 Good morning and welcome to the third meeting in 2018 of the Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Relations Committee. I'd like to remind members and the public to turn off their mobile phones and any members accessing committee papers using electronic devices should please ensure that they're switched to silent. We begin today's meeting with the first evidence session of our inquiry into Scotland's screen sector. The focus of the session today will be vision, leadership and strategy, and we will hear from two hugely experienced and knowledgeable panels of witnesses to discuss Creative Scotland's proposal for a new screen unit. Before introducing our first panel, I'd like to emphasise that today's session is an opportunity for members of the committee to hear the industry's reaction to the new screen unit proposals. The committee will be considering more specific areas in our inquiry over the coming months, and we've built in additional time to examine any emerging issues from today's session that are raised by witnesses today. With that in mind, I'd like to remind members and witnesses that time is very short and we have a lot of ground to cover, so if questions and answers could be as succinct as possible. I'd like to welcome our first panel of witnesses, John McCormack, who was chair of the Screen Sector Leadership Group, Ken Hay from the Scottish Screen Sector Leadership Group, Dr Bell Doyle of the Association of Film and Television Practitioners in Scotland, and the director, Kenny Glennon, Chris Young, managing director and producer of Young Film Foundation, and Professor Philip Slashinger, professor in cultural policy at the University of Glasgow. Some of you have sat on the Screen Sector Leadership Group, and I'm sure you're all very aware of its conclusions. What struck me was the priority that it put on addressing the fragmentation in the industry. I guess I wanted to begin by asking you whether you felt that the screen unit proposal addressed some of the issues raised in the Screen Sector Leadership Group adequately, in particular that fragmentation that should stogged support for the industry over the years in Scotland. I don't know if you want to start, Mr McCormack. Thank you, convener. First of all, I should say how the support of this committee in supporting our recommendations is very encouraging, and it's supported people throughout the industry that the committee is spending time on this consultation. During the last few months of last year, the group was consulted over two major occasions by Janet Ather and her colleagues on the developing proposal for the screen unit. The final proposal was informed by that. Not everything that's there was discussed or recommended within our group, but a number of the changes that we suggested have been implemented in the final shape. As you know from our previous discussions, we support the creation of the unit. The issues that I would like to raise since time is short in relation to the papers of the committee is that we now have a structure and we now have to take great care about the detail of it, the governance, the accountability and the implementation of that structure. I think that it's crucially important to refine the detail of the remits, the accountability, what happens about the protocols around the screen committee and where the decisions are taken. Of course, your predecessor committee recommended the setting up of the screen sector leadership group because it talked about the dysfunctional relationship between Greater Scotland and Scottish Enterprise as the two major public bodies concerned within the screen sector. The screen committee on paper looks at addressing that by bringing the public bodies around the table, but there has to be some clear purpose and definition about what the role of that screen committee is. Bringing people around the table doesn't mean agreement or decision making and what the role of that committee is is not clear. I think that that's the next stage that we would like to spend some time assessing with colleagues in Greater Scotland about the role of the committee. You bring people to the table doesn't mean to say that it's anything other than a monitoring and a reporting group keeping an eye as this committee has done so intensively keeping an eye on what's going on and whether people are falling back from their commitments. We need to make clear in the governance set-up that's there and it's not clear, I don't think, in the paper about where decisions are taken and at what level of discretion the leadership team for the screen unit will have to make decisions, make deals, get things moving within the industry. We have to make clear, too, in the small print that the things that we said right at the beginning that the areas of influence and power that Greater Scotland did not have, which were retained within Scottish Enterprise if one goes back three years to that report of your predecessor committee and where people, when we were doing our work, people described as a roadblock to progress and a roadblock to decision making. We have to make clear that in the protocols for that screen unit committee and its relationship to the border of Greater Scotland that that's all cleared out, there are no roadblocks, clear decision making, clear accountability and I don't think that's there yet but I do think it's the next stage between now and March, April to get that right and in the autumn of last year we were discussing open discussions with Janet Archer and her colleagues about that would be the next stage of our work and to contribute to that discussion and the shape of that. Do you think that there's enough industry input into the governance structures? I don't know what governance. We haven't, as the group, did not contribute to the governance structures. We said the next stage that we'd want to look at the governance structure, where the unit would then have to be shaped, it would have to be published and then we discussed the governance and the accountability and we thought there was time to do that in the first three, four months of this year. That's our next task. Frankly, we would have had these discussions maybe earlier in January but it wasn't propitious to do that then but I'm looking forward to those discussions and we'll have a screen sector leadership group before the end of March to discuss these issues and I'm fully anticipating the involvement of Greater Scotland. It's supposed to be delivered by April, is that achievable? It's the detail that needs to be worked out, we'd like to test it, we'd like to make our contribution to that. Although the unit has to be up by the first of April, the first year, we've got to get it right and spend the time getting it right. The full implementation of it, we're aware of the changes in the new chair of Greater Scotland and all of that, which has delayed things. Once we know when the new chair is announced, we're very much aware of the fact that there is no-one on the Greater Scotland board with any screen experience and that has to happen to make sure that governance and accountability works. There have to be new appointments and that will be a process that takes some months, as we know. I think that we've got to get it right in time. I don't think that we'll get it all right by the first of April and we'll do our best to contribute to the development of that governance structure and make our views clear. However, we need to have clear decision making, clear accountability and we need to have people who are leading the leadership of the screen unit able to take decisions, make deals and have the accountability for that. The screen unit, as is designed on paper at the moment, we haven't had any discussions about the detail offer but it's very important to see the level of attendance at that meeting from the different public bodies, from the funding council, from Scottish Enterprise. Would it be people who can make decisions? Would it be people who can support the new ventures and recommend new exciting projects? Or will it be people coming to do a checklist and monitor what has been achieved and part of the accountability rather than part of the strategic focus for the new screen unit? Peld oil, in your organisation's letter to the cabinet secretary, you raised concerns about governance, particularly that there could be more civil servants around the table, to paraphrase you rather crudely. Does that remain your concern? Yes, it is, because I think there are certain practical considerations about how do you talk to an entire industry and a very flexible freelance industry? How do we get people on board with this? I know people who are very supportive of this screen unit as an idea. I think what we are concerned about is the idea of representation and accountability. For all of us, delivery, because we want to see that things will change and that things will be more work for people and people will be able to progress careers in Scotland. That would be the ideal for us. However, we haven't heard back from the cabinet secretary yet, so I don't know what potentially is happening. But we wanted to raise our concerns at the very highest level. It doesn't mean that we're not supportive of the screen unit. It's about, as John says, the governance, accountability and the monitoring of it. Does anyone else want to come in on these points? I couldn't figure out the button there. It's automatic. You don't need to worry about buttons. I don't want to jump ahead, but just picking up on that word, fragmentation. You introduced me to the Young Films Foundation. That's one side of what I do. I'm a producer. The foundation has kind of grown out of a recognition that there is a gap in opportunities for new, particularly writing, directing and producing talent to stay in Scotland, to have a reason to stay in Scotland. That's something that many people and institutions are addressing, but that's something that we want to address up in Sky, where we're based. It came out of a project of making a large number of television drama programmes for the Gaelic Channel, BBC Alipa, which we've been doing in Sky and which necessitated us to train a lot of new both craft and talent. I just wanted to jump into on fragmentation. Speaking more as a producer now in terms of one of many producers in Scotland, the news of the screen unit and the proposals that are outlined are very exciting for anyone working in Scotland as a producer. Suddenly, we have a dedicated fund that opens wider in terms of content and what we can apply for. There's no question from my point of view that the sooner that's up and running, the better. All the proposals that the SSLG has come up with—indeed, the screen unit has followed a lot of them—are to be welcomed. From my point of view, one can only think that this is the beginning of a whole new thing and it's very exciting. Unequivocally excited by that, but the fragmentation, I think, does remain a very, very serious issue because we work, speaking again from the producer's hat here, it's a global market that we work in. We go out to fund our projects. The danger with the situation that we're in here is that if there are a group of significant players in Scotland who are not, as it were, joining forces as part of or collaborating effectively with what's going to be the key, in public terms, screen unit in Scotland, sort of funding, then there's a problem. To put it in very concrete terms, it all comes down to autonomy. As a producer, we're talking production in Scotland. What we want is to go to the screen unit and other sources of funding and know that there is autonomy across all those Scottish entities. For me, the elephant in the room remains the BBC and, particularly, BBC Scotland. My particular experience with doing a Gaelic language drama with BBC Alipa, MG Alipa, has been that I have worked and had a very positive experience working with an organisation that is autonomous and makes decisions in Scotland. That is not the case when one is dealing with BBC Scotland because decisions are made in London and the key decisions for drama. There was talk of a drama commissioner that was made by Tony Hull but there is no autonomous drama commissioner in Scotland. That is just one example but that's where the fragmentation problem is going to arise. One of the things that the paper by Creative Scotland says that its ambition is to have agreements and partnerships with commissioners in the BBC and other channels. Are you concerned about how that will be delivered? I think that it's very difficult to see how that will be delivered. Going back to a broader picture, how can we ensure that, again, if I put it from the producer's point of view, the screen unit is there as a resource but I'm going to go to the screen unit as a way of part funding a project? How can we be sure that, when I go to all those other co-funders, the screen unit is not going to be in some way just used by entities who don't have a particular commitment to all the things here which are to do with a legacy and a long-term strategic investment in Scottish production? I think that that's the danger because it's not just about money. How do we incentivise not just BBC Scotland but Netflix or Amazon or anyone else? Everybody is going to be very aware that Scotland is a place where they will be welcome to fund and make work. However, how do we ensure that the screen unit doesn't end up simply being the tail of the dog or rather being the dog that's being wagged by the tail that's on the screen? My concern is, and it comes back to fragmentation, I think that John made the point well at the beginning, so it is about, obviously, we've got to get the Scottish Enterprise and to create a Scotland thing going but I think in a wider context how do we ensure, and this probably comes back to leadership and strategy and vision, who is going to run the screen unit, who is going to guarantee, and I don't think we can just put it down to personality. We will need to be really, really careful that the screen unit offers so many things to so many people and that it doesn't actually end up being in some sense used for purposes of others because that's the danger here. It all comes back to autonomy and, of course, it reflects on the difficulty that we have in our own relationship as a small country within the UK and with Westminster and all the rest of it. I am stating the obvious, but fragmentation is what I want to take. Kenny Glynan, you were nodding there, is that a concern that you share? Chris Artyculated it very well. I think that the proposal is very adventurous and really exciting. In terms of screen, it's talking about moving into television as much as representing the film sector. Within that committee, you need people who have experience of working in television. On the committee, I think that the BBC is central to anything that moves forward. I think that there's a great opportunity, but I think that we're back 20 years now, unfortunately. In Scotland, we have a commissioning editor who then speaks to someone who is the commissioner for the north who then speaks to BBC London. I'm not sure if that's the case for BBC Wales or for BBC Northern Ireland. We don't have a department that commissions work from up here. I'm a director. I work in television and I've made low-budget feature films. All the time, I see a decision-making process that has a frame of reference, which doesn't include Scotland at all on any level. It's like a war zone out there. It really is, and it's happening just now. This year, this is what we're involved in. I think that the proposal is fantastic. I think that there's a lot of wishful thinking and positive thinking in there. I think that we have to bore down really into that relationship with the broadcasters and with the commissioners so that we have leverage within that and we don't become a bucket shop. The committee will have a session on commissioning and a view to feeding into off-coms consultation on that. I'm aware of times that I'm going to pass on to Clare Baker now. To be honest, I'm quite concerned by what I've heard this morning, notwithstanding the expression that those issues could be dealt with and the timescales we're facing, but looking at the screen unit being operational from April, the new appointments being in place, the concerns around governance, decision-making are quite worrying. To be honest, when we look back at what the economy committee said three years ago, these are the key issues that all this work was meant to try and resolve, and I'm concerned that there's a feeling that we haven't got to that stage yet. There is maybe an argument that we can get there, but given the timescales and the fact that Creative Scotland has already published proposals that don't go to that level of detail, even though it runs to many pages and lots of technical jargon within it, it doesn't deal with those core issues that seem to be continuing. The question that I'd planned to ask this morning was, does the proposal from Creative Scotland in terms of roles and responsibilities, will it deliver the transformative change that we all want to see, which was the purpose of the report three years ago and the work that you've done yourselves? I'm concerned that we're not at that stage yet. If we look at the Creative Scotland document, it publishes 12 action plans. Around those action plans, are you confident that they can be delivered? Do you think that they're the right direction to be taken? It includes increasing capacity within studio space, which has been an on-going issue for politicians, because it's the easiest one for us to grasp when it comes to understanding the screen sector, but we still don't have a studio space that is suitable for attracting the kind of business and giving opportunities to the television sector as well as the screen sector. Sorry, that's quite a long question, but it's just to say that I'm quite worried by the feedback that we've heard this morning. I might make a quick response to Mr Baker's comments. It's fair to say that it's a timing issue. There's no doubt that during our discussions around a group with the Creative Scotland team and Janet Archer leading them and in discussions that I've had with them, myself as chair of the group, they get it. I have no reason to doubt that their approach to governance knew what needed to be done. They supported our report on the recommendations, the fragmentation, the need for decision making, the need for people to be in the leadership team who could make deals, who could make decisions quickly, to respond to the industry, need for quick decision making and proper investment. They get all of that. They've come out with a model that was only published in December that we haven't interrogated yet for various reasons. I have no reason to doubt that, when we do have that discussion with them fairly quickly, they'll respond in the same way that members of this committee would want them to. I have no reason to doubt that they've got a system of work. It's just not there in the paper yet. Because of the past relationships between the public bodies that the committee drew attention to, we've just got to be reassured that the working is there and that the different members of the public bodies know what their involvement is and they're not getting in the way that they're there to help support, develop the strategy and make sure that the different bits are joined up. We just need to have that reassurance. If it's not done by 1 April, then maybe it will take a little longer to tell about it. I have no reason to doubt that we're all singing from the same hymn sheet and facing in the same direction, but we have to have the discussion about the Government's arrangement to reassure ourselves, and especially the lack of screen knowledge experience background within the Creative Scotland board and how that would reflect into the screen unit. As Kenny said, the membership of the unit, we need to be reassured about that. Given the way that the team has responded to the group's recommendations in the past and taken on board what we said, I think that it can happen. I have no reason to doubt that. How important do you think that the upcoming appointments are? How likely is it for Scotland to be able to recruit somebody or a group of people who will be able to work at the international level that we need? We went to visit Northern Ireland's screen, we've had discussions with other screen sectors. That seems to be a crucial part of it. There's leadership, there's decision making, there's a limited—while there's governance and accountability, there is still a clear decision making pattern and there's a hand for the people who can make crucial decisions. That's a commercial business that we're dealing with when it's screen and television. It operates differently from other creative sectors. We're in a chicken and egg situation here. Of course there are people with the talent and the skill and the leadership but we have to have the confidence to believe that there are such people as well. I think that the danger that we have—I really don't want to go back into bad-mouthing BBC Scotland, which seems to be my default. Forgive me, but there seems to be a mindset in certain areas of Scotland that we have to bring people in. I've been in Scotland in sky for 20 years making programmes and there are many, many people I'm working with who are extremely talented and able but that is not recognised because there is a mindset that unless you're south of the border you don't really know anything. I'm sorry to say that. It's not suggesting that we bring people in. We've also heard that people start off in Scotland and then move down to London and go to LA. It's trying to encourage that cohort to come back and bring the skills. I want to answer your question by saying that I'm very confident that we—you know, these are very exciting roles, that particular role but also I think that people stepping up to board of Creative Scotland. I have no doubt, as somebody who lives in Scotland, that there are people who can fill those roles. I think that the timetable—I think that what's being proposed, as Kenny said, for some of us it does feel like we're going back 20 years but the time is very ripe and I think that the proposals are arriving at a moment where I don't think that the timetable is impossible by any means because we all know what needs to happen. We all want this to happen so I think that there has to be a certain element of belief and confidence which perhaps is lacking sometimes. We need to be more confident about this. How can the committee have leverage with the television industry? That's the number of the things that we have to get into because in television whoever pays the piper calls the tune. If the commissioner says, this is what we want and this is how we want it, then everybody goes like that and makes it with that in mind. The casualties of that in Scotland will be—they won't use Scottish actors because there are no names or even though they'll be good enough. It will be a generic setting. It will be setting Edinburgh but it could be set anywhere. The story will be somewhere in the middle that won't be culturally specific. How can we get leverage in some way to go into an honest negotiation with the broadcasters where we feel we can be culturally represented as well as creating work? It can be two things. It can be both those things. I think that there's an opportunity for this to develop with the new BBC channel. Even though the drama is at the risk of being ghettoised because of the amount of money that they're spending on it and we have to be careful that Scotland doesn't get seen as we fill the quota but it's only of a certain quality or a certain standard. Kenny, do you want to come in? I'll take it back one step. The task was how to get the public sector sorted out and its response to the needs and opportunities of the screen industries. I think that the collaborative proposal, as it's called, is a major achievement having worked in this industry for too long and had been very frustrated at different times in trying to get public bodies like Scottish Enterprise and others around the table. The fact that they've all signed up to this is a major achievement. I don't think that there's any disagreement from that side. I think that it's picking up John's point that we've got the design but it's now about the implementation. The screenings itself won't solve everything. It's merely the public sector's response to those needs and opportunities but it absolutely has to have core relationships with the BBC, Channel 4 and other broadcasters, international platforms such as Amazon and Netflix. For the first time in my time working back in Scotland, I feel confident that it might work, which is quite a major step forward for me. It does come back to the people who end up being appointed into those posts. It ends up that the reason we've been focusing a bit, which we're taking as negative, it's more how do we make it better, is around governance. Key questions like how is it free to take the decisions that it needs to take in timescales that are sensible? Getting and having five public sector bodies sat around a table potentially being involved in taking those decisions does not give me confidence that that would be a good thing. So it's how do we create a governance structure that allows that freedom for those wonderful people who are going to come and do the job, to actually do the job that they're paid to do. The leverage point is spot on. In the past, previous iterations of this had responsibility in this territory but didn't have the money to do it and didn't have the full mandate to do it whereas the screening unit has set out, has the mandate, has the money and is charged with making this work. I think that's where the timing inevitably won't work to the 1st of April but it's a case of how quickly can we get it up and running and how do we ensure it works the best of its ability. I think that there are lots of bigger issues. The relationship with broadcasters is a huge one and has been there forever but this is the public sector response to that and I think that it bodes well. Philip, did you want to come in? Yes, I'd very much agree with what's just been said by Ken and before him by John. I think getting the design of the new unit right is absolutely crucial and when I read the paperwork and I see 12 action points I think that's fine and well but where are the priorities and what is fundamental. I'm not at all clear that that's found its way through into the thinking. I think that if we look forward we're at a period of really maximum change in a highly competitive internal UK market let alone the rest of the world. I'm not clear where the understanding of current trends and future prospects is going to be situated in the screen unit. We've got new distribution systems, new devices, new audience demographics, new challenges to sustaining national content because there are ambiguities of dealing in the global marketplace and new threats to the future of public service broadcasting which so much is being hung on in this discussion and also questions to be asked about the current structure of tax release for example and who actually benefits from that in terms of the UK marketplace as opposed to mainly US players. I think within the forward thinking there really needs to be some kind of research capability and there also needs to be a set of strategic priorities which is different from a set of action points. I think also obviously working in a university thinking through the relationships with Scottish institutions is really important and when I see film identified as the focus and I think well as has been said it's not just about film it's actually about screen industries and the transforming relationships between production, distribution and consumption that we need to get up to speed on. I think that too needs to be addressed in a different kind of way. How is this going to be informed by evidence and strategy? I'll just pause there because I really think if that's not inscribed into the future of the unit right at the beginning that's going to be a problem. Otherwise I would completely agree that this is a public sector solution to a problem and what has not been addressed is actually how you might access finance that is not in the public sector. Very very difficult as people know but it's something that does need to be discussed at least otherwise everything falls back into the same place and it gets parceled out and when it gets parceled out people fall between the cracks I think. Tavish Scott. Thank you very much. I actually wanted to just quickly ask that question again about the trends in the industry because it seems to be a very BBC discussion so far. All our kids are watching Netflix and lots of other things on tablets and so on so forth. How do you watch a telly these days? Does this unit have the ability to take that into account in terms of how we actually consume the marketplace that is the media nowadays? Quick answer from my end. Yes, because this is a golden opportunity for us makers because content, the platforms are all changing and all of that is true but the demand for content is still there and is increasing. I think the only reason that we talk about those structures like the BBC is not, I mean it's perfectly true to say that we're going elsewhere for those funding but I think that we do have, you know there's still quite a significant co, I mean a lot of the things that you might be, children might be watching on tablets are going to be in some way co-funded with BBC, I mean the way in which these things are happening. So yes, let's not get stuck on the BBC but I think that sort of shorthand for, as Kenny puts it, you know the problem of leverage really and the problem of being in a situation somehow to convert because I think picking up on your point that this is a time of opportunity. I think the fact that, and as Philip points out rightly, you know we need to be keeping a very clear sense of ongoing research on how these things are changing but everything is changing. I mean the film business is in complete turmoil at the moment because our children watch, my children watch everything online, they don't go to cinemas unless it's a very particular kind of product. So there is so much turmoil and I think that has to represent opportunity rather than chaos and I think what's very positive about the proposals is that they are framed in a way that allows that breadth and allows for that sense of change, the times are changing. I mean this is a fundamental problem for freelancers working in the industry, it's a fast changing industry, jobs are changing. What do you mean by freelancers? So people will go from production to production. They don't work for one, they move with... Yes, so they're moving from production to production and it is a major problem, something that you will be debating later about training but crew capacity, crew working in Scotland have to have access to training and also new techniques, new skills because things are changing all the time. I think one of the things that I see is really positive is this idea of data collection and it could feed into Philip's suggestion about research. One of the problems that we've had is actually collecting data to know who's working and what kind of things people are watching. All these things are relevant, there hasn't been capacity in Creative Scotland to collect that kind of data but what we need is, that needs to be built in to the screen. It is very boring collecting data, it won't be an exciting job but it does form the basis for research and it does mean that you know who the facilities companies that need to be invested in, the crew that have been working on a production and realised their skills are out of date, these are the things that we need to be mindful of because at the moment that is not happening. So this is again a good opportunity. Richard Lochhead, did you want to come in? It strikes me since devolution in 1999, we've been attempting over and over to get this right and whilst other sectors have prospered with devolution we've not quite achieved our potential with the screen sectors unfortunately. So clearly hopefully this is a turning point but I do get concerned when I see all the public agencies that are involved and how we talk about collaboration and I just wanted to note your views in terms of how we can ensure that the public agencies are genuinely focused on the screen sectors and that the individual from Skills Development Scotland or Helen's Nails Enterprise or the Scottish Funding Council or Scottish Development International or Scottish Enterprise are not just viewing the screen unit as a 10am Wednesday morning appointment a few weeks time, they're actually totally focused on this. That's what we have to interrogate in our discussions over the next few weeks within Creative Scotland, because on the one hand, if that group were not created considering the problem about the dysfunctional relationship between them and the fragmentation, so at least there's never a group where they sit around the table, to say that's the solution to everything is certainly isn't. It would be a contributory factor to making sure that communication between those agencies take place. That could be a world away from strategic development, momentum, support to the leadership team, making sure that deals are happened, leveraging funding and all of that. That's a part of the solution. It may be a small part, it may be a bigger part, but in bringing the Creative Scotland directors on to it and people from the industry, there may be a possibility to make that work, but I share your concern that it could be, as you say, a meeting at 10 o'clock to attend once a quarter, and I'd be very keen to see who the representatives are, who come from the different organisations and are sent to that. It's fine if the chief executive of Creative Scotland is there in a key role, but the priority that the other public agencies give to it considering their focus is not on the screen, for example the funding council or whatever. They've got other bigger issues in another part of the territory in Scotland, but to make sure that their contribution is focused on the screen industry. I think that that's the things we have to interrogate and work out, and if there needs to be other tweaks to the governance structure then we have to see where, so that there's a strategic development, there's momentum and support to the leadership team in terms of developing strategy and helping them to make the international context and do whatever they can do to make it happen. So, it's part of the solution, bringing them around the table, but it's just a start. To pick up, I mean it's no accident that you mentioned devolution, and it seems to me that we are living with the legacy of broadcasting having been part of, you know, the framing of devolution was that broadcasting was taken out of devolved powers. And I think, you know, we're living with that. I don't know if that can change it. I'd love when you said those words, I thought, oh gosh, maybe that can be changed. It can be, of course, sir. That would be a good thing. I think, I suppose, the thing about that is that if we, because I think it is about strategy, I think it's about, and picking up on Tavish's point too, I think the question we have to say to ourselves is, do we want to think, because clearly the ambition here is to do that, do we want to think strategically about creating an environment in Scotland where, as in other countries such as Denmark or we talk Wales and Northern Ireland to some extent, there is a clear, both commercial and cultural infrastructure that exists, indigenously, creating programmes, whether they're on Amazon or Netflix or anything else. That's not happening here, and the reason that we bring, you know, the new channel is mentioned in Scotland. You know, there is an issue about the fact that if we have a new channel that is being created in Scotland and it is not properly connected to whatever infrastructure we're going to have, which in 20 years time, because we need to be thinking in terms of, we just made reference to 20 years and the devolution, you know, what do we want in 20 years time? Well, what we really want is that indigenous screen culture. We want all those shows that we all watch on Netflix to be coming from here. We want people to identify here, not simply as a location where you can come, get some good scenery and a little bit of cash in your pocket from the screen unit. That's the problem. We don't want that. We want to be creating from the inside, and I think that that requires strategic thinking. And you can't do that without dealing with, well, the public sector, as Ken says, is the part of it. But yes, we do need to bring in, as Philip says, we need to think about all, you know, non-public money, but we also, we can't avoid thinking about the new Scottish channel and other, you know, these, that's all part of the same, you know, we're in this small country. I mean, the final point I would make is that there is a sense of urgency. I was reading how Netflix are commissioning $8 billion worth of content in 2018, which is eye-watering, and that's just one company. And I tear my head out thinking that my Scotland is not in a really fantastic position to grab a huge chunk of that, albeit we've done well in some areas and are improving. Can you give us an assurance that we're not going to turn around in a year's time, and the goodwill we had with the public sector agencies turned out not to deliver? And we're going to have to revisit that. Should there not be co-location of their staff with the screen unit or dedicated staff within those public agencies who work full-time in the screen sectors? Got the right skills, and they will bring benefit then, of course. You asked about Netflix, and the Northern Ireland example earlier was, obviously Northern Ireland's made its name in the last few years with Game of Thrones. And my question for the committee to consider is, does the screen unit make it possible with the next Game of Thrones equivalent? Would Scotland have any chance of getting that commission? I think that's an important question, and what's absent, I think, from the vision is any sort of sense of what's Scotland going to specialise in that will give it a particular kind of leverage within the global marketplace. And there is, within the proposal, an idea of growing larger companies, but it's not clear what those companies are going to be. And in some respects, while I wouldn't dissent from it, I think the conglomeration in the marketplace is going on at such a pace that even larger companies five years down the line would not solve the problem because everything will have relatively moved on. While we have to think about what we're dealing with now, and public service broadcasting is very important in that respect, the point that you were making about the scale of commissioning outwith public service broadcasting, which is international and going to global marketplaces, really dwarfs the means at our disposal. I think that where we have to start is thinking in those terms and trying to think creatively beyond them, because if we get obsessed with what is here now, we're going to get into a complete stall, I would say. I think that a lot of the points that I was trying to bring out are coming out now and I'm just intrigued. I mean, when the screen sector proposal emerged as a result of the inquiry that began in 2015, really these international streaming services were still something of a blink in people's eye. I think it was, oh, that's a promise of the future. We were obviously intrigued when we visited Ward Park Studios, £330 million worth of investment over three years from Sony Television. What was the catalyst that we could produce high quality drama and have proven we can at a third less than it could be produced in the United States? It seems to me that that is the selling point. What we saw there were hundreds of Scots being employed in the carpentry shop, in the wardrobe shop, in the painting and decorating shop, in the set building and in the production. What we saw really was the emergence of a genuine Scottish film studios and an interesting commentary from Sony Television that when Outlander reaches its natural conclusion, there is now a film studio set built in Scotland that they have confidence in being capable of delivering future production. I guess my question is, will this set, the screen unit, be fleet of foot in terms of its ability to move beyond, because all my life it was about the BBC or ITV. We then all watched the product. I mean, I'm gobsmacked by the fact that Outlander is the most watched drama production by women anywhere in the world and actually nobody in Scotland really knows anything about it. So we're almost moving into an era where there is a huge sector that can employ people but which people might not actually watch in this country. It could actually be that it's watched everywhere else but it's a huge opportunity for Scotland and it's that whole dynamic that I just want to understand. Will it be fleet of foot enough to look at that? From the committee's point of view, we can summon the BBC here. We've had STV and ITV along. I don't know how we get so many pictures, Netflix and Amazon Prime to come here that we can interrogate. In that sense of interaction, does the expertise exist within Scotland and the potential screen unit and how do we try to engage in a way, as I can think it only is going to grow, as Richard has said, for us to try and grab. I mean, I understand studio capacity as a feature in all of this because they have to be able to go somewhere to do it. But how do we influence, given that we've got that record now and the ability to produce a lower cost, will this unit—I mean, I don't want to find in five years' time that the screen unit has ended up having a five-year row with the BBC over whether or not we've got up to 43 per cent or 42 per cent of what they are producing when the rest of the world is burgeoning all around us and we've missed another boat? I think that you're absolutely right about that. Companies at that level are probably not really going to talk to the screen unit. They decide—they have people looking at exchange rates all the time—they know exactly the cost of everything to be filmed anywhere in the world. It's such a global market. I mean, it'd be nice if the screen unit were fleet enough and sassy enough that they could actually get ahead of this, but really, if you're talking about Sony, they'll come here and shoot because they've got the facilities. I mean, to bring up what Chris was talking about, what we don't want is to create enough of a production fund that other people are coming in in order to spend our money with no guarantees of any local talent being used. I think that would be slightly unfortunate. It would be—there would be spend in Scotland, but we wouldn't have any kind of cultural legacy or professional legacy in terms of people getting work on productions. But if we're talking about Netflix, Netflix are not going to want the production funding. This is, you know, 10 million. We think it's a lot, but they don't think it's a lot. So I would sort of get—I would just think—I'd be very grateful that Sony would still be considering working in Scotland, but I don't think we have any influence over whether Sony do that or not. I think that in terms of all these big studios like Amazon, Netflix, they are—it's only in our imagination that they may come here. They'll only come here because they can make a profit. That's the only reason they'll come here, for no other reason. That's not a bad reason. It's inevitable, but it's out there in the ether. You cannot help but talk about the BBC because they are here. They're staying here. They're part of the landscape. That has to become a major factor, a discussion point. We need to think about why we aren't creating the Outlander. What do they have that we don't have? It's just ideas, it's stories. They've just taken—it's the old Jacobite stuff. We all had it at school, it's drummed into us. What we have to be thinking—that's why I come back to the strategic thing—it's not changed. The markets, the platforms change, but we need to be planning. We've lost another 20 years because the Danish, if you take that as an example, spent a lot of time getting to a point where they do have some of the best writers in the world and everyone's copying their—the Israelis in terms of homeland or whatever. It all comes down—what's so attractive about this business in terms of making money for people is that it does come down to ideas. So what we have to say is, how can we create the environment in Scotland where Outlanders are being made of all shapes and sizes, not just by Sony for Sony's profit, but by companies based in Scotland, maybe delivering them to Sony or Netflix or other platforms? Because in the end, these guys all want to do business. As Kenny says, it's just about making money. We can make money for them, but the problem at the moment is that we're putting ourselves at the lowest possible point of that, which is just effectively cheap labour. What we want to be doing is originating. I agree. I don't want to talk about the BBC about that, but the thing is that in terms of resources, in terms of long-term strategic thinking, a public broadcaster or Channel 4 or other outfits, they do have deep pockets, and there are ways in which they could seriously collaborate with public sector units to strategically provide a situation in five or 10 years' time where we are generating all those kinds of massive global shows. Nobody's not for us to do that. I think that, following Mr Garlaw's point, what Chris has said, that within the screen unit proposal is that priority on helping to build the business base. I think that that's crucially important. It comes out of what Bell and Chris said, so that we do have more boots on the ground, more productions on the ground, so we can be built so that it's very, very fragile. It talks a lot about content development, such as screenwriting capacity and things like that. Is that the right focus? It's so multifaceted to make sure that the crews get enough work to stay in Scotland, develop their skills in Scotland, then having to do a film here and then go to London or Birmingham or Paris to do the next thing. So there's enough work going around so that people can make the choice to develop their careers in Scotland at every level of creative development. But getting the companies built, and I think colleagues on the second panel could go into that in more detail about the company development and what needs to happen to make sure that the small companies become bigger and the ambitions that are in the screen unit proposal are seen to be not unrealistic. But the company base has got to be built and then you can take the opportunity that comes with Netflix and Amazon because these new delivery models need content and we can deliver a lot of content. So there are more opportunities there. You're not stuck to the two or three public service broadcasters and the odd feature film. You've got these people who need a lot of content and are very keen on Scotland a lot of them. They know it and if we can match into the creative screen unit, the kind of people they want to talk to who can make the sort of decisions quickly that can help them to come here and tip something over so that the next game of thrones or whatever it is doesn't go to Northern Ireland but goes here, it's having people that people can talk to. When people say to me, people have said to me around the UK, when we go to, if we look up, making film in Wales, we're making film in Northern Ireland, we've got a website, an open door and a list of contacts, we don't get that when we don't quite know. We've got to know that Creative Scotland exists and then we've got to go in and then we've got to find a link into that. I'm glad you raised that because there was a commitment some time ago that we would have a portal. Now I know that wasn't the remit of your screen sector leadership group, somebody else was doing that. It's still not being delivered. I'm looking forward to seeing it. I'm looking forward to seeing it. Is anybody heard what's happening with that? I would like to see that there by the time the new screen unit is up and running and it's modelled and whatever. It's up to Enterprise who were doing that. You're absolutely right. There's some basic things that need to be done, but what we need to do is make sure that people who want to develop and invest in Scotland and develop the business can phone somebody, text somebody and say, can you help me? What do I need to do about this? That's not there at the moment. The screen unit knows that. The people who have designed this know that's necessary and it's got to be at every level. Some basic levels from website and the way they discussed each other through to working with the industry and the international players to find out what they need and what they want and that's why the appointment, the leadership team and why the governance and accountability is so crucial to get that right. So the right questions can be asked. Thank you very much. We'll have a brief suspension to move to our second panel of witnesses and I'm aware that not all members have the opportunity to ask questions in this first panel. So I'll make sure that members who haven't had that opportunity in the first session will get that opportunity in the second session. So I'll just briefly suspend and thank our witnesses for coming today. Thank you. I now like to welcome to the meeting our second panel of witnesses, Ian Smith, chair of the British Film Commission. David Smith, the national representative for Scotland of Pact. Claire Kerr, producer at Meade Kerr. Wendy Griffin, producer at Selkie Productions Ltd. Tommy Gormley, who is the first assistant director and Fiona Miller of the Association for Supporting Artists Agents in Scotland. Welcome and thank you very much for giving us your time today. Some of you will have heard the points made by the previous panel in particular about commissioning, fragmentation and whether we've got the new screen unit right in terms of governance. I just wondered whether you had any reflections that you wanted to make on that evidence before we move on to specific questions. Fiona Miller. Thank you very much. The Association of Scottish Casting Agents thanks you for being here today and I hope that you've seen our submission to the inquiry. What's really key for us and for to be quick, I'm going to just say some bullet points about what we'd like to feedback about the collaboration strategy in that, first of all, there's not enough funding. Local Government was awarded £170 million recently, really around pay rises. We need £170 million and we'll double that through jobs, investment etc. It doesn't reflect back to me the position of practitioners. I don't hear, see or feel anything in it that represents my experience in the industry. We need to refresh, redo and engage everybody from bottom to top to redo the collaboration proposal. Collaboration is not enough. I've been working in the public sector for 15 years around community planning and community planning didn't work and it took them 12 to 15 years to work that out. In order to make the public sector bodies work, they had to bring in legislation. 12 years is too late. We've already missed the boat and my concern is that, and it was quite clear that Creative Scotland found it hard to engage in a community planning agenda as did Scottish Enterprise. They also find it difficult to work at a strategic level, so we need legislation. We know that public sector reform has been challenging and in order to make the bodies work together and pool resources, we needed that legislation and I think we need that legislation. We don't need a collaborative approach. It's proven and there's evidence there to show it doesn't work. It's not ambitious enough. Five to eight dramas between 20 to 23 is not enough. There's over five to eight dramas at the moment. It's not fast enough 12 months to come up with an action plan for a studio. It's too late and six months to come up with a business case also is too late. Those times scales will make sure that we continue to fall behind and in terms of my last point, I think there's two issues in collaboration. There's one about the one that I've just drawn your attention to, which is the fact that the public sector bodies historically find it difficult. We need to deal with that, but we also need to recognise that this is a commercial interest. This is about making money. This is about making Scotland and telling Scotland that we're open for business. I'd like to start by saying thank you for letting me be here today. I suppose I'm the classic wandering Scot that actually works in the film business day by day after day and I've travelled the planet doing so and I think we haven't just missed the boat in this country. We've missed the entire fleet. It's cataclysmic. It's a cataclysmic failure at every level to deliver. The fact that the production spend in Scotland is catastrophically low compared to the UK. It's a disgrace. We're 8.5 per cent in the UK population. What's the spend? 3.5, 4 per cent? I don't know the exact figures. It's well less than half what it should be. Several things that I'd like to say briefly. It's called the film business for reasons. It's a hard headed financial business. It always has been, always will be. It's very fluid. It goes wherever there's facilities and there's a crew. That's what draws films, facilities and crew. We have a great crew in Scotland, not enough. For my own experience working in every film I've worked around the world, there was always a little coty of Scots working there. It's got slightly smaller in the last few years of notice. There was always 8, 9, 12 Scots on the crew. Now there's 4, 5, 7. There's less skilled crew and my experience on the films I work on. I left a film studio last night to come here. I almost missed a plane to get here from a film studio. I'm going back tonight to a film studio to start working tomorrow morning. I think there's a great misunderstanding. Even in Creative Scotland and Scottish Enterprise, what filmmaking involves is a very simple industrial process. It has its own little factory. It needs the factory. Your lovely MSPs have an amazing building. You come to work in the morning to this building. I've got a job. I leave house at 6am. Where do I go? I go to a film studio. It's not rocket science. We can't spend every day filming up and we can't spend every day in Glencoe doing scenery in the film studio. It's not rocket science. It's very simple. We don't have to build a Rolls Royce Pinewood in Scotland. It can be a very small scale. It can be several facilities. It could be anything that would help. The lack of a studio is crippling, I think. It has been when I first ventured abroad 25 years ago and it's been discussed endlessly and it's still is today. It's a good thing in drama that all character is action. It's not what someone says that matters in films or TV. It's what they do. All character is action and the lack of action has been staggering in my opinion in our industry over the last many, many, many years. The previous in comments at Creative Scotland was rather scary about the studio needs. We don't need the big, shiny studio. That was one comment that I remember from previous times. What happens is that when you make a film, it starts with two or three people. A location manager, a production designer, a director, a producer, they get in a room. They start discussing whether they're going to be with them, how they're going to do it and how they're going to hire a crew. The crew gets hired there. Ond mae'n gael i gael eich byth â'i gael i gael dasgol yn ynglasgol ac mae'n gael i gael i gynyddoedd ythoddion i Edinburgh'i. Ond eich bod yn dweud yn ddiwrnodd yn amser. Ond mae'n gael i gael i gael. O'n dwi'n ddiwedd dweud. Ond mae'n gael i gael i'rion, ond mae'n gail i'rion. Ond ydi'rion wedi eu cyddiadau. A dwi'n gael i'rion ar Wengdansgrifiannol, mae'n dwi'n ddim i gael. your bring them with you, because it's a no-brainer, because you know them, trust them, you've hired them, you know what they can do, that's how it works. So wherever the project is based is where the crew are hired, that's a critical misunderstanding of it's not a bit big sum shiny studio with nice windows and desks, it's about where the human beings all sit, and meet and discuss and like you folks do in the Parliament, where you meet is where work is generated from, so I've got a bug here at the studio for a starter. It's also 80% of the work...I've worked 1284 nesaf ar ei siwr ηmddig iawn, 8% sefydlach i'r byw. That's how films are made because it rains sometimes or it's cloudy or it's too cold, or whatever it is. It's not some fantasy that, you know, at the studios, it's not... It doesn't solve every problem. It doesn't create content. What I think we need... And there's, there's two strands to me, there's a content piece which my dear friends Ken and Chris spoke very well about, is very important. Of course, if they generate local content, they're two disparate things but they can run in tandem. Mae'n mynd i ddwylliant o'r cwloedd wedi lliwyr yn cwyloedd cwlad o'r ddwylliant. Awn ni'n gwych chi i ddwylliant, rydyn ni'n byw, i ddw i gyd i ddwylliant, a'i ddwylliant yn gwych i ddwyddiad. Fe wnaeth y ddulliant mewn mwychol blynyddoedd. Mae'n gwych i ddwylliant mewn mwychol a'u ddwylliant, ondנס nhw ymlaen i rwyllfa, ac mae'n gweithio eu collieidaeth i'r lle ar y cyfnod. Proses, mae'n meddylo'n rhoi cael ei gwylliannol, rymnwys, ymddangos yn Ffócd menwyd yn Rhynod Llywodraeth yn gilyddol, gyda gael cyfrifoc i gael sydd y manchydig gyda Gwydiannaethfa Nôr Groedd Skyrwyr, ac mae gennymai'n rhan oed yn Ffór Gwydiannaethfa Nôr. Mae hi'n diwylliant ei gallu ei wneud i chi gael Cyfnodol yw gweld Cymru hwnnw, ond bydd yn yn enogu hefyd, ac mae gennymai'n iddo ddiweddar i chi i chi, a byddai'n rhan o'r boi gwybodaeth a chymru. I that there is a lack of ambition and drive. On the jobs that create of Scotland their Scottish Enterprise do not really from the hard-hye production. You do not really understand how and why movies are made or what the process is. And I think we will continue to miss the boats until we have a film studio and will have people at the top of Qangos who are filmmakers and do not people who do like to practice it. Thank you very much, I will go to Bingharan Mary Gucci chose now. Fy enw i chi ddim. I just pick up from that, and I don't know exactly how I do that. Really, it's just in terms of the knowledge that you say that is needed at the moment in terms of that filmmaking expertise and people who are involved in the day-to-day working in industry. Do you think that that knowledge and that expertise will be there? any sots of reassurance that will be heard from the last panel officer de chi wna editor from film or television, do you think that that will be there? I think that will exist laekei is a danger of losing it, it is basically one of those jobs you only get knowledge of doing it. It is quite hard that the best training is on the job training I also think to bearing its pフ. It is not quite divisive as film it is tv, it is this it is that film and tv drama that is totally synonymous now Mae'r gwladau ynghyl weatherun o genbe limitation ynająngog, ac wrthy fawr yn maen nhw'n unrhywion. Fe amser y gynllunolion iawn, gyda ai nhw Kristyno. Taill o phasgau Covid cyhoedd-in, fel ddyn nhw'n hyn ti wneud eich llygw... Fe mae'r yw ddechrau gwaith pendulum, but people speak better now. We would struggle to wonder there is not a crew in favour of that of more than two films in Scotland. большеacesandings or big TV shows in amentschiethau differenti shew, and the crew may be the main thing to do. The more work we do, the more scale crew will have, and that in turn attracts Felly mae'r wneud wrthysbeth ddych yn bwyr i'ch gwmpasio brawn, ac dyw'r pithau tampos maelog, yn i'ch chi'n gweithio. Felly addisai'r gwaith yn y Llywodraeth. Ond os edrych Ieulydd yn ymgyrch gyda Llywodraeth, a i ffiliau i Llywodraeth ar hyn i'w gweithio.wy'r giniw y Llywodraeth yn Los Angeles, a gynnyddu'r gwaith i Llywodraeth, Ond wrth fy ffiliau i'w gweithi ar year nesaf. Ond mae nhw'n gweithio? Nod o'r ff我要dd, y tax rebate. If it would go tomorrow, if that change, it would go away tomorrow, it would get the crew, the facilities and the tax rebates. So why don't we look for a clever way of Scotland getting a bit of that action? Are we allowed to take an extra 1 per cent in the filming TV tax rebate? That would be a game changer. If we took one more per cent and suddenly if it goes at the folk like Ian sitting in London and they look at the accounts and say, oh, we can save 2.5 million by shooting this in Edinburgh or Glasgow or wherever, guess what they'll go in a New York second. That's what we should be doing. Just for clarity, in case anybody's expectations go up, I know the tax breaks are entirely reserved to Westminster, but David Smith, I think. I wish I'd get them back. David Smith wanted to come in. I just want to say that I work in an entirely different industry, I feel. I actually feel a bit of a ringer in this kind of mix in that I don't work in drama, I don't work in scripted of any kind, I think you've probably all been in more studios than I have been in my time. I work in factual television production, which is now and remains the majority of the turnover and employment in the Scottish sector. I hear the points made, I agree with the point made in terms of the importance of the studio, I think it is something we have lacked for a long time and very much need, but I think we lose sight and very much reflected on your original question, which was what are the points from the previous session that I think are worth picking up on, and also within the screening of proposal what are the things that are missing. So IP, the ownership of ideas is vital, it's the mechanism of production, so in whatever seer you in, if it's scripted or non-scripted, if you own the IP then you have the levers of power. Currently we don't have the levers of power. In my world, which is television and factual non-scripted production, up to 2003, the Communications Act, producers didn't own their IP, it was owned by the broadcasters, you worked for a higher model. The change came when the Communications Act delivered IP back to producers who were then able to exploit it. Many companies were first successfully built on that. There's an exponential rise in terms of the growth of the TV sector within the UK, particularly in the non-scripted side, but also very much in London in the scripted side. What happened in Scotland was slightly different in that we became a place for outsourcing, so production was displaced here. Whether it was scripted or non-scripted you ended up with lots of projects being lifted and shifted to Scotland. There's value in that, there's good value in that, but it's not as valuable as owning the IP. So it was really useful in the previous session to hear Chris and others talk about the primacy of ideas, and I think that's something that we need to get back to. In the screen unit proposal, when I read it, I hear lots of talk about the importance of skills and crew, and I don't deny those things, but I think there is a development skill that we need to focus upon. If you don't get development right, then nothing else happens. You become work for hire, you become guns for hire in the system. That was important. I also thought the point about companies and how they grow goes back to IP. If you don't have the right idea, you never grow. So IWC Media, which is a company based in Glasgow, where I worked for a while, grew because location, location, location was an idea that sold and sold and sold. Careers were built on the back of it. Many careers, many companies have been spun out from it. It all goes back to that one idea. IWC didn't grow because it was IWC, it grew because it made location, location, location, and that's what we need to return the focus to, I feel. And then, again looking back at the previous session and going back to the original question, I had lots of points to make about governance. I think they've all been made. I think the role of the industry within that governance structure needs to be given great consideration. I think that presently, the two industry reps that work within that governance structure are both on the scripted side of the business, and I'd like to see a role for non-scripted in that mix. Okay, thanks very much. Wendy, did you want to come in? No, I agree with a lot of, soft it was said earlier and also what we're just saying there, that I just think that a lot of it is about developing ideas and I think that what's quite hard with small companies is how you survive while you're doing that actually. So, I think that funds for development are crucial as well as all the other things that everyone's mentioned. Claire? In terms of the screen unit and how it's run, getting back to that, and who staffs it and who's there and who's committed to it, in Denmark they use a system where industry producers work within their screen unit and they have the job for only three years and then they go back to doing what they did before and what they get from accessing, they get access to international contacts while they're doing that and they bring those contacts back into the workplace. So it feels like a really useful revolving door, a model that I think Scotland could look at and use the talent that we have there but make sure that there's a fixed term for that job and perhaps you need to have people from both factual and drama sitting within the screen unit to make sure that the work that's being done and the way that they engage with the industry is realistic and relevant and also then they'd have a vested interest in building an industry they want to walk back out into rather than staying in a job which is very comfortable when the rest of us are actually living in relatively risky times most of the time. We've got two tracks running in Scotland, we have to keep, as Tommy says, we have to keep making sure that we can attract the high-end business that we're going to need to build an amazing industry but we also have to make sure, as everyone else has pointed out, that our Indigenous IP is being nurtured but that's all about those people getting access to the broadcasters and just in the break I was talking there about the fact that Outlanders have been here for about five years now and there's lots of training going on in Outlander but I don't know who from Scotland has access to the execs at Outlander, who understands what the showrunner does, who's had, and I know you'll be doing a training, there's training to be looked at by another committee but I think when you have these big shows here perhaps what the screen you can be doing is talking to them about new producers or maybe not that new producers but producers who've not yet had the chance to see how a machine like that is working at script level or Scottish writers, are there any Scottish writers working on Outlander? Yeah we don't know, I don't know but and it's hard to tell they may well be, I'm not saying there's not because I don't know what's going on there but when those big shows come finding out how we access the upper echelons, if they're going to be here for five, six, seven, eight years that's a fantastic opportunity. I met a young producer from England who is now working for Netflix because he had a job on a feature film with someone who then bumped on to the exec of a show, he'd impressed him as a young producer slash line producer. Those connections are really important but I feel we're making lots of connections in the technical level but we're not making many connections in the IP level. I think if the screen unit could be engaged in that it would be really useful. Okay, I'd like to bring in Rachel Hamilton. Morning. I just wanted to pick up on a point that John McCormack made about the dysfunctional relationship between Scottish Enterprise and Creative Scotland. Creative Scotland say that they will lead activity in key new areas, particularly business development support for those companies that don't have high growth potential and the ambition seems to set out that the collaborative proposal will boost the number of production companies with a turnover greater than 10 million. I'm particularly interested in how we will grow smaller productions and regional growth and Creative Scotland also say that they're going to adopt a one front door approach. I just wondered how you think that that will take into account these regional requirements and is this the correct approach? So, you know, the production capacity is on a smaller scale so not just the high growth ambition that the collaborative proposal sets out. Okay. I think, certainly, from our perspective and the amount of people that we can provide employment through being supporting artists, we would be calling on, yeah, the high end drama that people have spoken about, absolutely supportive of that and we all supply to Outlander. We're, you know, absolutely linked into that. But we're looking for domestic plus or super domestic shows which around the 1.4 million mark, for example, Grand Chester, Peaky Blinders, Broadchurch, Silent Witness. Silent Witness has just been commissioned for its series 22 and it sells across the world, certainly for Grand Chester. There's probably only five regions in the world that they can't see it and there's no reason why we can't do that here and that runs in parallel with the indigenous stuff with the high end and also that what they call domestic plus and that will provide more employment as well for us. So I think that's what we would be looking for. Anyone else? Ian Smith, can I bring you in here? Thank you. I'm here as the chair of the British Film Commission, but my day job is active producing internationally and another important credential is that I'm a Glaswegian. I have a home in Glasgow and I vote in Scotland, although I spent an undue amount of my time in London and in Los Angeles. The reason for mentioning that is I took the view a long time ago that I wanted to make what I would think of as real films and I discovered after 10 years of working in Scotland that I was having a good old time but I wasn't actually changing anything, I wasn't achieving anything, so I was drawn to London and then very quickly after that to Los Angeles and I haven't earned a pound in 30, 40 years actually, it's all been dollars, so I've been internationally oriented. So it's kind of inevitable that I ended up chairing, it's a voluntary position, chairing the British Film Commission and it's taken 20 years to move the whole industry into a position where we're now seeing the kind of numbers that were published just a week ago, which is over three billion in terms of inward investment film and high-end TV drama. So we're all about the business of underpinning the cultural objectives and the creative objectives within the UK as a whole, but underpinning that with an economic foundation that allows the industry to exist quite frankly. The unit, I think, is very, very good development, it's a very positive development and shows that there's been listing going on and that the marriage of uncomfortable marriage between art on the one side and creativity and art and money, if you like, on the other side, that is a very difficult relationship to maintain. We're doing it in the UK, and by the way, the British Film Commission exists for Scotland as much as it does for all the other nations. What we're trying to do is to make sure that the underpinnings of the industry are state of the art that we understand technology. It's all about industrial intelligence. We have a unit of four people in Los Angeles whose sole job is to listen and to understand and to go to all the Q&As and to go to all the parties and to do all that stuff and to find out who's doing what at the very early stages. Without that intelligence, we wouldn't have a fraction of the money that we're enjoying in this country. So the money we're enjoying in this country, if I look at a map of the UK, hugely to my frustration, I have to say that Scotland is underperforming compared to the other nations, Northern Ireland and Wales, because we do not have the investment in infrastructure, particularly in the studio. I've always been a campaigner for the studio. It doesn't have to be a big shiny pine wood. It doesn't have to be particularly expensive. It has to be a shooting space that has certain technical requirements in order to qualify. Once you've got that, and as Tommy was saying, we've got very good UK tax reliefs. They're valued highly. We have an incredible skills agenda in this country, UK, and the skills agenda is maintained by a strong link between industry and the training institutions. I also sit on the board of creative skills set, specifically because I can see that my job in terms of creating strategy for the industrial and economic side of things is directly linked to the degree to which our crews and our facilities are up to speed and up to the state of the art. I don't think that Scotland can do that on its own. Much as I'm all about self-determination for my homeland, just as Britain's had to do, you have to surrender a certain amount of sovereignty in order to gain something bigger. That is about understanding the industrial environment in which we live, the international environment in which we live. You have to understand the paradigm shift that's happening right now. We all know about it. I happen to know a lot about it, and it's amazing. Netflix is just the beginning, and beyond Netflix are the really big ones that are coming in fast. Amazon, obviously, Apple are now coming in, Google, Hulu, and then there's above and beyond that, you've got Disney. Try to look at what Disney is doing. Disney's just bought 21st Century Fox. What's that all about? Murdoch decided that Fox wasn't big enough, capitalised at 90 plus billion dollars. It wasn't big enough to enter the international battlefield, so he made a smart move, and he went inside Disney, which is much bigger, so just wait and you'll see what happens with Disney. They're going to start moving in on the global content. The good news is the demand for entertainment and the demand for content is increasing. What is changing is the means of delivery and the means of production, so if you just take a step back and look at that, that is an incredible opportunity for Scotland. It's an incredible opportunity that has not hitherto existed, which is the demand for content will step outside of the old ways of which I was a part of, where you were kind of alchemists working in sort of magic realm for the studio system. Now it's much more business-like. You have to work harder for less, perfect for Scotland. Scotland's got a good cost base, a low cost base, compared to the south and certainly compared to America. Scotland used to be second as a production cluster in the UK after the south-east. At the moment, it's now somewhere like fourth, maybe fifth in the UK, after clusters like Wales and Cardiff and Bristol, even Leith Manchester, that's getting a bit serious, and of course Northern Ireland. We are failing because of uncertainty, we're failing because of good old Scottish caution, and in my occasional dealings with Scottish Enterprise, I've been dismayed, frankly, at the apparent inability to understand that this is a real business, this is a real industry, this is much better than shipbuilding, all those of God, this is the future. Not only that, one can get onto the larger thing of the image of Scotland, how Scotland is in the world, is directly linked to our participation in the world of the media. That will affect how Scotland performs in all sorts of ways. Can I just come in there and Scottish Enterprise, under this proposal, Scottish Enterprise is still tasked with supporting the larger companies? Do you think that that's a mistake, just very quickly? Do you think it's a mistake that they've been given that role? I don't think anything's a mistake, frankly, if it's positive and moving forward, but the trick is that the implementation of the new unit is critical, and that means not just keeping it to, forgive me, was like us. That has to be about gaining people who really do understand the front line of change. The success of the BFC is because, first of all, I had personal relationships of trust with key executives in Los Angeles. I brought around the BFC, I brought people who had similar knowledge and expertise, that they could phone executives at home at night, and they could find things out that would be very hard for anyone else to find. Most importantly, is the relationship of trust. If I get a call from someone saying, well, can we put this into Scotland? I say, well, actually I don't think so, not this. They trust me because they know I'm a Scott and they would think, well, I'd say, yes, Scotland. You've got to play a very long game. Nothing's going to happen too fast. Change will happen, but this is a long game. As I said, it took 20 years to get the BFC up and running, creative skillset sorted out, to get government to understand the importance of the wider creative industries, but of the screen industries and particularly film and TV. David Smith, do you want to come in? It's two separate points. One was your point about whether Scottish Enterprise should be involved in that role. Without me, too harsh, no. I think it's—if the screen unit exists to do your job, then it should be empowered to do that job. That would be my very strong feeling. I think that Scottish Enterprise have sat around the table for 10 years and have a lot of time that has been sunk into them, and it's not really delivered a great deal. This new unit is a new start, and I think that it should be probably empowered to deliver what it's doing. It's going to be somebody's job or else it's nobody's job, and I think that it has to be the screen unit's job. Do you have a better way yet? There's a very basic fact. As Ken said earlier, you google filming Wales. It's like, come to Wales, Seriars is a very easy portal. Here's the business phone. Northern Ireland is the same. It's Scotland that's very confusing. There is terrible fragmentation. If one created of Scotland a minute, you're a small department of Creative Scotland, and it's really run by folk who like opera and drapman. It's very unclear. Whereas film Scotland, screen Scotland, what do you want to call it, the Scottish screen unit is not very enticing, to be honest. It's max of the incredible lack of ambition that's written through this whole story. It's a very unambitious name for a start, and I don't see what the clarity is of. It's a unit within what, within a what? It's like, if I was coming from somewhere else, I would think that that looks a bit unprofessional. Rachel, did you want to come back in with another question? It took a very long time to get some clarity there about Scottish Enterprise and the dysfunctional relationship it has with Creative Scotland, but I think that we've got there in the end and we've kind of got this message out. I think that the definition and criteria has been criticised, and that's what has just been mentioned. So, thank you. Stuart McMillan. Thank you. Just following up on the last couple of points, do you think then that this unit should actually be a standalone operation, as compared to— 1,000 per cent. I thought it was a catastrophic decision to merge Scottish screen into Creative Scotland. I thought it lost all its power, authority, drive, focus. I thought that was a terrible decision. Personally, I thought it always should be every other country in the world I go to. I've been in New Zealand this year filming. I've been filming in Norway, filming in Paris this year. On last year—sorry, it's only a few months old—a month old. Every other country in the world, you can Google in film New Zealand up at Pops. It's page one, and the fact that it's so convoluted here is embarrassing, frankly. To have that portal. I think that having Scottish screen recommission would be a nice thing in 10 years' time, five years' time, but we are where we are today. You have to work with the structure that's being put in place today, and that screening is a positive step forward if we can make it work in the way that we should. Governance points that were made earlier are vital, making sure that that includes industry voices. Also, the bandwidth and the expertise of the people that are involved in the unit. They have to have had, I think, several speakers have said, recent industry experience. I actually really like Claire's idea that they should sit there for three years and then move back into industry, and it should be a revolving point, because you get very comfortable sitting in those rules for a long time. You don't suffer the slings and arrows that we all do, and it would be quite nice to think that they would face the consequences of their actions. Also because the industry does change so much so quickly, you can just get behind if you're in an administrative type role and not on the floor. I think it's important. A question regarding training. It's based upon the past, but it's certainly looking ahead. In the past, when someone would have come out of university or come out of a particular training programme, what would their traditional role have been? Would it have been to go into the sector within Scotland or would it have just been to go straight down to London to get... You've got to know somebody, you've found a friend or your uncle. It was your way in was, you've found somebody and you became the T-boy and you became the runner of the T-girl. There wasn't a real structure for training when I started. There is now, thankfully, and it's vital, but it has to be totally linked into the industry. It has to have, and I think people have spoken already about it, it does exist now and it has to be cemented and expanded and it has to be totally tied into productions. Productions have to be forced to be part of the process, so it's much better than it used to be. From my point of view, there is a genuine way, there are skills from various agencies, there are skills training programmes in place now, which again need constant improvement and constantly have to be supported and adapted and expanded. The key thing for me is that it has to be tied into production, real life, it has to be tied into the industry completely for it to be meaningful. I think there's been a really brilliant scheme over the years called Nets, which I don't think is running this year, which is really, really respected across the UK and that's because it's kind of on set work placement. I think the problem is that quite often people come out of university and actually they've had no experience of the real industry and they do just go in as a runner anyway, so it's almost, I mean it's great to have all the film knowledge, but you probably still start at the bottom if that's your route anyway. I think that bringing the national film. To have it in school up to Glasgow is a huge thing, it's a massive step forward and that should be supported to the utmost use of Scotland channel. Absolutely. For a long time we've had an inherently weak domestic market for content. You know, you've had opt-out some BBC One and BBC Two for Scotland, you've had an STV, ITV channel, it makes very little in comparison to what you might expect a channel three licensee to do. Suddenly we had a BBC Alpa, which was a step forward, a positive step forward, and now we've got this new BBC Scotland channel, which for all the concerns we have about it being underfunded and transmitting an SD will be generating content. Now you build careers through that structure, you build, people will come up with ideas through that structure, some of those ideas will win. For me that channel is, it should be done on spending not hours, because it's very easy to say. We did 112 hours of drama, but it could be the lowest common denominator drama, you know, the budget said looking at. I'll touch on a separate point. Very easy to say, but why is that you still don't have a point? I'll pick up on the skills. The BFI, which is the strategic body that leads the industry in all its aspects in the UK. My strategic body, I mean it's the body that the Government will talk to. The BFI has just produced last year at some length, I have to say, a future film skills strategy. The past few months have awarded a £20 million funding to Creative Skillset to open up areas of skills that have not yet been properly mined. One of the problems with that is that Skillset has tended to be Government facing rather than industry facing. What we've been trying to do in the last couple of years is to change that whole headspace around, and we've succeeded in that. Creative Skillset, from now on, will be much more informed and much more interlocked with all the different sectors of industry, including the nations and the English regions. It's very, very important that Scotland is part of that. I'm not saying that it has to be beholden to it. I think that Scotland can be perfectly independent, but it's just stupid, frankly, not to be plugging in to the opportunities that are available in the UK and wider a field. There's a big sea change happening, a very positive sea change happening in skills, as a matter of survival and as a matter of maintaining productivity and as a matter of continuing foreign earnings, which are critically important for the UK economy. Will the proposals in the screen sector assist to ensure that there is a more robust set of skills within Scotland, so that, when you go and you talk to others in the future, you can then say, yes, you actually can go and film that in Scotland, you can put that production in Scotland? No, I understand the negative when I've made my little anecdote, but definitely there are positives for sure. The positives are that the skills base here is rising. Outlander has helped enormously. Every time there's an interface between crew members and facilities with major production, there's learning, there's real learning. It's not an academic thing, there is an academic aspect to it, but it's very much about applied experience and understanding of just how it works. The film business, particularly television, is the same. It's a very human business. It's so human. It's all about who trusts who can... I ask you to do this job. If I'm a producer, I want to make sure that whoever I'm employing is better than me, because I'm doing anything less than that. I'm endangering myself. And if I've had any success, it's because I've done that. I think in terms of the fragmentation, there's also something there about what you're saying. It's a human business and the fragmentation, I think, is about it's all... We need to bring the networks together so people know who's who, and we can actually start to capitalise on a lot of the really good work that Ian has just described, because I know when I speak to young people, because they come to us to be supporting artists, they ask us how to get in the business. I've been on set myself on a regular basis, and speaking to the runners often is because the production team were drinking in that pub that day, and the young person wanted to get on set, and they said, come down and be a runner. Now, GBM Casting has worked in a partnership with Edinburgh College, and we are trying to have a gateway for young people to find their way into the industry, because you were saying, people in university, they're not getting the real understanding of A, how to get into industry, and what practical skills you need. I hope that some of that will help, but we need to make sure that information is getting to young people, which is the role of Skills Development Scotland, who also have a part in a collaborative strategy. I'm keen to bring in Ross Greer, because you haven't asked the question yet. I'm keen to come back to issues around governance and accountability. With governance, that's something that's inherently internal and structural. The direction of travel around governance for the unit seems to be positive, taking on board the concerns that David Smith raised about diversity. However, the challenge that you always have with governance is that, when it boils down to a couple of individuals from industry on the committee, as has been highlighted repeatedly this morning, your industry is an incredibly diverse one, and for a couple of individuals to represent it in all that diversity is a huge challenge, which is where accountability is critical. However, it's considerably more abstract than governance arrangements, which are very direct. Do you think that the direction of travel on accountability around the unit is the right one at the moment, because it seems considerably less fleshed out than governance is so far? I think that boards are about strategy and policy, not administration. Administration has to be much more particular, much more specific, much more fleet of foots, is your phrase. With the BFC, we have a big national board, where everyone sits, and Greater Scotland is represented on that, as are all the others. However, the real work, if I can put it that way, is done by a business subgroup. That subgroup is appointed people who are brought in because of their particular point of view and their particular skill and knowledge, so that our intelligence is as high as possible. That is not to gain, say, the main board, not at all. In fact, everything that goes on at the subgroup is that we meet once a month. That all gets reported back to the main national board, who generally nod it through, because they understand that this is good stuff that we're getting. I think that that's probably the way to do this. You can have two appointees who are the great and the good of the industry and who have the industry's best interests at heart and have knowledge and understanding of the vision thing and all of that, but they're not necessarily the ones that we should rely on totally to run the front end of the business. I think that the continuation of the Scottish Green Leadership Group alongside the unit, the board, whatever it's called, is going to be quite vital. That relationship that's grown up over the last year or two between those two bodies, combined with the oversight of this committee, has been useful in moving all of that forward. In television, there are two real issues that we face in Scotland. One is the debt of Londoners, which, of course, we're about to consult upon, and the other is a licence-free reinvestment. As Iain said, the expertise within the unit should be able to address those things if the board has set those as the main strategy points that have to be dealt with. That interface with the Scottish Green Leadership Group should also run in parallel with it, because it has been a really good way of ensuring that the industry is listened to. Of having practitioners as part and parcel of the unit, it could be on a rotating basis. It could be a conscription service for a year, whatever it is, because what tends to happen is, you know, in that whole story, those that don't do teach, you know, the ones that actually do the hard-end jobs, they're very rarely in those positions or are listened to, so I think that having people actually at the sharp end, seconded to the unit on a rotational basis, whatever you want to do, would be a massively clever idea, in my opinion. Absolutely. There's definitely that practical level missing. There's a strategic overview on how you're going to do governance, but actually, in terms of the work that we do with supporting artists and supplying to productions in Scotland, we are absolutely at the coalface, because we are chasing that work all the time. We know what's going on, and we need to feed that back up. And we need a voice at the table, because, at no point have we ever been engaged or consulted, and we have years of experience, been around for 15 years, so somebody needs to cash in on that experience and that coalface experience as well. Tommy, you mentioned a number of times now the equivalent structures, equivalent organisations in other countries that you've worked in. Yes. How does that accountability relationship work? Not just the Government—we can examine the governance arrangements of equivalent organisations, but the accountability with the industry, that cultural accountability? I think that you tend to find—I'm not an expert on the fact—that the most countries that I've worked in, you tend to find that the practitioners are much more involved in the governance of those bodies. They're not ads. As a working person around the world, or a Scottish person working in the film business for 29 years, I've never had a known or a real relationship with people in the quangos. It just have all seemed very removed and not really on the same planet as us. They don't come to the set. I don't know them. They've never asked me before when I'm saying, what do you think? Or, you know, would this studio space work? Or, what do you need in a studio? You know, in 28 years I've been asked once, you know, by a couple of people, about, say, what would you look for in a film studio? And I've spent, you know, my whole life in them. I can tell you in 15 minutes what it takes to make a film studio. I've never been asked. Can I just come on up and see that we do actually have quite a thriving industry in Scotland, in spite of the fact that Creative Scotland has been around and in spite of Scottish Enterprise. You know, we've done that without their support, so if we can do that, there's a real opportunity now to remodel the governance structures. There's already been talk about we don't, you know, Scottish Enterprise hasn't delivered, so we don't need them. So, my point is, is that we've done this without them, and that comes back to what you were saying as well, Tommy. I think the difficulty that I perceive of Scottish Enterprise is that they are old thinking. They're thinking about big companies, they're thinking about permanent employment, they're thinking about buildings and land and property deals and all of that stuff, which goes against the grain when it comes to the business that we are part of. We are part of a virtual business that is globalised and all these other countries that we're talking about, you know, they understand that they need to be part of that, and they understand that, particularly when they're not English-speaking, because we win and lose with the fact that we speak the same language as America. But if you're going, I've just spent a big chunk of time in Hungary, where it's immediate. As a producer coming into Hungary, I can get to Victor Orman, the Prime Minister, within a day, because he understands the significance that lies beyond the obvious. As a Scottish producer, I would sadly say that I have made more films in Budapest than I have been in Scotland, not because I have avoided Scotland. Easily, many more. You have a 25 per cent tax increase there. Why is that? And they so can do, so helpful. They understand that it's not just about the moment, it's about the possibilities that lie beyond that. As a result, and this is another thing, trust. You say about Netflix and all these guys, they're just people. They're just people and go home at night, have their holidays, they turn up for work, they hope they've got their job next week and all that stuff. They're just people. They're not some sort of fancy elite, they're not. And they're generally scared. They're scared because they've got to perform and they're looking for solutions and they're looking for them more around the world than they ever did before. And Scotland should be part of that. What are the key things that we need to do to be like Hungary and is this unit going to deliver them? I don't think you can be like Hungary, if you don't mind me saying, but I think you learn from Hungary, you learn from Czech Republic, you learn from Romania, you learn from South Africa. These are nations competing now actively to get a lion's share of the international film production business. I think we learn from London as well. Primacy of IP is a lesson well learned. The whole of the TV and the international television industry is based upon the value of IP. To this day, it's commissioned in London from London-based producers because they come up with the best ideas. So if we want to move that debate forward, you have to invest in the skill of developing ideas. That's on me again. Once I totally understand the idea of keep it here, you know, grow local talent and so on. Personally, because of my own experience and Tommy's the same, we learn so much by going away and by putting ourselves at risk, if you like, in the bigger clusters. It's a business of clusters and you learn experience and you come home, hopefully. And certainly, I know Tommy's the same. We've never lost sight of where we come from, but unfortunately we have to spend a great deal of our time elsewhere. But the knowledge that people like us have is available to Scotland. And so if you come back to that subgroup idea, you have a small group. It's not a big meeting like this. We're talking about six people, maybe, but those people are all hand-picked to cover particular aspects of futurology in the film and TV business. It's simple, common sense. Are you talking about a subgroup of the board or are you talking about the executive level? Which informs the board? One massive thing that would make a massive difference to Scotland is starting to look at community benefit clauses, how that public funding is attached to a target of you. If you come in and you're given public sector money that you must use, I don't know, 25 per cent, 50 per cent of local companies. Outlaw King, which was Netflix, which was done by Signaf Films, came up. That was 100 million pounds worth of investment in Scotland. The three casting agencies, which are represented here today, went to see the second AD, and he said, I'll decide who I use. I'll be using somebody from London. And we worked out that that was a loss for Scotland's casting agencies as 100,000 pounds worth of investment into us. And there was nothing we could do. There was nobody we could go to. There was nobody we could say. There was no legislation to back that up. And as a result, we lost a massive opportunity to supply extras and all of that that goes into that as well. And that would make a massive difference not only to the casting agents in Scotland, but to crew, to facilities, if there was some sort of tie-up to public money with community benefit clauses. Ozil, which is around the kind of three tick boxes they're looking for, which are cultural, economic and social impact. I think that that's a really useful lever that we should be concentrating on, especially when you come to national broadcasters like the BBC. That would help to address issues that we have, concerns that we have around lift and shift, for example. When I phone Northern Ireland productions to say, it won't use at you because we've got to use NI. We know the London creep is in Scotland. We know the London creep is in Northern Ireland. I phoned somebody in Southern Ireland the other day. Nope, we have to use locally-based companies. Fyllin Wales is exactly the same about that. Actually, their application form before they can get public money has to demonstrate who they're going to talk to and who they're going to use for, and that in itself would make a massive difference. That would be worth bearing in mind the benefit that comes from what we would call sweet nurse, which are local incentives. They don't have to be big massive, but they're almost token to film production. If you think of Netflix and huge money on all that stuff, but £100,000 is placed to incentivise them to come to a particular place will make all the difference. Not so much because of the money, but because of the good will it demonstrates. That makes a huge difference. I mean, it interrupts. It's huge, you know, for the Disney Paramount Universal and someone says, oh, they've offered us free flights to go and scout South Africa. Oh, suddenly you're in South Africa because somebody managed to get, you know, and it can be as pedantic in mundane as that. Those little things really matter. You'd be amazed how much they matter. That's why the budget of £20 million is not enough, given the £170 million that I mentioned earlier. Ofcom, as is going to be looking at this in relation to the TV and this committee, is going to be having another session on that, but in terms of this new unit within Creative Scotland, are we tough enough in terms of incentivising the film companies to use local crews or do you think that we could be tougher? When we're working on the sort of project that you were talking about before, so you were talking about the local, you know, the major local project, so Grantchester, I was just doing Shetland, for example, which is a big chunker for Scotland in the summer. You have to hope that you're making Shetland when Outlander are on a holiday because otherwise you're toiling to get the people you need, but maybe the ITV make that, they're not a Scottish company, they have to show a certain spend in Scotland, they have to put a certain spend into Scotland to work within Ofcom's rules and I've worked with other production companies who've come the same thing when we're making the replacement, Left Bank were making that, they had to show their spend in Scotland, that spend is always, it's always a negotiation because as soon as the production company isn't from Scotland, their production fee, which is part of the qualifying spend, isn't part of the equation and my jobs align producer gets slightly harder because then I'm trying to make up the difference of their production fee in what I spend in Scotland on facilities and crew. We don't get any points for having booked Scottish actors, you do get some, I always conclude the talent from the supporting artists as part of the point scheme, but that has been argued, I've been argued against that by people in BBC Scotland when we're reporting, it's a strange anomaly that nobody really seems to understand very well and the biggest thing that makes a difference to that spend, if you want to keep that spend on the right side of the percentage you're supposed to spend is if we can do post-production because if you can't have the fee from the production company be Scottish, if you're doing your post-production in Scotland then that's a huge chunk of your budget and that along with things like background artists and crew and facilities and all these things makes a difference but all too often we see that heading south as well because the production companies come from the south so they want to go home to do their post-production and it's totally understandable, they want to be able to do that. Shetland did its post-production in Scotland this year at Blaise and Griffin, I worked in another production called Murder which did its post-production at what was 422 partly because we pushed really hard to make those things happen with the commissioners and with the production companies that were making them and it often falls to the line producers to try and sell what we've got here and I think you do need to incentivise it but I don't know who police is that at Ofcom because it's often a fudge and when the decision is made that we're not going to do our post in Scotland or we really don't want to do other things then there's very little I can do about it but yet it will often be my job to explain why it didn't happen but I don't have the answers. It's about the IP, if the stuff was being commissioned directly out of Scotland we could satisfy Ofcom's requirements very easily but until that starts to happen it feels like... I know that David Smith wants to come on. On out of London it is by far I think the most important fight we have to get right over the next year or two which is why having expertise within the new unit that understands the nuances of out of London rules networks is going to be very important. Substantive base which is the first tick box is often the one that's missed on drama and comedy projects because they are commissioned and made down south and outsourced to do Scotland for production. We have to get substantive base element of it right. At the moment out of London is about production and where production takes place around the UK and I'd like to see a shift to economic impact and value. That's partly to do with IP, it's partly to do with the retention of profits and that's what makes companies sustainable. I go back to where I used to work at IWC media again. It was sustainable because it owned the IP, it owned the profits, it could generate new ideas, it could generate new opportunities. As things currently stand, your substantive base is not an essential tick, it's a one of three options. If you get it, it unlocks lots of spend variables which as we've discussed in front of this committee before do not necessarily mean that even though 100 per cent of a value for project was set against the Scottish quota, as little as 10 per cent can actually be take place in Scotland. Ian Smith Thank you. Picking up on that, I've tended to concentrate on the inward investment side of things and the economic underpinning of the industry. Apart from the economic benefits of that, the obvious ones, the considerable ones, there's no point in having that if it doesn't in some way sustain and support and grow the indigenous IP. That has to be part of the programme. So it's a kind of double whammy. You're bringing the stuff in and you're kind of suffering a bit because prices will go up, there'll be crew having to work in lesser positions and so on, but the learning processes that will be going on will also be sustaining the indigenous industry. It's crucial because the inward investment business is very hard fought and won, very hard fought and won. We need a more sustainable business where we hear our own voices and we understand our own mentality and we define ourselves by the cultures that we can express. That's very important. I think that the inward investment of the bigger shows actually trains people, it feeds them, they learn, they have their own ideas, they go off. It's actually very symbiotic. They're not in opposition at all and the IP thing is vitally important and maintaining our cultural input into the films we make is vitally important, but you can have both things not only can live together, they must live together. You can play the two side by side. And the industry's used to that. It's used to these incentives and regulations. Completely, yes. You tend to get a two-tier system starting to work. When people are making good money into the big American productions coming in and are then taking less to enable smaller projects or more local projects to happen. One begets the other quite often. Richard, did you have a very quick supplementary? Right. We're actually over time already. The Natalie Usher. Obviously she's going to be replaced. What sort of talent and skill would you like to see replacing that? That's not really a supplementary, Richard. I would like her just to come and find me and talk to me and ask me what I need. That's all I want. I'm not asking for money, I'm not asking for anything else, just come and find out what those of us grafting at the front end of the business need and the casting agents are open for business and we want a place at the table and we want whoever goes in, whatever the screen unit looks like, that we want them to talk to us. Going is the one thing to say. I think that Natalie had caught up with the skills we would like to see the next person have and I think if someone like Natalie is in their head to do what they know is right, then they'll be able to do it. I think it depends who's who is, yeah, I think that they need to be given the room to do what they know is right. I think that Natalie had a very particular set of skills and experience which has been brilliant actually for this Scotland and it would be amazing to find someone similar but I think just because she really understood the business of film which is important, so yeah. I just understood IP, where she came from, it's part of what we're all hoping for, as we say, running two things alongside each other. Richard. Oh, thank you. It was just in light of everything that both panels have said. It strikes me that for some reason in recent years the industry or government or whoever has failed to articulate and encapsulate the massive potential of this industry to Scotland and I just wondered if you agree with that and what we could do to address that. I think for Scotland, almost more than any other country I can think of, it means a strong creative industry sector and that's because the world I see is very much about are you part of the networking of information flow, entertainment, everything. And if you're not part of that, then you're not in the ballgame at all. For Scotland, I think just on that broad macro level it's very, very important for Scotland to have a voice, particularly as we move steadily towards self-determination. There has to be a sense of the culture and the creativity of the Scottish people. I think that while it remains a retained matter to Westminster, there are limits to what the Scottish Government can do. I think that they have put a lot of effort into the sector over the last few years. Clearly, there were deep systemic issues to do with the fracturing between Creative Scotland and the Scottish Enterprise. There was actually, I remember, five, six, seven years ago, a real conversation around just an education process as to what's the difference between film and television, what's the difference between in-house production and indie production. We went on quite a long education process as a wider group. There's a real understanding now within the Scottish Government as to how this works. It takes time to kind of change things, but I think I'm optimistic. I think there's lots of reasons to be optimistic over the next few years. I agree with my colleagues who work in the wider international world of film, which is a mystery to me. But in terms of British domestic TV production, we have a new channel, we've got the new screen unit, we've got money coming from the Scottish Government. These are all things we didn't have a few years ago, so it's a start. I think also to add to that, the freelance workers have organised themselves into an organisation that has given a paper to this committee. The things that the recommendations within that paper are backed up by 750 people that work in the industry, and I think they're worth taking on board. A lot of what we would like—I read it again, it's very clear, it's very well written—it's recommendations, I would back up 100% in terms of what needs to happen next with that screen unit and what needs to happen. I think one of the great things about the kind of stushy around the Pentland film studio was that the freelancers got organised. There was something to fight for, there was something they could see, something that they had their eye on a prize and they wanted it. All of that's kind of come at, it's been a bit of a perfect storm. You know, that hope that that studio's going to be up and running sooner rather than later will see the work stack to come, more work, more of that work. For a while, there will be much more experienced people arriving to teach us something, but that's fine. You know, we've got something to learn. I do think that it is an optimistic time, and I think that people are beginning to understand the value of our business much more partly because of those arguments. I think that there's massive opportunities ahead. As everyone said here, the whole paradigm shifted. The business is exploding. The desire for content is increasing, not decreasing, and we should get our share of it. We need a film studio. I think that it's a basic building block of filmmaking, and the lack of it is a disaster, and that should be a priority one, from my point of view. People are saying that it is optimistic, but I think that it's about that screen unit proposal being delivered properly and with the right input and with the right people running it. That's so that I'm taking on everybody's input. I want the committee to have the courage to actually make real change here. This is a real opportunity. If we're telling you it's not working, then for two long public sectors, just maintained status quo and people have been recycled into different jobs, this is a brilliant opportunity to do a different something different and a different model which we can pick from any part of the world and really implement in Scotland so that these exceptional people can make it work and tell the world that Scotland is open for business. Thank you very much and I'd like to thank all our panellists and panel two for coming and giving us our time today. It's very much appreciated. Thank you very much. I shall now suspend and go into private session.