 Good morning and welcome to the sixth meeting of the Constitutional Europe External Affairs and Culture Committee. I am minded this morning that the committee would like to express its solidarity with the people of Ukraine and wish for a speedy and peaceful recovery to the precarious situation that they find themselves in at the moment. We will move to our first agenda item, UK in a Changing Europe and the Regulatory Divergence Tracker. Our first agenda item is an opportunity for the committee to hear more about the UK in a Changing Europe and the Regulatory Divergence Tracker. We have, welcome to committee this morning, Professor Anand Menon, director of the UK in a Changing Europe and Ywell-Reyland Researcher UK. I welcome you both to the meeting. If I could start off with a couple of questions, could you give us your perspective on how the UK Government is choosing to exercise its regulatory autonomy following Brexit and which policy areas might be most suited to regulatory divergence? Do you want me to go first, Joelle? Choosing is quite a heroic way of putting it, I would say, in the sense that there is so much—well, firstly, you've had Covid getting in the way, so that hasn't been the kind of structured, well-thought-through process of figuring out what we want from divergence with the European Union. Secondly, I think that politics means that actually choosing a path is very, very difficult for this Government because on economic policy, the Conservative Party in Parliament and indeed in the country is a very, very broad and internally contradictory church. So, you know, there's been no sort of clear sort of setting out of a direction. There's been a lot of rhetoric, contradictory rhetoric, and what I would say—one of the great paradoxes about divergence and the European Union is this—for those of us my age, you can think back to the Euroscepticism of the early 90s in the Conservative Party. That was a Euroscepticism founded in the belief that Brussels over-regulated that if we could cut free of that regulation, we could make ourselves a more dynamic and more competitive economy, and the point of Brexit was to get rid of rules. It was to make ourselves a properly competitive capitalist economy in a way that you couldn't be inside the European Union. The irony is that, having left the European Union, what we have become is a sort of high-spend, high-subsidising country that has made use of our freedom from the European Union to keep precisely those regulations that the fresh start group and others had always banged on about. We haven't got rid of working time, we've kept the environmental regulations, all those sorts of things, but we've got a new subsidy regime that allows us to give more money to industry. So, in a sense, we've left Europe to become more French. So, there are sort of paradoxes inside this. Clearly, in terms of areas for divergence, and there are, I'd say, two things. Firstly, there are those areas where absence EU membership, we had to do something. So, agriculture, we don't have the common agricultural policy. To be fair, and let me just say in parentheses, or actually not in parentheses, given who you are, our divergence tracker is about essentially the UK EU. We're very, very well aware that there are UK internal market questions hiding behind a lot of this. Actually, we have plans afoot to supplement the divergence tracker going forward with some more specific considerations of the internal market of the UK dimension. But if you take agriculture—and I understand for you that one of the big issues about agriculture is the devolved aspect—but if you'll forgive me and let me just talk about the UK EU aspect, we are doing things differently. God help us if we can't put in place a better agricultural policy than the common agricultural policy. Anyone should be able to do that. What Michael Gove first defined and what DEFWR is putting in place now, there are some encouraging signs that this might actually be a more sustainable agricultural policy tailored towards what we have in this country if—and it's a massive if—they do it right and if they fund it properly. The other obvious area before I hand over to Joel—actually, two more points. One is immigration is the obvious area where we have diverged because we ended free movement, we have a new system in place. All sorts of interesting things can be said about our immigration system. One, how liberal it is for non-Europeans compared to what went before. Two, how UK public opinion has shifted dramatically on immigration since the referendum. For the first time since the early 2000s, for the first time since those days when new labour was busy blurring the lines between refugee asylum seekers and migrants and making the debate a total mess, immigration isn't a salient issue in British public opinion anymore, so there have been lots of interesting shifts in how the UK public sees things. If you think about it, in 2017 and 2019, we had two general elections when we didn't talk about immigration, which is unheard of since the first years of this decade, but certainly in England. I see that the chair doesn't agree with me, but we can squabble later. The other final thing is that, in terms of divergence, what the Government is setting out quite reasonably is the biggest opportunities to come in new areas of economic activity, where we don't have lots of regulation already—fintech, AI, robotics, gene editing—their areas where the British Government hopes to be able to move first, attract investment before the EU gets around to acting. It is not unreasonable, although the one thing I would say is that there is precious little evidence as yet that doing that will compensate for the negative economic impact of leaving the single market and the customs union. George, I will hand over to you. I think that just to supplement what Anas has said, I agree with everything that he has said. If we are thinking about the fundamental thinking behind what the UK Government is trying to do in terms of divergence, I think that, from our research, the impression that we get is that it is somewhat scattergun at the moment. If you were to look at the best illustration of that is the benefits of Brexit document, which came out a couple of weeks ago now, which is a 100-page list of almost everywhere that we could do something differently from the EU. It is highly aspirational, but there is no clear sense of how you might make the most of regulatory freedom, and that is how you end up with a situation where, on the one hand, you have a Government that is trying to increase the size of the state in terms of a new subsidy regime, agricultural regime, specifically in England. On the other hand, you have the Treasury, which is looking to deregulate and make a lighter touch architecture around financial services. Those things do not seem to fit together. The underlying implication is that the Government does not have a particularly clear strategy of what it wants to do. Another illustration would be the new Brexit opportunities minister inviting some readers to write in with their suggestions reportedly. Lots are already coming in, and that is not necessarily a good way for civil servants to make the most of their time in terms of passing what might be a good opportunity. That comes back to saying that, when thinking about divergence, business in particular would appreciate if it had a clear direction, because business is very clear that it takes five, if not ten, years to adapt to new regulatory regimes and new rules. They need an idea of what is coming, and they need clear goals to work towards. It also helps if, across departments, you have common goals, because then policies tend to fit together and you do not end up with a situation where, on the one hand, you are presuming a new emissions trading scheme, you have net zero goals and, on the other hand, the Treasury is cutting fuel duty on domestic flights. Those things do not seem to have any internal coherence. That illustrates that, if you want to make the most of divergence, you want departments that are all singing from the same hym sheet, and that also helps business in its preparation. To address the second question, where can it go? Where are the biggest opportunities? Again, I would agree with that. Emerging sectors are the obvious answer. Again, I would point to the Treasury as the one department that has a clear idea of what it wants to do with divergence. It was faced, after Brexit, with a very clear reality that financial services would have less access to the European market in terms of equivalence agreements, but it has made a very clear decision, which is that we are not going to try and get close to the EU. We are going to keep that distance and try to make the most of that by becoming, as they would do, a more competitive environment. We are going to remove EU solvency regulations, which should make some of the bookkeeping processes a bit simpler for financial services, and we are going to go in that direction. Again, innovation around fintech, regulatory sandboxes, to try to encourage innovation and that kind of stuff—that is a clear direction of travel and the sector can work with that. That, I would argue, is a model that could be transplanted more widely across Government. I apologise, but I did not mean to not have a good poker face. I was surprised that it is not my experience. I am sure that some of my members will comment on that, but it was just in the context on Tuesday of this week that the Scottish Parliament rejected the LCM on the nationality and borders bill. That is the context that I was thinking of. Discussions and how much immigration features in what we are doing. I will move on to questions from the members. I invite Mr Ruskell first, please. Yes, thanks very much. The trackers are a really useful tool, a really useful summary for policy makers. It is exciting to hear that you want to overlay some of the internal market act and devolution aspects over the top of that. I wanted to ask you about one of the things that is highlighted in the tracker. That is around financial services and greening finance and the development of a UK taxonomy. Just get your perspective on where you see potential divergence or alignment sitting within the EU or maybe with other countries that are developing their own taxonomies. I am obviously aware that within the EU there has been a very strong debate about the inclusion of gas and nuclear within the EU's taxonomy. Do you see an inevitable alignment there, given that we face similar energy challenges across Europe? Do you think that there is a different tilt, a different perspective with other countries that might end up getting wrapped up into some of the trade deals that the UK is looking to set up? I am not sure who wants to go on that first. I can go first if you want, Joel. What I would say is that it is far from that. I would not take it for granted that the EU comes up with a United Dance on this going forward or anything like that. At the moment, they have fudged it. They have fudged it quite effectively. One of the things that the EU has become very good at over the last year to 18 months is papering over differences very effectively. Even if you look at Ukraine at the moment, there are real divisions between member states, but they are managing to keep going otherwise. I will go back to what I said at the start. As far as I am concerned, Joel knows that these areas are a lot better than me, so I will defer to him. However, it strikes me that there is a fundamental ambiguity about Government ambition in this country. You have rhetoric firing off in different directions. As a rule of thumb, take divergence seriously when it is driven by the Treasury, because they at least seem to have a plan, as Joel was saying about financial services. Anything else, you will find evidence of cross-departmental squabbling of different parts of Government going off in different directions. The picture for now is so blurred. I am reluctant to hazard even a guess, to be honest, but Joel is a lot braver than me, so he might. On the specific question of nuclear and the green taxonomy, my guess is as good as anyone else's. Here, I simply do not know what the exact thinking is going to end up, but what I would say about the green taxonomy is that it is a good example and quite a unique example of where the UK and EU are moving at the same time, which is quite unusual when looking at divergence. Normally, it is either because it has to now that we have left the EU or because it has chosen to is creating new regulations or the EU is doing likewise. However, here, they are both moving in the same direction. It will be a very interesting test case in whether there is a desire to move in lockstep and have mutually assured the opposite of destruction in this case, that we are going to do the same thing without saying that we are, and that makes life easier for everyone, or that we are going to push the boundaries of what each other is able to do and try to get ahead and become the centre of green finance in Europe and potentially the world. My instinct is that the Treasury is thinking more towards that latter scenario, where it can get ahead just before the reasons that I said before that it has got a very clear idea of what it wants to do with divergence and a lot of the rhetoric coming out of government ministers in that area is that it really thinks that it can get ahead of the EU because we are one country rather than 27. I would not be surprised if we see gaps opening up in terms of green finance taxonomies in the coming months and years. That is interesting. In terms of how taxonomy is interpreted within the devolution settlement within the UK across Europe, where you have sub-state actors that are looking to invest in particular technologies, do you have any thoughts on how that might play out? Obviously, we are meeting in Scotland today, we have vast renewable resources. If you were to devise a green taxonomy for Scotland, maybe creating a financial centre for green investment in Edinburgh, what would that look like? Can that exist within an EU taxonomy that is perhaps tilted in a slightly different direction or emphasises other technologies over others? I do not know if you have any thoughts on that. Can you clarify if I was not 100 per cent certain what you are getting at? The point is that how can we maximise the opportunities for green investment in Scotland to create a focus utilising the resources and the advantages that we have in terms of energy under a taxonomy? Is there a potential for some divergence or emphasis in Scotland under a green investment taxonomy in the UK? I would say two things. First, this is way beyond my pay grade, so it is not an area that I sort of specialise in. The second thing that I would say is that there are two phases to all of those questions. The first is how you regulate to encourage investments. The second is having attracted that investment, whether or not you are able to trade easily with the European Union. This is the rub with divergence in a sense. It is all very well saying, okay, we are going to create rules in such a way as to make us a leading centre for X. Take gene editing. The British Government wants to liberalise the rules. We want to be less bound by the precautionary principle than the European Union. The logic being that that will attract inward investment that will not go to the European Union because you cannot experiment as easily with gene technologies in the EU as with the UK. That is fine. You might attract the investment, but that investment only really comes to fruition if subsequently you can trade those products with the European Union, who happens to be the largest market on our doorstep. One of the things that is absolutely missing from the UK Government's considerations of divergence and the benefits that it might bring is that trade-off, which is that if you diverge, you might make investment easier to gain but trade harder to do, which will play back into investment decisions. The final thing that I would say about that, of course, is that divergence is always, in many cases, going to impose costs in terms of the UK's internal market with regard to Northern Ireland. For instance, if you keep going on the issue of gene editing again, if we change our regulations and if we diverge from the European Union, it might well be that we are manufacturing goods that cannot be legally sold on the market in Northern Ireland because of the protocol. I know that that was a very vague and generic answer for the reasons that I gave you, which is that this is not an area that I am an expert in. I do not know if Joel wants to have a punse as well. I am trying to read that across to renewable energy, and maybe there is an approach there. Joel, do you have any thoughts on that? Yes. One thing to add is that I would say that the impression of divergence so far is—I am sure that you will be aware of this—that there is very little sense of communication or co-ordination between the four Governments of the UK and trying to create the example that you are illustrating of perhaps that Scotland would be the centre for one aspect of the new regime in Wales. Northern Ireland would be the centre for another. That, to an extent, is probably an inevitable challenge of the fact that the UK has not had to do its own regulation for 50 years. The European Union has, to a large extent, set the processes for how we regulate, and so we are a nascent country in terms of having to regulate things again. There are a lot of processes that still need working through, and much as it is going to take business 10 years to adapt, it is probably going to take Government five or 10 years at least to adapt to working out how to do that effectively, especially given the political clashing dynamics between four Governments as well. One interesting aspect will be the review of inter-governmental relations and how the new councils and things that have been set up, how they work in practice. I know that there has been some tentatively positive commentary about how it might boster better relations and better working processes. Although, incidentally, the Interministerial Committee on Finance seems to be potentially by more problems than the other committee, so that might be attention, particularly on green finance. However, it is incumbent upon Ministers in all parts of the UK and officials to make those things work properly, because it will rely on a lot of political goodwill to make that success. Final question about the European Union missions trading scheme. I think that you say in your tracker that you expect the scope of that to be significantly widened. Again, do you see the UK just falling into that same kind of scope, or do you think that there may be tensions over aviation or other areas? I think that the biggest tension will be over the carbon border tax, which is the secondary element to the emissions trading scheme that tends to work hand in hand. We know that the EU is developing plans in that area. That seems not so clear that the UK is necessarily going to follow on that area, so that is where I potentially see the bigger element of divergence emerging on emissions trading broadly for the time being. The EU and the UK are thinking in similar ways about it, so I do not expect major elements of divergence. Although there may be some nuances as those things mature over time because they are both very new, and there will be some need specific to the EU, which we will not necessarily want to replicate here, but I would expect largely to move them. It is the carbon border tax element, which is potentially more sensitive and more dramatic move for the UK to make, and largely might depend on who is in government, I would say. You alluded to the experience of businesses trading goods. You certainly talked about how Brexit has not simplified regulation from the point of view of businesses who found that regulation might have been multiplied or at least duplicated. Can you make any observations about the Scottish Government's intention to attempt to keep pace with regulation in Europe, and what the impact of that might be whether there are any areas that might be fruitful for the Scottish Government in your view to concentrate on to try to minimise that experience of duplicated regulation or complication from the point of view of people trading goods? I will flag it up and let Joel talk about it. The key examples at UK level—we focus very much on UK level rather than Scottish Government—we will try to talk about Scotland a little bit—is probably the CE mark, where the UK Government talks about bringing in its own alternative to that and has delayed that, partly, I suspect, because of pressure from business and chemical regulations. Two days, the Government is facing an awful lot of pushback from business for diverging, so it might be. That is where it ties into Scotland. I would not be at all surprised if, at the end of the day, the UK Government diverges far less than early rhetoric suggested that it might do, because pushback from business is saying, look, this will add so much in the way of cost to us. It might be that Scotland has less work to do, in a sense, in remaining aligned, because London is doing it anyway. It becomes less complicated in that way. That is a guess, and our politics is nothing if not massively unpredictable at the moment. The identity of the occupants of Downing Street is going to have an enormous implication for the future direction of travel. The signs at the moment for me are that having talked tough on that sort of stuff, the British Government is rightly backing off the idea of widespread divergence in that sort of area, because it is becoming more aware of the input costs. I agree that UK CA, the marking that is replacing the CE mark on a manufacturer good when it comes into the country in order to be able to circulate on the British market, so that new mark is creating a lot of bureaucracy for businesses to get everything re-approved in some product areas. It might take 60 years to get every product restamped, so it is a big headache for business, and that is why things have been delayed and chemical regulation. The UK is trying to set up its own architecture, but it takes time and it is simply not able at the moment to move at the same pace as the EU, so it risks some element of divergence by default in the meantime, because the EU is regulating on more harmful chemicals than the UK is able to keep pace with. The challenge for Scotland on both of these is, in the middle, I do not know every fine-grained detail of this, but it does not immediately appear obvious to me how you could allow Scotland to keep great pace, because these seem to be things that are done at the UK level. I may be wrong, and there may be something that you would want to go away and look into, but those are the two most obvious examples for the time being. I do not see quite where Scotland can mitigate the most significant effects of it, and it is somewhat reliant upon the UK Government rowing back on its earlier commitments. The most obvious area at the moment where Scotland has an element of autonomy is agriculture in terms of developing its own agricultural policies, gene editing, the new office for environmental protection. I know that England has its own one and Scotland will be developing its own one, so those are the obvious places where there are grounds to keep closer to what the EU is doing than England is, if that is what Scotland wants. I am interested in divergence in the field of climate and environment, and I think that it is an incredibly interesting report that you have produced. I note that you say in that report that, in theory, Brexit could make it easier to enact policies for reaching net zero. I realise that we are at an early stage of this, but can you indicate what the early evidence is suggesting in terms of the UK's approach to divergence from the EU in terms of target setting and mandatory commitments to help to tackle climate change? Who would like to come in first? I am happy to go. There is very little divergence. This is coming back to what Anand said right at the start. We have left the EU to become more French, more European and almost more European than the Europeans when it comes to climate change because ambition at the moment is higher even in terms of the ultimate pace of getting to net zero than it would have been had we been part of the EU's NDC. There has not been that. There has been no backsliding or moving away on that level of professed ambition. Largely, when you look at what the UK is trying to do at the moment in terms of getting there, it made mentions of Brexit and the net zero strategy, but there is very little that requires regulatory autonomy to move there. For the time being, there is no major indication of a different strategy outside of the EU that may change with time. That is more what the comment meant. In theory, we have the autonomy to change VAT on certain products if we wish that we did not have before. Those are kind of weeks around the edges that could be made. Potentially, you might want to use betaed subsidies in future. The example that is always referred to is gigafactories and putting money into these factories for the development of solar panels. The new subsidy regime may enable that, but we are still very much in the theory rather than practice stage of that one. There are those opportunities if the Government now or in the future chooses to take them, but at the time being, level playing field, really. I go along with what Joelle said. At the moment, it is very hard to say. I understand that there is a weirdness about Brexit, but it is all that we have talked about since 2016. I am going to say that it is very early dates. We have to live with that paradox because the Government has not had a chance to act. At the moment, the Government talks a good game, but everyone knows that this is a very, very performative Government that is good at sending out signals and, as yet, has been less good at delivering in practice. Again, you see that playing out a little bit with the rhetoric over sanctions on Ukraine and the reality of our sanctions as compared to the EU's when action was necessary. I suspect again that we will cleave quite closely to the European Union for all the rhetoric about the fact that we are doing stuff first. Thank you. That is very interesting. I think that some of your analogies can be applied up here in Scotland as well with respect to climate change narrative versus delivery. I just wanted to specifically ask you about the UK's nationally determined contribution, which is highlighted as a 68 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, and the EU's target is 55 per cent. In the impact assessment of that, there is an indication that, while being part of the EU, it would not have stopped putting that more stringent target in, it would not have been able to present it in the same manner if you like. I just wondered if you could perhaps expand on that. I note that there are a number of other examples where the UK is striving ahead in order to tackle climate change on oil and gas boilers, more sustainable agriculture on petrol and diesel cars, and I would be very keen to hear comments on that. Will we start with Professor Anand first this time? I will say something very general, because Joel is the person who knows something. In general terms, and more or less across the board, what the EU does in regulation is that it sets baselines. It sets baselines for the member states, and member states are absolutely at liberty to go further than those baselines suggest. That is true when it comes to rights, and it is true when it comes to environmental targets. As far as I am aware, there was nothing in EU law that would have stopped us saying that we are going to do this by an earlier date than EU law mandated. The argument that you get from some Conservative MPs in Parliament is that that is true, but that is given as an added incentive to prove ourselves. There is a political will element to that that is built in because we have left that was not there before, and you can agree with that or not, as the case may be. However, as far as I am aware, there were no legal strictures that would have stopped us doing this as a member state of the European Union. I absolutely agree with that. The main benefit from having the UK's own NDC was the symbolic element, particularly in the run-up to COP26, in the sense that it allowed the UK to say that we have got this 68 per cent target, whereas had it been any EU member, it perhaps would have had to repeat the 55 line in the sense that that is the unified position, albeit that it could have been pursuing exactly the same goals as we are pursuing now outside the European Union. It was that purely symbolic element of being able to talk about something that perhaps diplomatic leverage you get out of that. There is an open question as to how well that was used, and it just comes back to the point that the benefits that we are seeing in climate change policy are, for the time being, still very much in the rhetorical sphere. It is about being able to say that we are signed up to a new British target or that we are going to create a new British agricultural system, which is going to be greener, public or not British. Actually, that is specifically English, but public money for public goods, those kind of, you know, sort of rhetorically, we are moving differently, we are moving faster than the EU potentially, but really the fundamental issue is that we haven't seen the delivery yet, and we don't know whether the Government is actually going to be able to deliver on what it's promised, and that's where the real test of making use of very little tree freedom is going to come. Thank you for that. I think that you're quite right to highlight. Actually, setting the ambitious targets is the very much the easy part of tackling climate change, and the delivery is when things come home to roost as we are seeing. So thank you, panel. Thank you, convener. Thank you, Mr Golden. Can I invite Ms Binto? Sorry. Thank you, convener. Thank you, panel. I've got two specific questions on the report, the tracker that you have provided. On migration, I'm interested in the—when you did your introductory, you were talking about the importance of robotics and the investment in this country and how research and development and that could be sold on. I'm just wondering how that ties in with no longer being an Erasmus Plus scheme and the new Turing scheme, given that Erasmus Plus also supported inward students, so a different and improved university experience, but also supported research and also lecturers, giving a wider experience in universities, colleges and allowing for wider research and how that ties in with the situation that we have. I'll say a couple of things on that. In terms of the R&D base, Erasmus is far less important than Horizon. Horizon, of course, is being held up as a function of the on-going uncertainty over the protocol. I absolutely have no doubt whatsoever that the commission is using this as a political weapon. They might deny it, but the fact that there's been no decision yet on Horizon is really considering what's going on over the protocol. That really matters, and that has got the scientific community exercised. Access to those research networks is really fundamental to the future of British science. If you want to be that sort of leading knowledge economy with the leading university sector, having that access is absolutely fundamental. On Erasmus, it's as much cultural as it is scientific Erasmus in the sense that you get people who come here of experience of living here and might come back and settle here and things like that. Erasmus was always an interesting thing when discussing UK universities because it was something English university where I've experienced, because we tended to jet far more students than we sent. It was always a bit of a struggle in my experience to jetting the students to go over there, and there was always a bit of an issue because we had a few questions and they didn't. I think that it's a separate debate. It's an important debate, and you can add to that debate. The other part of the cultural thing is the British Government's decision, rising decision, I think, not to recognise EU identity charge, which is having a calamitous impact on school trips to this country. Again, on the cultural side, I suspect that that's something that's going to have a serious medium-term implication because those kids are simply not going to come and see this country when Adam speaks of it. Thank you. Jules, do you have anything to add? I largely covered the points that I was going to make. I think that was a slightly broader reflection, no problem. Give me some words. A slightly broader reflection on divergence is that when we look at this tracker, we are trying to identify, obviously limited in what we can do, we try to identify what we call significant cases of divergence and broadly we measure that in financial costs, we measure that in new non-tariff barriers, other administrative costs for business, for citizens. Erasmus slash shearing is an interesting example of what's more culturally intangible. Those things are, by definition, very difficult to measure and really one of the most challenging aspects of divergence to keep track of is what it means in terms of people-to-people links, in terms of just the kind of sense to which the UK is tied culturally to its neighbours. That can have very serious implications down the line if things are lost. You look at students who come to the UK are much more likely to remain here, to come back to invest here, to take holidays here, so there's all kinds of elements which, ostensibly, if we were doing a divergence tracker now, we wouldn't say, this cost has happened from the loss of inward student movement, which is not in the cheering scheme, but it could be a very significant effect. Potentially, there are going to be more areas like this, which we simply haven't come across because Erasmus is a hyper-uplo issue, which we talk about a lot, but there may be others out there, and that is a challenge for everybody in this sphere. I think that that's a really good point. We've taken evidence about the importance of soft connections that you have, and certainly the cultural side is one of those. Just also thinking about the diaspora of a country isn't just the people who've left, it's the people that have come and perhaps gone away again, but we'll still keep coming back and continue those connections. That moves me on to the recognition that the different countries in the UK have different needs, and that's been highlighted through the freedom of movement act. As the convener touched upon, we had a debate in Parliament about the nationality and borders bill this week, which the Parliament rejected. Also, in December, there was a joint letter sent to the Home Secretary from the Scottish and Welsh Governments raising concerns about that. I wonder whether you could expand a bit more on the research that you've done with regard to visas in specific areas. You highlighted HGV, vehicle licences, HGV drivers, I should say, but health boards as well are certainly crying out for staff, also vets and hospitality, so really all spectrums and how we can move forward with those areas. The moment we introduce control, you end up with a system that is less responsive to economic need. That's what we've done. We had a system where there was no control, and of course the lack of control itself was a political issue, as we saw in the referendum, but it was more quickly responsive to economic needs. Whatever system we put in place, it's going to be clunkier than a system via which people from your nearest neighbours—because geography matters as well immensely here—were able to come and fill gaps in our labour market. Obviously, in Scotland, we did a conference the other day on British politics, and Kirsty Grafman was on the panel, and she said, I don't know if it's true or not, but it stuck in my mind that, given the ageing populations in Scotland, even if every single school leaver went into the care sector, there would not be enough care workers because of the gaps there. We have a need for that, and the new visa scheme doesn't address it necessarily that well in particularly lower-paid sexes. Whether the Government bends on this going forward, we just have to wait and see. The signs over HGV driver licenses was that, yes, there is some flexibility in the Government position. Whether, longer term, they decide, look, we're going to have to put something more structural in place for those professions, particularly things like social care and healthcare that come below the wage threshold, I don't know. There's an awful lot of pressure on them, and the health unions are already making it perfectly clear that, look, you can't train enough people for those positions, and besides that, it takes a long time to train a doctor. At the moment, I think the bottom line is that politics is dominant when it comes to immigration, and it's politics rather than the economy that is taking precedence in the thinking of the Government. Whether that situation remains the case going forward, I just don't know. However, there is a mismatch now, and it's an inevitable mismatch. You're moving from a responsive system with no controls where actually the inflow of labour is largely determined by the market to a new system where the inflow of labour is determined by political and bureaucratic rules. I think that that's an interesting comment and comparison given that some of the arguments that we hear about the reason for the EU exit were economic ones, and yet—I'll leave it there, Joel. Do you have anything to add? Yeah, I think—firstly, I would absolutely agree with—and I'm that the biggest challenge is going to be in terms of that lower-paid work is where I think the biggest gaps are going to be going forwards, but just as you're saying, there is a certain irony in the fact that we expect net migration of the UK to remain in the hundreds of thousands for the rest of the decade. That is not taking back control of borders, it's not about cutting off the borders. I would also encourage you, if you haven't to read our report on doing policy differently after Brexit, which we published about a month ago now, which has a chapter on migration, and which makes it quite clear that the UK outside of the EU is going to have one of the most, if not the most, liberal regime for non-EU migration in Europe. There are potentially greater avenues for people from the rest of the world to come to the UK than there are for them to go to the EU, but the challenge remains that there is an estimate that maybe 50 per cent of jobs in this country would be eligible for a visa based on the skills and pay requirements, but nonetheless you need the money to pay for a visa, and you need to be, you know, these aren't necessarily going to be some of the more low paid jobs in society, so the type of migrant that you're going to get coming to the UK is going to fundamentally change, and so there will be different diaspora, which brings with it its own potential cultural benefits, new links, but yeah, the type of worker is likely to change, and in particular sectors like the care sector probably aren't going to benefit much. They are going to be probably net worse off, or not probably, they will be net worse off from the new regime, which is coming in. I wonder if I could just ask a supplementary question, because I'm finding the conversation quite fascinating in terms of visas. If we look to what's happened previously prior to Brexit, Scotland had a post-study work visa, so you were talking about Erasmus not being an economic value, but the post-study work visa was incredibly valuable and incredibly important last year. It was initially adopted and rolled out across the UK and then scrapped, but retained for Oxford and Cambridge universities, so I guess there's a sense of, I'll just say, grievance in Scotland as to how that arrived at and that's there. Also from what you've said about, you know, this was all about, you know, building a free capitalist economy, is also the decision of the Government to last week shut down the investor visa route with immediate effect, which could limit capital investment. Is that kind of intuitive to what the stated aims of Brexit would have been? Well, I mean, I'm not going to sit here and try and pretend that we have Government policies that are coherent across the board, because we don't. Of course, in regard to the sort of investment visa, that's got to be viewed in the context of what's going on in Ukraine and enormous political pressure on the Conservatives over links with Russian money. It's a whole, you know, events, as Macmillan said, are driving this rather than anything else. On the post-study work visas, I take your point about the grievance. I also take your point about the economic importance of those things. My understanding is that those things are back for some categories of people, so I believe that Indian students in the UK as a whole, if I'm not mistaken, can now make use of this post-study work visa. As a result of which, ironically, there's been a massive uptick in the number of Indian students in this country. It's been very underreported, but I think it's trebled or something. There's some enormous eye-watering number. Actually, if you're interested in this issue, I'd strongly recommend that you have a session with our colleague Jonathan Portes on the immigration and migration issues. There's a curious tension in the Government's position, which is that they understand the economic value of having students here, as you can see in the case of the Indians, but deny it in the case of Europeans. There are clear tensions in the Government that this isn't consistent or coherence across the book, but I think that's just called politics. Okay, thank you. I'm going to invite Mr Cameron, please. Thank you very much. I'm very struck by those last comments about the difference between the skills labour from non-EU parts of the world and in contrast to the EU. Can I ask about the pace of divergence? I was very struck by your comments so far about the fact that we seem to be moving very slowly. We've obviously had Covid and we've had to move in some areas. There's the opportunity to take advantage by being proactive in other areas, such as financial services. Do you see divergence speeding up in any way over the next few years to come? I think that the answer to that is political, rather than anything else, in the sense that it depends what happens to the UK Government and the UK governing party. What are the scenarios? The scenario is that you continue with the Boris Johnson Government, in which case I don't actually expect. I expect a lot more fudge and not much more divergence. There's a lot of rhetoric about Britain doing things first and best, but if you get a more ideological conservative leader, then yes, you could get more divergence and more of a plan to implement the kind of deregulatory agenda that was laid out in Britannia Unchained. I don't think that it will go as far as that, but this is very politically driven. If you ended up with a Labour Government, you would end up with greater alignment. I think that Keir Starmer has said that he would sign an SPS agreement with the European Union. I suspect that he might sign a mobility package with the European Union to allow service providers to travel. He might go for more in the way of mutual recognition of qualifications. That is ultimately in the hand of politics, and if there's one thing that's unpredictable at the moment, it's politics. Joel, do you have any observations? Yes. As usual, I totally agree with what Ananda said, but I would add on top of that. Basically, divergence takes time. There's no quick way to do it, even if you want to deregulate, even if you want to get rid of existing EU legislation, you have to consult on it, you have to then design processes for it, you have to implement the systems to remove regulation and you have to get business prepared for them. You're looking at several years before you can even make a more like-touch regime in a lot of areas. Examples at the moment would be medical device regulation. That's the best example at the moment. Deregulation takes time. For that reason, I cannot see there being a major shift towards it because, fundamentally, Governments are fairly short-termists in what they try to pursue. They have four or five-year mandates, so they don't have the time to pursue reform that will really take two parliaments to do properly. I can't see it being across the board's deregulation, even if we were to have a very ideological Prime Minister coming in. I would expect it to see it perhaps more in some areas, but I don't think that we'll ever see major deregulation. Where divergence can move quickest is in terms of where you can make the most changes in terms of limiting some of the obstacles that have been created. Where Labour to come into Government, I would expect to see more quick fixes to some of the bigger problems that businesses are facing, but which the Government now might feel ideologically unable to address for their own complex reasons. Thank you for those. It goes back to something that I was saying earlier about. It's a very blurred picture and one of you referred to it as cross-departmental arguments. It strikes me that that's the nature of politics. There's always going to be internal arguments across the civil service. There's going to be different personalities, et cetera. Without being too depressing about it, do you see any setting aside the political drive at the top? Do you see any clarity emerging on divergence in the years to come? Are we going to be not a standing or very helpful tracker? Are we going to be feeling our way for many years, it seems to me? I think that we are going to be feeling our way for many years. It's partly administrative as well as political. We have to wait and see whether Jacob Rees-Mogg is a policymaker or a policy taker. There are two broad models to the Brexit opportunities unit in the Cabinet Office. One is that he acts on the basis of the reportedly 1,200 letters that he's had from sun readers about regulations that he'd like to get rid of, and the Cabinet Office starts making the weather here and saying to departments, look, this is what you need to do, and the authority, the Prime Minister, is behind me. The other model for Brexit opportunities is that Jacob Rees-Mogg essentially just takes credit for stuff that other departments were going to do anyway that are based on our divergence from EU law. We don't know yet. We don't know how that unit will operate, whether it's going to be symbolic or substantive. So much of it does hinge on the basis of leadership from the top. You're absolutely right. Interdepartmental rivalry is part and parcel of Government, but interdepartmental rivalry can be mitigated if there is a clear steer from the centre. One of the interesting things about Jacob Rees-Mogg's appointment is that his rhetoric on tax and on regulation is very much that of one side of the parliamentary party, but it's far from all of the parliamentary party. So even there, how free he is to pursue the agenda that he clearly has is something that—I mean, if you ask us back in a year's time, we might have some more clarity, but at the moment I just think it's very, very hard to say. Thank you very much. Can I ask just one final question, which is about the impact of commitments that the UK has in terms of international obligations, and the fact that the ability to diverge may be impacted by those international obligations, be they in the TCA WTO agreement. Where do you see the booby traps, as it were, coming in terms of international obligations affecting divergence? I could say that the TCA is far from the only international obligation. I've put in the chat, and I'm not sure if members can see the chat, a link to a report called Doing Things Differently, Policy After Brexit, and I just draw your attention towards a section on public procurement in there, because that points out very clearly that actually one of the reasons why, despite very high ambitions, we haven't diverged that much from the European Union in terms of our public procurement rules, is that those rules are derived from WTO rules on public procurement. There are numerous areas. Auto standards tend to be global, so there are a number of areas where actually this isn't a question of freeing ourselves from EU rules and being able to do whatever we want, but it's freeing ourselves from EU rules and finding that actually we're still bound by other international commitments that we've signed up to as well. Joel, do you want to comment on that? Yeah, the other area that's going to become more of a factory in the future is future trade agreements. You can already see it in terms of what's happened with Australia and New Zealand and their intentions around what it's going to mean for certain food and environmental standards. Ultimately, those haven't shifted differently, but they were likely to be implications around financial services and liberalising agreements for movement with Australia. That has then potential knock-on effects for your wider financial services architecture, and that's going to come again. It's going to come with visas going back to Annan's point about visas for Indian students, and there was a geopolitical tension there with a number of visas given to Chinese students. If you try and do agreements with other countries, I'm sure visas are going to be raised as a factor, so that has knock-on effects for your immigration regime. Every time you try and enter a bilateral enhanced bilateral partnership with a country, it's going to want to extract things from that relationship, which has knock-on effects for your wider regulation in that area. It's been very interesting being able to read the tracker and also the work that you've been doing. I wanted to pick up one of the issues about lessons learned from other neighbours to the EU. You've got the EFTA network, which has been going on for decades. I'm just wondering what are the lessons that the UK can learn from being a neighbour of Europe, but not now being in the EU? Any lessons from the other non-EU neighbours of the EU in terms of the economy and divergence and trade deals? I'd say two things. First, if you are a neighbour that doesn't want to join, it's a bit of a nightmare. That's the first lesson. It's very hard to be next door to the European Union unless you pledge allegiance and say that ultimately you want to be part of the club. Switzerland has suffered as a result and is suffering as a result in the negotiations. I've always had far from a smooth ride. I've always, and this is a purely personal belief, thought that the sort of EEA model works fine if you're a small country for the UK as a whole. I was never convinced that an EEA model would work for the United Kingdom, given our size, given the nature of our political debate. The kind of, as they call it in Norway, fax diplomacy that works all right for them would never particularly work for us. My suspicion was always that we would blow the EEA up if we tried that sort of model. In terms of lessons, there's a lesson in reverse that Brexit, without even thinking about Ukraine and the scale of the issues, has brought home quite clearly the fact that the EU doesn't really have a very well-developed or effective approach to dealing with neighbours that don't want to join. I think that both sides have a lot of thinking to do about that. Just reflecting on the Brexit process, it was a process that very quickly became toxic, very quickly became political. The hope has got to be that over a medium-term horizon, both sides actually pull back a bit and think, all right, look, we're not members but we're allies, we're partners, we're trading partners, we're collaborators, it can't be beyond the wit of man to figure out a system whereby we can work together closely without necessarily trampling over the sensitivities of either side. However, I suspect that at the point where at now we'll need that sort of cooling off period and a passage of time before we're able to have that kind of rational cold calm discussion about it. That's really useful insight. Joel, do you have any perspective on that? Yeah, I think this is an unprecedented situation in terms of the UK lying on the EU's doorstep, and it says it's not normal to have a country which isn't, to some extent, part of the orbit that's fundamentally the UK is trying to compete with the EU in a lot of areas and it exists right next door, and that's not something that's really happened before. It's hard to draw lessons from applying to such a novel scenario, but why would it say, as a wider reflection in terms of thinking about where the relationship might go, that the EU thinks about regulating in a very specific way, which is that it thinks about consolidation between member states, policies that can apply across all, even if they're not perfect, something like common agricultural policy, and it also thinks about consolidation in terms of preventing from external threats and augmenting the power of the EU internationally. A lot of what it's doing right now around digital markets, around production of microchips, around regulation of platform companies is all about this idea of digital sovereignty and making the EU less dependent or giving less power to global, often American corporations in the EU market. This is a way of regulation that's about control, it's about protection, you might even say in some extent protectionism, and the UK is not, isn't encumbered by those same ways of thinking, and this is going to be the interesting thing for the UK in the next five, ten years, is can it fundamentally rethink how it does regulation, because we are, we're inheriting a model that's about control, and we might want to move to a model that's more about innovation, more about getting ahead emerging sectors, and there's no example to follow on the EU's doorstep at the moment, and that's what makes it more difficult. That means that Governments have to think ahead, plan ahead and be much more strategic, and as you've observed, year six in from leaving were not at that point yet. It was interesting getting your take on different future Governments, Professor Menon, what they might do, and that alignment issue about choosing to align on most issues, and then potentially innovating in areas where you're prepared to put subsidy, Government investment, gave the example to Morris about solar panels, presumably you could also do other renewables investment as well, if you, but you have to be strategic and think, think long ahead and presumably put chunks of central Government money in to actually kick it off. There are two sorts of normal line costs to think about. There's the cost inherent in being outside the single market, which leads to the need for certain checks depending on sector to make sure that the standards work. Even if we align with the European Union in an informal way, that's to say that we track what they're doing, and actually in parentheses, one of the interesting questions that I think I noticed on your agenda for today is how you track what the EU is doing to make sure that you're aligned is a very, very big question for all four Administrations in the United Kingdom, I think. But the second question is if you take the initiative and diverge a second layer of costs for business is the need to comply with two sets of regulatory standards if they want to try with the EU as well. So there are two different, conceptually two different sorts of costs to be thinking about. That is really useful. Thanks. Thank you. I'm looking around. I don't think there are any further questions from the committee this morning. Thank you very much for your attendance. Professor, we'll make sure that that link is circulated to the committee this morning that you put into the chat. On that note, I'm going to suspend to allow our witnesses to change over. Thank you very much again. Welcome back. We're moving to our second agenda item on a different topic this morning, which is our consideration of the Scottish Government's resource spending review. We welcome to the committee Diana Murray, fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Robbie McGee, chair of arts, culture, health and wellbeing Scotland. I welcome you both to the meeting. We're going to move straight to questions due to time constraints and can ask that witnesses do consider being concise if possible given the time today. Mr McGee, first of all, you say in your submission that the barriers to realising the wider benefits of culture are not just financial and you call for cultures to ensure health practitioners, teachers and the wider public sector are aware of the benefits of cross-portfolio approach. How do we bring about that culture shift? Thank you very much and thank you for the invitation to speak to the committee. I think that it is a big question, but it is about the idea of joint working and divisions within the Scottish Government working together, collaboratively, to reach shared objectives and outcomes. I think that the quote that you made about health practitioners, the culture sector and the wider public sector, but also the wider public need to get a better understanding of how arts, culture and health collaborations really have a positive impact on people's lives, particularly people in hospital or people with mental health issues. It is important to try and get that collaborative working going across departments and see whether there are ways of breaking down the traditional models of working and working in a new way, which allows for more innovative approaches to reach more people. From the conversations that I have had with people in health, they are always really, really positive and really want this work in their area, whether they are in a hospital or in the community. Wherever they are working, they can see the benefits of cultural interventions to their patients or participants, but it is quite difficult to get that in a more kind of formulated structure, which allows that to be parity of services across Scotland in different regions, because a lot of it is centrally based at the moment. Geographically, it is not equal what people can access. There are lots of challenges, but there are so many practical ways that it could be done in setting up particular steering groups or working groups to look at how we can make this a more equal area of practice, this cultural health area of work, and how collaborating and joint working can reach as many people as possible. It is not rocket science, it is just that there are quite traditional ways of working and people can be quite fixed in their pattern of working. That is true of everybody, that is true of culture and that is true of health. However, if there were ways of trying to break down those traditional ways of working and get people working together, I just think that there sometimes needs to be some kind of intermediary practical step-taking for those areas of culture and health at a policy level, as well as an implementation level, to start talking to each other and meeting and moving this area of practice forward. Ms Murray, you point to the well-established research base showing that participation in culture can provide several well-being and social benefits at individual, community and national levels. Coming out of Covid and with the challenges that we are all facing, how ready are we to adopt that research and realise those benefits? I think that we are more than ready to go. The thing that is holding people back is the funding issue and knowing whether they have consistent funding or not. We have done quite a lot of stakeholder mapping. I am also the chair of Arts and Business Scotland, and that organisation has done quite a lot of stakeholder mapping to find out what the barriers are to people moving forward. The consistency of funding is one. If you have consistency of funding, you can then draw in other funding sources from trust foundations, businesses and so on, without that knowledge that you are actually going to be there next year is very difficult to do that. That foundation is really important. I also think that we have been doing quite a lot in stakeholder mapping work. There are a lot of organisations, particularly community-based organisations, that are very keen to get going. What is holding them back from what we were just hearing about is how to go about it. They have programmes of work that they want to do. There is plenty of evidence that their work will be helpful in the health sector, in community development, in regeneration and all those kinds of things. Who do they partner with and how do they break down the barriers of the people that they want to work with? In addition to that consistency of funding, one of the most important things is to help them to create networks and to get the networking going at local level and at national level, so that we can understand where organisations that already exist and programmes that already exist and extremely good projects that already exist can be most effective. I am going to move to questions from the committee and can invite first Mr Golden, please. Thank you, convener. I will start with Robbie. It was very interesting written evidence that you provided around the mapping of arts and health provision. I am particularly interested in the suggestion that the provision is clustered around Glasgow Edinburgh and the central belt. I wondered your thoughts on how that provision could be expanded beyond the central belt, or whether it is a case that there is activity going on that is perhaps not being included in the mapping exercise? What is being included in the mapping exercise is funding for organisations that are funded through Creative Scotland. It excludes quite a lot of organisations that are getting funding from the NHS, local authorities or other funding bodies. I know that there is a huge amount of work going on out with the central belt, but it is not being included in the mapping exercise. I think that the mapping exercise is really valuable, because it does what has been missing, has been a benchmark and has been an opportunity to look at what is going on and to see in practical terms what is happening and where it is happening. That has been missing in Scotland, so it is useful to have it. The next step would be to develop a joint action plan with Creative Scotland and to try and consolidate what is happening, to promote best practice, to see how that can be more equally distributed across Scotland. There is a parity of service and we are trying to get a more strategic approach to this area of work, because there is now a huge evidence base that is detailed in the paper. There is a lot of work happening, but I worry that it is not always equally accessible to people where you live or whether you have a great project in your area. It is a spectrum of activity as well, so some people will need quite an intensive support. There are organisations that have been working across Scotland for over 30 years who have a huge amount of experience. Other people are going along to their voluntary drama group or music group, and that is just as valuable as well as to acknowledge how important that is in people's lives. There is a huge spectrum of creative collaborations across Scotland, but what is missing is maybe some strategic business plan or action plan to identify a vision and aims and objectives. That is where we want to get to over the next three years for this area of practice. I think that that would be really useful. Yes, thank you, Robbie. As you have highlighted, there are almost two phases to this. The first phase is establishing what provision is out there and understanding where gaps might be, and then the second phase would be looking at attempting to ensure that throughout Scotland the provision is as consistent as we can possibly make it. I wonder in terms of what intervention would you like to see by the Scottish Government or Creative Scotland to allow both of those phases to be enacted? I think that the more radical intervention is to look at funding from not just Creative Scotland having resources to fund organisations but from broader portfolios, from health portfolios that can support organisations. There is a limited amount of funding, and more established organisations are delivering work. If they had a core or flexible funding approach that secured them for more than three to five years, any area of work would secure more benefits to your participants, to the public, to patients or people who are working with those organisations. So I think that securing those organisations infrastructure and long-term funding is a really important aspect. Other initiatives such as the social prescribing area of work, which is a huge developing area, might be a special fund or additional fund that looks at social prescribing across Scotland and funds organisations across Scotland to deliver that model of social prescribing. That would give a longer-term perspective on the quality of work and what is happening across Scotland. There is focus in on particular areas such as social prescribing, but there is also investing in those organisations that are less likely than your other mainstream cultural organisations to receive long-term funding. Diana, your thoughts on how we want to improve our understanding and mapping of that, as well as help to enhance our provision? I think that we have done a lot already, as Robbie was saying. The exercise that Creative Scotland did is a very useful one. It would be useful to extend that to include more of those that are not funded by Creative Scotland, because, as he says, there is a lot going on. As I said, arts and business has done quite a lot of stakeholder mapping through its membership and those who are willing to partake in surveys. That is a very good way of finding out what is actually going on. That is the first step. I would like to draw a slight parallel with the work that we have done with businesses, because businesses are very pleased to help in getting involved with culture, but they have to make a business case usually to their organisation before they will fund anything. It is not just a case of philanthropy, it is often a hard business case. The same thing would apply if you are going to use money from other departments, such as the health department. You cannot just expect them to allocate an amount of money because it is a nice idea, or even if they can see the benefits, they have to make a proper business case for it. I think that we are going to have to work harder at networking and working with the health service and other arts of government to demonstrate the benefit of using arts and culture in their departments. There is a business benefit to them that it will enhance their work or save them money in other ways. For example, with mental health, it is really difficult to quantify, but there is certainly a huge amount of mental health and wellbeing avoidance of mental health issues and encouraging wellbeing issues, which are really hard to measure, by people joining local arts groups, being part of voluntary arts organisations and so on. It is difficult to measure that and ask the health service to fund that, but by working together with them, on the networking basis, we could partner the status up and demonstrate that making a business case is possible. That was very interesting. I am interested in expanding a bit more on Mr Golden's questions about social prescribing. I have a friend who is a retired doctor and that is something that he would have loved to have been able to do. There is perhaps a perception from some people that you go to the doctor and expect to get pills or a bandage or something. Social prescribing is a way to go to make that more acceptable. I am interested to know the work that you have done, Robbie, or your organisations that have tried to change people's perception of that and how that has been achieved, or have you got any examples from other countries that are doing that and how we can change what has happened in Scotland? That is a great question. I think that the public perception is key. I think that that is often forgotten about in this area of work. It is such a new area of work that I do not think that there is a huge understanding in the wider public about the role of culture and creative collaborations and how they can be really beneficial to your mental health. In some ways, they are just intrinsic, so people do them and that helps. However, it is not as spelled out or as clear to the public as some people think. I know that there is really strong social prescribing work happening in Scotland with the development of the new community link workers and there is within NHS Lothian and other NHS boards across Scotland trying for the community link workers to work very proactively to look at the cultural activity that is happening in the local community and to try to get people who are hard to reach, housebound or not engaging in their wider community to access through the community link workers cultural activity that is happening in their community. I have been doing this job a long time. Previously, about 10 years ago, I did a report with the Mental Health Foundation on the benefits of social prescribing. At the time, they were looking at how people who were being prescribed antidepressants and how, as an alternative, if they were prescribed to a cultural or creative engagement, how that would work. It was a very small study, but it is interesting that, after 10 years on, it has still not managed to secure a more strategic, broader, sport referral is quite established within GP practices and healthcare settings, but cultural referral has still got a long way to go to reach that same stage. In England, they have built up quite a strong social prescribing model and they have put a lot of resources into it. That is in its first year of its development. It is interesting that it is looking very much from primary healthcare, referring people who are coming to the surgery, coming to see their healthcare professionals and referring them to cultural activity. The big elephant in the room is the resources and the funding and how you measure and how you guarantee that, if you are referring to somebody who could be quite vulnerable or anxious or not confident about going to an activity, you are sending them to an activity. Have you done the research? Do health have the time to do the research into that provision and do culture have the resources to provide the provision? The other argument is that you can overthink it because people can be quite resourceful and they can go to an activity that is happening in their community and really benefit from it. However, you have to be careful that, if you are doing this work, you need to think about the whole picture and trying to resource the activity properly and provide a pathway for the person who is going to be positive for them. There are some guidelines being written up and developed from various projects across Scotland and there is a new social prescribing network in Scotland. It is mostly from a health perspective and they are looking at how they can refer their patients and people who use their services to cultural activities. There is a strong one in Verklyde, which is a strong cultural social prescribing network coming through primary health. It is developing here, but it would be great if you could pull all the projects that are happening in Scotland together so that you could get more of an understanding of what is happening and how you can make this more a palliative service so that it becomes more integrated into NHS and healthcare so that everybody can access it. That is where we are. How do we integrate social prescribing more strategically into healthcare in Scotland? There is a model in England that has done that. I have started that the first year with the kind of strategically integrated social prescribing into NHS England. Diana, do you have anything to add? Not really. That all sounds very sensible to me. I have just come back to this networking point that bringing together the people who are doing this already encourages other people to take the step and to do it. There is nothing better than, for example, to provide other people that this is a good way forward. I recognise that in my constituency of Argyll and Bute. The word of mouth is very important. If someone sees a benefit, they might take someone else along that can also get the benefit. However, I am also very aware that one size does not fit all and what works on one island might not work on another island. It is an interesting conundrum. Changing the topic ever so slightly, last night I was at a cross-party group on the creative economy and we got some fantastic presentations from individuals and organisations from the gaming industry. How they were working across different areas, not only the likes of minecraft but also from a health perspective and an education perspective. I am just interested to hear Robbie, what work have you done with the gaming industry? Diana, I suppose, what research have you done bringing that area of our economy, which is also part of our culture side as well? It is a really exciting area. We did run an online event due to Covid for young people in mental health and how culture and creativity can support young people's mental health. Art Link Edinburgh did a presentation on the work that it is doing with young people. It was around the idea of designing a game and a comic and it was really quite innovative the way that it was approaching it. It may be a bit obvious but, for me, that is where there is a lot of interest in the gaming and cultural economy and things in the younger, reaching younger people, who are often sometimes quite difficult to reach. Obviously, there are huge issues around self-harm and mental health issues with young people. It seems to be that gaming can be a way of bringing young people in. It is within the arts and health context. It is not particularly well established that area of practice is working in that way but it is a developing area. The experience that I have is that it is younger people who are accessing the arts and health by bringing them in through the gaming, as you mentioned, like Minecraft and all those different things. It would be interesting to see how that could develop more. It is not a huge thing that we have been working with within the network but it is something that is developing. In my experience, it was when we ran an event for young people in mental health and it was quite a big part of that event. We have dropped a wee pebble there and you can do some more work on that. I have less knowledge about the health benefits although I can see that very clearly. One of the points that has been made in our presentation is that there really needs to be investment in skills development and training right across the board, particularly in the creative industries that have it in Spain. Across the rest of the arts and culture, because there is a lot that can be delivered digitally, I can think of a programme that was delivered in the Western Isles, which was a web-based memory programme so that people could take part in it, even though they were in dispersed communities. That was very successful. I think that there is a lot that digital skills can offer. I think that a lot of what we are talking about can come down to better training and better development of skills. I think that making sure that we build arts, culture and the digital skills in that young education level in schools is really important, because that helps people to take part in a lot of these activities. You mentioned, Mr Murray, how it can be hard to measure the benefits of these interventions in terms of culture and health, although we all know that the benefits are there. If either of you wanted to say anything about evidence from other countries, I realise that your recent work has been mentioned in England. More generally, I wonder if there was anything that you could say about evidence from other countries that might be offered up to help to make that business case that you describe about the benefits of perhaps prescribing cultural activities or closer working in terms of budget between cultural and health organisations. I haven't got any evidence that I can bring to you, I'm afraid, that I can immediately think of. I don't know if Robbie has. Yes, there's a 2019 review by the World Health Organization, which looked at over 3,000 studies and identified a major role for the arts in the prevention of ill health, promotion of health and management and treatment of illness across the lifespan. That was a major piece of work. It did a presentation in Sweden and it was brilliant, because it was like the world is doing all this work in arts and health. We have a good contact in Nigeria with arts and medicine in Nigeria, which has started in Nigeria and is now a global organisation that is delivering work across the world to support collaborations between health and culture. Often, it is looking at health inequalities and how joint working can be shown. The fund projects for a year showcase the collaborations between health promotion and health and culture and what they achieve in that year to illustrate how those collaborations can work and to show them globally. There is a lot of research that has happened. There has been quite a lot of research by the all-party parliamentary group and the creative health report in 2017. It was huge. It was almost like a bible for arts and health, because it did go into real detail and focus a lot on the evidence base for that work. There has been quite a lot of work done during Covid. I have listed it in the paper, which is a research of cultural and health collaborations during Covid and the impact that they have had on how post-Covid work needs to be developed, because the impact on people's mental health and the increase in isolation and loneliness and the impact of Covid and the role of culture and health creative collaborations could be a really beneficial post-Covid as we try to recover from the pandemic. There is a lot of evidence out there that is clearly showing the benefits of creative collaborations on people's health and wellbeing. Finally, all I really want to say in the back of that was that the evidence is there from what you have just described, Robbie, but on the other hand, it has been pointed out by Diana Murray that sometimes it is a struggle to assemble evidence that makes a business case. What can be done to marshal that international evidence in a form that is going to convince health boards and Creative Scotland and everyone else about the need for closer working? I really think that—I know that this may sound counterintuitive, but I think that we have to put a financial value on that. That is why I say that it is quite hard to measure the preventative value, the preventative outcome, and what are you preventing happening. If we can put a financial value on that, the cost to the health service by investing in those activities, it makes sense to the people who make the decisions about where the money goes in the health service and elsewhere. While health professionals can see the value of it, I am trying to argue that money should be allocated to that kind of activity is a different situation altogether. I do not know how we do that, but I think that it might be worth developing up a model to do that. There are certainly—one of the ways of doing it to a certain extent is to do some impact assessments. I have mentioned at least one of those relating to the events industry in the paper that we submitted from the society, but I expect that Robbie Scott has other examples of that, too. The impact that is increasingly recognised internationally is the social prescribing model. That has got an international kind of momentum and there is a lot of research around that, and that is a kind of commonality happening across the world that people are trying to implement as a social prescribing model. If you are particularly looking at particular areas in medicine or health, if you focus on those areas, you can look at the research that supports the development of work in those areas, such as the recovery from mental illness after trauma, improving the experience of hospital inpatients, improving social connections between staff and residents in care homes and the benefits of culture activity on people who are living with dementia. There is a lot of research in those areas and I think that a lot of people can use the research particularly to those areas, when they are looking for resources from NHS or broader funders out with the cultural funders, but also with the cultural funders requiring that evidence base. I think that there is lots of evidence out there, but as you say, it is how you relate that to your applications in getting resources and funding to support the work, but it is now much better than it used to be the evidence base. We have got all the evidence on our website. Our network has all the new evidence that comes out and we put that on our website, so it is accessible to everybody. However, as I say, now there is a huge evidence base for this work and I think that a lot of people do now look out the areas of research that will support particular projects and areas of medicine. I thank both the witnesses for the fantastic paperwork that you have sent us in advance, which very much tunes in with what we have been discussing. On the one hand, we have had the evidence from Creative Scotland that says that key parts of the cultural sector risk collapse post Covid. You have got the decade of cuts to local authorities, which impacts on community culture, and that is massively impacted because it is not a core funding. However, you have got the evidence that you are giving us about the preventative impact of spending on culture. Jenny talked about the CPG this week, the culture and the business sector. We have had the culture and communities evidence, all of which aligns with your evidence today, which tells us that it makes economic, financial and human sense to invest in social prescribing. How do we do that? We are a committee giving recommendations to the Government, but it feels like that should be part of a fast-track Covid recovery. If you think about young people's mental health, they cannot get that support and yet social prescribing potentially would get people back on track and not have to miss years of progress in their lives. We have got the budget, but what are the triggers to lift that up? We all agree that preventative spending makes sense, but as you have just observed, Robbie, some of the research has been out there for over a decade, and Campbell Christie's recommendations were a decade ago. What is our trigger that would actually help us to come out of Covid and get on the right track? What would you recommend? Maybe take Robbie first and then move on to Diana. When I was thinking about this, I had noted down in my paper, but it does relate to the funding about the kind of securing the funding for organisations who have been working in this area for a long period of time so that they can secure their funding base and develop programmes that are secure for three to five years. It sounds quite basic, but historically, arts and culture and health has been the kind of poor element that does not necessarily fit into your clear kind of equalities framework of different equalities priorities, so sometimes it is difficult for art, culture and health organisations to get that longer term support. However, I suppose that it is about how you kind of make it more an understanding of this area of work within the wider public as well as the kind of area of practice where people know it is good and know its work but trying to increase the understanding within the wider public. From that, you get a more momentum to try to make sure that the work is recognised and valued. From my personal experience, at the moment that I am working with a consultant in renal medicine and the patients that she has been working with, I have had such a hard time during the past two years. Some of them have been vaccine resistant and it has all been very traumatic. We are trying to develop an arts programme for those patients post Covid. I can see the value of the work and it is not just a kind of soft value, it is actually quite a fundamental value to patients, families and staff. I do not say that lightly because I know that you can make broad brushstrokes about culture. I do think that there is a kind of intrinsic value in integrating that into mainstream healthcare so that there is an option for people to look at the person and the quality of that person's life within our care structures. I know that a lot of people are thinking about that post Covid. It is not just about the medical provision, it is also about the personal quality of life aspect of your care and I do think that culture can play a huge part in that. I wonder if there is a job to be done in trying to articulate the value of that work to patients, staff and their families to try to make that more integral into health. At the moment, it is quite bitty that certain health boards are funding certain projects and certain priorities are being funded. I think that if there is a national strategy and we could get the health and culture working together to really invest in this and say, post Covid, we want this to be an intrinsic part of both those areas and we can work together to make that happen, then I think that that would be a really positive thing. I do not know whether that is idealistic, but I do think that if there was a way that both those health and culture could work together strategically, based on the work on the ground, they would come in up from what is happening on the ground. At the moment, there is great work happening, brilliant work happening in Scotland, because I have seen a lot of the work happening. I would argue that the work that is happening in Scotland is so valuable and strong, but I do not think that Scotland is necessarily best at promoting that and saying that and saying that we are world leaders in this area of practice. I just wonder if there is a way of culture and health working collaboratively to make it more integrated into the health service. That is a really useful insight. Maybe a kickstart fund is to get things going and then think about that three-year funding that you are talking about to enable longer-term investment and make sure that you have picked up issues about care and safeguarding, particularly if it is people with mental health issues, to make sure that you are not making them more vulnerable. That is really useful. Diana, do you have any insight on that as to how we would make that happen and kick it off? Yes, I do. I am going to look at it from a different angle. That is so valid and I would not—this is not an either or. From the other angle, we want to catch people before they get into the health system. There are some fantastic community organisations and arts projects that are out there. I know that every time you talk to them, they are really struggling for cash. All they really need is the consistency of funding. Now, they are mostly organisations that Creative Scotland is aware of and that local authorities are aware of, but what they actually need is that consistent funding. If they get that three-year funding commitment, they can go out and work out projects, get funding for those projects, work with businesses or work with personal foundations or find ways of earning money themselves. They need that consistent funding. I will give you one example. I was on the panel looking at the awards for the SIRF, the Scottish Open Regeneration Fund. I went to see some fantastic projects, but one of them was the Whale project in West of Hales. On a shoestring, there were projects for young people, arts projects and plays. People were coming through the door all the time. Older people were coming in and doing crafting sessions and creative crafting, but the point was that they were talking to each other. They also had a shed in the garden where some men came to just communicate with one another and drink cups of tea, but they were also doing art projects at the same time. That is replicated all over Scotland. It is different in different areas. In the western hours, I came across a project that was a web-based one, which involved people being able to take part from their own homes. All of those things are mostly known to Creative Scotland. If we can get the funding consistently into those really good community arts projects, we will have a preventative effect on people's mental health, on people's socialisation and a number of other things, including dementia. We are allowing people to stay in their own home but to take part in some of those activities. I think that the areas that have been so badly hit by the pandemic, by local authority funding, which has been stretched and by the central funding, which is also stretched. That is where I would focus from a preventative point of view, but that is the area where I think that the outcomes are difficult to measure because they are preventative outcomes rather than the ones that you might get directly. That is very useful. In a way, we probably need to do both, because that prevention going forward is as critical as supporting people once they have had a crisis or an instant. If I can draw colleagues' attention to that, there was a really good report published this week that highlights the work of the Whale project. It was about mapping cultural dispersal done by the Edinburgh festivals. It is the point that was made earlier about spreading investment across not just Edinburgh and Glasgow, but even within Edinburgh and Glasgow, the social barriers to access to culture are huge. The evidence that we have just had is something that we need to pick up going forward. I am just thinking about some of the points that you have been making this morning, and particularly some of the creativity that we are seeing in communities, the way that projects get set up, their history, their diversity. Does that make it difficult then in terms of mainstreaming, in terms of taking a particular model that you can then take to every health board across the country and say, okay, this is what projects deliver, this is how we are going to employ consistent monitoring and evaluation, this is how we are going to develop some of the assessments of how you make financial savings. Is there a difficulty here in taking what is perhaps quite a grassroots movement, grassroots projects, and then trying to interface that with perhaps some of the harder objectives and systems that the NHS will have or health and social care partnerships or community planning partnerships or whatever? How do we get that creativity within communities interfacing with those who have actually got the money in a way that can deliver the objectives in a consistent way? Robbie, do you want to start off from the perspective of your projects and how they have managed to negotiate that? It is a broad spectrum of organisations within communities. If you were looking at health boards periods, you can map that there probably is an organisation that has been in existence for a relative long period of time and is probably fit into the long-term funding model within that local authority. Then there are other organisations, as you say, who are more grassroots. There is a strong movement in Scotland about supporting voluntary community organisations in that area of practice as well, because there is a political aspect to that as well in the sense that those organisations are proud of their community and voluntary status, and that is the perspective that they are coming from. You can have a tapestry of all those organisations within the different health boards, and you can design a kind of art strategy within that health board that draws on all your resources within your community that members of your community could benefit from and work with. If you were to map the cultural organisations and activity within each health board, you would find a lot of resources that your health board can draw on. The piece of work is designing your strategy on the financial benefits of using that resource in your community. The most important thing is the benefit to your patients, hospitals, residents, care homes and members of your community who are housebound and are not accessing any community services. If people work together—we have examples of all those things that work brilliantly in different parts of Scotland—if there is a way that we could work with health boards and design a strategy that draws on that resource, that would be really positive. However, you are right, there is quite a piece of work to be done in mapping that and co-ordinating that and facilitating that. I am a firm believer, because I think that having worked in this area a lot and practically doing stuff is really good rather than just trying to make the perfect scenario and design that. It generally comes from the organisations themselves, the best approach. If you can take that to the health boards or the funding bodies and say that this is what exists already rather than reinventing anything, I do not think that there is a necessity to reinvent anything. I think that it is all there. I think that it needs to be joined up. There needs to be funding for organisations for the longer term, and there needs to be a fund to support organisations coming in for project funding. There could be a development coming in for project funding, and that leads to permanent funding in three or four years once you are more developed, so that kind of structure could work really well. I do think that the organisations and the artists and the community workers and the volunteers are all out there. It is just how you co-ordinate that. I suppose that I am asking here if there is a need for that consistency. You mentioned and reclined earlier on as an exemplar, but do you think that there needs to be guidance to all health boards to do that, or is this the responsibility of community planning partnerships, or should there be some expectation on authorities to be doing this mapping work and evolving this work? It is difficult, because health boards have different priorities and health boards have different areas of interest. There was a kind of directorate, but it was not there on public health. A new build, there was a percentage of that capital needed to be put into art, so any new health building needed to have a percentage for art within that, but sometimes when you make it so kind of directive and so prescriptive, that kind of can have a negative impact as well. It is trying to find a balance where actually health boards want to do this because they can see the benefits to their communities, and generally that is what health boards want. I think that it is about designing a strategy over a three to five-year period and trying to engage with all the health boards across Scotland to buy into that strategy that they will look at their cultural strategy and see how that can be implemented. We can provide all the examples of the best practice or work that is happening in different health boards across Scotland. If there is a need to join that up, because there are a lot of networks. There is a social prescribing network. There is a community arts network. There are different networks across Scotland that you would bring into that conversation and try to make it as inclusive conversation as possible so that it becomes a really dynamic and positive thing. From the case studies that are listed in the paper, there is so much diversity in the work that museums are doing, the work that galleries are doing, the work that particular arts and health specific organisations are doing, and then the work that community organisations are doing that would not necessarily label themselves as arts and health organisations, but they have a really positive impact on their community's health. Then health organisations who are delivering culture as part of their work as well. There is a broad range of organisations that are engaging in that work. We will see a fuzziness between the boundaries of what certain projects are doing and they may be delivering objectives across different areas. Diana, can you ask for your reflections on that? I think that the strategic approach is probably helpful. It is important that we are not too prescriptive about it, as Robbie said, because the thing about culture and heritage comes into that to some extent as well. It can offer that kind of support to the health agenda in all sorts of different ways. If we start being prescriptive about it, it probably won't be very effective and will take up a huge amount of resource that can be used elsewhere. There is a lot out there, as Robbie said, already that just needs to be harnessed into the right direction. I think that strategy is a good idea, and I would agree with that. I will go back to my networking point. The more we can get people to network together, there are networks out there where the benefits of that kind of activity can be promoted and developed and example-shown. There is nothing better than an example for other people to say, oh, we could do that and we could reap the benefits as well. I think that that is a good way to do it. The question is how do you do that? We do have organisations like Creative Scotland and Historic Environment Scotland, Arts and Business Scotland and Robbie's organisation that could use their experience to put something like that in place and make it more Scotland-wide than it perhaps is at the moment. However, there is a lot of experience there. Thank you, a lot of it is just to bring it all together and to share the benefit of it. I think that particularly areas like monitoring and evaluation of projects and trying to share that understanding about how to do that. Just a final question—it is a bigger one, really. It is about the Government's got a well-being economy bill slated to be brought forward in this session of Parliament. I wonder if you have got any thoughts at that kind of higher level of governance in Scotland about what could be in that bill that would help to support those initiatives? Is it about having the right kind of indicator? Is it about having a commissioner that can look at the needs of future generations? What do you think that that thing is that would be useful in the bill at a legislative level that would help to drive progress in this area and ensure that we are not forgetting about this work and we are prioritising it? Do not worry if you do not have an answer to that, because there is time for you to beat that into the Government consultations, I think, but it is interesting to know if you have got any top lines. It goes a bit too far to the moment, Mark. I am conscious that we might not even get the bill for this committee. If you do not mind, I think that if you want to follow up writing with an answer to that, I would be more than happy. I am conscious of time as well, so I am going to move to Mr Cameron. Thank you. Good morning to you both. I would like to talk about public service reform. One of the suggestions that is made in the Scottish Government's review framework document is that the Government says that they are going to examine discrete opportunities for longer-term, large-scale public service reform. Clearly, there is a funding element to that and how we fund culture, but there is also an organisational element to that. I just wondered if either of you had any observations about the funding structures for culture, but also the organisational structures, the agencies that work, the role of local authorities. Robbie, I noticed that, in your submission, you talked about perhaps a more radical change of core funding to cultural organisations from outside the culture portfolio and a project funding approach. I just wondered if you could develop that, please. Perhaps Robbie, followed by Diana. I think that it is interesting because the work that we are doing does cross over health and culture, obviously. If the funding model is looking at indicators in relation to health outcomes and people's increase in self-esteem, confidence and wellbeing, if those indicators are being achieved through the cultural intervention, I just wondered whether, with the cultural portfolio, there would be opportunities for public health resources to be funding cultural organisations who are delivering on health outcomes. The radical idea was that the contribution that culture makes to the outcomes of the national performance network could be recognised by providing fixed-term funding to organisations that are crossing the health and culture field. The structure of funding at the moment, Creative Scotland, has been very supportive of our network and provided funding for the first year and has provided funding for the second year. We have a good relationship with them in terms of their advice and support. Historically, with Creative Scotland, there has not been a particular focus on arts and health as a strategic area of development. That is now changing and that is a really positive thing. It is always never quite fitted into a particular area within Creative Scotland. If it is that there is going to be a focus on arts and health, culture and health within Creative Scotland strategically, that is definitely a really positive thing. That is certainly the conversations that I have had, that is the road that Creative Scotland is going to be focusing more on arts and health as a strategic area, which should hopefully mean organisations, because there are not any core-funded arts and health organisations in Scotland. That is very unusual compared to England, whereas about 10 to 15 per cent of the organisations that receive core funding are arts and health organisations. Within that already, our infrastructure and capacity to develop as a sector is limited. Another point is that there are NHS boards that are funding cultural organisations, and that is a really positive thing. Again, that is something that we need to look at and how that works and how that is achieved. There are also other areas within the NHS that are funding cultural activity purely for the health outcome benefits to them. Again, articulating that and sharing that across other organisations and other, making that more understandable how that works, would be beneficial. For me, in a very simple term, the funding structure would be to fund organisations who have been working in this area for a long period of time and have the expertise and knowledge on a fixed core funding basis. Organisations who are developing and looking to come into this area of work or for specialised projects around social prescribing and stuff, they could be funded on a shorter-term funding process with the trajectory that they could apply for core funding as they develop. If it was possible, in an ideal scenario, that would be accessible to public health. It would not just be through Creative Scotland, as you said in your question. It would be accessible through different areas of funding within public spending, so it could apply for a cultural project, not just for a cultural funder, but for other areas of public funding. We acknowledge that culture is a major part of all sorts of things in this country—tourism, the Scottish identity, and we are talking today specifically about its contribution to the health of the nation. The amount of money that is identified for cultural work is really tiny compared with the rest of the Government funding. I am quite sure that it will not be increased, but I think that we need to recognise that. That amount of money goes a very long way already. We have major funding organisations, and sometimes one feels that they do not necessarily work together. We have Creative Scotland, and we have Historic Environment Scotland, and we have the lottery fund heritage money. We find that organisations have to apply to all three and do different funding applications to all three with different emphasis. We are so used in the cultural sector to having everything project funded, constantly trying to think of new projects, because some of those funders will not fund projects to be repeated, even if they are really good. All of that needs to be looked at. It is probably out with the committee's remit, but I think that there are issues there. Often, organisations big and small rely on project funding at the expense of having a core that allows them to really develop. I should mention that, with my Arts and Business hat-on, we are trying to encourage businesses to invest much more in culture. At the moment, we are getting about a 1.2 return on investment for businesses investing in culture with match funding from the Culture and Business Fund, which is provided by the Government. There has been an enormous take-up this year of businesses wanting to be involved with culture, partly because of the new environmental, social and governance feeling about businesses where they want staff to, staff well-being, and staff working with purpose are much more important these days. They find that having involvement with culture is really good for the well-being of their staff, so it is not just in the health sectors that we are talking about, but in businesses where staff have been suffering from well-being issues. We could easily double the amount that we give out to our Culture and Business Fund Scotland and get more than double the amount back from business at the moment. That is a whole area that we need to look at again, not necessarily directly on the narrow area of health and wellbeing that we are looking at, but perhaps a broad area of culture spend. Just finally, spending and funding are plainly of immense importance, but just setting that aside for the moment, do you have any comments on the landscape of Government agencies working in the cultural sector and any kind of reform that you might want to see in relation to what the Scottish Government suggests about public service reform? Perhaps Diana, quickly followed by Robbie. Well, I do agree with the aim of trying to get culture right through all the Government departments. I think that the siloisation of Government is much better than it used to be, I have to say, but it is still there. Education as well is another area where you would think that it was well established, but it is not as good as it could be, as well as health and social issues. There is the whole international aspect of that as well. Our cultural activities are very important in the area. I am sorry, I am thinking off the top of my head because it is not an area that I am sort of prepared for, but those are just things that I could think of immediately. I have worked for Creative Scotland, a local authority and a health board, all of them are doing brilliant work, but they operate in their own bubbles. I know that that would not be straightforward, but if there was a way of public services somehow working in a more collaborative way to reach shared outcomes in relation to culture, if there was a way that—and I know that there is already and I know that there are models ready—if there was a more collaborative working between public sector funders to reach shared targets, that would be a really positive thing. It could be quite simple or it could be quite radical and innovative to try and make them more collaborative in relation to culture, because often local authorities, health boards and national funding bodies are all reaching for the same targets in relation to people's mental health and wellbeing in terms of their communities. They can operate in isolation, and I do not know what the answer is, but if there was a way that they could work more collaboratively, that would be a very positive thing. Exhaustive questions from the committee this morning. I thank you very much for your attendance and also for the submissions that you gave, which have been referenced by many of the colleagues this morning. They were very helpful. I am now going to close the meeting today.