Hansard

Good morning. Thanks for the invitation to join you today. Reflecting on the budget that was announced, the feeling among our members and colleagues is that it is not as bad as it could have been, but it is not as good as we had hoped. The First Minister’s commitment of an extra £100 million over the next five years was welcomed across the sector, as we have heard from colleagues already today. However, as soon as that was announced, voices across the sector said that it was really important that that be front-loaded. The crisis in funding is now, and organisations and individuals need access to that money so that they can keep doing what they are doing in the face of a cost of living crisis that is having real impacts on organisations, but also on individuals who make their living as professional musicians and artists. Unfortunately, I am not sure that the additional funding announced in the budget—as welcome as it is—will have the impact that we need it to have. The refloating of Creative Scotland reserves, which may be to cover the £6.6 million that was withdrawn in the current financial year, is welcome, but if that is put back into reserves, which might be a prudent thing for an organisation to do, it will not have an impact immediately on artists and organisations. The other £6.6 million, as I understand it, has been put into Creative Scotland’s budget to fill the national lottery funding shortfall for the last five years, so I do not know that that will feel like new money to Creative Scotland and to those applying. Having spoken to our members who have applied to Creative Scotland and to colleagues at Creative Scotland, I understand that at the moment, fewer than half of the music applications that are recommended for funding are able to be funded due to constraints in the budget. That means that musicians and those working with them are writing strong applications that could have a really positive impact on musicians in our communities, but Creative Scotland does not have the resource to support them, and I am sure that that situation will be reflected across other art forms. The other thing that rankles slightly is the cabinet secretary’s letter describing a 3 per cent uplift for national performing companies as an “inflationary increase”. Given how long the funding for national performing companies has been static, I do not think it will feel like an inflationary increase. I am sure that my colleague from Scottish Opera will touch on this later, but national performing companies’ budgets from Government funding are in real terms 40 per cent lower now than they were, and that is reflected in the fees that our musicians are paid. I did some quick sums yesterday, catching up with myself after Christmas. In 2011, a Scottish Ballet Orchestra tutti player—a starting-rate player and rank-and-file member of the orchestra—was paid £67.97 per session. In 2022-23, their fee was £76.22 per session. Using a very technological inflation calculator on the internet, I note that, if the fee had kept pace with inflation, it would now be more than £95 per session. Musicians might play eight sessions a week, so they are around £160 a week down what they could have been earning had their fees kept pace with inflation. I am not sure, therefore, that 3 per cent feels like an inflationary increase to companies or to individuals. However, when I compare the settlement that has been offered in Scotland with the situation in other nations in the United Kingdom, I think that it is not as bad as it could have been. We can look to Northern Ballet Sinfonia as a cautionary tale, in many ways. Given its funding constraints, Northern Ballet is now proposing that all, or the majority, of its touring work will be done without its orchestra and with recorded music. That is not something that any of us want. It will have a real impact on those musicians, who are losing a vast amount of their work. It will deprive audiences in touring venues of the full experience of seeing and hearing a live orchestra doing fantastic work, which is completely different from listening to a recording of music. Even with the best public address system in the world, it is different when you know that the music is being played, and when you hear it played, live. We need to ensure that we do not end up going down the same road anywhere else. The Musicians’ Union is campaigning against that decision at Northern Ballet and we will continue to do so, but it is a cautionary tale for us all. That said—I feel that I am being negative so early in the morning, so I apologise for that—any uplift is welcome, and we will continue to watch with interest how the rest of the £100 million over the next five years comes to fruition. However, as colleagues have said already, the detail is important, and if too much of it comes too late, it will be too late for some organisations.