Hansard

Thank you for inviting me back. Because I have the privilege of speaking last, you can almost guarantee that everything that I was going to say has already been said, so I will be brief and perhaps focus on your questions around confidence and the strategy. First, we welcome the budget announcement of increased funding and the First Minister’s commitment to an additional £100 million. That went some way to restoring some of the loss of confidence over recent months. However, as Lori Anderson set out clearly, although there is an additional uplift for the national collections, national performing companies and the V&A, which we really welcome, it looks like there is nothing similar for Creative Scotland. The implications of that for the RFO network of very small organisations around the country is serious. For the Edinburgh International Festival, it means that we are looking at a 16th year of flat funding. You can imagine the impact of inflationary increases on our cost base over that period. It is extraordinarily difficult for any organisation to manage 16 years of flat funding, irrespective of how well it is run or of other sources of income that it might have. I have worked in the industry for coming up to 30 years and I have never known it to be as difficult as that. That is the backdrop. Although the movement in the Government’s narrative is extremely welcome—and we must commend the cabinet secretary for securing any increase in the culture budget at this point—as others have said, it is not yet finding its way through to the places that it needs to get to. As Simon Hunt said clearly, that means that we have to reduce activity. For us, that means that we cannot do the closing event, which was a free event for the people of Edinburgh to come and look at the fireworks. We physically cannot afford to do that any more. We have to row back from providing activities that do not generate revenue, because there is no headroom in the budget. The people who suffer are the people in communities across Scotland who most need and benefit from cultural activity. As yet, the relief that was promised by the statements in the budget, the cabinet secretary’s letter and the First Minister’s words is not yet working its way through. Simon Hunt also mentioned the UK Government tax reliefs. They are incredibly welcome and they are what is keeping a lot of the sector afloat right now. Without UK Government support, I am not sure where lots of us would be, and we have to acknowledge that. As has been said previously, over the next 18 months, we have an opportunity to figure that out. For the international festival, from 2025 onwards, unless there is a significant step change in income—all sources of income, not just public—we will have a seven-figure deficit and that is not sustainable, so something significant needs to change. We—and colleagues around the table—are keen to work with Government to figure out what that change could be. That brings us on to the strategy. I welcome the fact that it has arrived but, for me, it does not yet provide a clear route to delivering that transformation and step change, and it does not yet match the level of ambition that we are starting to hear from the Government in the words of the cabinet secretary and the First Minister. There is yet to be more alignment between that ambition and the tangible outcomes and actions. Quite a lot of what is in the strategy is internal to the Government. It talks about exploring and scoping things, and more strategies. It does not yet provide those bold, ambitious steps that will really change the fortunes of the sector. That is not in there yet. Again, I would be very happy to work with Government on that. 09:45 The essential question is this: there is limited resource and there is excess demand on that resource, so how do we square that? That is what the strategy needs to address. If there is limited resource at the moment, how do we grow the pot? What examples can we look at around the world? What innovative things can we do? How do we, as an entrepreneurial sector, use our brains to think about how we grow that pot? If we cannot do that, what is the strategy for making cuts? That is not in the strategy. What is there is about growth and delivering outcomes for the country, but it dodges the difficult questions. It must address those for us, so that we can at least have the clarity that we do not have yet. I would say that it is a mixed bag. There is confidence that Government has heard and listened, and it has made some positive statements about additional investment in the sector. There is less confidence about its ability to deliver on some of the difficult questions that need tangible and bold steps.