 Good morning, and a warm welcome to the 21st meeting of the Constitution, Europe External Affairs and Culture Committee in 2022. We've received apologies from Donald Cameron MSP. Our first agenda item is to take evidence on the BBC annual report and accounts. This is an annual event that the committee undertakes. We welcome to the committee this morning Steve Carson, director of BBC Scotland, Louise Thornton, head of commissioning at BBC Scotland, and Rodi Talf and Davies, BBC director of nations. A so very warm welcome, and it could invite Mr Carson to make an opening statement. Thank you, convener. I'm pleased after several years of virtual appearances to today. My colleagues and I can attend this committee in person, and I'm delighted that, alongside me this morning, I'm joined by Louise and Rodri, as you've noted. Those virtual sessions are a reminder that the year under review in the annual report and accounts slide before the Scottish Parliament covers the time when we were all still working and providing vital broadcast services under Covid rules and regulations, and those services included in-depth coverage and analysis of the parliamentary elections in May last year. The reports and accounts also cover a time when Scotland hosted COP26, BBC Scotland staff and infrastructure were at the heart of global coverage of the climate change conference, as well as our news programming. We heard from Scotland's innovators in Our Planet Now. We looked at Scotland's engagement with North Sea Energy in black-black oil and shared the remarkable story of a life of solitude in the documentary The Hermit of Treg. While the report covers the last financial year, it is important to note that, in recent weeks, when the eyes of the world were once again on Scotland following the death of Her Majesty at Balmoral, BBC Scotland's teams were at the heart of bringing those historic events to a national UK and global audience. Through the past year, the BBC's across the UK strategy has seen an increase in network commissions and co-commissions with some of the BBC's biggest drama titles, including Shetland and Vigil, set and produced here. Vigil itself was the most watched new drama launch on UK television in the past three years and a second series is now confirmed. We also saw the return last autumn of the critically acclaimed award-winning drama, Guilt, with the third series now in the works. At the end of this year, we will also be welcoming a new Aberdeen-based drama, Granite Harbour, to the schedules. This week, we have been celebrating 20 years of River City, an audience favourite that plays a significant contribution to our creative economy, developing talent on-screen and off. In 2022, Scotland has become the BBC's centre of excellence for technology journalism with the move of BBC News specialist technology team here. The weekly technology programme CLIC broadcasts in the UK on BBC One and on BBC World across the globe, and it's been broadcast from Scotland since May this year. Radio Scotland continues to serve Scottish audiences across the country. Climatails give a voice to children and young people sharing their fears and their aspirations for the planet. The station is marking our centenary with 100 years of Scottish stories where listeners across Scotland are recording and sharing the one story that they would like to pass down to the next generation. I'm sure that we'll come to it today. We know just how central our partnership with Screen Scotland has been in growing the creative economy here with shared training and development initiatives. Screen Scotland's recent report on the economic value of the screen sector showed just how important the BBC and public service broadcasting is to that, and the BBC alone accounting for nearly three quarters of all PSP spend on television in the year of their analysis. Partnership is also at the heart of our Gaelic services. Alongside MG Alba, we've launched in the past year, Speak Gaelic, a multi-platform language learning course with programming across BBC Alba, Radio Nangill and our online platforms. I think there's more we hope to be able to share with you today. Louise Rodryn and I look forward to discussing the annual report on accounts and associated matters with the committee this morning. Thank you very much for that really informative opening statement. If I could begin questions on impartiality, the BBC doesn't have to be neutral on every topic, but it must show due impartiality. I know if common describes this as a complex challenge. Contrasting audience ratings for the BBC News is highly trusted for accuracy, but lowering ratings for impartiality. The regulator has said that, given the apparent disparity between audience attitudes and the BBC's impartiality, it's a good record of compliance with the due impartiality broadcasting rules. It's important for the BBC to find creative and engaging ways of delivering and demonstrating to audiences its commitment and its approach to due impartiality in order to retain trust. I wonder if you had any reflections on the regulator's view on that. The regulator has done a number of studies from media nations to a report on due impartiality. You're right to point out that the BBC has a very strong record in due impartiality. Research is interesting. For example, the BBC is still, according to our research for the annual report on accounts and off-coms research, a highly trusted news source. One of the figures in the annual report on accounts would be the go-to news source for nearly half the population. Other brand name, that's a bit of that way, would be in single figures. When we look at the difference between trust and impartiality in Scotland and the rest of the UK, the figures aren't widely different. As I've pointed to, I think that this is about communications and confidence. The way that we can make sure that people believe that we're impartial is by doing our jobs well, by following our standards and our guidelines, and we do, again, off-com research there back in June, looking at Scotland, talk to what some audiences in Scotland felt, sat and watched BBC Scotland programming and STV programming. They actually felt that they were very similar, covering the same subjects, and in some cases the reports to the BBC were doing better. I think that we always need to be alive to audience perception. I think that the figures in Scotland are not radically different to the rest of the UK. I think that the proof is in the pudding. I think that people come to BBC News and BBC News in Scotland when they want that information. We saw that during Covid when people came. The choice of outlets for public health information turned to the BBC and the BBC Scotland to large numbers at a time when they really needed to find news and information that they can trust. I think that Mr Golden wants to come in. Thank you, convener. First of all, congratulations to River City for celebrating 20 years and showing a very entertaining and innovative anniversary episode. It was great to watch. Just on an interlinked point around impartiality but looking at the four nations and their views on the preferred news source, there seems to be a clear differential between Scotland and Northern Ireland versus England and Wales. In England and Wales, BBC is significantly ahead of ITV and ITV Wales in terms of a preferred news source and that differential has flipped with respect to Scotland, which I'm clearly most interested in. I just wondered whether your thoughts on this and whether those views are reflective of content or perhaps mirroring society. I think that the off-comers search, which is in the research pack produced for the committee, if you look at it, they're stripping it into individual services. So obviously, STV news, they do an excellent service for news provision in Scotland. They've pulled out of other genres in terms of their contribution to the main channel 3 schedule, but the table that you're looking at shows STV news as one single source and then all the other BBC channels and services stripped out separately really of Scotland, BBC One Scotland, Scotland channel. Actually, when you aggregate all those sources together in the table, I think it's 58 per cent would be the service of choice to find news about Scotland in Scotland. I think you'll remain in a very strong position here. If I may just add to that, it's worth going back to what Steve was saying earlier. It's worth bearing in mind the enduring trust of the audience in BBC news services. Around 80 per cent of the population is coming into BBC news services every week. The breadth that is offered, as Steve mentioned, across the BBC Scotland channel report and across Radio Scotland, across online, that is an extraordinary portfolio of news and current affairs services. And I think it's a unique position where we're able to deliver value to news audiences right across the BBC portfolio. Thank you, panel. Thank you, convener. Miss Minto. Thank you, convener. Thank you, panel, for coming along. And 20 years ago, gosh, that's quite frightening. I can remember when River City was first commissioned. Continuing on the impartiality and actually breadth of service that Rodri just introduced there, we had a debate in the chamber on 3 March this year on public service. And actually one of our colleagues, Stephen Kerr, said in his speech that it's 20 years since devolution and the BBC has not caught up with that. He then continued to talk about the coverage that Westminster, he was previously an MP, as you'll know, the coverage that Westminster got compared to what the coverage that this Parliament gets. So I'm interested to know about your thoughts on that. And given what could be happening in the next few years, how, if you've got any plans to change how you cover what happens in this Parliament, everything from FNQs to committee sessions to debates? Well, I think individual decisions can change over time, but our commitment to cover the workings of this Parliament will be strong and remain strong as it's a key part of our public service in Scotland. And indeed the work of Scottish members in Westminster also features within our outputs. And I think in terms of our coverage of politics, I think it's a considerable investment and one of our most talented teams actually. And we've expanded that in a number of ways. Obviously with the investment in the nine, I think podcasts like Podlytigal. And then as I say, changing schedules for improvement if you look at the launch, for example, then of the Sunday show, which is both Radio Scotland and then BBC One Scotland pulling together. And I think Louise might talk about that. It's a key thing for us in BBC Scotland joining our services together. So I think we've actually deepened, improved and enhanced our political coverage in recent years. And I think the commitment to make sure that the work of elected representatives of our audiences in Scotland are properly covered. Do you want to talk about that? Yes, so first of all, thank you so much for having me here. I started as head of commissioning in December 2020 taking over from Steve in the channels in a very healthy position. Part of the work that we do within the commissioning team is to work in a multi-platform capacity. So I manage five commissioners who all commission certain genres but we always look across platforms for opportunity. So something like the Sunday show is an excellent example of where we're looking for an opportunity to use talent that can reach a certain audience through television but that can also speak to a radio audience as well. Increasingly, we're looking to how we deliver through sounds as well. That's a key priority for us. Podletico is a fantastic programme and the Sunday show also picks up an excellent audience through our on-demand. And just to reassure you, digital is a major priority for us so in terms of how we're delivering news, that is absolutely a consideration going forward. Thank you. Thank you. Dr Allan. I was interested just to hear a bit more about how you define a Scotland-specific programme and because obviously you've produced some statistics around that. I must be clear that I'm not calling for some very purest definition of that but I'm just a bit unclear what it is. So I mean, I didn't know, for instance, that CLIC was produced in Scotland. But is it all about location or are there other factors you take into account? So for instance, does Ken Bruce count as a Scottish programme you're shaking your head? I'm just curious to know what is included and what isn't. Incidentally, I also enjoyed Vigil once I'd overcome my irritation with the fact that the programme's writer seemed to believe we have coroners in Scotland. But I just wonder if you could say a bit more about whether it's all about location and production or whether it has anything to do with how BBC Scotland is reflected? It's a mixture, so you'll see in the annual report that an account's spend directly in control of BBC Scotland is reported in one of the tables there. And that's a content spend controlled by Louise and her team and the BBC News spend as well as some Scottish Symphony Orchestra. So some stuff is specifically BBC Scotland spend. Then we also count network spend in Scotland and that's devised or defined under rules from OFCOM where there are three criteria such as having a substantive base here proportionate to spend here and the talent on the crew base here. So there's an OFCOM criteria for how spend in Scotland is allocated. Within that network spend I guess there's two types. There's portrayal spend which you'd see in Shetland and Vigil, Two Doors Down which is set in Scotland and reflects Scotland. And then there's considerable portion of spend like CLIC for example which is made here. Our studios in Pacific He are really one of the centres of excellence for producing quiz shows across the BBC. So that's not portrayal although audience members often come from Scotland but it's valuable economic activity. So there is a mixture but the accounts do separate these things out. I mean at this point about mixed ecology I think is spot on. Across the network investment and the money control by BBC Scotland you want that range of work. It helps build the sector it helps build skills. But it is worth saying that in terms of the plans that the BBC laid out last year across the UK it is about transfer of investment outside the M25. It's about £700 million up to the period 27-28 but it's also about what is made and who it reflects. Outside the financial movement is that at least 100 comedy titles drama titles over the next three years are authentically rooted. You can talk about location, mindset, world view, accent whatever but that they feel and come and feel authentically rooted and you want that mix. You want that mix of investment and you want that to ensure that there is an authentic portrayal of the different parts of the UK. Finally just on the back of that that's very helpful an issue or a question I've raised before has been about writing and promoting new writing when you're talking about portraying Scotland or portraying anything but encouraging new writing within Scotland that would give backbone to the programmes you're talking about. So I'm just curious to know again what's being done to promote that. That's the key part of what we're here for to hand over to me. You're absolutely right it's absolutely key in terms of authentic portrayal and storytelling that really reflects a modern Scotland which is what we're all here for. We have various ways of developing writing talent one that you will probably all be aware of is BBC Writers Room which has been incredibly successful over the past few years so we have a close relationship with them and Gavin Smith who's the commissioner for scripted in my team works really closely with the Writers Room some examples of actual programming that's come from that recently was a partnership that we entered into with Screen Scotland which was a short form drama opportunity in the iPlayer space as you know drama is very very expensive so actually giving somebody their first writing break on screen iPlayer is a fantastic space to be able to do that and short form again has got massive appeal to younger audiences so marrying that up with our desire to develop talent attract different audiences we commissioned a range of scripts through the Writers Room and then selected one script to take to series which resulted in a really successful series called Float which you can watch on iPlayer which has subsequently gone on to win a Screen Mary award now we're replicating that experience this year working with Screen Scotland again this time we've selected a writer called James Price who is a writer from Glasgow and is writing a piece all based in Dundee called Dog Days again in that short form space where he can have his first chance at serialised writing that's one example of how we develop talent of course we also have River City which is a brilliant training ground for writing talent and we've seen writers from River City go on to all manner of other huge shows our challenge with River City is really hanging on to that talent because they develop them so well so congratulations to River City 20 years of fantastic programming and what they do for the sector in writing it's fantastic thank you very much thank you can I ask you about the proposed selloff of channel 4 and what the impact may be on the BBC either directly or indirectly I mean clearly that's a matter for UK Government and you'll be seeing the debate and discussion around the future channel 4 at the moment I mean our view is that the public sector and the mix of public service broadcasting in the UK is a very precious thing and you want and when we think about the development of the Scottish creative sector a mix of buyers, a mix of funders a mix of suppliers is crucial in terms of the sustainability of the sector but in terms of what the right structure is for channel 4 I think that's a discussion for channel 4 in the UK Government we've had some very strong evidence from the independent production sector in this committee of the potential impact where does that sit within your risk register do you have concerns that certain indies may not be here in a few years time as a result of channel 4 being privatised would there be a pressure then on the BBC to support the independent sector at a higher level what would be the budgetary impacts of that what are the impacts in terms of your own strategy I mean I know you can't say politically where what your views might be about privatisation of channel 4 but surely for your strategy it could be very significant I think before handing over to Louise about the sector generally I mean I think it is that kind of mixed ecology you know I don't think it's a coincidence that the UK as a whole and increasingly Scotland now itself has developed a really flourishing broadcast industry of global strength with a mixture of the licence fee core funding and a strong independent commercial PSB sector including channel 4 and I think both the BBC maybe Louise gives some examples both the BBC and channel 4 have been very focused on developing the wider creative sector to keep what I always think of our mission the BBC Scotland is you know we're the largest creative organisation in Scotland but we're not the only show or town and really what we want to be is a sort of an enabler an anchor tenant for the wider sector so we play close attention to growing and developing the independent sector in Scotland as channel 4 half as well in terms of that future strategy yes thanks Steve yes I think whatever happens with this particular issue developing the sector no matter how that changes over the next few years and part of our strategy is how do we bring business into Scotland with the budgets that we control how are we spending that in a way that develops the sector in terms of returning series that's a massive priority for us both within factual and looking to bringing more drama through Scotland as well and increasingly we're looking at how we co-commission with the likes of BBC Network so we have a strategy where we are committed to a certain level of funding per year we will match fund 5050 projects with network across all the genres so something like guilt is a fantastic example of that Martin Combson Scottish fling which is out at the moment is a co-commission with BBC 2 and we have two more dramas coming through this autumn Granite Harbour which Steve's already mentioned and Mayflies which is an adaptation of the Andrew Hagen book so in terms of developing the sector that is our key priority how do we bring more high impact content through Scottish Indies developing the Scottish sector and then the second part of that is how do we alleviate other funding for ideas and increasingly we're looking at other partners in terms of distributors and other models where we can bring additional funding working with independent sector budgets I think I can to tell a positive story I think obviously the work of this committee looks at the economic impact as well as cultural and creative the sector in Scotland with the investments that the BBC put in from 2018-19 and channel 4 obviously operating their commitment as well I mean the independent the creative sector here in Scotland really rose to that challenge and I think we saw like a very significant increase in volume but I think it was fair to say quality and ambition Covid sort of stopped us in our tracks for a period of time although the sector ourselves had other ways to work as you know but I think there's a very sort of strong momentum story building there and I think the creation of Screen Scotland has been part of that as well so I think Scotland could be proud of the creative sector the independent broadcast sector as well as what BBC Scotland directly does itself and that momentum will continue and continue to have those positive economic impacts. If Netflix bought channel 4 what would be the implication for the BBC? Can I come on with that? Channel 4 is an independent broadcaster it has its own relationship with Government I don't think it's appropriate for us to speculate on the different for us to speculate on the different models I think we the BBC has a view that one about the unique roles that we have is to portray the diversity of the UK now clearly Netflix does many things very well but its authentic portrayal of the UK is nothing like the scale of commitment and ambition that the BBC has and I think we have to be really honest about the financial position facing public broadcasting in the UK at the moment I mean we are as you know in high inflationary times and the BBC is dealing with an inflation a licence fee settlement that is flat now that is incredibly challenging challenging for every organisation but when we set out last last May that we thought that inflation freeze represents about a £285m funding gap for the BBC through to £2728 inflation has probably moved that closer to between £400m and £500m so we are ambitious added investment additional investment going into Scotland year on year as we bounce back from Covid and it's great to see those numbers reflected in the annual report but we also need to be honest with the committee that the financial challenges facing public broadcasting in the UK are significant and it is only the public broadcasters that have in their DNA that commitment to reflect the real diversity of this country and the standard of reluctance to go on the public record in relation to channel 4 but I would hope that the board of the BBC would be looking very carefully at this and that the financial risk as well as the risk to the whole sector particularly the independent sector would be a matter of intense discussion there are always private discussions within the BBC and there's quite a lot of swirl at the moment as you'll know on the content of the UK Government I just don't think that the BBC publicly discussing different scenarios is either helpful or appropriate given the independence of channel 4 We'll have to guess what the impact is One thing again from an economic development perspective and again Netflix is great it probably all subscribed to it it doesn't obviously have anything remotely like the range of bitesides and other services and I speak as a former independent producer myself what you also find in the UK is the terms of trade where the independent company can grow an idea they will then own the IP and be able to exploit it with a share coming back to the licence bear and that again has been a hugely influential part in growing the sector under terms of trade with primarily US based streamers the producer gets paid to make the programme but all the rights then are retained and it's the model that we have with our terms of trade it's been a huge part in growing that success story of the sector Thank you Thanks very much I've got a couple of questions about how you effectively market BBC to people in Scotland and if you look at the Ofcom report when they were looking at BBC 2021 they highlighted that some audience groups have lower satisfaction with the BBC and they highlighted disabled audiences those in Scotland and those from less well off backgrounds so to what extent are you reaching out to those audiences and we've talked a little bit about different ways to access TV but I'm also interested about future viewers and younger people in particular so what is your strategy to address those issues both from a Scottish context and the audience ratings Thank you for the question First of all we know that we have challenges and we know that certain groups we find harder to reach so that's absolutely something that we look at within the data and within the commissioning team we are all absolutely alive to in terms of I'll take the second part of the question first about younger audiences so younger audiences seem to be a really hard to reach group but actually when you look at the data we find that 75% of them use BBC iPlayers their preferred VOD so from that stat I take heart and then when I look at the data on some of the programmes that we are making so for example our sport our sport output and particularly our live sport our championship games on a Friday in terms of young people as do programmes very big successful programmes like murder case, guilt, river city has 25% of its audience on iPlayer from a younger age bracket so we are attracting young audiences I'm not pretending that we're a young audience service we're not we're a broad universal service but I can see the points in our programming where we do have younger audiences and how we retain them and how we make them feel that the BBC is for them and that comes to the second part of our strategy which is where do they see themselves on the BBC and particularly BBC Scotland so if I take an example of something like Transmit Scotland's biggest music festival fantastic music festival I think if you're 15 years old possibly not when you're in your 40s like me and I went to it but a really popular festival and what we see is a million people are watching it on our services and half of those are young people watching on iPlayer and that's their viewing habit so I think we need to make sure our iPlayer strategy is very strong I think when we have that content that we know attracts young people we need to look at how we market so to your marketing point our team led by Gillian Morrison we've launched recently a TikTok account that took a while with the BBC to authorise a TikTok account but what we're seeing as younger audiences are finding our content comedy, sport, music we know they will come to us for those genres and we know that TikTok, Instagram still Facebook as well we've got a very healthy audience on Facebook and a very healthy young audience we also have the social which is absolutely targeted at young people it's targeted at a young audience in terms of consumption but it's also targeted at a young audience in terms of them seeing and hearing themselves the social for those that don't know is a co-creation project so we have a team who work all across Scotland working with young people from all different backgrounds and to your diversity point the social has very strong diversity targets built in to make sure that we are hitting those and we are hearing from under-served audiences that's how we term it so within the social they create hundreds of pieces of content a year from all over Scotland from young people who might not have had a relationship with the BBC in the past and what we've seen and it's been going for several years now we've seen that a lot of those young people have then gone on to work in the industry which is absolutely fantastic and some of those young people who have created content for the social have also then made programmes for BBC Scotland so for example Roaming in the Wild was a programme that developed from two young men who were making short form content they then got a six part half hour series on BBC Scotland coming to your screen students is Eat the Town two young people who are friends and they're going to go and sample food from places in Scotland that you might not normally go to in terms of your culinary experience so we have a really strong strategy in terms of young audiences from those types of projects but we're also looking at the bigger programmes that do bring in young audiences we're thinking how do we do more of those we can see murder cases as well we can see crime files does really well with young audiences paramedics on scene where we can see people from all over Scotland doing everyday really important jobs again doing very well with young audiences and our relationship with BBC 3 is very strong as well we co-commissioned two programmes last year a Wild Weekends and a series that's just out at the moment Sky High Club which shows the young people who work in Loganair flying all over the country again good portrayal we see young people but it's also the treatment of that programme if you were to watch it is delivered in a very BBC 3 type way so it looks and feels very young okay thanks for that the other side of that in terms of young people is career opportunities you've talked a bit about production in Scotland can I get a sense of production across Scotland because obviously a lot of our productions in Glasgow what about the rest of the country and can I pick up the particular issue of BBC news to what extent is that across the country or just mainly folks in Glasgow what are the opportunities for young people getting into the sector journalism to act or be behind the camera what are the opportunities there well I'll start off on the direct BBC and BBC Scotland initiatives we have and then maybe more broadly the wider sector support so I think BBC Scotland has a really strong track record going back a decade or more in apprenticeships and trainees games and actually it means the demographics of our workforce are actually different and I think right now in Scotland there are apprentices and trainees and that's bases all around Scotland as we've 12 bases around Scotland and those apprenticeships 17 started this month and I think we're due to start another 17 in January and they're right across the range from journalism production management broadcast engineering software engineering user design and as I say that's a very big firm commitment but it's also bonus for us because the way we can recruit those apprentices we deliberately go to people who maybe wouldn't have ever thought of the BBC as a career for them and so their diversity of thought and background is incredibly strong and I think the other thing which is hugely important in our industry where so much of it relies on sort of work experience etc etc is that these are paid apprenticeships and trainees and that in itself opens access to people who can't afford to live off the bank of mum and dad so I think that commitment there has been hugely valuable to us and that's our direct employment and obviously the ways then with our commissioning hat on works with a number of other agencies Thanks Steve so I mentioned the social obviously that is a great job in terms of bringing the people into the industry so we have a really healthy partnership with Screen Scotland and within the MOU we have a Screen Scotland, we have a number of initiatives and we've just launched our new directors initiative which is aimed at young people shooting their first broadcast hour or half hour within that initiative we select candidates from different and diverse backgrounds and we place them within the independent sector so that should be delivering later on this year also within the MOU with Screen Scotland there's initiative called Format Labs and that's about bringing talent at different levels into factual programming and there is the RAD diversity scheme as well but beyond that we're always looking for opportunities where we can bring trainees into some of our productions so Granite Harbour which is the drama set in Aberdeen that's going out later this year we had a training programme at the heart of that to bring on new talent because we know drama is booming in Scotland so we really need to bring new people in that way because it's a very active training programme where we see lots of young and new people coming through that production as well and I was just going to mention one more thing in October we're launching a series for Black History Month working with an indie who's bringing through young black talent writing, performing and directing so we really do look for opportunities where we can do that and I think BBC Scotland really is a place where we can develop new talent and take a risk sometimes on people as well To your direct point then about distribution of our journalists we have in all those bases BBC journalists working from Edinburgh, Dundee Aberdeen, Inverness, Portray, Stonewallyshire and Orkney but to your wider point it's something I have noticed working in Scotland that the broad creative sector is very Glasgow focused part of our role and through commissioning very strong as well to make sure that we go outside Glasgow and make sure that we represent all of Scotland as a direct example a few years ago we were pitched a series about a children's hospital when it was set here and we said we were interested in the area but we don't want it here so that was then commissioned through Aberdeen so I think it's something we're constantly focused on, we need to make sure that we're representing all of Scotland OK, thank you OK, I'm bringing in briefly Dr Allan Yeah, just briefly when you mentioned young audiences I was interested in the issue of audio content there's certainly no shortage of interesting audio content from younger people, podcasts and so on but I didn't listen to the radio because I have to admit if I let slip to a younger member of my family or friends or work colleagues that have heard something on the radio they give me a very puzzled look so audio content for young people where is that live, what does the future of that look like? Thank you for the question so where we see young audiences coming to radio it's sport to be honest sport sound does a brilliant job we know there's an audience need for sport, live sport and sport sound delivers brilliantly but what we are seeing is a lot of those young people are picking it up on baby C sounds now so we have seen growth on that platform again to the earlier question it's how when young people come to that platform to listen to our sport content how do we then surface other content to them because we have been investing over the past few years in podcasts now we know that's a growth area and we know it's a growth area for young people so one of our podcasts that's done incredibly well with young people is the Brewdog podcast we know it's an area of interest it's a brand that's known to them so within that portfolio also True Crime again does very well with young audiences so we've got a very successful podcast called Who Killed Emma which I think was sitting at over a million downloads with a strong youth profile but beyond that in terms of music transmit again is a great way in, Belladrum that we co-commission with BBC Alba as we do with transmit and then also we have a very successful partnership with BBC Introducing and that skews very young because that's all about celebrating new music, new artists in Scotland and the way that we structure that programme is we put it out live on Radio Scotland but we also put it as a podcast on BBC Sounds and then last year we also extended that brand to produce a TV competition show called Scottish Act of the Year which is done very well with young people and the winner of that was Bems who was a rap artist from Ayrshire and just a fantastic talent known to young people perhaps not known to me but is now and that's where we see the real benefit of something like BBC Introducing that's about grassroots music it's something that BBC does brilliantly it's a very strong brand for the BBC and we've really leaned into that in Scotland and are delivering it digitally for young people thank you I think we've touched on some of this and I'm also conscious as a testing financial backdrop but I'm keen to get on the record how you're developing plans for capacity building in the regions if you like beyond Glasgow and particularly focused around Dundee and Aberdeen so in terms of how we're building capacity in Aberdeen we have a very strong production sector in Aberdeen Beechgrove landward some of our strongest programmes come from that area so we know there's talent there and we're just about to extend Beechgrove to do a run of winter specials again using the talent from that area but also the fact that we did research to find out what other audiences might like from that programme so we're always thinking about where we have something that's successful how do we do more I've mentioned Granite Harbour again that was about building the sector in Aberdeen in terms of drama so the training programme we put at the heart of Granite Harbour was absolutely about that in terms of Dundee we did a piece of research recently that showed that Dundee was perhaps one of the places in Scotland that felt underserved by the BBC so with that in mind we have created a strategy that's looking at local audiences and really thinking about how we deliver more value for those audiences so actually at the moment we're running a four-week local what we're calling our local pilot with the Dundee and Tayside area where we are making sure we have a volume of programming coming from that area including an increased digital news offer debate night last night came from Dundee we've just published a podcast commissioned by Gareth Hyde called The Cruelty which is a story of the unknown bear from Tayport and what we're doing over the next month is looking at how our sports output can also lean into Dundee and then once we've finished our pilot what we're going to do is measure the impact on that increased volume of content also with a wrap round marketing and content discovery to make sure that when audiences come to us they can find other content and hopefully we'll see a very positive impact from that pilot that will allow us to replicate it across Scotland thank you, that's very useful back to you convener I've got Ms Minto and then I'll come to thank you last year I asked about programme commissioners being based in Scotland just interested to hear about the progress that you've made there yes, I can take that so, as I said I sit with the five BBC Scotland commissioners so David Haran commission's factual, Gareth Hyde's radio Gavin Smith scripted Steve Allen popular factual Tony Nellan esport and factual so where we sit in Pacific Cay in Glasgow but obviously we're out in the sector quite a lot as well we also sit next to our network commissioning colleagues and our Gaelic commissioning colleagues so from network we have I think we have five network commissioners and we've just recruited an assistant commissioner for drama so Gaynor Holmes is the network commissioner for drama and Gaynor and Gavin work in collaboration on projects like Granite Harbour, Mayflies so we've got a very strong relationship there Stephanie Fife has started as the assistant commissioner again working with Gaynor but also working with Gavin on developing new writing talent Muslim Alim works on daytime so he works in collaboration mostly with Steve Allen Neil McAllum is entertainment we've got some BBC3 projects on the go with Neil at the moment Gregor Sharp is comedy commissioner and again Gregor and Gavin will work really on things like guilt they co-commission that together Julia Bond also sits in Scotland and she commissions I think she might be based in Sky but I'll have to check that but she commissions for our network but out of Scotland working with Scotland Indies It feels very joined up in the way that you're talking there Louise I noticed in the papers today that BBC had a programme launch and was talking about the cost of living crisis and has said that it wants to produce or is going to be transmitting programmes that are escapism but also resilience and then also cost of living elements will be throughout the programme so I'm interested to know what BBC Scotland's planning to do that because it's a slightly different environment here I think it's a really, really good question and something that we've been discussing at length and with Kate Phillips who's taken over unscripted in network our approach at the moment is absolutely to build it through our output so news will be covering it extensively Gareth Hyde's commission's Radio Scotland has just built that throughout the entire schedule so if you listen to Radio Scotland you'll hear it being all the way issues being discussed through Good Morning Scotland but also through to morning phone in as well so we've been covering the energy crisis rent freeze but then also looking at a property surgery as well so we're thinking actually it's not just a one programme for us it's how do we build this through the output but specifically we'll also be looking at how debate night into that because we want to hear people's voices as well as experts but we want to hear real people's experiences and the social will be looking at how they impact on young people so they'll be producing short form content again letting young people share their stories and their voices round about this and beyond those programmes River City always is alive to what's going on in the world so they'll be thinking about how they bring that into their storyline as well so that's the approach at the moment but escapism is absolutely key so I think our autumn schedule is looking really strong we've got a mix of the harder hitting the content that will help you but then also we've got some wonderful programming about renovating houses travelling round Scotland drama and comedy to come through as well and BBC Alba as well absolutely BBC Alba's got some fantastic content coming up they have a new drama I'm going to try and pronounce this properly and claw more I hope that's the way I pronounce it Margaret Mary's been very helpful I'm not a native speaker all about Harris Tweed I think that's going to be really fantastic drama for BBC Alba and their award winning documentary series is also looking at gaming culture again BBC Alba are really thinking about how do they push into younger gaelic speakers as well and if I may ask as well about the budgets Roger you mentioned the fact that the BBC budget overall is standstill but you are in the advantage in that you know how much money you've got in the coming years some like things like reading in gael BBC Alba's funding BBC SSO's funding have remained or appear to remain at the same level so no inflationary rises so I'm just interested to know how that might impact on output for example where can the orchestra continue to travel thank you for that the first thing to say is obviously it's incredibly encouraging to see increase in spend in Scotland over the last year I know that's been a focus of attention here and I think that to see that bounce back from Covid across our spend both on Scottish services but also network services is the right direction and Steve and I would share the ambition to see that grow further again I guess it's a reality check this is an organisation that has faced a 30% reduction in real terms in the value of the licence fee over the last 10 years that has driven and Steve and I in daily discussions around how do you ensure that you put every penny into content and reduce as much as you can if you like the costs of doing business but as I say the licence fee settlement which was you know not the outcome we were looking for two years flat a generationally high point in inflation is difficult and I don't come here to ask for sympathy it's at every organisation across the country is facing a similar predicament but we'll have to look at that and we're going to have to look at it across the board and it's too early to speculate how we will go about it as I say our focus has always been how do you drive reductions in areas like procurement areas like distribution that don't touch and affect the audience because in the end the real test for the BBC going into the next charter will be what is the value that people get for the £159 that they spend on their licence fee each year so you have to protect as far as you can your spend on content but the challenge we have and which I detailed a little earlier is that the assumptions that we made in terms of the impact of the original licence fee deal hadn't obviously anticipated the level of inflationary pressure we were seeing whether that's energy costs whether that's the hyperinflation that we see in the production sector given the demand for skills so that financial challenge as I say by 2728 of between maybe four and five hundred million is something that we're going to have to circle but what I would say is we are ambitious to see Scotland continuing to grow and continue to thrive but it's against an incredibly constrained financial backdrop at the moment I would say to your point about stability at a time you look back over successive annual reports at a time when other budgets other investments were going up and down we've maintained investments on our Gaelic services because we recognise how valuable they are there was significant investment came into BBCL which the weekends were over one million in 18, 19 and again through the succeeding years when other things were being reduced we've maintained that level of investment that it has grown on other incremental things such as speak Gaelic have been added to it and we know the value that those services both BBCAlba and Rydian and Gael have amongst their target audience they're very, very highly valued and they're a hugely important part of our remit we're currently working in terms of the partnership we have with MGAlba we're working with that organisation to see how we make sure we can continue to offer services on linear but also increasingly on the digital future so we know there's a high demand we know there's a demand for language learning for example in Gaelic which the Duolingo app I think showed to us and I think speak Gaelic then is also part of that as well that we can use in partnership with MGAlba and others our platforms are services to help you know make an impact there and if I may just one very quick question what do you do with all the information that you get from productions on the Albert system you were talking about environmental footprints that productions have, what's happening with all that information yeah well it works towards the BBC then achieving its overall sustainability commitments so the Albert calculator was developed by the BBC and then kind of released out to back to the broader sector it's now at the point of every commission I mean Louise could speak to that I think that this is tracked yes it's absolutely part of the commissioning conversation now so each commissioner will sit down with the independent company or producer at the start of the commission and talk through what they need to achieve in terms of what they need to achieve the Albert certification and that is monitored throughout production and then is checked at the end of production so we're it's mandatory from January 22 so we're obviously helping companies just adjust to that now you know in terms of what they need to do but we are tracking it as Steve says and we want to get to 100% and are you finding that independent companies are learning from what they are the information that they're putting in perhaps changing their behaviours yes I think there's still some work to be done to be honest because it is a new part of the commission but we've been encouraged by the results we've seen so far and we're doing a review of the process just to make sure that everybody knows what they need to do and at what point everyone we speak to within production is absolutely committed to this you know that there's no resistance in terms of people wanting to do this it's just making sure that people know how to do it and making sure that at the end of the production they've achieved what they've set out to achieve so just to reassure that this is not just about the BBC pushing its sustainability commitments into the independent production sector it's also we also need to put our own house in order and as Steve mentioned we now have a very clear target in terms of 2030 in terms of achieving net zero that requires some quite aggressive work we want to try and reduce energy costs or energy usage by about 20% over the next three years and by 30% by 2030 so there's an awful lot we need to do in terms of our own estate across the BBC and in terms of our internal working practices but there's no doubt that Albot has pan, has sectoral support and one of the key reasons why the BBC moved Albot to BAFTA was to make sure it was a genuinely sectoral initiative that commanded the support of the whole production community thank you just that I can't talk about what BBC Scotland directly is doing it's I'm really delighted that this is actually coming up not as some sort of corporate requirement but in Aberdeen the team there led the way by forming their own green team and coming up with their own solutions so what we do BBC Scotland is in the advance of transferring our car fleet over to electric vehicles and in fact we're now working with the rest of the BBC to pass on the lessons we've learnt if you've been to Pacific here recently we have an enormous solar array built which is taking a significant chunk, I think, of a 7% of our energy being generated directly by that we've looked at it over a number of things that we've done over the past few years replacing chillers, changing access LED lighting we feel we've removed about 1800 tonnes of carbon dioxide from our own footprint in one building alone can I just come back to Louise about social media strategy I'm interested to hear BBC is now on TikTok where do you see that going will the BBC go on to Twitch for example, where do you see the platforms evolving, where do you see the BBC's involvement going forward thank you for the question I think that's quite hard to say just given the speed with which social media platforms move and also audience behaviours at one point when we're looking at our young audience behaviour we thought actually they're not on Facebook anymore we shouldn't be trying to target them but actually it's not true a lot of young people are on Facebook across the demographics so I think our strategy is we know that Instagram has a younger profile mostly females so we think about how we target our content that way we know that TikTok does skew younger so that's we're taking a targeted approach with our content discovery there to think about the types of content we put on that platform however I think we're now seeing a lot of older people consume on TikTok now I think when you see the parents of kids going on to TikTok the kids may start leaving TikTok but we do know that it's a great way of targeting young people we don't have any plans for Twitch at the moment but we do have a comedy channel on YouTube because we can see there's great consumption for longer form sketch type comedy but we have to be mindful with our social media strategy when we're working with independent companies we have to be mindful of IP in terms of our overall strategy being we would like people to drive to iPlayer so we're looking for awareness an attribution of BBC content on social media but we're also looking for iPlayer growth and BBC sounds growth as well if I may there's a legislative dimension to this as well which is that in the old money the BBC's position on the analogue platforms in television and radio was very protected it gave enormous prominence to public service broadcasting the question and it goes back to the audio question we were discussing earlier the question of how audiences find and discover content on social media platforms on new smart televisions on all these new devices it raises a critical question of what prominence we give and safeguard for public service media in the years to come so the prospect of a digital media bill addressing that is really critical not just for the BBC but for the whole public service landscape because if we're serious about younger audiences having access to trusted media that is about where they are then that legislation is essential because otherwise the abundance of content out there at the moment it's very challenging to cut through and the BBC has the advantage of scale but the prominence we've enjoyed historically has also been a critical ingredient and we need to protect that on the new platforms I wonder if I could ask a final question a key theme of the work the committee has been doing is around wellbeing society and wellbeing communities and we have been looking at how cultural budgets can leverage that within our communities so in terms of a big ticket item which I do think is a jewel in the crown of the symphony orchestra is that part of the strategy for looking at projects and what might be done in communities and also is it also part of the diversity in terms of audience, live-off audience participation and some of the productions that are being done I think we're very proud of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra the BBC as a whole as you know conducted a classical review earlier this year noting very broadly the BBC's important role in classical music but the Scottish Symphony Orchestra as part of that was quite rightly recognised for its quality it is a big part of our strategy the Scottish Symphony Orchestra is an organic part of BBC Scotland outreach is very important and that's everything from getting out and about and touring as much as possible around Scotland but also working with organisations like System of Scotland again trying to bring music to particularly young audiences that might otherwise access it it's a key part of the thinking in the orchestra and in our wider strategy I think that concludes questions from the question this morning I thank you very much and I'm going to be very cheeky at the end I hope to see you again next year where one of your areas of interest will be a Eurovision in Glasgow so thank you very much for your attendance this morning and we'll suspend briefly for five minutes Welcome back to committee our second agenda item is to continue taking evidence as part of our pre-budget scrutiny on the culture spending portfolio can I welcome to committee this morning Sir John Layton director general of the national galleries of Scotland Lucy Cassett chief executive of museums gallery Scotland and Alex Patterson chief executive of historic environment Scotland very warm welcome could I start the question around the financial outlook for your sectors last week we heard that culture organisations are experiencing a perfect storm of rapidly and in some cases unexpectedly increasing costs and reducing income and your submissions would reflect that to us today so could I ask each of you in turn to provide an overview of the impact of the pandemic cost crisis and other financial pressures on your budgets and what do you see the impact of this will be on the levels of service that you are able to provide and if I could start please with Sir John Layton thank you very much chair and thank you to the committee for inviting me to join you this morning I wonder if I could just begin with I know you don't want any grandstanding or opening statements but perhaps I could just begin with something positive because if you're speaking about funding all morning it's going to be completely miserable isn't it and I think all of us represent sectors and organisations about which there's a huge amount to be optimistic and we're all about enhancing people's lives so indulge me just for a moment stepping back there's a huge amount about which we can be positive certainly at the national galleries and the wider museums and galleries sector and interest in what we do levels of interest in what we do have steadily increased over the years and certainly at the national galleries in the past decade our visitor numbers to our Edinburgh sites have more or less doubled and pre Covid we were welcoming on average 2.5 million visitors to our Edinburgh sites we also managed to keep national programmes running we've lent works of art across the country in exhibitions from Dumfries to Shetland we've run national programmes in learning and outreach we've worked with disadvantaged teenagers in the west and in the borders we run all manner of programmes for all edges at our Edinburgh sites from BYOB bring your own baby through to the fantastic gallery socials for dementia sufferers and we also work internationally lending hundreds of works of art across the world and also exhibitions every one of them a mini ambassador for Scottish culture and finally activity online of course has blossomed and our offer online now reaches millions of people across the world and we saw of course during the pandemic how important that has been and has the potential to be so as I say lots to be positive about and I think we all know that we look after assets which are of immense importance for the life of people in this country that's the positive bit I think when we turn to funding of course it is inevitably less positive and I'm sure that what you hear this morning is fairly familiar from right across the culture and heritage sectors in our case I think we face funding challenge the like of which I've never before witnessed or indeed imagined already before the events of recent month we were looking at a pretty substantial deficit in our budget for next year and widening in the years beyond that and then when you layer in the lingering impact of the pandemic in the inflationary dramatic inflationary costs that we're seeing at the moment the pressure to try and keep a paying a fair wage to our staff and of course particularly in our sector the energy costs which for my organisation are predicted to at least double next year from a 6 figure sum to a 7 figure sum then you're really talking about a crisis that to me feels more serious and more difficult to deal with than the pandemic itself it would be I think tempting to relate all this to the immediate context of pandemic, of war of inflation of cost and living but to my mind the roots of this go further back and lie in patterns funding across a longer period and it's fashionable at the moment to refer back to the financial crash of 2008 but if you go back to that time when in the aftermath of that particular period budgets for organisations like mine were reduced they never really recovered and what happened in the period from say 2011 onwards is a pattern of if you take out increases that were designed to cover Government pay policy and if you take out the more variable nature of capital funding what happened is more or less level funding across the piece and like other organisations we've tried to make up the difference by peddling ever harder with self generated income we've worked really really hard at that we've set up a very successful trading company with revenue from shops and cafes we've explored venue hire we've lent commercial exhibitions abroad car parking charges donations you name it we've pulled every lever that we can think of and with some success and so the model broadly was of Government subsidy supplemented by self generated income but that Government subsidy was covering less and less of the kind of activity that activates what we do in which the public see so we reached a point where now 92% of our grant and aid goes to the salary bill all the other things that make a difference whether it's displays, exhibitions, learning education programmes you name it that is now covered by earned income and that model broke during the pandemic of course that income shriveled and we're now in a period where it has not yet recovered so with the two key parts of the funding under pressure the Government subsidy and the self generated income you face really a crisis which will in our case I think lead to a severely reduced offer national programmes reduced international programmes reduced different patterns of opening hours partial closure of sites and short as we said in the submission an offer which falls severely short of what you would expect from a national cultural organisation that sounds bleak but I think it would be no exaggeration to say that as I look to the next year and beyond I'm thinking this is about how we protect the collection, keep the lights on and the door is open and that's it I was great to hear John's starting with the positives because we do have a fantastic museums and galleries sector in Scotland and I do want to talk first of all about the sector before talking a little bit about museums and galleries Scotland as the national development body represent them there are 442 museums and galleries in Scotland currently on our books and they really are spread right across the country in all sorts of communities and it's a very diverse sector which makes it quite a complex sector but there's the richness in that as well in terms of its creativity so about as well as our fantastic national institutions that we are obviously really lucky to have here in Scotland the quality that we have there about a third of our museums and galleries are civic so either directly run by local authorities or by the alias the arms length trusts and about 60% more are run as independent charities so they face a different range of issues within that independent sector quite a number of them are run wholly by volunteers or maybe with one member of staff so in terms of the support that the issues that they face and the way their ability to respond to those is varied as well you heard last week coming from community leisure UK about a lot of the pressures facing the civic museum sector it is a huge concern as Sir John said that the issues facing the civic museum sector as a non-stratutory service have long been were really severe before the impact of Covid the funding that was made available during Covid that came through to museums and galleries was not made available to the civic sector so they came into this year with real issues and I'm very concerned about the ability to protect that non-stratutory service with all the pressures facing local authorities but I particularly want to talk about where we were supporting and we were very generously supported by Scottish Government through the pandemic such that we didn't lose any museums and galleries as a result of Covid which I think was quite remarkable cos it's not what we expected to happen when that started but the last round of funding that we gave which we hoped was going to be for the recovery of the sector was based on keeping these fragile organisations cos they are fragile organisations such that they would have three months of reserves come March 2023 so that was the calculation that was made based on the estimates of income and expenditure for this year now we saw a recovery begin this summer but it has now stalled we're looking at those visitors that are coming spending about half what they did in the past that international visitors not returning and spending to the same levels so the levels of income that have been generated this year and not what was hoped for and now we have this cost of living crisis and energy situation that is meaning that these organisations that were fragile going into this year are really in crisis now and since the submission was made we put out another call for really up-to-date information so I can share with you some of the things that came back from that organisation that is the biggest crisis they've seen to their organisations for more than 30 years organisations that discontinued their buildings and contents insurance cos they simply can't afford it organisations that are cancelling all but emergency maintenance so these are some of the things that there's just not a sustainable position when you start making as if you see the next step for the organisations to talk about insurance would be public liability insurance at which point they close organisations are reducing their opening hours because that's the choice that they have to make in terms of reducing costs just at the time when communities are calling on them to be those warm spaces free to access spaces that would be so valuable if they were able to do that so I'm really concerned about the position in our independent museum sector in terms of what's facing people at the moment and they do have that obviously obligation to care for their collections organisations if they do go into crisis and if they do fail finding a new home for those collections which they hold on behalf of their communities and on behalf of the Scottish public is something that is going to have to be faced up to in many cases their governing documents would suggest those collections should go to either the local authorities or to our national organisations so not easy for those organisations already struggling to be in a position to accept that so I'm sorry that is the sort of the bleak bit but it is the reality and it is so I suppose thinking about Museums Gallery Scotland the national development body that supports the sector and we do distribute funding but we support the sector in many other ways as well and we grew during Covid to be able to support the sector so our activities particularly in relation to grant making got larger so the cuts that we're looking at now are actually not sort of 2-5% that's being built but actually more like 30% cuts in our budgets for next year so our ability to support a sector that perhaps has never needed us more is definitely a major challenge so we have increased our work in relation to supporting the sector in its journey to net zero we've increased our work in terms of supporting fair work practice in the sector but these are all things that we're additional to our core grant activity and are now at risk to see how we can keep doing things that are so important and we're very agile organisation that managed to work really hard to reduce our costs one of the things we did in the last year was to move our offices we've made a 67% cut in our costs for our running costs in that basis so we've got very little left by way of efficiencies to make so that's a summary of the situation as I see it thank you Mr Paterson I repeat what my two colleagues to my left have said trying to sort of come back in the three points you asked Covid, the impact of Covid and we sort of might be thinking that Covid is away now but it's not it's still here and the impacts of it are still being felt so we did some research amongst the sector sorry environment sector at various points over the last two or three years the impact of it and fairly obviously when 80% of the tourism market packs up and goes home then there's a very direct impact on it from an organisational point of view £53 million disappeared off our budget just when the global tourism stopped and we projected it would take at least until 2025 to get back to where we are pre Covid I think recovery has probably happened a bit faster than we had anticipated visitor numbers back to our sites across Scotland are ahead of where we expected them to be we're probably now back if I average across all the sites probably back to close to 60% of pre Covid figures which is good to see and a lot of that has been driven by the return of international visitors over the last six months but that was a big hit on us and the ripple effect through the sector is well and just when you think you're into recovery and you can see some green shoots of recovery starting to appear albeit not in any way back to where we were in 2019 then the cost of living crisis has come through and I was chairing a meeting of my opposite numbers from across Europe back in May and we were asking the questions of what is looking after culture and heritage post pandemic look like and one of my colleagues said about the cost of living and I think that for a very fragile sector having survived if you like the last couple of years this is the the double whammy which is really really concerning because the support for the sector that was there through Covid is not there at the moment and so how does it impact as I think the cost of living impacts in a number of ways when the most obvious thing is in terms of costs I can see it, you'll all see it and the sector sees that material cost increases difficult to take forward major projects because you just cannot pin down costs contractors won't commit to costs or to prices with any degree of forward projection energy costs, we are looking at the moment of potentially a quadrupling of our energy bill and other things might intervene to sort of limit that but that's from our point of view going from about £1 million to about £4 million energy costs and then whenever we arrive at an outcome with the wage negotiation staff it's extra extra cost so fixed costs are increasing even by doing nothing but it's not just a fixed cost it's the other cost there as well so we run a grants programme and a lot of our grants recipients are now coming back to say all of these issues are hitting them so their projects are being delayed potentially cancelled but the costs are increasing the income side of things are concerned as well we already had some research a couple of weeks ago that showed that it was at 65 to 70% of people in the UK are already cutting back in disposable income spend and going to a museum and going to a historic attraction falls into that sort of category so we're aware that disposable income might not be as much as perhaps was before and what does that do when people have to make choices upside is the way the currency is at the moment that perhaps makes international tourism a bit cheaper but that's a very slim silver lining with all the challenges we've got and so what does all that mean going forward it means that the Scottish Government budget will be under even more pressure to address the wage settlements to address the other costs that are there that will feed through to grant and aid funding for ourselves and other organisations as well we had the capital spending review a number of months ago which was helpful in giving us indicative budgets going forward but they are indicative and the world has changed a lot in the intervening months so while I can look at what's happening in the visitor market and say I can see signs of recovery which is positive from our point of view in terms of income there are real challenges also in terms of how much grant and aid will be available to support what we do our budget pre Covid was about 36-38% funded by grant and aid the rest was funded by commercial income that's quite a quite a challenge and quite an exposure frankly pre Covid it will take a while to get back to that sort of level but with expectations on the Scottish Government budget has been quite limited even maintaining that level of support I think will be quite challenging so we are in the same boat as my two colleagues on my left here with costs increasing with income improving but with a high degree of uncertainty what gives in all of that I guess would be the question that we are asking ourselves at the moment Thank you. That was very sobering which I think is the word that we used last week as well for me took evidence I suppose if I could throw back your question that you just asked there and ask what given this crisis how at each of your organisations looking at the way that you operate Lucy you talked about small museums museums that could be looking at had been planning capital work perhaps that would reduce costs but then the costs are then increasing because of the cost of living situation I was reflecting as well on your point about warm spaces which I think impacts on all of you as well because across my constituency of Argyll and Bute that's what local organisations have been looking at but if this is going to impact on these spaces then where are people going to go and I suppose then that also touches on the wellbeing of people as well so a few topics there to explore that you've all touched on and perhaps you could expand on Lucy do you want to start Yes thank you so a difficult question what gives and of course we're talking about a lot of different organisations so it will be different choices but they're all difficult choices and my fear is what gives first is all of the activity that animates the collections we've talked a lot about the potential for museum collections and activity to help with health and wellbeing and it's stuff in that programming that delivers equality as well because there are programming around different ways of accessing collections for young people, families with autism for example and so these are the programs that are the easiest thing to lose but there's a great cost to that the opportunity cost from that and all of the ground that's been gained in terms of experience and we worry about that as it is those who perhaps need those collections most need that ability to have that opened up to them and you'll end up with an audience that is much more the people who are already confident to access those services so I think that's a big risk for us as an organisation we're looking hard at what is the most important services that we provide so we're looking at things like our recognition programme for example which may be something, there are some activities that perhaps we could put on pause to focus on the most urgent needs one of the considerations that we're you may have seen that we paused our grant making programme for now so we have £750,000 left and 440 museums in difficulty so we want to be really careful about how we spend that during Covid one of the really important things is to open up our funding to non-accredited museums so there are museums that meet those professional standards which is a really important part of the sectors is encouraging those standards but there are also a large number of really important community level museums and volunteer museums that provide a fantastic service and asset in those communities that are often telling the stories of those places and the unique identity of those places and they are no longer able to access our funding at present because we've returned to our pre-Covid funding programmes and what do we value and it's a difficult choice to say do we value the most important collections or do we value that value that those museums bring to communities so we're thinking hard, we're talking to our colleagues in the Scottish Government but it's £750,000 is not going to solve the problem so that we'll be about making those difficult choices and we haven't quite resolved that yet Thank you and Sir John in your introduction you talked about people making decisions as to how they get that evidence on Monday when we had a round table with various community groups and the stark point was people will look at £20 and try to think about how they're actually going to spend it so same kind of question to you what are you looking at What gives as Lucy has said the first thing that gives is programming and the activation of the collection and the difficulty with that of course is that not only do you cut back on the offer but that then has an immediate impact on your ability to generate income so you get into a vicious downward spiral so if we don't do exhibitions for example then we don't benefit from the exhibition tax credit which has been so helpful if we don't have people coming through the doors we don't get donations we don't get gifted etc etc membership which has been an important form of income for us is highly dependent on a form of programming if there's no offer that people want to pay for or see then why become a member and so that side of your activity very quickly comes under pressure but I think we are looking at and certainly we're modelling different forms of opening hours closing a couple of days a week at certain sites perhaps a partial closure of a site perhaps closing one site for extended periods we're modelling all of those can we earn more income yes you can always push it hard but we've been pulling those levers quite hard for a decade can you cut more costs yes every organisation can cut costs but we've been doing that we've been doing shared services with the national libraries with the museums we've run our second voluntary exit scheme this year in two years we've said goodbye to over 40 staff so the creativity in this regard begins to run out after a while so I think during during Covid we were all forced to sort of revisit what our priorities were and we were very fortunate to be assisted by the Scottish Government increasing our grant in aid when 85% of our commercial income disappeared like snow off or dyke so you know we have been pulling back on some of the things some of the things we do and I think that's just business as usual now to be honest but how might we deal with the challenges that we see coming down the track towards us through cost of living implications I think the first thing is you focus on the core business and things that are maybe nice to do and not essential to do those are the ones that aren't prioritised and as Sir John said the core business is critical because if we can't open some of the castles then it is the income that flows it's the membership offer and so on and the core businesses is really really important I think we have to find ways of continuing to invest because a lot of the things that we look after are by definition historic assets and they were there long before us they'll see it all of us out but they need investment and a short term pulling back in that investment actually has long term implications and it's not just in the capital cost it's things like skills we're facing a huge crisis stone masonry skills so whatever the short term budgetary challenges are we need to find creative ways of still investing because if we take a short term view of some of this then we end up with long term challenges further down the line I think what a lot of this is leading us all towards is actually asking some pretty tough questions about what's the strategy for some of the sectors we look after are involved in going forward are the strategies that were right in the past are possible in the past still possible going forward so I think that some of these bigger strategic discussions that are actually quite important and I just offer two other quick thoughts one is I know we as an organisation are perhaps in a slightly different position than some organisations in the sense that we have commercial opportunities but the parameters within which we're asked to operate through our framework agreement with Government doesn't allow us to pull some of these levers particularly easily so I think while we have a real challenge I think there are some opportunities that we'd like to look at how to encourage more incentivisation to do certain things without it necessarily having an immediate negative impact and the final thing is I would say this whether we're in a cost of living crisis or not we just need to change the narrative around what we as a sector collectively do in our title we're called Historic Environment Scotland people think we work in the past with the past, yeah we do but what we do is as relevant to today and tomorrow as it was all these years ago so we've got to see culture and heritage and historic environment not as the nice to hams but actually quite fundamental to what we do and it's why in our submission to the committee we didn't say too much about us we actually talked about the contribution that our sector makes to the economy through income through tourism through jobs through the procurement trickle down to lots of small businesses to the wellbeing agenda in other words what we all collectively do isn't in a nice wee box packaged off to left field here it's fundamental to so many of the government priorities and it doesn't get that narrative or it doesn't get seen in that context and the final one I would just say the whole ambition around net zero and climate change if they could fix the problems of historic properties not castles and standing stones but 20% of the buildings that people live in go to school in, work in and hospital in are historic buildings they're pre-1919 which is the definition if you could fix them retrofit them, reuse them, make them energy efficiency then a lot of the challenges we've got around net zero would be met and that's why what we do and that's why investment in the historic environment not just houses an organisation but the sector is so important because it's contributing to the agendas of today climate, net zero wellbeing, inclusion, education economic development, community wealth building and so we need to change the narrative about saying well we get the problems that are left at the end of the table to actually this is core to what we're trying to do to build a better Scotland thank you I think a few of us attended the international culture summit in the Parliament and that was part of the festival and that was the key message that was coming out from that from across the world so thank you for that thank you, could I invite Mr Ruskell please thanks if I can come back to yourself Alex about the particular issues around managing the historic assets that are under your care and particularly the masonry issues at the moment I mean we've had a submission from an institute for conservation who've said that there's been a lack of investment for many decades so this isn't a Covid or a cost of living issue it's been evolving over time and that the burden of maintenance and repair is increasing I mean do you recognise that this is having quite an impact on certain communities now and I use the example of Dumblane where the graves at Dumblane Cathedral have been fenced off now for the best part of two years and it's starting to make that historic quarter of the town look quite dilapidated and it's having an impact on the surrounding community so it's a difficult issue but do you recognise that and how do you see a way out of that because some of our historic assets now are effectively frozen and it's having an impact on many communities absolutely absolutely see that and one of the things I've done a lot in the last few weeks and months has gone around many of the communities who've got one of our properties in their midst and it's either closed or restricted so we absolutely acknowledge the impact it's having the flip side I would say is that we almost had no option to do what we've done we have about 60 sites at the moment where access is restricted and I use the word access restricted rather than closed because they're not all closed but we've got quite a number of the sites where access is restricted the visitor numbers are still really good because there's still a good offer but we almost had no option but to do what we've done and that's for the simple reason that we embarked on a project to look at the risk to life safety at all our sites and that comes in various forms it comes in gravestones it comes with trees, it comes with boats it comes with all range of things to be assured that we had everything in place to mitigate those risks last thing we want is anyone to suffer an injury or worse at any of our sites one of the components of that we call it tier 1 programme was high level masonry and the way in which high level masonry has been inspected in the past and we're talking about buildings typically without roofs, high walls and so on was either an inspection from the ground or you fly a drone over it because those two methods gave you the level of assurance that you actually needed and so we did a couple of pilot four pilot sites and we found out that we have an issue here that issue is down to many things it's down to lack of investment over decades and as my technical colleagues would say the exposure of some of these sites to climate change which is not the full cost but it's accelerated some of the decay we've got ad nauseam about this and the advice to me was if you think there may be a risk you have to assume there is a risk and you have to act on that basis so one of the toughest decisions I've taken this job has been to say actually we need to put restrictions in place at a number of sites until we can be assured that the sites are safe now I would say that over 80% of our sites are still open and are still accessible the narrative often is all your sites are closed, not true we've gone through a programme of inspections to actually see what is the challenge here and what do we need to do to get the sites back open and a number of sites we have been able to get reopened but the inspection programme will run through the winter or run into next year until we've done the inspections and know what we're facing it's difficult to actually know what the solutions are some of our sites we've inspected and we've been able to fix small problems as we've gone that is now reopened but we recognise the impact that it's having on communities and that's why I've gone out and spoken to a lot of communities about how can we work together to address the challenges that our closures are our restrictions are bringing and I think I would say three things have struck me in these conversations number one they don't like their sites being restricted any more than I do and I've just been upfront and honest and explained why we've done what we've done what we're doing to try and address it and that has been appreciated I think the second thing is we've explored with them how we can work together and that's been a very productive and fruitful conversation so there are things that we can do short of our sites being fully opened with local communities to still enhance the offer and provide opportunities in those communities and the third thing we've done is make sure that we're not just restricting access and saying that's it we have put a fair amount of interpretation into sites, done new things rolled out a whole range of digital interventions to try and provide a visitor offer even where the full access to the site is not possible so yes fully accept that this is not where we want to be fully accept that it will take a bit of time to get the whole thing resolved I think this is little consolation this is not unique to us other heritage asset owners across Scotland and across the world will anar facing similar problems it doesn't feel comfortable sometimes being out in the vanguard of all of this but it's the right thing to do I could not sit in front of you as a committee and say actually we decided just to leave them open and somebody's been hit by a small rock falling from a huge hike and somebody's been badly injured or worse can't take that risk there have been examples I gave one in relation to Dumbling the location of the community has not been ideal and actually there are surrounding museums as well that are affected by that so maybe if you could take that away in terms of the consistency of that approach because I think everybody understands this budget constraints everybody understands we're in difficult time but that work with the community is important to understand when something will be fixed how I know we've had some correspondence recently on Dumbling I'm also happy to meet with the community of Dumbling I'm very happy to be there Can I then move to Sir John and Lucy about another issue I'm aware that there's been a programme looking at Scotland's colonial history and colonial legacy and that's been a detailed piece of work for museums and galleries and one of the recommendations coming out of that one of the principles is of culturally important objects being potentially repatriated and there being restitution as well Can I ask is that work progressing with your institutions and how that's progressing and how that is seen right now because obviously it could be an opportunity to strengthen cultural links with former colonial countries and communities in the way for example it was achieved with the repatriation of the ghost dance shirt nearly 20 years ago now or it could be seen as losing potential assets from collections which might be attractive so I'm interested just to know how that work is progressing at the moment The project the Empire Slavery Scotland's Museums project was something that Museums Gallery Scotland was asked to lead on behalf of the Scottish Government after the vote in Parliament about committing to having a slavery museum for Scotland and to how best to realise that The recommendations came forward and MGS's recommendations are an independent steering group chaired by Sir Jeff Palmer was created and has spent 18 months looking at that and coming up with the recommendations and behind that was a huge amount of research there were nine different strands of research that happened in the terms of public research with the museum community but also public attitudes and particularly important research with the communities who are most at risk of exclusion of those who experience racialisation and the legacies of slavery and empire so the recommendations are well founded in that but we're talking about that so the sixth recommendation was around the collections and that issue of potential repatriation and we haven't yet had a the recommendation there about the Scottish Government taking a position on that as well as the welcome that and we haven't had a response yet from the Scottish Government to the recommendations but in the meantime there are a number of cases of progress being made by individual institutions you may have seen that the University of Aberdeen repatriated a Benin bronze to the Kingdom of Benin the Glasgow museums have repatriated items three different three different collections to different communities and there are other cases that are currently actively in progress as well so I think we are starting to see more progress in this area and you're absolutely right that there are opportunities to create those connections and to really to be seen to be making that part of our cultural diplomacy to be sharing the skills as well it's not always about returning objects there's a range of different things that can happen in terms of sharing expertise and sharing access and so on they're complicated issues but there is a recognised process to go through in terms of identifying the right owners of those objects and we are aware that there are a number of objects in our collections that have been unethically acquired and I say our collections because MGS doesn't have any collections ourselves so for us it's a matter of supporting museums and galleries to find the right advice and what sort of process and the sharing of the good practice that is evolving in Scotland I would say there's some really good practice going on and there's some live cases and certainly Glasgow museums and the College of Surgeons as well and Edinburgh have returned some items as well so we are starting to see progress and I think that's really, really welcome so yeah Will we support the excellent work that Museums Gallery Scotland have done and the report makes excellent reading we're in the position that the nature of our collections is such that should I touch I'm not expecting any claims for restitution because of the actual nature of it not unless they start to want impressionist paintings to be returned to northern France but I think we should be alright in that regard but what is very important for us is the whole issue of how we present and interpret collections which may have connections with empire or our colonial history and I suppose catalyzed by the black lives matter movement I think we've all become aware that we need to be much more active in how we tackle issues of equality, diversion and inclusion across our collection who we represent in the collection how that art is across time is presented so a couple of years ago we embarked on a complete programme of reinterpretation of the collection starting with identifying those objects where we have perhaps been very neutral in how they are presented and looking again at trying to produce a more layered interpretation there are balances to strike so for example if you're presenting a portrait of David Hulme you can of course draw attention to his certainly now and always unacceptable views on race but he's also got to point out that he was a great philosopher who had a huge influence on the pattern of western thought so striking the balance is sometimes difficult the path to virtue in these issues has become quite narrow I think we're fortunate in this country that it is perhaps less politically loaded than it has been for our colleagues down south and so we do this with the support of Government and I know with broad support from communities and I'm sure from people around this table but getting as I say those balances right is tricky but there is great work going on and as Lucy has pointed out some active cases and you can see that happening across the world I'm the trustee of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Rijksmuseum is part of a consortium having to deal with particular issues about their colonial past in Indonesia so this is not something restricted to as you said to this country it is European wide Thank you very much Can I ask just a final question on a very different topic we had evidence from cultural organisations last week who are pointing to where they may find additional sources of income going forward and a number of the organisations that have the potential to use a transient visitor levy as to raise money directly for culture I wonder if that's something that in your roles you've had discussions with local authorities and others about when there was consultation on that through Edinburgh City Council we got involved in that dialogue broadly supportive and the caveat is as long as those monies flow back into culture provision and not into the potholes that would be the main caveat but we're supportive of it and I think it's been shown to work in other European centres and why not here We submitted evidence at the same time to that consultation there is a balance to be struck here a fine balance between increasing investment and making sure that our tourism and hospitality sector remains competitive so we offered some thoughts if you like more about the design of a scheme firstly let's make sure that any income raised is reinvested in the sector and not into a pot and that there needs to be some transparency as to how that would be done because the sector needs investment that's not in doubt but we've got to make sure we do it in a way that doesn't disadvantage or make our tourism industry uncompetitive or perceived to be uncompetitive so it's more about the design and the principles of the scheme would be important going forward that was our sort of view support on the same basis really it's about where that funding then goes if it's to be used of income generation that would be very welcome if that was to be invested because we have to recognise the value that our sector brings and as a draw four visitors in the first place and our cultural assets are an enormous draw four visitors to Scotland so that could be a virtuous circle if it was to be done right thank you thank you just perhaps like to start with a specific issue with Alex Patterson if that's okay just to follow up with Mark Ruskell's initial question Arbroath Abbey there's been no access to the Abbey itself for years now as it awaits high level masonry inspections and clearly this will have an impact on tourism around the Arbroath area and I just wondered what the timescales could be for the next stage and whether it might be able to open up fully and happy if you don't have the details there to receive a written submission regarding that thank you for giving me the get out of geocard free Arbroath is on the inspection list but can I write to you formally with the timescale of it and we've tried to do at Arbroath what we can do we've opened a new visitor centre there there's the scriptorium which has opened recently so back to my point about where we can offer some experience, we're trying to do that but you're right we need to complete the full inspection at Arbroath so let me write to you and try and give you some more information about the timescale on that that'd be really useful this morning we've heard from Sir John about energy cost doubling from Lucy around 30% cut in budget and from Alex that visitor numbers are just 16% of pre Covid levels in that context and the requirement to meet net zero and the costs of this, there's a fantastic example just at Holyrood Lodge which I visited earlier this year with Historic Environment Scotland on some great work but it's quite niche, it's difficult to get the contractors and I just wondered whether you've made an assessment at least of costs of building net zero through the building infrastructure and thereafter how on earth are we going to manage to ensure that that net zero is achieved perhaps I'll give you a break so start with Lucy if that's okay the simple answer is no we don't have an assessment of the cost of doing that because to be honest there's no visible sight of where that funding would come from so I suppose it's an exercise we haven't prioritised but I think it's really important to recognise that the issues we're having with access to sites such as Dumbley and Arbroath and the other sites that we're talking about it's that historic lack of investment if we're not able to invest in our properties we will see these problems and these closures and certainly it's an interesting contrast where an assessment was done south of the border in relation to museum estates and the need to adapt those and there's a museum estates development fund in England of £200 million a year our capital investment fund is £200,000 a year across over 400 museums so we simply cannot address the challenges that are there and I don't see where that budget is going to come out of culture and I don't see where it's coming from elsewhere either but it's absolutely it makes perfect sense isn't it to be able to make those investments in those buildings to adapt them to do that net zero transition is essential but I don't see where the answer is coming from at the moment we're very happy to try and do an assessment of the cost of doing that but I don't see where the funding is coming from at the moment we were one of the first national museums in the UK to employ an environmental sustainability officer some years back and so we have costed out the required investment for our various grade A 19th century listed buildings to shape towards the path to net zero and it's substantial and it would be over a number of years but as yet funding for that is not identified in our environmental response plan there are really three headings there is that what we can do as an organisation ourselves to become more environmentally efficient on our own path to net zero there's what we feel needs to be done and I think this will resonate with Mr Paterson about how we anticipate the increasing more dramatic impact of climate change and what we need to do to protect the collections in that regard and then there's a third very important strain for us is which how can we play our part in raising awareness of the issues for example through the artists and the programming that we have and I often we work extensively with contemporary artists who I tend to regard in some respects as that the canaries down the coal mine of society they're often the people who are responding earliest and first and then very creative and imaginative ways to issues that are deeply relevant and of course many of our artists are very involved in climate issues so working with them giving them a platform is, I think, a very important part of what we do but the impact of climate change is already being felt just two weeks ago we had quite a dramatic flood in the gallery of modern art as a result of the dramatic downpours that's happening increasingly so the collections aren't at in sense increasingly at risk there's nothing worse for precious collections than water and that is, as we're saying, an increasing risk but that will resonate right across the sector multiplied hundreds of times I'm sure also in the historic environment just a few comments to add on to that I mean as an organisation whenever we're looking at improving the condition of our sites we're looking at energy different ways of doing that net zero options the most recent one you might have seen was the introduction of solar panels on the roof of the National War Museum at Edinburgh Castle small contribution but it's in the right direction so as an organisation we are investing in net zero and climate change activities we've got a fairly extensive climate action plan which is steering our direction in that on the wider point do we know how much it would be cost net zero I suspect my climate change team has a figure or can give some estimates so I might, in my lengthy letter to you I might just give some indication of that because we have been trying to work out what needs to be done partly for cost but partly for another thing which I've mentioned now again which is skills and it's one thing having the aspiration to make all these buildings energy efficient and wind and water tight and so on but we don't have the skills out there and most of the construction companies do not have skills in their companies to work in traditional buildings so we've just taken on in the last couple of weeks our biggest intake of stone masonry apprentices that we've done for a number of years partly because some of the colleges are pulling back in provision but secondly it's not just fixing the castles and the standing stones and all these sort of things it's the houses that folk live in and all the aspirations to be energy efficient in net zero go out the window, excuse the pun if the buildings themselves are not repaired and maintained to the correct standard so that investment in skills is really really important and I think the other thing just I would say on net zero and climate is back to the policy drivers for it I used to work in economic development I can understand entirely why wind turbines on offshore wind farms and all the waving tidal things are important and of course they are but until we actually address the re-use and the retrofit and energy efficiency of traditional buildings we'll not make the progress towards net zero that we as a country aspire to be so I think from a policy point of view incentivise and encourage investment in that type of activity would actually be really important and my final line I always mention this line and it's not within the Scottish Parliament's gift to do anything about but why is there 20 per cent VAT on repairs and maintenance to listed buildings when new build is VAT free so there's 20 per cent that could be taken off off a cost if that mechanism could be if that incentive could be could be addressed so long answer to your question but I welcome back with hopefully some sort of parameters around the cost for the Scottish Parliament thank you panel final quick question if that's permissible convener answer to this to be low or non-existent but the courier reports today that benches outside the McManus gallery in Dundee's Albert Square have been destroyed again by vandals tearing strips of wood off the structures and I just wondered in terms of your buildings if there is any instances of criminal activity or vandalism that you've had to cope with would anyone just something yes it does happen we recently had an instance of a sculpture in the in the grounds of the gallery of modern art that was damaged by graffiti a delicate surface from which it is now probably impossible to remove the traces of that graffiti happily such instances are rare and particularly when you put sculpture into the public domain you're really dependent on self-pleasing I don't mind people putting pink bras on the Antony Gormley sculptures in the water of Leith you know that's fine damage, physical damage is another thing but happily it's quite rare thanks with anyone else yes Alex heritage crime which would encompass all of that has been increasing year on year for quite a few years now it ranges from the deliberate to the completely innocuous unintended but yet at our sites we have vandalism occasionally fire raising antisocial behaviour it's unfortunately a path for the course it doesn't happen everywhere but at some sites it's more prevalent than others and our teams on the ground deal with it but it's under the umbrella of heritage crime is increasing and we have a really good working relationship with Police Scotland and the enforcement agencies are taking heritage crime much more seriously than perhaps was done in the past so it unfortunately is there but we just can deal with it Lucy Bidge you don't operate any sites directly so we don't have that direct experience but certainly it does happen and we would support where we could but it's not a clear role for us as a national development body in doing so other than providing advice if people come to us for that okay, thank you panel it's very worrying but that's very useful back to you I wonder if I could just ask Mr Patterson I know there's been a specific area of interest for two of my colleagues but if you could share the wider issues that you were talking about and copying that letter to the committee it would be very helpful can I invite Ms Boyack please Thanks very much I was just going to echo that point because I'm just to pick up Historic Environment Scotland I was looking at the annex to the evidence that we got today about the key performance indicators and what really stands out is that in terms of improving on maintaining the state of Scotland's historic sites and places it's red everything else mostly green some amber but that really stands out and it's been quite a big discussion today so we used to talk about spend to save as a way of helping future investment but you're actually talking about spend to save to avoid losing buildings so I think it would be very interesting to get your take on that because the evidence you gave us was that it's not just good for who we are and how our historic environment but 4.4 billion goes into the Scottish economy in terms of heritage and half of our international tourists come to see heritage and 60 per cent of the heritage visits are to Historic Environment Scotland so could you just give us a sense of what you need to do to actually deliver that because you've gone through Covid income reduction you talked a bit earlier about flexibility you needed, levers do you want to say a bit about public sector funding and then a bit about flexibility that you want that's a big question so I think that the RAG diagram you've got there is to our place in time it's not just hez, it's the overall sector but you're right, that particular KPI is red and that just reflects the lack of investment or the lack of interventions in the historic environment collectively over a period of time exacerbated by Covid there's no doubt that that has exacerbated in some of the comments that Lucy was making earlier about what gives when cost of living increases start to hit that just exacerbates the problem we've got I think from one of the flexibilities I was talking about, so I'm a bit schizophrenic in this when Covid hit us Scottish Government colleagues ministers helped us out hugely that was critical but as an organisation we can't carry reserves across multiple years we there's other restrictions that we can't we can't operate out with the upside is and I know we are if not unique we're in a very small category of organisations but we have commercial levers we have sites that we charge up for we've got a subsidiary company that runs an awful lot of ancillary commercial activities we think there are further fundraising opportunities out there and other partnerships to do but we operate within some of these constraints at the moment and I guess our concern would be that we could actually go and try and realise many of these opportunities but if the effect is not to help us invest in the historic environment and to improve the properties and improve the experience and improve the outreach and learning we do but rather it's offset against the reduction in granted aid then there's no net benefit discussion we have with colleagues in the Scottish Government at the moment there are upsides and downsides benefits and so on to it but that's a sort of flexibility we're primarily relating to that we think there are ways in which we could generate income if we had the ability to retain it and invest it into making the historic environment both better as a physical set of assets but also the experience that individuals and visitors at the time to be clear it's not an either or you both need continued investment in building in terms of capital as well as a bit of flexibility because what comes across really strongly is the short term in terms of funding given that it's a whole of our heritage I'm going to come on to museums and galleries in the second yes and to be honest there'll never be enough money to go around any of us want to do we think a bit of flexibility in our model gives us a wee bit more scope to do that that would also contribute to capital investment in our sites so there's all sorts of ways in which that would be beneficial I think in terms of the forward looking in the budgeting the reality is that budgets are confirmed on an annual basis but we have to plan on the basis of multi-year budgeting projects projects are over multiple years so we are working on the basis of multiple year budgets albeit they're confirmed on an annual basis what I think would be helpful and where I think the capital spending review and the resource spending review got to us was some indicative budgets over an extended period of time even three years and I just use the phrase indicative budgeting even if it was confirmed on an annual basis fine but if we had some sense as to what the parameters might be over a three year period then it gives us a bit more of a planning horizon and it's not just us, if we have that then we can do it to the organisations that we support financially as well and from their point of view the cost of living crisis is biting right now I think there needs to be some sort of support considered for the sector who are just trying to recover from Covid and have been hit by this again but some indicative budget over more than just one year would undoubtedly of comfort that many at the moment just don't have OK, thank you and I really want to push that same issue on to Sir John and Lucy because in both your evidence submissions you talk about that short termism and I think that the word uses projectism worn off annual spending and one of the things we've been taking evidence on is the contribution of culture to health and wellbeing and both the submissions you've given to us are quite powerful on that so I was wondering if you could say a bit more about that I think Sir John you talk about the need for determined leadership from the Scottish Government we've asked cabinet secretaries and it's like it's coming at some point so just tell what would that mean now in terms of leadership investment that would be transformative to help you deliver what you've got the potential to deliver Shall we perhaps good questions shall we perhaps take it in two parts as the issue of multi-year funding first and I think we all had very high hopes for the spending review which was launched at the end of last year and there was a sort of feeling about at last after years of this short term funding this would be an exercise that would give us perspective unfortunately that exercise seems in many respects to have been derailed by events and in my organisation it wouldn't be possible to take anything from the published figures apart from the conclusion that it's flat funding right the way through that would be my interpretation of it the unfortunate thing I think for us is that museums and galleries as intergenerational organisations we have a very long term vision we have skills knowledge expertise that we develop over time we have collections and estates that have to be nurtured over a long period we have activities that require sometimes years of planning and investment and none of that none of that responds in any way well to short term cycles of funding we can always adapt to change we can always adapt to different patterns of funding but that also takes time so I think that's what we've been the underlying theme of one of the things that we've been talking about here is that as a sector still in recovery we need that time to get back to some sort of position of normality taking perhaps 2025 as Alex mentioned as a benchmark we need that degree of certainty to get us back into a position where we can restore some kind of a sensible business model so in my view that lack of certainty that we have it discourages investment it tears sponsorship and also stifles innovation in any sense of risk taking I think that that part of it is clear in terms of health and wellbeing I think that the frustration is that we know from the work that we do that there's obviously the implicit benefits of offering safe social spaces and in present context warm safe social spaces that people can go to we know all of that but we know also the essential benefits of targeted programming whether it's in helping with preventative working with disadvantaged teenagers or whether it's dealing with people who are suffering from actual disease or it's suffering from forms of physical and mental illness we know all that and the evidence is there I think that the frustration is that it is fragmented there is no real sense of any kind of national strategy and so for an individual organisation we keep on doing our thing which is where the projectism comes in and there's so many different examples of best practice but none of it's really joined up I think the case for the culture and health beings wellbeing was very well set out by the report from the national partnership of culture all the different factors and arguments are there the response from the Scottish Government was published a day or two ago and I think the message coming from that is yes it all aligns with what we want to do but there is no extra funding in the present physical context and I'll be briefly frank I'm really not interested in any new initiatives or any new programmes unless there are some pounds attached to it I just don't have the resource I don't have the capacity, I don't have the staff we don't have the time to divert energy from what Alex described as core business at the moment so to be frank a lot of this sounds as if it's still rotating in midair in rhetoric and very aspirational I don't see any changes happening on the ground that's really clear given the comments Jenny made about sobering it reinforces that in terms of the need for money now and clarity going forward Lucy, it was really striking you referenced over 440 museums in Scotland the capacity for those organisations to cope with the cost of living crisis and keep the doors open do you want to say a bit about both the multi-year funding generally to actually get through this I'm just conscious I've only got 10 minutes or so left of the committee and I still got another member wanting to come in so if you could be concise in answers going forward that would be really awful thank you the reality is our grants budget is £900,000 of revenue and £200,000 of capital across those 400 plus museums so it's already it's very difficult to do anything very substantial with that our maximum award we can make is £60,000 and that is annual budget so it's a very different position to that in the arts sector there is the possibility of three year funding deals and so on and that's simply not available to the museum sector and the biggest challenge in terms of what that the implication of that is I think we're not unrealistic about the fact that change is going to have to happen in the sector and the trouble with these one year budgets is that you tend to try and preserve what you have because you cannot have that longer vision of what how you make that change not how do we save this one thing that's currently in crisis today and then the next thing or something else because actually we need to see that change we need to see more collaboration we need to see more integration we've just funded a lovely project where four museums came together to appoint a member of staff that they share in common and that's a great idea and a sort of model that would be possible long-term partnership working that's already established that creates that and that is where the investment is needed if you've got a longer term vision you can see how some of those things might become possible and that's really what we would have seen as the greatest benefit we were able to have a longer term funding that we could make project grants over a slightly longer time and make them to groups of museums potentially and we have greater submission also in relation to civic museums who also could have some potential to collaborate on some services if they're not affordable to everybody or collaborate around storage of collections but that takes that bit of investment to make that change happen that doesn't become actually strategically planned as opposed to kind of trying to plug the gaps which is really where we are at the moment so it is a real concern and there would be a great opportunity if we could see longer term funding to be able to be more strategic about the change that will come because it's not realistic to think that we can save everything and I think that we've got to just not be naive about that Thanks Dr Allan Thank you I will be brief a frame coming back to yourself Alec Patterson again I hear and I absolutely appreciate what you're saying about the pressures that are applying just now inflation around other pressures pressures to you and to the whole public sector and to the Scottish Government itself so I think people can readily appreciate what you're saying there I had vowed not to mention any building in my constituency but as everyone else almost has I will I'm afraid again mention something that we've corresponded about which is one of the most iconic buildings in Scotland, Kishmawl Castle and the fact that it's not open to the public but more generally my question was really I think you mentioned there were 60 buildings that had restrictions in terms of their opening at the moment and I just wondered if given these pressures you felt you'd been a position as an organisation to lay out some kind of a plan or timescale as to when you would get to something as near to full opening as possible and my other question briefly just related to that I suppose is about you mentioned I think about the importance rightly of spending to save or not allowing problems to grow is there other certain risks associated with buildings being closed in terms of maintenance thank you well we're trying to fix up another meeting on Kishmawl so all I would say here is that we've had teams out both technical teams and visitor teams looking at what the possible is in Kishmawl so we'll pick this up separately I think in terms of the timescale for site openings that's awful difficult why it's difficult until we actually do the inspections and find out the scale of the challenge whether great or small is then difficult to know what the timescale is so I suspect there'll be some of the sites that we inspect where we know actually this is quite a big task we've got here and we may have restrictions in place for a period of time while we develop a scheme to consider them there are other sites I mentioned to Andrew's earlier so some others where we've done the inspections and we've been able to either open them because there were no issues or the issues were quite minor and therefore they have been reopened Trinity House is opening again quite soon so it's not it's an inadequate answer because the answer almost is on a site-by-site basis we need to see what the inspections throw up and then we can plan what's the repair for what's the time being in opening and it's the question I've asked most often when will my site be open and I can do no more I'm afraid other than say once we know once we have inspected we'll then know what that might look like thank you it was quicker than I thought it would be is there any final question in the last few minutes that we have I suppose it is that issue about it would be good to get that list because you think there's about 20% of our historic buildings or sites are not able to be opened at the moment so I think it would be useful just to get the scale of this because that's fundamental it's not one or two areas this is quite significant in terms of rebuilding tourism as well and just restoring our culture and the other thing was I'd recently asked some issues about employment issues in historic environment Scotland and what really came out was a real issue in terms of gender in terms of pay and I just wondering if you've got any comments on what you're doing to improve opportunities in the sector particularly for women because I think there were I think it was banned seeing one right at the top women are doing okay but all the other bans women are doing really less well in terms of employment opportunities I would say in terms of our gender pay gap we don't have an issue because our gender pay gap is actually really really really really small there will be a difference in terms of the gender profile across some of the roles we have so for example a lot of our monument conservation unit teams our colleagues who are out on our sites maintaining the sites and looking after the sites should normally be male so there is a profile difference across some of the roles but I'm doing this off the top of my head I don't think we've got a major issue in terms of male, female, gender split across the organisation it may be a particular role and what we're trying to do about it you know where we have for example maybe an imbalance of the gender profile at some areas particularly in our conservation teams then we are encouraging female apprenticeships and others to come and join us we've got quite a number of female craft fellowships have joined us recently so I'll take it away and ask the question of my people director but if you ask me do we have a major problem in terms of either gender balance or gender pay gap I don't think we do It would be good to get that feedback thanks just to compare with the stats that your team gave me earlier okay I think that does conclude questions this morning and I thank you all for your attendance and we are having a final session on the budget next week followed by a session with the cabinet secretary and the evidence that we've taken so thank you very much this morning and I'll close this meeting