 Good morning, and welcome to the 15th meeting in 2018 of the Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Relations Committee. I'd like to remind members and the public to turn off mobile phones. Many members using electronic equipment to access committee papers should please ensure that they're switched to silence. The first item on the agenda is a declaration of interests. Alexander Stewart and Jamie Greene were appointed to replace Jackson Carlaw and Rachel Hamilton respectively as members of the Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Relations Committee. I'd like to warmly welcome Alexander and Jamie to the committee. On behalf of the committee, I would like to extend our thanks to Jackson and Rachel for all the work that they did during their time on the committee. Before we move on, I would like to ask Alexander Stewart and Jamie Greene to declare any interests relevant to the committee. I have no interests relevant to the committee and I very much look forward to being part of this committee. Thank you very much. I'd like to pay tribute to my colleagues for their work in the committee and look forward to being on this committee. Given the external relations element of the committee, I'd just like to declare an interest in my membership of cross-party groups on voting bridges with Israel and the cross-party group on Taiwan. Thank you very much and you're both very welcome to the committee. Our second item of business today is an evidence session on the committee's inquiry into Scotland's screen sector, focusing on research, statistics and value. This will be our last evidence session with stakeholders before hearing from Creative Scotland and the Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs next Thursday. The committee then intends to publish its report before the summer recess. I'd like to welcome our witnesses today, Dr Michael Franklin, of the Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths College, the University of London, Andrew Barnes, Associate Director, Allsberg SPI, Alex Tosta, research manager, RSU team at the British Film Institute and Inge Sorenson, lecturer in digital economy and culture at the University of Glasgow. I'd like to begin, if I may, by asking Mr Barnes some specific questions because I know that your consultancy, Allsberg SPI, was involved in preparing some of the data on which the screen unit collaborative proposal is based. Is that correct? That's correct, yes. In terms of the underlying data about the screen sector in Scotland, what was your feeling in terms of what you had to work with in terms of preparing the data for this report? I think that the overall impression is that there is a lot of data out there, but perhaps the coherence of that data in terms of having a number of different data sets that align with one another and which can be used in a single fashion was perhaps lacking. As you'll note from the report we wrote, we had to put a range of findings in for turnover, GVA and FTE employee numbers on the basis that we couldn't be sure from the data that we wouldn't double count. There are a variety of reasons for that. I don't know if you want me to go into those at this stage or whether you have a full-up question. It's quite a technical issue for many of us, but there are some things that leap out in terms of your comments in your report. One of them is the risk of double counting that you have addressed in some of your figures. Are you satisfied that the data doesn't contain any double counting? We can be satisfied that the lower end estimate doesn't contain any double counting, but the risk is of undercounting, of course. We can't, from the available data, at least not without a significant amount of granular research, which was beyond the scope of the project, have identified precisely what production company did what in Scotland. The use of the ONS-level statistics on companies and which companies were in which SIC code got as a certain amount of the way and companies' house filings on those. The production spend data from Creative Scotland got as a certain amount of the way in the other direction. What we can't, with any degree of precision, tell at this moment in time, is where in the middle those overlap and the degree of overlap. Has anyone ever questioned the data? Not to my knowledge, no. What do you think about the concerns that you have pointed out about it? What implications does that have for the ambitious targets that the screen unit sets in terms of increasing production spend? I would argue that the major challenge that you face as a nation in increasing production spend is to be able to identify the degree to which you have increased production spend and to accurately measure the impact of that at a future stage. We work across many countries starting at a much lower base level than Scotland in implementing screen support systems. We always tell those countries that putting data collection provisions in as part of that investment is something that is required to be able to accurately determine the impact of that investment. In Scotland, there is a certain degree of that, but there has to be the question of how one puts a data collection methodology in place, which allows you to evaluate the impact of the investments against their targets and track that back to where you started. That might not be possible, unfortunately, but the second part is absolutely critical. In Scotland's case, are you satisfied that we have a robust process in place? I haven't seen any data on what the process is for the screen unit proposal as it stands, so I don't think that I can go to that. Before I move on, I just want to ask something specific about your data. You mentioned that you include non-domiciled cinemas, so I assume that you are on multiscreens. That is going into the overall figures of the screen sector in Scotland in terms of employment and investment. I think that most people, and certainly for the purposes of our inquiry, would not think that your average multiscreen is what we are talking about here in terms of boosting Scotland's screen sector. Why was that put in? That was put in after discussion with our clients on this occasion. It was felt that without that particular piece of data, the overall report would provide an underestimate of the impact of that part of the screen sector, and that reflects the fact that, even if the beneficial owner of that particular cinema is not domiciled in Scotland, the wages that it pays to Scottish residents and employees would nonetheless have a downstream impact on the Scottish economy. It is a tricky balance, and that is why we disaggregated it in the way that we did to make it very clear which bit was Scottish domiciled companies with a Scottish tax base and which bit was Scottish employees only who would still therefore receive some benefit from the... Kate of Scotland asked you to put that in. It wasn't necessarily your inclination to include that initially. I can't remember which of our clients it was, whether it was Creative Scotland or Skills Development Scotland or Scottish Enterprise. I'd have to look back through my notes to tell. Right. Thank you very much. I'll now pass over to Claire Baker. Thank you, convener. It might be helpful if the panel could outline what areas of data are to be prioritised. Mr Barnes has talked only about the economic impact, but there has been submissions around audience participation and what the kind of softer value of the sector is. Also, where the panel identifies whether there are gaps in Scotland's knowledge where we need to increase the data. From a BFI perspective, I can show you how we would approach an issue like this. For us, we'd be looking first to identify what the outcome we would like to achieve from any kind of research or data collection. From that, we'd be identifying what are the key and critical questions that need to be answered from this. We'd follow that up with trying to identify what data is already available and what data needs to be accessed. I think that it's very dependent on those what your priority is regarding data collection and any additional research that needs to be carried out. I don't know if any of the rest... I don't know if the panel has had a chance to look in detail at the screen unit proposals. They have published a fairly lengthy document so far that's quite technical, but is it clear enough what they're trying to achieve, what the outcomes are? As you said, that would then lead back to what they need to collect in order to reach this stage. Do you agree with what they've identified and do you think that they have the right priorities in place? I think that because I look at data from a UK level, I know that one of the limitations with any data is that there's not the granularity to go down to a four-nation level. I do appreciate that. I acknowledge that. That is one of the priorities, I think, from what I saw in the documentation. How you would get that data, I think, would need further investigation. There's a really, really good point. I think that the issue of interrelation of the data sets is really important. As I pointed out in terms of the UK level, there are certain things that every funder of films across the UK would like to know. There are also specific questions. You want to get at this granularity at the Scottish level. I think that in setting up that work, it needs to be passed and parcel, I think that was mentioned earlier. When you're setting up any of the systems, it needs to be part and parcel of just the general work of business. As distinct from, although there should be people with expertise within statistics and understanding and delivering research on it, but as part and parcel of what happens, the data is just part and parcel of allocating funding or the operation of the exhibition sector. All of that is feed through as part and parcel of what's going on, as opposed to having to think every three, four years are we doing it right. It should be a continuous, on-going thing. That should be linked to what goes on at the BFI, but also at the European level as well. I'm just relative to what's going on. It should be the role of teamwork, especially in making sure that data can be mapped across different areas. It's really important. In your submission, Dr Franklin also mentioned Edinburgh University and the work that they were doing. Do you think that there's close enough collaborations in place or that something needs to be more developed? I think that it should absolutely be more developed within both sex and obviously I say that as I came in, but also there are three current, I think, areas that are really important happening right now, as you have seen from the creative industries sector review from Westminster. There's these proposals for linking that to current bids for AHRC funding, where there is one really interesting proposal that's through to the last round at Glasgow, which is to do with that point. Dr Sarrison can talk about in a second. Also one at Edinburgh, which is to do with data-oriented creative industries analysis. Although the film is not particularly mentioned within that bid, it is absolutely something that could be a great link-up. There is expertise here that should be used, and there is a great confluence of interests that could be maximised here, especially within the work that Professor Speed is doing on blockchain and things like that. I think that it would be a win-win for everybody. I think that it's important to define what the screen sector is, and I think that the interim report, it was interesting to hear that you are the first ones who mentioned Netflix, or not the first ones, but that the collaborative report is quite media-centric and focused on film and TV, and the screen sector, of course, is many things. It's also games, it's also VR, it's also mobile and web content, and I think that it's important going forward to also measure these things in a Scottish context. I appreciate why the proposal needs to maybe be film and TV-centric just now, but to future-proof both the new screen unit but also the development of the Scottish industry, I think that it's important to take a very holistic view of what screen is. To add to what my colleagues on the panel say, I think that that sort of coherence and across the four nations is particularly important. We, as a company, are currently in the process of finalising a revised economic impact study of the UK's screen sector tax reliefs, and part of the aim at the outset of that particular process was to try, to the greatest extent possible, to identify on a national and regional basis what the breakdown of UK-wide production spend and impact was. The data didn't allow for that, and even though people like Northern Ireland's screen, Creative Scotland and the Welsh agencies collect data, they all do it in a slightly different way, and that leads to a lack of coherence. To be able to identify not just the impact within Scotland as a nation, but how Scotland compares to other nations within the UK which are identified in the screen sector proposal, I would argue that it's important to ensure that there is some degree of coherence across UK-wide data gathering that allows for such comparisons to be drawn. I really just had a couple of questions around skills and skills development in Scotland and the research programme that they are carrying out with Creative Scotland. Obviously, they funded and commissioned a research programme to look at exactly what's going on within the company-based screen sector, and they've said much more significantly what's going on within Scotland's freelance workforce. It was really just to get your views on that and what you hope to see come of that. We also heard evidence from others that that should be an annual survey that's carried out, so it was really just to get your thoughts and opinions on that, please. There's interesting things going on in the freelance workforce survey space at the moment. Creative skillset has recently started to redo research, which, in our report, we suggested that they hadn't done some for a while, which was correct at the time. Again, that might have some value and to avoid double use of resources, it would be helpful to ensure that any work that's done aligns with what Creative Skillset are doing at a UK-wide level. Historically, they have done broken-down internations and regions. I think that when you look at the data for freelance, it's always a particularly difficult area because although there are a lot of Scottish freelancers working in the UK's film production sector and TV production sector, the question of where they ordinarily work is a pretty key one. It goes back to the question of definition and what you're trying to achieve as a policy objective here. Is it having Scottish workers, is it having workers based in Scotland, is it having workers who ordinarily work in Scotland? Those are three potentially very different things. The question of how you achieve granularity within the data, which would allow you to identify the Scottish freelance workforce. However you choose to define that is a pretty key one. To be honest, I've never seen anyone answer that question. I don't know that there's a straightforward answer to it. That's one thing from the evidence that seemed where there was quite a lot of data missing, was in terms of finding out about freelance workers. I think that we'd read that and some of the evidence that was received where I suppose it's been seen as, it's not really, they don't see it as up to them to take part and some of the other reviews that have been done. Do you think that the review will be able to identify gaps and the skills requirement of companies in the sector? It should be able to, to some degree, at least at a high level. If you're looking at which departments in a production sector have gaps speaking to the line producers, speaking to the producers, identifying where they have difficulty hiring, to get to breakdown to the exact grade, so exactly what level of seniority you're looking for, that might prove to be a bit more difficult because it's a very fluid industry where people move around a lot for work. What's true one day might not entirely be true the next is if a different production comes up and takes somebody from Scotland to anywhere in the world fundamentally. So it's, you know, as I say, it's a tricky challenge. I noticed that in one of the proposals there was something about using, using what are they called, the sort of workforce databases. That's always a challenge because the most senior members of crew don't like to go on those because they see it as a sign that they can't get work any other way. It's such a word of mouth industry that they will probably reject that approach. You should be able to find a way at a high level to identify where the gaps are, but in terms of the really, really granular stuff, I suspect it's only when you start working and start putting courses together that that will become more apparent. So do you think this is something that should be done on an annual basis to be able to... That would probably be helpful. Yeah, that would probably be helpful, but there's also going to have to be a certain degree of qualitative data gathering as part of that rather than purely quantitative. Okay, thank you. Ross Greer. Thanks, convener. Just before moving on to a specific question on production spend, one of the frustrations that I think we've come across on a number occasions from the industry, the industries in this process is a sense that wheels are being reinvented that don't have to be. I'll go into a specific question. I wonder if anyone could just cite examples of public bodies elsewhere, screen unit equivalents, that are effectively marshalling or coordinating the data collection required to actually grow and sustain industries. If I work within the research and stats unit, as you well know, and as part of that, we have an extensive database that helps us provide essentially a compendium of statistics across a range of areas in film, which is within our statistical yearbook. Within this, we have statistics not just on the value chain of box office through distribution, et cetera, but we also do have some statistics on audiences, education, as well as film economy. That looks at the GVA of film within the UK and also levels of employment. We also look at public investment, so that just looks beyond the tax relief but also looks to see who are the other public funders of film within the UK. I think the issue for the panel today is I provide data at a UK level, and it's very obvious that you want data at a Scottish level. A lot of the time, it's not easily available. As you're about to go into production, I'll mention that. Within production, we track all the productions that are made, so film productions that are made within the UK. It's very difficult to get data to identify whereabouts that's spending in the UK is being done. The nearest we get to that is we get some data on location of shoot. For example, we'll know a production shot in Scotland, but we don't know how long and we don't know how much money has been spent in Scotland. That's just one of the issues. Going back to what originally I said, already at a UK level, there's quite a comprehensive range of data that is freely available. Unfortunately, I know that you want it at a granular level. We're limited by the data that's available, but we're also limited by if you go on the ground to a production, going back to the production spend, the budgets don't work out that way. If they say that they want to do a month's shooting in Scotland, they will just have a budget for shoot, not whereabouts that shoot is taking place. That's not a unique problem to the UK that we find that colleagues in the US, for example, when productions are shot across multiple states, have similar issues in trying to break down their data as well. I don't know much detail about what goes on in other countries regarding production. I only know in a general way, but yes, it is pretty much that. I know when you get a large studio coming to the UK to shoot here, they'll be able to say, this is our UK budget, and this is what our spend is elsewhere, but they won't be able to go into, oh, we've done some shooting in Scotland, and this is the cost of that. Just to speak to your question about the United States, because of the different way that film incentives work in the US, and we've recently, actually maybe a year ago, finished some work in the state of Georgia on this, there tend to be good data on production spend on a state-by-state basis, because it's the states themselves that incentivise the production, and Australia is the same in Canada where the provinces provide incentives. As a result, they get audited spend data which provides them with good detail. In some provinces, British Columbia for example, they will even be able to break that down by which part of the province because there are additional parts of incentive which provide an uplift for particular economically deprived areas of work. That's a relatively common thing in those state level jurisdictions within federal countries. In terms of which countries do this well, I think there are a lot of countries that do a lot of work on this. We've worked in recently in Australia which has very good data. We've worked in Canada, the United States, most European countries. They've all got good data to a degree. It depends on their particular aims. That's always the thing. They collect data based on what they're trying to prove. They could always put more money into it, but that's how long is a piece of string question. You could always put more money into data gathering and analysis. There's always the question of how much it adds value. Maybe it'll be helpful to look at the Scandinavian countries because there seem to be two needs for statistics here. One to drive the industry and tell us what the Scottish screen sector is really like. One specifically in this context to drive policy. In the Scandinavian countries they have film law every four years that decides what the sector should be doing and gives direction and budgets to the screen funders. In that process there's a collaboration between the Government who sets down the law but also the screen agencies, stakeholders and the industry. In that context data becomes very relevant and very obviously interesting for deciding what the future next four years would be. That could be an example. Sorry, I'll just very briefly for Dr Franklin. That's a really interesting example. Is there an element of trust making that process easier? Because the production companies have a level of trust in the public agencies and in the Government there's that collaborative approach that there's more of a willingness to share data than there is perhaps in countries where the relationship between production companies and the state is more challenged? That's a really interesting way of looking at it and you can also look at it in completely different ways and knows that the film law comes up every four years and because it is a consultation between stakeholders the industries, the various industry bodies I know most about the Danish context and the policy makers people knows that this is coming up and know how to inform the policy making process it has, yes, it generates trust it also generates distrust I'm sure but it's also a quality control because the industry then or stakeholders can say there are these issues that are facing the industry now that we need to discuss and that need to be integrated into the future policy for the next four years so there's a degree of collaboration but also a degree of quality control that complaints or issues can come up in that process and also it can drive real important structural things in the industry for example the Danish film law has quite a big budget allocation and priority set down in the film law for creating non-format content so web content, VR there's been a budget allocating priority and that in Sweden they have 50-50 gender quotas that are enshrined in policy or then quotas are targets but you can make policy decisions that matches both government priorities but also the industry and stakeholders priorities and it just seems to be a quite proactive and good way of organising your screen policy it also means that it takes the screen unit maybe as it stands I don't know but so far Creative Scotland has decided in a way what their own priorities would be for the screen sector and that I'm sure takes a lot of energy and time and resources whereas if that's kind of a given and agencies role to best deliver this particular film law that seems to create maybe a better process and a more transparent process as well That was a really useful example, thank you Go ahead Are we finished? It's a really good point about the trust issue just to come back on that Mr Banser is saying a very interesting point about you can always spend more time on a piece of string idea in terms of that level of uncertainty about how data will be used and to what benefit there is that element of risk about we don't know the ultimate benefits if we go down that route and so I think that is when there has been historically a little bit of lack of wanting to participate or to collect data within Scotland it's been about what will be the benefits and there is that on-going uncertainty which requires the work of a variety across Europe looking at the way in which European Audiovisual Observatory deal with data from all different areas and see a great variety in the amount of resources that are applied so the wonderful output of the BFI and the applied thinking of the CNC in France where they have huge amounts of resources done to this you can see those applications but I think it's taking the best practice from exactly as Dr Sorenson says and applying that within this idea that some of it's going to be uncertain like some of it's going to be experiential Thank you I have a supplementary from Richard Lochhead The issue of trust clearly began to address the question that I was going to ask was how is the data made robust because clearly the reasons why we'd want data would be the likes of ensuring that companies fulfil their obligations for filming and spending in Scotland or in response to getting public support so that they've spent money in Scotland so how do you ensure that it's robust especially for companies from outside of Scotland to be filming here? Do you mean that the statistics and the data and the research itself is robust and valid and therefore is of good quality and trusted or do you mean more about the process of the process how you collect it and who collects it and ensuring your checks? I'll have to refer back to the BFI so within BFI because of we produce all of our statistics and research for the public and industry good and part of that is we produce official statistics so that's part of the whole statistics code of practice so all stats have to be for the public good and by following that code you kind of develop a sense of quality but also a sense of trust in the statistics from that and that kind of feeds into a circle where companies are more willing to actually give you your data in general what I've noticed in film is that there's a very large appetite for more data and whenever we've had some user engagement they want more data and they're willing to share it but I don't think there's a natural ingrained process within film for actually sharing data the best example of how data is shared within myJAP is through the certification process which is certification so a film can be officially British and claim tax relief and part of that is they see a benefit for the production of the film but also this has been established for many years now and it's also been reviewed officially and I think this has been backed up by a team that has gone out to the industry and actually provided guidance of how they can provide this data so for me it's a mix of all of those items if I want to refer back to Scotland I would say you could look at that but I think as Inga mentioned in the previous example it would be really useful to see what other countries have done as well I think the Danish example is actually a very good example of ongoing user engagement which I've found at the BFI is vitally important for developing any kind of trust in any part of the data and statistics process I think to speak to the question of how you ensure that people have obeyed their obligations the standard way is to have those data audited auditors tend to be required for every incentive system and a lot of public funding where there are spend requirements of that kind obviously they have a particular duty under law in relation to how they sign off data leveraging that duty tends to be the approach that is taken in most jurisdictions Can I just follow on from that because you mentioned different states of America and provinces of Canada earlier have you had the opportunity to look at just how rigid they are about making sure that companies that say they're spending the money in Georgia or British Columbia or wherever it is are actually doing so and how does that compare with how we test that kind of data here I can't speak to how you test that data here I've never looked at it in detail so I'd sort of refer you to Creative Scotland for that one because we didn't look at that in terms of how this gets done in other jurisdictions they tend to be very robust about how this gets done I mean there have been cases where for there have been cases in the UK where audited spend statements have been proven to be incorrect and those people have ended up in jail because of that particular issue so and we know from conversations with producers in Ontario at least that the volume of checking which is required has led to quite a lag in how long it takes them to get their funding back from the Ontario provincial tax credit system so it all speaks to systems which are robust which take a lot of care in how the money is returned to productions which have availed of their tax credit systems and other selective funding systems and where producers tend to see it as a cost of doing business to put that audit requirements in place there are two things going on here what we are talking about here which is incentives for film mainly through Creative Scotland or the UK Government but there is also a separate Zofcom reviews going on about the regulations of out of London spend that we are talking about so that kind of issue around robustness would apply to both those wouldn't it it should do yes again I can't speak how it should indeed Thanks very much Stuart McMillan Thank you I'd like to pick up on a couple of points from the question from Mary Gougeon the point was raised regarding a yearly update of data but surely it should be the real time model should be applicable as compared to just a yearly update Can I ask what's meant by real time in this context I've looked in the questions we were sent in advance it was referred back to previous evidence to the committee and working through that evidence I couldn't find the term raised so I just want to wonder what is meant by that in that particular term and what the use of that is proposed I was thinking in terms of other sectors prior to me becoming a parliamentarian I worked in an electronic company and the data that was collected was done on a daily basis I'm not suggesting that because I think that would be extremely difficult for the wider sector but to have something whether it's weekly or monthly updates as compared to annually I think would be useful and certainly would probably be helpful in terms of the data collection for that analysis I mean I think the question that I would raise about that is what the data is are useful because one of the things we've often found working around the world is that production companies I'll speak about production companies in this instance have an anticipation that if they have real time data about what's being produced what the market is doing and what consumers are interested in they'll be able to make films which or television programmes which hit those particular demands The challenge in this sector is that the lead time on production is so great that when you go from idea to final content that's three years whether that's for a piece of film content a television programme or even a physical facility such as a studio takes a while to build a data that you've got at the start are no longer relevant to the market into which the piece of content is released so the question that I would raise in relation to real time data is in terms of how it's going to be used and it goes back to that how long is a piece of string question is there value in asking people to do this or is it and the people who are administering this product it's not something we've ever identified as a major concern if we're honest That's helpful I wanted to test that particular area just because of the experience that I've had outside of here The second point just regarding the point that Mr Toster spoke about a few moments ago in the industry wanting more data Do you think that the request and the specifications for data that's been looked at are clear enough and how flexible do you think that that actually is as well in terms of the changing nature of the sector and therefore the changing nature of data that would be required going forward Looking at the documentation that I was sent to me this sounded to be quite honest quite the standard routing data that the film industry is asking for for me I would naturally have to go back constantly and do this user engagement talk to the industry to ensure the data adapts to the changes in the industry and prime example for that is ten years ago we were only looking mainly at where you chain and public investment in my team and now that's extended to going further into audiences and education and that's just through this constant user engagement I do think that there's also a need to as we've mentioned definitions flexibility to me is all about the parameters of the statistics and the data and that is all about definitions touching on timeliness with this real time data as well as accuracy as we've mentioned before so the data that you're collecting and what you want to collect data on you have to be responsive to whatever the industry wants but you have to bear in mind that you can't make these changes immediately within statistics it doesn't happen this quickly and also I think in a way film does appreciate that when they're asking one question at development stage in a production and that question will change by the time and in a way you've constantly got to be flexible but on top of that part of your quality is consistency as well so I may sound like I'm going around the houses but in my head I'm thinking very much in a stats delivery process and part of that is I know you want a data on employment as well as skills as well as production spend you can provide these consistently but with your user engagement you can actually adapt these to make sure they're more suitable to your film industry say in year 5 because there's been changes between year 1 and year 5 I hope that's clear enough That's helpful but it certainly takes me on to one of the points from Dr Sonson earlier when you spoke about the Scandinavian model and that four year cycle so in terms of that flexibility and also in terms of that that appears to be a joint approach is that the kind of thing that would actually be useful to be implemented here bearing in mind in the discussion with Mr Torster a few months ago I think also going back to some of the questions that came from Mary Grouchon earlier about skills and the freelance basis that there is just to take it back there is a need for more granular and better understanding of how freelancers work in Scotland and how much they earn what industries they work across because often a screenwriter would write a corporate one week feature film the next but not quite like that but engaged in a variety of genres and a variety of different functions throughout the year also in Scotland there is sometimes a skilled drain towards London towards other industries not just in Scotland across the sector but to try and find out how do freelancers who engage in this sector actually work how do they make their money what can we do to keep them creative keep them in a screen sector and drive future developments in Scotland so that's kind of one thing and that I think could feed into trying to identify what are the future trends is there throughout the years for Netflix or developing content for them that they do for the BBC or whatever so where is the industry moving and what are people actually doing and also identify the skills needs but also identify how can they continue being creative in Scotland what does it take is it I don't know tax incentives or whatever and that could maybe feed into bigger statistics it wouldn't be what you were doing what were you... does that answer your question I'm not sure I think I'm weird of course there it sounds like it sounds like needing to move to a big data approach without potentially having that clarity in terms of what the data should be what's actually going to be required and also potentially some questions in terms of do we have enough technology there to actually gather that information and collate it as well as the skills to do so and also the capabilities within the unit to actually deal with that has to be delivered as you said Alex retrospectively that you have to maybe engage in a census that would then feed into a bigger data set or how would that so what you've just described is the parameters of a data system how you actually have a starting point which I think is what you're mentioning is for me it goes back to your primary purpose and outcomes and the questions you fundamentally want to answer and I know I may sound like I'm repeating myself on this but from a research and data stats perspective those are fundamental how you get and I think once you have those clearly defined then you can decide on an approach and methodology of how you get your data and simultaneously you need to have this user engagement running in parallel so that the film industry is involved in shaping its own industry but also having a say in what stats can be used to describe the industry appropriately and whether this is whether to start this off you decide we will run an annual census or you will first take an order of available data on Scotland it's up for further discussion I think that's probably better outside of this committee to be honest I mean I know there are certain issues that certain methodologies won't help and as Ingers mentioned freelancers from the work that creative skills have done freelancers are very difficult to even get into data because of the whole definition around freelancers and the behaviour and activity of that type of employee-employer and that's just one example so for me I think it's all about setting out parameters first and those are based on your outcome and the questions you answered and I think once you've got those sorted you can then discuss methodologies real-time data where do we look for the future of the data I think just one more point is when you talk about research and statistics by the nature of them they are retrospective as Inger mentioned that's because we have to collect data at a certain time point and then report on it there's no escape in that and I know with the likes of Netflix who say they can record what their viewers are watching or what their directors are making immediately they have a very different setup to actually how most of the statistics are collected around any industry and I think that's just important for the panel to know about when you are making further considerations about a screen unit for Scotland We have to look at two more members to ask questions so if we could keep answers quite succinct that would be very helpful Alexander Stewart Good morning panel we've talked about skills but I'd like to maybe tell you a look at employment process so we have a growing cultural sector we have more people working in the arts and culture and the economy is bigger and better but when it comes to collecting employment data we still seem to have some gaps in that process is it because there's not enough investment does that have an impact in the whole process or how can they be filled how can that gap in the employment sector be filled I seem to be starting on the question sorry panel from a data perspective so BFI when I'm reporting on employment in the industry at the UK level we get our data from the Office for National Statistics so these are collected from their various business surveys and their population surveys and I mention business because I look at it in a whole of GVA and number of companies etc and one issue we face with providing data at a lower level so at the four nations or regional level is often the data being suppressed because it can disclose either an individual or a company and that is one data issue I think that well I have in Scotland I was checking the employment figures yesterday and actually they've been suppressed for parts of Scotland so that hinders me from providing a UK picture how you would fulfil that gap is quite difficult actually because the official statistics will always press and because of their rules and regulations around disclosure control I think it would need further investigation of whether you do additional research or additional data collection on this I don't know if the rest of the panel have anything to add to that I think that sort of company level ground up process is probably the one if we were working on that kind of project which we did recently in the Republic of Ireland we had to use a ground up level approach so look at individual companies identify the number of people who are working with them through a survey process and do it that way we did the same thing in the current UK screen sector tax relief work for the game sector because of the particular issues around SIC codes in that industry I can't see another way of doing it other than a sort of primary survey piece of work the investment behind it does that have an impact or not to the same degree not seen any evidence you've got nothing collated that will actually identify that as an issue no thank you Jamie Greene thank you convener and good morning panel I probably should have declared a volunteer interest that I worked in the television production sector for 13 years where I came to the Parliament so it's a subject close to my heart I wanted to pick up Dr Sorensen on a point that you made earlier around definitions of what is the sector now when I was in television production we would get very excited on the overnight so we had a couple hundred thousand viewers but the reality is today people across the length and breadth of the country making content that is achieving millions of views overnight and monetising that so given that the sector is outside of traditional film and television production to the online world to web production content in the charitable or not-for-profit sector VR and gaming production advertising and so on how do we best collect data in all those other aspects of the production sector which are the ones that we probably talk about the least in reality and who should be responsible for collecting that sort of data The big question I think one way maybe to look at this is that currently the screen units the future screen reader and most screen work is very focused on production and stimulating and funding production and there isn't really any there isn't much data distribution because it's hard to get because companies don't want to disclose it but looking at distribution as much as production data would maybe be a way of looking a different way of providing an optics on the sector I also think defining what the screen sector is and collading the data from the different agencies who has information about inwards investment productions that are funded here broadcast productions would be the way forward I don't have a quick fix but certainly more data on distribution and where things are seen and where they're distributed to would be helpful if that's even possible you would know better than me I think when we talk about the digital landscape and it's created this new extension to the screen setters I know a BFI is I think because film is also it's quite nebulous when you start getting into it it appears to be structured a bit actually it has elements where there is not much structure about it which makes gaining any information about it sometimes quite difficult beyond official data collection or how we look at production where we actually employ someone to track production in the UK and I think there's a general difficulty in understanding of what this they're not really new screens but this new digital area actually is let alone starting to track it and what it's doing and what does it contribute to the economy overall say in one way we do at BFI we started really basic in a way but it's not a store quite complex where we've started following productions and developments in high-end television, children's television, animation television and video games that are a game through the certification process and trying to become officially British and that's just a starting point I think there is an element that this is a set to where in a way they traditionally have not been in this data sharing world that are providing data to see what's going on because it appears that they either want to keep within themselves say like Netflix which you can watch anywhere and any how or if you're in say the gaming world they kind of know what's going on and there's a lot of there's a lot of kind of network infrastructure from what I've gleaned from my from the little I know about it so overall it's quite difficult because at the moment we have quite a structured and almost a traditional approach to collecting data on these new sets but they are not traditional in a way, they work slightly different and in a way the data gathering hasn't really adapted enough for them so it's quite difficult to actually suggest anything at the moment without looking further into them and doing more on-the-ground work and getting more involved I know UQ have done as a trade body to the game sector and they do a lot of events with them just to get them more involved even with the certification so maybe that is one approach where it's more on-the-ground work but beyond that that's just a small suggestion if I could thank you very much for that response if I could forward this up perhaps moving into a slightly different area does the panel have any views on the gathering of data around the disparity of gender pay in the industry we talk about it a lot in other industries but it's perhaps not something we talk about very much in the screen sector or any qualitative or quantitative data that's produced on whether women are being paid the same rates for example it's freelancers as male counterparts or the representation of women in the industry in terms of specific rules that are dominated by by one sex or the other how much data is produced on that and where does the panel think we could do better in that respect There is a report on diversity in Scotland I think I was a producer before I came back into academia 10 years ago and I think and this is not unique to Scotland and the world that the problem is not so much around gender pay it's how to keep women especially in the business once they want to start families it's not a particular family friendly industry and that's certainly why I left so that's just an observation I don't know if anybody else is I'd like there are many initiatives that are addressing this issue that are really important for the screening unit to engage with there is one specifically around parenting and film also women in film and TV which are UK initiatives I think it's the film the parenting one is called raising films and the women in film and TV both doing really really good work again then at the international level there's the Annenberg you may have come across this inclusion rider if you like an equality for pay issue which can be put into a contract at the budgetary level that when public funders receive applications they get a budget and that will have breakdown of certainly at a high level the name cast pay parity so that information is there within funders and certainly also in commercial bodies I think foregrounding the importance of this issue is absolutely vital I think on the second part of your question was about representation on screen I'd just like to flag some great work which is being done by Mr Tos's colleagues within BFI Mr Anson did a presentation on Monday about using their filmography database to allocate where different genders ethnicities are being represented underrepresented in the whole of the filmography of British film absolutely something I think Scotland needs to engage with as a partner thank you I'd like to thank all our witnesses for coming to give evidence today and that leads to the end of this session and we will now suspend and go into private session thank you very much our third item of business today is consideration of the committee's draft annual report for 2017-18 before inviting contributions from other members I have a couple of observations that I would like to make on page 9 of the annual report in paragraph 18 I think we should put in an additional sentence that explains that we've agreed to wait for the Migration Advisory Committee to publish its final report for the Home Office later this year before returning to our immigration inquiry I think we all decided that and that's the reason why we're kind of waiting and we haven't taken any more evidence on that particular subject our members agreed with that I think it just clarifies matters and my only other observation is a typo on page 12 in the word languages in the second bullet point if we could fix that please any other members have comments to make? Mr Greene I'm very surprised that I've got a comment to make given that I wasn't here for the last 12 months but I'm going to make some general conversation and I've done this in another committee that I'm in and I'm trying to gently encourage all committees in the Parliament to include a section or sections on reference to qualities and human rights and also accessibility and the work that committees do in terms of making sure that the work that committees do is as accessible as possible and in one of my other committees I had quite a robust conversation with my colleagues in the committee about what our committees could do in reflecting on the work that they've done to ensure that they are as accessible as possible in terms of users who are deaf or blind, BSL, subtitling of committee meetings and making sure that the work that they do gets out to the wide range of people and we were pleased as a result of that conversation to include a section on the equalities impacts of the work that they had done that year so it's perhaps just something that we should reflect on. Thank you very much. That's a very important and useful contribution and we have actually responded to the equalities committee's invitation asking us about those very subjects so I can certainly make that response available to you but it's certainly something that we should be aware of and perhaps we could include in our business planning day going forward to make sure that we're always aware of it in future. Any other comments? I think that there's seven around the Erasmus and Plus inquiry. It doesn't mention universities anywhere that's linked to the Erasmus programme so I just thought to mention somewhere might be. Yes, I think that's important. That should be included obviously. We obviously took evidence from modern languages and university and the importance in terms of delivering our modern languages courses in university so that was important. Evidence and highlighted in the reports press release as a recall so we should certainly include that. Any other comments? Okay, thank you very much. Are members content to sign off a report for publication there? With those amendments? It will be circulated with those amendments made. Okay, thanks. I shall now suspend the meeting and move into private session.