At the same time, I do acknowledge that, if it has to happen every year, especially for smaller organisations, there is a very significant amount of time that is spent dealing with all of that, as opposed to the rest. We cannot get away from the fact that there is also a balance to be struck around organisations that are offering something that is valued by the public, and that people, as the public, can support. If we can help organisations that are offering something that is popular, who should be able to raise funds for what they are offering, to be able to go ahead and do that, there is this whole thing about dependency and freedom in relation to funding, and there is a balance to be struck in all of that. Is the balance always correct? No. Does it work better for some than for others? No doubt, but I think that it is right that there is an encouragement in the cultural and art scene to try and have funding from the public, as those that attend performances or events and so on. We need to put on record the appreciation that there is for those who support cultural and arts organisations through philanthropic support. It is really important in Scotland, and I would like to encourage as much of that as possible. At the same time, the Scottish Government through Creative Scotland has a very important role. As do others, national lottery, postcode lottery and other such organisations that provide funding. However, I am very keen to support Creative Scotland as it moves towards a new funding model to, hopefully, obviate some of those issues around annual applications for funding. I think that that will make a big difference, because the experience that we had during Covid, notwithstanding the tragedy of the pandemic, was that, with organisations being trusted, while there were safeguards in place to make sure that finances were being spent for the wider cultural and arts purposes that they were intended, we can also reflect on what that says about our cultural and arts organisations. That is exactly what they did, and I think that they should be very proud of that, and I think that we should be very proud of them. Absolutely. I agree, cabinet secretary. Building on some of the points that have already been raised, and with reference to the cross-governmental benefits of culture and the enriching nature across society, we all know how challenging the public finances are right now, and the effect of that came up in some of the evidence that the committee heard. One of the interesting proposals that we heard in Dumfries was the idea of a percentage of different departmental budgets going on culture, given the positive benefit that culture has on the economy, health, the environment, etc. I just wanted to relay that proposal to you, cabinet secretary, as you continue to consider how to meet the challenge of the pressure on the public finances but also support culture as an enriching part of our society and a social benefit across Government. Well, thank you for the encouragement, and that being heard right across Government. It would be remiss of me to not observe that, at a time of particular financial constraint, to embrace what is a paradigm shift in approach to governmental decision making in particular when dealing with intangibles or things that, on some levels, might only be measurable in five, 10 or 15 years. Those are timeframes way beyond the normal way in which decision makers in Government think that they tend to be much shorter electoral cycles. To give very concrete examples, there is widespread understanding of why Sistema is such an important offering in communities in different parts of Scotland. It is literally transformational for kids from these communities to learn music. That brings a whole series of other benefits, many of which are intangible, that will relate to education, that will relate to divergence from perhaps other less positive paths. Were it not for Sistema being there, how does one measure something like that? If one is going to measure something like that, I suspect that it is something that one will only be able to do a number of years down the road. That necessitates colleagues in Government to accept that it is a good thing to do, but then to embrace the funding of that sort of thing. We are pretty much at the beginning of that process because it goes hand in hand with the likes of social prescribing, but I sat here before Mr McPherson joined the committee with the then health secretary and now, fortunately, the new First Minister, who was talking to the committee about why he and colleagues in health very much understood the benefits that culture and the arts has to offer. The good news is that individual ministers, the First Minister and the cabinet, which agreed that to be the case, culture is agreed to be a priority across Government because of what it can offer to the outcomes that different Government departments are responsible for and not just simply seeing it as a responsibility for the cabinet secretary for culture, for colleagues in the culture directorate and that part of the Scottish Government or Government agencies that deal, like Greater Scotland, with culture and the arts. I think that we are still in the foothills of making that work. Will some areas be quicker than others to making that work? Yes, but I think that there is definitely a willingness to make that work. I very much welcome the input of the committee to keep us on the right track, to make sure that we are doing all of that. Does anyone else have any further questions for the cabinet secretary? I think that that is exhausted our time this morning with you, cabinet secretary, but thank you very much again for your attendance today. I just have a few closing remarks again to thank those members for whom this is their last time at committee. I wish them all the best in their new roles. It is a final meeting before the summer, so I thank all members, the clerks and the officials and advisers to the committee for the hard work in what has been a very busy time, as evidenced by two reports that I have been discussing this morning to enquiries. I hope that everyone manages to have a well-earned recess. I look forward to seeing you all again in September.