 Welcome to the ninth meeting of the Culture Tourism Europe and External Relations Committee in session 5. I remind members and the public to turn off mobile phones, and any members who use electronic devices to access committee papers should ensure that they are turned to silent. Apologies have been received today from Tavish Scott MSP. electrific I is a decision on taking agenda. Item 3 in private is consideration of evidence that we heard today, because why are members content with it? Members will disagree with that. Our second item of business today is an evidence session on screen sector leadership report, which I welcome our witnesses to the meeting—John McCormick, Chair of the screen sector leadership group, Ken Haye, Chief Executive Officer for the centre of the moving image, Dean Muirhead, director manager of Reyes the Roof. Welcome and thank you for joining us this morning. Mr McCormack, would you like to make a brief opening statement? Yes, thank you convener. We appreciate this opportunity to discuss our report with you and thank you for spending the time to do that. Our report outlines what the screen sector believes needs to be done to meet their concerns. The concern that Scotland has fallen behind other parts of the UK, that the fragmentation and overlapping responsibilities mean that there is no overall integrated coherent strategy and therefore no leadership or accountability for the investment in the sector. To address that, we strongly support the proposed screen unit with an expanded remit with additional responsibility for business development support needed by the small companies who operate in the screen industry but do not meet the criteria set by Scottish Enterprise, and they require additional resources, as we outline in the report. I have to say that the lack of visible progress since it was first mooted in May last year only reinforces the cynicism widely held across the sector that I have been asked to represent today and the belief that real progress will not be made until there is a realistic co-operative partnership established between Creative Scotland and Scottish Enterprise working to shared objectives. There seems a reluctance to learn from the successful model in Northern Ireland where Northern Ireland's screen and Invest Northern Ireland work closely together. The EET report in March 2015 highlighted that. Sadly, there is no evidence of an improvement in the relationship during the past two years. As a belief that only Government can make that happen, and that the sector is not a priority. We believe that our report presents an honest assessment of what needs to be done, and we hope that it can be a catalyst and that you can help us to bring some urgency to the process so that we can make real progress. Thank you very much, Mr McCormack. I am struck by the pessimistic tone of your opening comments. I take it from what you are saying that, even since the report has been published, you have not seen any evidence of progress? There is no real progress in terms of the key relationship that your predecessor committee in March 2015 drew attention to. There may be things happening behind the scenes that we are totally unaware of, but by the time that we put in our report and submitted it in January this year, there was no sign of the kind of understanding that would bring that kind of integrated relationship and shared objectives that we think is necessary. That is why the establishment of the screen unit is such a priority, and that is a very positive proposal that came from the Government. We received a presentation on it in October last year and gave it full-hearted support. We hope that that will come to fruition, but for it to succeed, it needs to have a real co-operation between the screen unit and Scottish Enterprise, with Scottish Enterprise giving it the full support. It means that business development responsibility for the small companies that work in the screen industry and across the screen industry would pass to the Creative Scotland and the screen unit. That is crucial to helping those companies that fall below the radar, as far as Scottish Enterprise is concerned. The main concern, of course, is high-growth companies. That is optimistic. There are a lot of other things that have been optimistic, as you were discussing at your last meeting in terms of the increased investment in the BBC. However, the passage of time that my colleagues around the table said that it does not seem that there is any urgency behind it. We are drifting behind other parts of the UK that are making further advances, attracting greater investment internationally than we are at the moment. That is a pity, because the strengths are there within and across the sector, but it is fragmented. We need to bring that coherence, accountability and leadership. We think that the screen unit within Creative Scotland would bring that leadership, and we strongly support it. The screen units, have you been given any indication as to where that is in terms of how soon it will be delivered? No, we know that discussions are continuing between Creative Scotland and representatives of the government. Where do you see the blockage to progress? I am not in a position to judge that, honestly. I am not saying that there is a blockage in the process. It is simply that if we were very excited about the process of the screen unit when it was presented to us in September, October and we had discussions about it and gave it a full hearted support and kind of hoped that we would have seen some tangible progress by the coming financial year, because it will demand increased investment. My colleagues around the leadership group table who know that we are coming here today asked me to express their disappointment that nothing has come out towards the end of this current financial year, which would give them the optimism. Rather than a cup halfs empty process, I am a cup half full empty, but she came to the end of the financial year and no investment has been announced to get it off the ground, because there is a set-up period and recruitment necessary and all of that, and they are beginning to wonder if it is going to be very, very slow progress in achieving it. In terms of my own conversations, the mood music that I am getting is that there has been progress within Creative Scotland, but Scottish Enterprise is the blockage. I do not know if that is what you are hearing as well. I have heard that as well. That has been put to us. I will hand over to my colleague Lewis McDonald, who was also part of the EET committee inquiry, as was I a couple of years ago. Good morning. You mentioned the issues that we raised in that committee's report on the importance of joint up leadership. That was partly about having a dedicated approach to the screen industries, but it was also recognising that, no matter even with the creation of a screen unit, there will still require to be co-ordination and joined up approach between Creative Scotland and Scottish Enterprise. In the course of your inquiry and in the feedback that you have had since, do you have any indications that that wider point has been taken on board? We certainly had some feedback of Scottish Enterprise being more proactive than perhaps it has been in the recent past. I wonder if that is something that is reflected in your own dealings with Government agencies? There have been some working groups over the winter looking at some smaller projects, setting up a shared services centre that requires co-operation between Creative Scotland and Scottish Enterprise, and setting up some other kind of share on the edge of the sector. I am not aware of anything fundamental that has been progress in terms of your independent sector. I am not aware of any large initiatives. It is business as usual with Scottish Enterprise, which continues to be quite confusing to be honest for businesses. We do know that there is a range of services that are available, but it does not seem that they are any easier to access. One of the issues that came up during that inquiry was uncertainty about where the lead lay within Government, which Minister had the lead in those matters. Is there a sense of certainty around that now? Can you say from the point of view of your members or colleagues, yes, that this is the Minister and that this is what the responsibilities are? I think that that is beyond our remit, but we believe in the leadership of Creative Scotland and the Cabinet Secretary for the Responsibility for Culture should be the lead minister on that, but we realise that it cuts across infrastructure, economy, finance to get things to happen. With the current review of the enterprise agencies under way, that may be a factor in why we have not seen—there is a moving picture there and maybe that is the reason why we have not seen progress that we might have expected to see over the last year—we would expect to see the leadership from Creative Scotland and from the culture secretary. The Cabinet Secretary for Culture would be the lead minister, as far as we are concerned, but it does cut across a number of responsibilities. That is helpful, because I think that it does capture the point that the Government seems not to be clear about what it intends the enterprise agencies to do in general, and therefore perhaps a lack of progress in this area in particular is not that surprising in that context. Can I ask about the other point that the Committee, the Economy, Committee very much focused on as, if you like, the litmus test of progress was the question of a film and television studio, indeed. I wonder what your observations would be in light of the comments in your report, but also in the light of developments over the last few months as to whether that litmus test has been passed? Clearly, no. There has been an awful lot of conversations. A lot of positive noises, people putting forward proposals. There was the Pentland studio proposal just outside Edinburgh, but a number of others as well have been talked about. To date, and again, two years down the line from when your predecessor committee reported, there is nothing. There is no new studio facility, additional studio facility in Scotland. Production still continues, people are making do with what is available, but when you are going out to international marketplaces trying to sell Scotland as a viable and vibrant production hub that it is worth coming to film in, you can see fantastic locations, but what we do not have is that large-scale studio facility that would facilitate further inward production activity. There was real concern on the committee and among witnesses two years ago that the absence of that meant that Scotland was losing opportunities and losing its place, if you like, as the leading centre for film and television production. Is it your view that that has continued to be an increasing problem? In other words, have we lost more opportunities over the last two years? Is there a risk that we slip all together out of the race? I do not have the data to know whether we have lost more, but certainly trying to sell something that we do not have is quite hard work when other parts of the UK and other parts of the world do have those facilities. We are trying to sell ourselves as a production base, but with our uncles tied, it is quite a hard one to do. As it came through our report when we were talking to people in the skills development area and facilities development companies, they stressed to us the importance of having a studio and what it does for developing the skills base in Scotland, providing a training ground, providing apprenticeships. We have a stable workforce in the skills sector that we do not have at the moment, as I outlined in the report. How important having a fixed studio can be in developing that longer-term strategy for the industry? That remains a flagship requirement and one that has not been delivered. Thank you very much, Jackson Carlaw. We conflate all our issues at once, because I, too, would like to talk about the skills, but I would like to talk about the film studios. If I could go back to the opening area of discussion. You touch on Northern Ireland's screen. This is not an issue that the Scottish Government has made clear in the chamber that the investment that they have put into film and television matches every bit and that exceeds that that the Northern Ireland Administration has put in. I notice that there is a member of Scottish Enterprise who was on your panel. The representation that has been made is that Scottish Enterprise just sees themselves as far too big a beast to be terribly bothered with the much lower level of discussion and integration about commissioning and taking advantage of opportunities. Even since BBC announced their studios initiative, representations were made that Northern Ireland's screen was almost on to all the independent partners immediately saying, look, how can we assist, how can we work to secure these productions for Northern Ireland, whereas here in Scotland there just has been none of the same kind of co-operation and traction. The mood music seems in creative Scotland to certainly have changed. They are prejudiced looking only at film. They now seem to see the television sector as a much greater opportunity. In Northern Ireland, it has been suggested that there has been a compelling personality in place who has been able to drive that synergy through to a point where the enterprise company and the creative operations have functioned together. Is that something that we should be looking at here? Is it simply that there isn't somebody who is evangelical advocating for this as a sector within creative Scotland that could actually generate results? That is a really interesting point about an evangelical person. The impression that the independent sector gets from Scottish Enterprise just now is that their feeling is that TV production in Scotland is flatlined. That is not the case at all. I could cite so many examples of why that is not the case, but the other thing is that we should be really mindful of is that again we are sitting on the edge of massive opportunity as well. The number of hours of television that are produced in the UK and in Scotland has not reduced. The opportunity is still there. We now have the new channel that has been announced in BBC Scotland, which presents further opportunity. All that we are asking for is the support to be ready to meet that challenge because the opportunities are absolutely there. If that needs an evangelical person at the top who believes as passionately in our industry as we do, that is what we need. I am right to say that Creative Scotland, although it has the creative commitment, has a relatively small budget in comparison to the opportunity that would come from Scottish Enterprise. You talk about the emerging opportunity. The report is quite BBC centric when I look at it. I know that Channel 4 and Scottish Television were also on the review team, but there is not that much mention of the opportunity arising from them. It strikes me also that the creative emerging opportunity is international digital television production, which we are now seeing on Netflix, Amazon Prime and other internationally established channels. I think that the BBC themselves see an opportunity to have a platform too. There are quite a few of the programmes on those two digital channels that are produced by the BBC. I notice that we have not seen here on landline TV. Given all of that, Scottish Enterprise is oblivious to it because what seems to me to be the case is that the budgets underpinning some of that production are of international film production levels. They are not what you might have regarded historically as the budgets that you would see for television drama. They are really £1 million in episode type things, which really do create a huge opportunity. There seems to be a real demand for it to be cited in Scotland. You have obviously had more discussion with Scottish Enterprise than we have in this. Can it be a mood that has changed, or are you pushing a stone up a hill here? What Scottish Enterprise feels to understand is that it is development that is the lifeblood of independent producers. That is where we need to invest our money. We need to develop the next big idea. Having said that, when something is commissioned, nobody actually knows if it is going to be a hit or not, but we need to keep that pipeline going. The other thing is that, as independent producers, we have to be robust. We have to learn how to react to what a broadcaster says no. I would say that 95 per cent of our ideas end up in the rejected pile. The investment is massive. That is the type of support that we would like to see from Scottish Enterprise and Creative Scotland. We were hoping that that would be something that perhaps the screen unit would be able to help with, because Scottish Enterprise just does not seem to get. That is what feeds our businesses, is development, its ideas, its people. That is what our research and development is. I can come in on the back of that, but you are asking the question about who and how. It is not a recent issue. This conversation has been going on for at least 21 years of my life. If you go back to 1996, the report was produced under the then Conservative Administration that led to the creation of Scottish Screen, which was the model for Northern Ireland's screen, the model for the English regional screen agencies, and the model for UK film council. Scottish Screen was obviously one of the predecessor bodies to Creative Scotland. Through my time working at Scottish Screen, the issue was exactly the same, about how to join the dots effectively between public sector bodies with shared responsibilities, shared resource and shared ambitions. It was just about impossible to do it in a sensible way. We could get individual projects off the ground, but having that shared strategy with shared responsibilities, shared authority and shared cash was impossible to do. One of the solutions that Creative Scotland presented when it was created seven years ago was to resolve that. Rather than having a relatively small agency in Scottish Screen trying to have a battle with a large agency in the form of Scottish Enterprise, you had a much bulkier organisation having that debate. In the seven years of Creative Scotland's existence, we seem to be in exactly the same position. In terms of the leadership bit, it actually comes back to the top level of government to say, this is what we want. It stops saying, have a nice conversation, guys, and see what you can come up with, because for 20 years it's very little. I have just a last point on this subject. You opened by referring to initiatives that are taking place elsewhere, which are potentially putting us further behind again. Could you share with the committee some of the initiatives that you feel are taking place in other parts of the UK currently, which point to Scotland potentially falling further behind in terms of the advantage that's open to us? In terms of investment, BBC Wales and the Welsh broadcasting sector moved ahead in Scotland because of significant investment there from the BBC, and that's why we were so pleased. That's why we did spend so much time in the report on the BBC side, because we felt that, in terms of the allocation of the BBC licence fee across the UK, Scotland was falling behind. That was a matter for the BBC, and that was a time to draw attention to it, as you did in terms of the new charter and the new governance arrangements for the BBC. That's one area, and that's one area where we strongly support the licence fee revenue raised in Scotland, being spent in Scotland. We noticed that that was discussed at your last meeting with the director general of the BBC, and I was kind of disappointed about one or two of his comments afterwards in interviews where he talked about if Scotland received all of the licence fee, then different regions of England would have to receive all of the licence fee, and the integrity of the BBC could be under some issue. We see it rather differently than in terms of underpinning the BBC, and the audience council for Scotland of the BBC more or less said the same thing in their last annual report. Instead of sending, once there is a £140 million deficit, a very welcome £40 million is coming over the next year or two. We say in the report that, over the next five years, that remaining £100 million could be brought into the sector over a five-year period and built up and developed to give us that sustainable growth that we have liked in the past. We believe that that strengthens the BBC rather than weakens it. In a devolved UK, the BBC has got to have a very good case if they say that some of that £100 million has got to go to support the broadcasting industry in the overheated south-east of England. The currency is programming, and we know from research that across the UK there is strong support for high-cost drama productions coming from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Wales has succeeded tremendously well in the last five years. There is now an opportunity for the BBC with the increased investment that we heard about last time to build on that, but we believe that the strengthening of the BBC will come from that increased portrayal so that the UKness of the BBC is demonstrated on its major network channels. The other side, of course, is Northern Ireland, where the relationship between invest Northern Ireland and Northern Ireland's screen is free-flowing, co-operative and where funding passes from invest Northern Ireland into Northern Ireland's screen and they meet their shared objectives. They work very much in partnership, and that is what we would like to see here. I have two questions, but one relates to infrastructure. I am not sure that we are discussing that just now. On the big picture in Scotland at the moment, can you help us to paint a picture on the challenge of retaining talent in Scotland at the moment? Is it the case that many people who want to work in the film and TV sectors feel that they have to move to London or elsewhere, or are people able to live and work in Scotland but still work in UK productions or whatever? It is an on-going issue. We have made progress in certain genres. One genre in particular is features and factual programming. There was a programme that was commissioned by Channel 4 nearly 20 years ago in Scotland called Location, Location and Location. On the back of that programme, there have been companies that have been spawned. There has been a whole generation of people who now live and work in Scotland and work on that type of programming. As a result, more of that type of programming is being commissioned. However, there is a real, real issue in scripted, for example, in drama. We have not had any major dramas that Indigenous Scottish dramas produced here for a number of years. We can talk about things such as Shetland, for example, which is fantastic and is great for the area itself and uses local crew, but it is not actually an Indigenous production. It comes from ITV studios, which is a great thing. We welcome that, but it is a tragedy that there is no drama that is being written and produced out of Scotland and the IP is being kept here as well. On the back of that programme, a lot of the talent works in the places where there is the activity. A lot of Scottish talent, particularly Central Belt talent, work in Northern Ireland on things such as Game of Thrones, although they will be working in Manchester on a range of productions being produced out of the north west of England. It is, as well as going to London. It is the way it is. It is a very mobile workforce and they have to make a living. When we hear the news as we did just a few days ago, there is going to be a major film shot in Edinburgh, I think it was. Is it Avengers? We have got that wrong. Will local people be hired in terms of the creative sectors for that kind of production? I do not know the details, but my experience would say very few. It will be a huge benefit to hotels, huge benefit to other suppliers at that end of the scale, but certainly walking around the centre of Edinburgh over the past couple of weeks listening to the voices, they do not sound particularly local. If you are setting the film up, that is, and it is the Avengers. As Ken said, it is always a transitory thing. People go where the work is, where the money is, and that attracts—in the skills base, the people behind the scenes are well used to travelling across Europe and across the UK. Because we have not been able to have a sustained base core business that goes from year to year to provide some stability, we do not have the basis of the training, the development, bringing on the next generation of people. The transient population is part of the industry, but we like the core sustained business in scripted programming and film making to allow us to build that up for the future. I was interested in the comments about the film production because when you see the movies and they are shot in various locations around the world, you will usually see the credits of different crews and people used in different locations. I wondered whether that was a norm for international film productions that are filmed in Scotland? There will certainly be local people being used, but I do not know the details of that particular shoot. It was London-based and studio-based companies that have got all their vans up and all their lighting rigs and everything else up, so I am assuming that it is the London-based crew that is working here. I have got one general question. I thank the cross-party group on culture, and we had a session on that topic, with speakers including Andrea Calderwood. Andrea Calderwood was talking specifically about the points that you were making about the major international dramas that are always collaborations, but she said that there was an issue around the tax breaks. Although the tax breaks were good, they were not geographic specific, and what we needed was for the UK Government to specify that the tax break would come if you employed people and did the work, say, in Scotland it would have to be geographically specific. I wondered what your views were on that and whether you think that if we did have that, it would improve things in Scotland and address some of the problems that Ken has just identified. Well, there are very specific rules to how the tax credit is applied, but it applies to the UK, so there is no geographical differentiation within the UK, it just applies to the UK base. If you are wanting more for Scotland, then it would be a case of, well, does the Scottish Government or Creative Scotland or whoever put further incentives on the table, and in some ways that is what Northern Ireland's screen has been able to do, that Creative Scotland or Scottish Enterprise have not been able to do. There has been the production incentive growth fund that I am not fully on top of that Creative Scotland has had, which has been some additional money to attract business in, but it has not been enough and it was, from what I remember, it was just been for an initial year where the further follow-up year, so it is how we can get that sustained investment in place for a longer period. To go back to my original question, I do not know whether the other panellists have got a view on this. If the details for the tax break were to be revisited so that there was some geographical incentive, do you think that that would help? I think that it would be helpful, but sometimes there are unintended consequences that you cannot see in terms of whether that might be a disincentive to some people to come and work in the country, but I think that it is certainly worth the examination and certainly worth looking at. Just a supplementary question. I wonder if Ken Hay could tell us a little bit about what additional things Northern Ireland's green are able to put in place on top of the tax credits that perhaps we could learn from? I think that rather than, I suppose, the starting points actually at the top rather than at the bottom, which is their task with developing the sector and there is an agreement from all parties involved to develop that this is a good thing to do. There is an integrated strategy that joins the dots at the top and the leadership for implementing that strategy rests with Northern Ireland's green. They have the money to invest, to achieve those objectives. Some of it comes from invest Northern Ireland, some comes from the Northern Ireland assembly, some comes from elsewhere and they work on that basis. It is a very simple, clear model with the full backing of everyone on the ground. They can then, going back to your question, address all the individual elements because part of the challenge in a report like this and part of the challenge in describing the sector is that it is all interconnected. It should do as important. Skills-based is important. Talent-based is important. The development functions are important. Inward investment is important. Indigenous production is important. It is how you tie all those different strands together. What Northern Ireland's green has got is the mandate, the authority and the cash with a strategy to back it up. It seems to be quite a simple, straightforward thing that, for 21 years, we have not managed to achieve here. We need to go back to Richard Lochhead and we will be interrupted to your line of questioning. Others may want to ask about a film studio and my question is very loosely related, so I am not necessarily going down that road. My question is in terms of goodwill amongst public sector organisations, private sector organisations in Scotland. The former RAF can loss base in my constituency, a huge site. To me it would be great for a film studio or at least an outreach or film work and people working in the industry agreed with that. Of course, the MOD were very, very lukewarm about that being used even though a massive proportion of the site is unused at the moment. What is the situation across Scotland in terms of getting co-operation in goodwill? I know that local authorities are very welcoming in the main to film and TV work uses locations, but what are the wider public sector organisations such as the MOD and others? I have no experience of the MOD or Government departments in that sector. A lot of entrepreneurial work goes on where people, when they have locations, are available or warehouses that come empty are very quick to make it available to the local authority and to the local screen agencies around the country to make sure that it is available. I remember 25 years ago, I went into this used WDNHO Will's secret factory in Deniston to see the BBC set up for a drama series that was rigging up. As our BBC guys were coming in with a truck of cameras and lighting rigs, STV was leaving having derigged taggert from that space. That was when I first thought, couldn't we join this up and get a studio and then there's a fixed lighting rig and you take the cost go on to the screen rather than in the infrastructure. There are a lot of examples of that around the country's spaces. The BBC development in Dumbarton is well used and a number of dramas have used that studio. It's a kind of mini Hollywood with the white-painted whisky bond. It's exploited behind the scenes and a lot of work is done there. What's lacking is that big soundstage studio that's a permanent fixture that people know is there so they don't have to send their people up front to locate and scout around for premises and then adapt them. That's an increased cost, so it's a fixed resource but, certainly, the local authorities are entrepreneurial. The different film offices across the local authorities do a lot to make facilities known to different film companies internationally and do a lot of good work. There's a line in a section of our report about the data relating to film investment and the return on investment. We know what we have. The data that we have shows that the return on investment is quite considerable but we need to do some granular work over the next couple of years of building up a statistics base, as the report says, about the return on investment in Scotland. Too many of the figures are dissipated, there are UK figures, and there are very few figures for Scotland and for local authorities where we can go and demonstrate the return on the investment that the local authorities put in to their film studio work. There's a lot of entrepreneurial work that goes on, but it doesn't take away the need for a fixed film studio in terms of the international market place. James Muirhead, you spoke about development and we've heard about crews and teams and different specialties moving around to film or whatever, but I'm interested in talent, development and skills and training. How can we ensure that when we're looking at skills and development training that there isn't confusion of overlapping bodies that are already in existence so that we can deliver appropriate skills and training? Skills and training should be seen as a fundamental part of the investment overall. Once we train those people, how do we make sure that we retain them in Scotland and that they disappear somewhere else? Well, again, keeping people, you have to have the work. That's the bottom line. You can't get away from that. As for training, there is always quite a lot going on. I think that one of the biggest providers in Scotland is actually TRC media who do actually receive funding from Scottish Enterprise and various other bodies as well. A lot of training should actually be on the job, but again, it's the mechanisms to actually help that happen. We, for example, as a company, have had partnerships with Channel 4, for example, where they have actually given us funding for an executive producer that worked on daytime programmes to actually work on a primetime programme. That was very useful, because that would have been an additional budget line. It was an additional person working on the production. Things like that are actually very helpful, because it's people at that level, the executive producer level, that sometimes were in danger of losing from Scotland as well. If we can keep people like that here who are the next generation of business owners as well, the people who will actually generate the commissions, I think that that's very important. However, getting that buy-in from somebody like Channel 4 or the BBC for quite a simple scheme, there was actually nothing on the table from Scottish Enterprise, for example. To add to that, I think that one of the things that I want to emphasise about the whole report is that it's obviously heavily weighted towards production, but it is covering the whole of the sector. It is talking about exhibition, distribution, audience development and education as well. The skills and training part, yes, is about the production talent base, both the creative side and the technical side, but it's also about developing talent for exhibitors, distributors and a wider education pool. One of the things that we were able to tap into last year from Creative Scotland had a one-off screen skills fund, where I think that there was some money from the Scottish Funding Council or backing from Scottish Enterprise, but it was for one year. A number of initiatives were set up that ran their life and stopped. We ran one—this is as a CMI working with Film Hub Scotland—looking at the next generation of talent coming through for distribution and exhibition, so people who are wanting to run cinemas, people who are wanting to run film festivals and so on, which you might assume is more at the cultural end of the sphere, but in terms of turnover in the country, cinema exhibition has got a higher turnover than the average amount of production coming into the country each year. Part of it is, how do we grow that? It's a potential to grow the market place there, but we don't have the right level of skills and particularly entrepreneurial skills to ensure that we maximise that. As we say in the report, we again would like to see the screen unit have an expanded remit that would include the leadership role for co-ordinating the skills development for the screen sector. As we say in the report, we recognise that skills must be provided by a range of bodies across Scotland. Some of the skills are specific to the culture sector, to the screen sector, some are general to other sectors. It takes co-ordination and puts pressure on the bodies to work together. We make that a clear suggestion and recommendation in the report that if the Creative Scotland could have an enhanced responsibility for skills development within the sector, it could then convene and do an audit of the skills sector and where the needs are and bring the different bodies together around the table under their leadership for this sector, and then it would follow the leadership of other areas for other aspects that are general to skills development rather than specific to the screen sector. Again, that enhanced role for the screen unit is crucial in this area. Can I just ask a removing towards what we really need as a revival of Scottish screen, when we obviously did away with it a political decision, even before the present administration was made to do away with it, when the decision was made to set up Creative Scotland. We seem almost to be going back to that model, which is obviously working for Northern Ireland. I would have to say that you have some veterans of Scottish screen sitting in front of you. A number of people said to us over the year, as we were doing our work in talking to people, that there would be no surprise that people said to us that we should have our own screen agency. On the other hand, we took the view as a group that the proposal coming from the Government for a screen unit should give that an opportunity to be fully set up, established, properly funded as part of the culture sector to see whether that can work. If it then has to move on at a later stage, but the idea of changing course at this time, we would rather see the screen unit set up, strengthened and enhanced within the cultural body creative Scotland and then see what happens. If the decision was made in the future to set up a screen agency, that could be the basis of it, I suppose. That would have a lot of support across the sector, there is no doubt about it. I have got a supplementary on that topic from Jackson Carlaw. I will probably come back to you if that is all right. Rachel Hamilton wanted to expand on Emma Harper's question about skills and development. On the Government website, it says that the Scottish Government provides £1 million to deliver skills and development training for the Scottish screen industry. You talked a lot about overlapping. What is it that the Scottish Government currently does not provide with that level of funding that you are looking for over and above that amount of money, or does that include a lot of the overlapping that you see is perhaps unnecessary? I think that, going back to the beginning and John's opening statement and one of the things underpinning the report, there are lots of bits of money, there are lots of very good initiatives, lots of good projects but they are not joined up. What we think would make most sense is to have an integrated screen strategy for the whole of Scotland. Creative Scotland, for example, has its own screen strategy but it is for Creative Scotland and the people that it works with. It is not embracing the whole of the sector and it is how can we ensure that both the public sector and public service broadcasters and the broader industry are all properly reflected in that strategy properly understood and the dots can be joined. It is then a case of going right, how do we deliver it? At the moment, we are doing it bottom up but it is a bit of a mess. Is that a coherence? There are a number of bodies. Things fall through the gap between them. Things are overlooked. The specialist needs of the sector are overlooked because Creative Scotland does not have a lead role. It does skills development almost by stealth but it does not have the lead role in being able then to commission proper skills development work. It is too bitty, as Ken says, and needs to be joined up. What people are looking for is quite simple, really. It is not the earth shattering at all that runs through the report. It is a one-stop shop. In the first month of doing this work, a senior figure in the industry who wanted to remain anonymous said that if he had a few thousand pounds to spend, the first lot of money that he would get, the best investment would be to provide a person and say, I'll be your screen guide to help you through the myriad of things you need to know. I'll be your route map, I'll be your sat nav, pay someone £100,000, get it off the ground so that people can phone, contact, email that person because they can't do it on their own. We work in the industry and we find it very difficult and we keep bumping into saying, well, that's not my job or it's not my level or it's beneath it. It's too small scale for me because you're a small company. We get sent from pillar to post one-stop shop, give us a key guide, give us an evangelist, as I said earlier, and that person could help us through the myriad of things at other places that don't need that, and that one-stop shop could be the screen unit that's enhanced, emboldened and funded to provide that asset. I can understand how your recommendations are looking for that clarity, which then leads me on to make the observation that I'm very surprised that the Scottish Government and other bodies haven't responded to your recommendations. Did you put a time frame on asking for a response? No, we saw this as a report to this committee. I appreciate this session this morning. The work was commissioned, the recommendation to set up, the screen set of leadership group came from your predecessor committee, as we've already discussed, and we saw our role as to provide a response to the committee and expected the committee to be our go-between with government, although we've had a positive response from the cabinet secretary in a meeting with her and officials about the report and about the range of work that's in the report, so I'm optimistic about that. My pessimism, the convener drew attention to at the beginning, was because around the sector people have said to me, well, we're here, you're at the committee tomorrow, but we haven't heard anything about the screen unit, we haven't heard anything about this, and we're really worried because the financial year is about to start and nothing's come out. I was expressing their concern about that and hoping that perhaps this meeting and your work and your attention to these will put the energy behind it at needs, because we know that, as this committee has many competing priorities for its time, the Government has many competing priorities for its time, but this has been lying there for some time and after a year's work we would hope that the detail of the report could be put into the hands of the Government to do the macro work of knocking the heads together, that needs to be, frankly, knocked together, and the enhanced screen unit within Greater Scotland to get on with the detail of commissioning of the different strategies for the different sectors as we outlined, and that would give us optimism for the future. I've heard a lot this morning in terms of leadership and direction, and the issue of skills was touched upon, but certainly in Scotland over the years, there has been a wide range and a large number of award-winning directors, actors and others involved in the sector. I can think of a BAFTA award-winning director living in my constituency. We've had this discussion on quite a number of occasions in terms of what his thinking is in terms of the way ahead. It's not always been about having one big unit somewhere that's been about ensuring that there is, as you touched upon earlier on, Mr McCormack, in terms of ensuring that there is that throughput of commissioning and that throughput of activity taking place, but notwithstanding that, in terms of when you talk to people with the report that you published, have you ever found an attitudinal issue regarding what takes place in Scotland and the skills that Scotland currently has in the sector? Has there been an attitude of, well, it's only Scotland, well, it's too wee, it's maybe not as important as other areas in the UK? For my own broadcaster, I'll ask Jane and Kent to come with a different perspective to different involvement. For my own experience in broadcasting, people like working in Scotland, they like working with the crews, they feel a kind of release and a kind of energy and a kind of openness and friendliness in Scotland. Did they say that they don't get in the overheated southeast where people can take or leave work and be fairly picky about what they take? People up here relish the experience and I've had a lot of feedback from producers, directors and films when I was involved in the film festival, saying what a relief it is to come to this festival and meet people that you can work with as a team. It's a very positive attitude. People have said to me over the last year that it's the disappointment that they would like to come to Scotland but they can't join up the door, they can't do the work here and they would relish it. I have never experienced any barriers at all to that, if you don't know. Are you talking about commissioning? Well, commissioning might be awesome, but there might not be as much creative talent in Scotland. Again, it's that cash 22. The more experience workforce we have, the more we get commissions. I don't really see it as being a massive issue, to be honest. The BBC, for example, is making some inroads in some genres in Scotland by having people embedded here, such as Joe Street, who works across daytime and entertainment, and who works with producers in Scotland on quite a granular level to develop ideas and take them to the network. She champions them. Now we have a lot of daytime producers, which is very important to the economy, because they are fast turnaround, long-running, returnable series, which also sell well internationally. On many bases, that works very well for us as companies, because that's the money that goes on to fund our next round of development. There are some inroads being made. You mentioned Andrea Calderwood earlier on. When she was head of drama in BBC Scotland, she led a golden age of development. The reason that works so much goes back to Mr Macmillan's point. The reason that works so well is that, when I was reading your evidence in the last meeting, you talked about the commissioning role. That commissioner for drama in Scotland is a crucial role, which helps the development of scripted work, and can develop the skills that are then needed within the film industry, and they can work across both media. It worked because she had a drama commissioner in London, the head of drama in London, and they worked in partnership. It's a bit like we were saying about Northern Ireland Screening and Invest Northern Ireland. They worked together to develop programmes in Scotland. There was no resistance to developing programmes in Scotland. It's a people business, isn't it, like many businesses? That relationship was crucial to building it. We had one in the 1980s when Bill Briden was head of drama in BBC Scotland, and Michael Gray was the controller of BBC One. They worked and there was another five, six years of wonderful drama commissioned from Scotland and seen across the UK. Those roles are crucially important in terms of the Jo Street role in the factual and the features area, working with people on the ground to develop, helping them to develop their programmes. It's that development role that's so crucial that we would like Creative Scotland to go back to the screen unit to have that development role. Jackson Carlaw is anxious to come in, so I'll bring him back in now. Can I come back to the issue of studio capacity? With reference to the Avengers movie, I suppose, because it is apparently the largest ever budget that's ever been spent on movie production in Scotland. It's Scottish and UK stars speaking with American accents and a film being filmed on location in Edinburgh, but all the studio and post-production work being done in the United States and Atlanta because there is no studio or post-production capacity here in Scotland. My understanding is that this is what the whole Pentland Studios project is about—six sound, one water stage and academy, which brings in all the permanent skill sets. You mentioned the Dumbarton studios, but we know that there's been expansion in Cumbernauld, too, which is nearly all committed to the digital television series Outlander for the foreseeable future. It seems to me from the representations from industry figures that the whole Pentlands project, which is mired in planning hell at the moment, we've now got the reporter having made the recommendation to the Government. We're waiting for the Government to give a decision. This is years after the thing commenced. But I guess I want to know. It seems to me that it's becoming something of a symbolic totem pole for the industry in terms of whether or not we are going to see the energy put into a facility that will give Scotland the opportunity to compete for many of those productions. Is there a lot of industry expectation resting on this? Is there another proposal in the works anywhere that would match or meet any of the objectives of this facility? If it doesn't go ahead, what can we offer in the immediate period ahead in terms of complementary post-production and studio capacity to match the phenomenal locations that we're now able to offer? If I start off on that, across the screen sector leadership group, there's strong support for that fixed studio facility and the frustration that it's taking so long. They understand the planning process has got to be adhered to, but there would be great disappointment if that didn't come to pass. When you've got people like Gillian Berry who's on the group in Ian Smith talking about it and supporting it and expecting it, there is an expectation across the industry, but it's got to meet the planning objectives and people are just waiting for the decision. Again, it's been delayed beyond the time that they were expecting it, so they have some clarity. There are other areas that people are looking at, and Mr Locke would do attention to the possibilities that exist in different parts of the country. There are premises that are being looked at in LEATH for the possibility of a studio development that is currently vacant and could be invested in. I don't think that all the eggs are in one basket by any means at all, any manner at all, but a lot of effort thought scrutiny has gone into the Pentlands project and there's expectation across the industry that that might be the beginning of the new wave of production in Scotland, if that passes the planning strictures. I think in terms of your assessment about it being to TEMIC absolutely, and sort of linking Mr McMillan and your comments that it's about confidence. What there has been an issue about is a lot of negativity about the state of the industry, the industry itself going, there's huge opportunities there if we could just get our acts together, and it is a collective act, it's the industry, but working with the raft of public bodies, the broadcasters and so on, and just a huge frustration that everything seems to take so long to not make very much progress. Do you have any other questions about the film studio specifically, because it is an important area? I know that I'm anxious to bring Stuart back in again, because I think that he would have more questions, but if we could maybe just focus on the film studio, if anyone else has questions about that, is that okay, Stuart? Because it was in planning for most of the time we sat, planning hell, as Mr Carlaw told it, I couldn't possibly say that, but the film studio delivery group was working with that and necessarily a confidential process. We had hoped that they would be a result by the end of the time that we put in our report, so they were working in parallel with us in private and confidential and with the planners to achieve it. Can I just ask—I mean, the Pentland project took some time to reach the stage that it has reached. Presumably, if that were not to pass the planning structures that she described them, we might find ourselves in a position where we're facing another significant period of time before something comparable can reach maturity. Colleagues in Cretia Scotland at the moment in the film area are very aware of the expectations and are seeing if other projects come out that they don't have to have this long, long time. See, on its own it won't necessarily solve everything anyway, so it's how far it's the beginning rather than just a one-off and the end. There have been comments made that one of the difficulties is state aid rules, because Scotland is part of the UK and there has been state aid going into other film studios in the UK, we would struggle to justify significant state aid for a film studio. I know that the one in Lothian is a private initiative, but do you see that state aid rules as being a significant barrier? I'm advised that they are, but I'm not a specialist in that area. I couldn't add any valuable comment to the committee about that, but we know that it's one of the barriers that's got to be overcome and dealt with. We thought that the Pentland studio would not fall with that hurdle. We didn't think it would, but we've been watching and observing the progress of the Pentland discussions as they go into planning rather than playing an active part in it. We just feel the studio as a part of the infrastructure and the essential development for the sector in Scotland. Just to pick up on that theme, does that not mean that, given that MOD buildings are already publicly owned and there's a number of empty or going-to-be empty sites around Scotland, that therefore they would be exempt from state aid rules? I'm glad you made that point. I don't mind if my colleagues at Crates of Scotland would be aware of that. I think that there are also empty aircraft hangars in Dumfries and Galloway that have it in with a good shout as well today. Stuart McMillan. Okay, thank you. I'm going to take you to Greenock now. It's obviously in recent years that the programme at Waterloo Road was part of the lifting and shifting. It certainly was very successful in terms of the local economy. Once again, going back to some of your earlier comments, and if we are to have a major unit within Scotland, whether it's Pentland or whether it's something else, do you think that that would aid or have the opposite effect in terms of programmes being involved in lifting and shifting from elsewhere to come? The reason why I'm portion of the question is in terms of if that skill set has got that permanent base, would it actually provide that additional flexibility for that type of activity to take place in terms of programmes moving even for a period of time or do you think that it would have the opposite effect? I don't think that it's a binary. I don't think that it's an either-or. I think that it's very much a both-and. The lift and shift in some ways was blamed for things not working. Lift and shift was absolutely fine because it created employment opportunities. The problem was that we weren't investing in the Indigenous production at the same time. It's back to John's point about how do we create that critical mass of talent, whether it's the creative talent and the technical talent, all the facilities and so on, that can sustain that activity. It then means that, further, Waterloo Road appears, that can be absorbed in the overall workforce and employment set-up. At the same time, we can happily take on the Avengers or anyone else, not necessarily personally. As big strength we'll be building up, securing that permanent infrastructure and skills-based and skills-development-based and training-based for people that we don't have at the moment because it moves around the country. I've formed a view and I'm reinforced by your committee deliberations about the lift and shift processes being devalued. I think that people within the BBC recognise it and I'd be very disappointed to see that resurrected in any major way. Certainly, I'm in favour of and I've said when I was in the BBC and since then, I've said, it's better not to meet your criteria by doing that. There's no shame if you have a quota of 9 or 8 per cent and you can't meet it one year. It's a creative business, ebbs and flows. You should be allowed not to make it, but don't dress up something as an Indigenous production when it isn't. I think that that's arguments being accepted and heard across the BBC. I was very interested yesterday, convener, to see that OFCOM have published regulations relating to the development of the sector in Scotland. I've never read the small print yet, but it's very clear that they're going to, as we recommended in the report, I don't think it's causing the effect necessarily, but we hope for clear criteria relating to investment in the nations, and they're established a new set of criteria for investment in the nations, which the report I read said should lead to an increased investment in Scotland. I should say that it is a consultation and therefore both committee and the scheme sector leadership group and individual companies need to respond to that consultation over the coming weeks to say that they think that it's a good idea. That's useful, thanks very much. Just on that particular point, and to go back to what you said earlier about the relationship between the drama commissioner in Scotland and London, you listened to the director general's evidence to the committee and we did push him on that particular point. How confident are you that the new drama commissioner in Scotland will deliver on the expectations of original material coming from here and we'll have a good relationship with London? One of the things that came out in that evidence session is that a lot of the commissioning still rests in London. It's something that we were talking about before we came in here this morning about the too much commissioning is within the hands of a few people based in London. I, as an outsider, can't comment on it. It's down to the relationships that will depend on the person who is appointed in Scotland and the relationship with the persons in London. I know that there is frustration within the sector. We heard it around our table about too few people at the centre in London sign off too many major projects. We asked in our report that we recommended that the BBC should devolve commissioning. In a devolved United Kingdom, there should be a measure of devolved scripted commissioning, as there is in features in Glasgow at the moment. We have yet to see that. I would hope that the appointment of a new commissioner for drama in Scotland may lead to that, but I am not too optimistic. It comes down to relationships and individuals. I would hope that the work, the report and all the discussions about the importance of the commissioning process would be heard within the drama commissioning area and the BBC in London. There are some areas of your report that we haven't really touched on. It's important that we give you the opportunity to talk about them. You mentioned the issue of data. There are gaps in the data. Existing regular UK surveys such as the off-coms communications markets report and the packed annual census should be reconfigured to extract more useful and consistent data. Those and other UK studies should provide more detailed Scotland-specific data. How should we go about making that happen? I think that it's up to us to move that forward in the hope with your support and interest in that. It's important information in terms of return on investments, as I mentioned earlier. But working with colleagues in Greater Scotland, it's up to us to move that forward and keep attention on that and try to make sure that there's data commission that can really have an impact within Scotland. It's too fragmented at the moment. I mean, Jen, you've been sitting in that area for a long time. Absolutely. In actual fact, we're a sector that is heavily surveyed. There tends to be a few times a year where we get about three or four in our inboxes, but it's actually just bringing all that together in a coherent way. Also so that we have a baseline, because we don't really know with any great detail where we are at this point. I think that that's something that definitely is a group that we should be taking forward. Why isn't the current data that's provided by off-com and packed? Why isn't that Scotland specific? What is holding them back from providing Scottish data? Is it the way that it's collated and gathered? Is it the way that it's collected? Packed is a UK-wide organisation. That's why they collect the data in that way, but I think that it's something that we could take forward with your backing and perhaps with the backing of Scottish Enterprise as well. So really, it's not that there's a gap in the data. There is data being collected. It's just that it's not being co-ordinated properly. Is that made— A little of it is Scottish specific. It's UK data, and we can have generalised from that and built from that, but we need specific data in Scotland because we think that if we had that, we could make a strong case for screen investment and the return of it. Why do you think that it's for Scottish Enterprise and not the new unit within Creative Scotland? Because it doesn't exist. The other issue that you talked about quite an interesting issue was the Scotland screen heritage and you talked about strengthening the connections between audiences and Scotland's screen heritage. Can you perhaps say a little bit more about that and how you think that strengthening of connections can be achieved? Well, film is a relatively new art form and TV even newer, but it's just over a century, but we've got fantastic archive collections, both within the National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive and a number of other collections as well. Getting that out there, there have been a number of programmes over a number of years that dig into that, but it's an area where you're going, how do we get the wider population in the country more aware of the richness of the screen heritage? It can be about film, the development of film as an art form in its own right, but it's also just about social history. It's about how Scotland has evolved as a nation over the last century and looking at where we're at now as a country and how we can understand from our history where we might be heading, I think would be a good thing. Part of the challenge is a lot of it's in formats that no one is able to screen any more. So very little of it is digitised, it may exist on film, there's very few venues left in Scotland that can continue to show film, film house, GFT or some of the few that can. So if you're wanting to screen films, then you have to digitise them, digitising them costs money. So one of the key things here is the whole section that isn't reflected in the report is going to cost money to support the digitisation of Scotland's screen heritage. If you look at a country like Canada, the national film board of Canada has over the last 10 years digitised their entire collection dating back over 75 years and they make it available for film makers, for programme makers but also for audiences, so if exhibitors or distributors are wanting to get that out to audiences they can do so. My last advice that I was given by the Moving Image Archive is something like 15 per cent of their archive is digitised. So there's a big gap between this fantastic collection and collections that we have and our ability to actually allow audiences to connect with them. How much will it cost and how long will it take? Well the national film board did it over a six, seven-year period. I don't have their exact figures but their budget is, as you would expect, significantly higher than the Moving Image Archive or, indeed, Creative Scotland have to put into that kind of work. Have you made representations to Government? With my old hat on, yes, at Scottish Green. I'm not sure what representations have been made because the Moving Image Archive is now part of the National Library of Scotland but what we would say is, with their ambitions to make that archive more accessible, we would fully back it. Okay. Thanks very much. Did any other members wish to come in? Okay. Just also mentioned the digital strategy and digital delivery. Do you feel that there is a clear focus or a target that we consider that we need to reach within your proposals as well? What we had in terms of the audience development and distribution section was recognising that those large parts of Scotland aren't connected to superfast broadband and there is a commitment through Digital Scotland to get that superfast broadband rolled out as promptly as possible but it is over a number of years and, as ever in these situations, the original target then has to be shifted. What counted as superfast broadband 10 years ago would be quite slow now. However, if we are genuine about the whole of the country being able to access and whether it is archive material or just being able to watch film and television on their own screens at home or on their local village hall, that is a way that would transform the country's ability to see screen content. Okay. Do you want to come in on that point, Liz? Well, I think not directly on that point, but I guess at a bit of a tangent, which is sometimes the risk of the conversations that we have about providing central facilities and upgrading facilities is a risk of centralising everything and of having seen and used the term earlier, Ken, talking about the talent that is mobile. A lot of the talent is in the central belt but there is an awful lot of production talent out with the central belt in the north and indeed the south of the country. I wonder how you envisage your recommendations in general impacting on those other centres of production. I am thinking of Aberdeen particularly, but I can think of Inverness and Stornway and other places that are existing centres of production talent and production activity. How do you see that going forward? Moving on from the audience aspect, from the production and talent pool aspect, having access to superfast broadband would be transformational. I know a number of people who work in Aberdeen, a number of folk who work north of Inverness who are plugged into the system, and in effect it does not matter where they are in the country because they are connected to the rest of the world. However, it is inconsistent how people are able to get that level of access. On the whole, you tend to get more of that level of access if you are in one of the big city centres. However, as someone who commutes backwards and forwards between Glasgow and Edinburgh, trying to get decent broadband, certainly mobile broadband, when you are on the train, is just about impossible. Getting a decent phone signal is just about impossible, and it is things like that that you are going, surely it should be within our powers to somehow address that. We are not saying that it is our job to do it, but as part of that, joining the dots that we talked about earlier, this is something that the country is doing anyway, and we want to do it anyway. How can we assist the argument to make it happen? Okay, thanks very much. Just to wind up the committee's planning, its work programme, you have produced this wide-ranging report, which we are very appreciative of, and it gives us a great deal to get our teeth into, so to speak. However, in terms of our work programme ahead, what would you like to see us focus on? Well, our priorities in the report are very clearly. We strongly support increased investment in the industry, and we spent a lot of time talking about it, because there are people going cap in hand who don't often get a yes answer about looking at what is across the sector internationally and across the UK. An increase of the investment in the screen unit in Creative Scotland to £20 million, we felt, was the first, the biggest priority. Without that additional public money, whether it came from other sources or was new money, it was essential to get the development slates off the ground and to help encourage a number of new companies in their projects. That is number one. The film studio and the infrastructure are important because it also brought in some of the granular areas in terms of skills development and building up the workforce to bring stability. The two things that we felt were infrastructure support, increased investment to help to sustain the economic development of the sector, that would be our priority. I suppose that it is underpinning it. That strategy and mandate is currently quite confused. Can I just come back to our very first point? I think that it is an important one around the screen unit. The Scottish Government's website says to create a screen unit within Creative Scotland in 2017. I think that, from what John R. Cormack was saying, the concern is having missed April 2017, that may now mean April 2018. Is that so? Well, as people across the sector have been saying to me, expressing that disappointment to me in the last few days because they were expecting something by the end of this month, in terms of financial planning and all of that and post-budget, they are expressing that disappointment. We do not know that it is not happening in 2017 but, as time goes on, there is disappointment across the sector and there is not a sign of some white smoke saying that there is progress. It is fair to say that that is one of the questions that you would like the committee to be asking. Yes, because it is a great proposal. We just want to see it happen and get up and running without too much delay. As you go from financial year to financial year and budget years, we know how things can be delayed for a year without thinking. Thank you very much. I thank all our witnesses today and we shall have a brief suspension.