Meeting of the Parliament 26 January 2023
I welcome the opportunity to speak on behalf of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. We focused our pre-budget scrutiny on the culture spending portfolio. I thank all those who attended our round tables and who submitted evidence to the committee.
Although culture spend represents a relatively small proportion of the budget, the return on investment in culture, heritage and the arts is significant. Culture enriches our lives and provides a platform for innovation. It is of strategic national importance, from Edinburgh’s festivals, which attract more than 4 million people to our capital each year, to Scotland’s screen sector, which contributes £500 million to the economy and is set to become a £1 billion industry by 2030. Our grass-roots cultural organisations work in communities up and down the country to change lives every day. Scotland’s cultural heritage is intrinsic to who we are as a nation. It plays a crucial role in how we market and position ourselves globally—Burns night, which was last night, is just one example of that.
Over the past year, the budgetary challenges that Scotland’s culture sector faces have become much more acute. The evidence that the committee heard was clear and sobering. The committee found that the culture sector is experiencing significant financial pressures, which are, as Iain Munro of Creative Scotland said, driven by a “perfect storm” of reduced income generation, increased operating costs and longer-term budgetary pressures. That comes as the sector struggles to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic and has been compounded by the cost of living crisis that is affecting us all—indeed, we heard that the cost of living crisis presents
“an even greater short and medium-term challenge”
to the culture sector than the pandemic did.
Let us not forget that culture was among the sectors that were hardest hit by the pandemic. We were told that the emergency support that the Scottish Government provided had been essential in helping many cultural organisations to stay afloat. Now, however, the sector’s already fragile recovery from the pandemic is in doubt, as cultural organisations are vulnerable to significantly increased operating costs. That has followed on from longer-term budget pressures for the culture sector, which go back to 2010. In its session 5 report “Putting Artists In The Picture: A Sustainable Arts Funding System For Scotland”, the Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs Committee pointed to a
“real-terms reduction in funding for the arts”.
During the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee’s evidence sessions, Sir John Leighton, who is director general of the National Galleries of Scotland, said that
“we face a funding challenge the like of which I have never before witnessed or, indeed, imagined.”
He made it clear that the roots of the challenges
“lie in patterns of funding across a longer period”.—[Official Report, Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee, 29 September 2022; c 24.]
Creative Scotland’s core revenue budget has reduced in real terms by approximately £13.1 million since 2010-11. The impact of the longer-term pressures, combined with further fiscal pressure arising from the recent resource spending review, featured as a key theme in the evidence that the committee received. If the spending review plans prove accurate, funding for culture and major events will fall in real terms by an estimated 4.7 per cent by 2026, despite being protected in cash terms.
This year’s budget settlement for Historic Environment Scotland and the National Galleries of Scotland was welcomed and was said to provide a “year-long breathing space”. However, the rationalising of estates, which Mr Gibson spoke to earlier, is a very different challenge for Historic Environment Scotland than it is for other organisations. Funding for Creative Scotland is down by more than 10 per cent, but that will be offset by national lottery income and reserves while the Scottish Government faces budget constraints. Although we welcomed hearing the cabinet secretary’s reasoning for that decision at committee, it is not recurring money and therefore not a long-term solution.
The committee recognises that other areas of the budget are also under considerable pressure, so there are no easy budgetary solutions in tackling the considerable difficulties that the culture sector faces. However, there must now be an increased urgency to accelerate innovative solutions to the funding challenges that culture faces. That includes the development of additional public and private revenue streams for the sector.
The committee wants progress to be made on establishing a percentage for the arts scheme, which has been consistently proposed by our community and third sector organisations. We should also consider how the culture sector could benefit from the proposed transient visitor levy, given the role that culture plays in attracting visitors to Scotland.
The committee has discussed at great length the mainstreaming of culture across portfolios. We would like to see consideration of investment in culture from other budget lines and a reappraisal of what is considered to be health spending. That should include recognising the contribution that preventative spend in the arts makes towards health and wellbeing—whether that is through projects such as choirs for sufferers of dementia or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or craft classes to tackle isolation, stigma and mental health problems. On the Scottish Government’s aim of redirecting funding towards demonstrable preventative approaches, we need to see progress.
The committee has made all those recommendations previously and, in the face of the “perfect storm” that I described earlier, we reiterate them because the evidence that we have received suggests that a strategic approach is still lacking when it comes to mainstreaming culture. To quote Sir John Leighton, the ambition to embed culture in health and wellbeing is
“still rotating in mid-air; it is rhetorical”.—[Official Report, Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee, 29 September 2022; c 45.]
The committee welcomes the cabinet secretary’s reassurances that closer cross-portfolio relationships are being developed, but we need to see that in action.
I turn to multiyear funding—