Hansard

Thank you for inviting us. My colleagues around the table have made a lot of the points that I wanted to make, so I will focus on the issues that are specific to us as much as I can. We very much welcome the increase in funding. It is the first increase in cash terms that the national performing companies have had since 2010-11, so it is already a step forward. In our submission, I set out in a graph the cumulative impact of below-inflation settlements over many years, as Sam Dunkley alluded to. For the past seven or eight years, there has been standstill funding while inflation has increased. I echo what has been said. We have all, in different ways, addressed those challenges. We have made efficiency savings year on year for the past 14 or 15 years as we have tried to find ways to deliver the impact that we want to deliver more cheaply. That has resulted in reductions in activities. When we set out as a national performing company, we performed, for the first few years, six big main-scale operas a year in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness, but we are now down to three. That means that there is less work not just for musicians and singers but for the many people who work behind the scenes, as Leonie Bell said, including those who work in our workshop, costume makers and other people who provide the infrastructure around the industry. We have done our best to be innovative with our funding. All of the national performing companies have done amazing things to grow audiences, particularly among demographics that you might not expect. We will very shortly produce a report on the social impact of the national performing companies. One thing that has not been mentioned so far is the impact of the UK Government’s creative tax reliefs, which have become hugely important to us in filling a gap that our core grant funding has not been able to fill. The reliefs are an immensely valuable contribution to what we can do, particularly at the moment, when we have enhanced rates following Covid. According to the current plans, the rates will taper back over the next couple of years, which will have a dilatory impact on what we can do. Sam Dunkley alluded to the impact on musicians. That impact applies across the board to other types of specialists whom we employ. One of our efficiency savings has been to hold down pay rates, but that has an impact on the livelihoods of freelancers and on our ability to attract and recruit staff. All of these are on-going challenges. We absolutely understand the challenges facing the national finances, we understand and appreciate the battle that is being fought for culture and, as I have said, we welcome the increase. What we would love to see is longer-term certainty. The £100 million was fantastic and really did increase confidence, particularly after the events of last March, which shook us all—we had thought that we were going to get standstill funding and then we were asked to model cuts. However, although the announcement of the £100 million was fantastic, we would love to know the timescale for it. As we have heard around the table, it is important for that investment to be brought forward as much as possible. I ask those around the table to forgive me, but I noted that one of the submissions—I cannot remember whose it was—talked about culture not as a problem to be solved but as an asset to be invested in. It was a great line, and it leapt off the page at me. The fact is that, if you invest in us, we will give you a return, and that return goes across the board in the kinds of economic and social impacts that everyone around the table has very articulately described. The issue of multiyear grant agreements has been on the table for a long, long time. We would love to see them, as they would make a big difference to us. After all, we have to plan a long way in advance. If we want the best directors and artists to come and perform to audiences in Scotland, we have to book them two or three years in advance—and even longer for the very best. Doing that without absolute financial certainty is a risk that we sometimes cannot take, and it means that we compromise on the quality of what we can provide to audiences in Scotland. Perhaps I can bring some of these themes to life with a wee case study. We have an opera highlights programme that we take on the road with four singers and an accompanist; in four weeks’ time, the spring tour will start, and we will be going from Largs to Duns to Blairgowrie, Stornoway, Peterhead and many, many points in between. The programme is not just some greatest hits or “Your favourite arias” thing; we innovate within it. This year, for example, the programme that audiences will get includes a commission that we have put in; in other words, a world premiere will be delivered around Scotland. Historically, we have gone out to 35 different venues over two tours, and our audience feedback and numbers have been amazing. For many folk, it is their only exposure to the art form or, indeed, any of the art forms. For 2024-25, in the expectation of standstill funding, which is all that we could budget on at the time, we thought, “Well, we can’t really do 35 venues any more. How are we going to do this?” We halved it; we pushed and pushed and pushed the envelope; and instead of two tours, we ended up with a single tour going to 24 venues. In other words, there was a cut from 35 to 24. That might not sound like a lot, but it means that 11 communities, all of which have quite a big hinterland of people coming in, will not be getting that tour in 2024-25. The increase that has been announced could, in theory, fund us back up to 35 venues, but it is too late now. Contracts have been signed, venues have been booked et cetera. What the money will do is, I hope, enable us to reinstate things for 2025-26 and put the number of venues back up to the 35 that we were doing before. That is why it is not just some academic exercise when we say that we would love to know these things in advance; it has very practical implications for what we can deliver. That is probably the end of what I have to say. We need clarity on how and when the £25 million for 2025-26 that was announced in the budget speech will be allocated, and the same goes for the rest of the £100 million. It would be fantastic to have that knowledge as soon as we can, although we understand the constraints that ministers are under in delivering that.