�f. Efallau i ddim yn gweithio i gyfugir y cadw. Mae'r First Minister yn cael eu cyfraeg o gyllidau i gyfugir cyffiliaid yr OEI, ac yn cyf betrayio llei, mae'n meddygon ni'nıydd o'r cwrdd i'r treliau i eich cyfraeg o'r gyfugir cyffirmidau. Mae'n meddygon ni'n meddygon ni'n meddygon ni'n meddygon ni'n meddygon o'r cyfio i gael eich gyfugir ar y cyfraeg o'r meddygon, ac oedd hynny'n mynd i'n gweithio i gael eich cyfraeg o'u meddygon y gallan. agoronwyd, wirrisshau'r byw yn y cychewch. Is the committee agreed to take that paper in private? Yes. We are agreed to it. We move to our second item on the agenda then, which is further consideration of the Scottish Government's resource spending review. We are joined this morning by an online panel of witnesses. They are as follows, Cursity Cumming, chief executive community leisure UK. Duncan Dornan, Head of Museums and Collections Glasgow Life, Carol Calder, interim audit director from the performance audit and best value team in Audits Scotland. Can I welcome you all to the meeting? If I may start with a couple of questions. The first question is for all three of you. There has been criticism in the past, especially from our predecessor committee in 2019, around the consistency of local authority approaches to interpreting what adequate provision means for recreational, sporting, cultural and social activities. What is your understanding of the phrase adequate provision? Do you feel that it has been interpreted inconsistently? Who wants to start us off but perhaps we go to Katie Cumming first of all? Kirsty Cumming, can you hear me? Would you like to comment on my question or should I go to someone else? Duncan Dornan, would you like to comment on the question? I'm sorry, I didn't hear the question if I get part in. I'll start again. There's been criticism in the past, including from our predecessor committee in 2019, around the consistency of local authorities when they approach the interpretation of the phrase adequate provision and what that means for recreational, sporting, cultural and social activities. What's your understanding or experience of the phrase adequate provision and do you feel that it has been interpreted inconsistently? I think that's a very challenging question. The definition of adequate provision is determined in part by the circumstances of the local authority and the locality in which it finds itself and therefore the demand that is generated by those audiences and by those communities. That's a highly variable phrase, which underlies the difficulty in answering that question. What represents adequate provision in a rural, diverse, community, dispersed community will be significantly different from that in a much more densely packed urban area, so there are fundamental difficulties in local authorities interpreting that phrase in a consistent manner. In your experience in Glasgow, how has it been interpreted? In Glasgow, we have a very large city with a very diverse population and a very significant tourist industry to support. Therefore, Glasgow has a very ambitious cultural offer and ambitious sporting offer. That reflects the scale of the city, the diversity of demand in the city, the ability of culture and sporting activity to underpin a sense of place to underpin inward investment and to address some of the social and health issues and economic issues that exist in the city. Glasgow has responded, as you will be aware, with relatively high expenditure over a long period of time, but that is using culture and sport as a mechanism to address some of those fundamental issues. The challenges in Glasgow, of course, are significantly different to other parts of Scotland. Can I turn to Kirsty Cumming for a view, if you can hear me, Kirsty? Thank you. I can hear you loud and clear now. I think that very much echoing Duncan's point around the challenges of the definition and the different interpretation across local authorities being dependent on populations, geography and the relationship with local authorities. There is quite a variation in terms of how that definition is applied, but I think that underpinning principles are around access to culture, so ensuring that everybody, wherever they are in Scotland, has access to cultural opportunities, be that a library, be that performance, be that museum exhibitions. It is interpreted in different ways. That reflects the different makeup of local authorities and the needs of their communities. As Duncan said, there are very diverse communities across Scotland with different needs, but the important thing is that there are inclusive and accessible offerings right across the country where possible. I do not think that it is a terribly helpful definition to have adequate provision. It is not something that we can audit in any way because of the reasons that Mr Donan and Ms Cummings have given the committee. It is inevitable that there will be inconsistency. It is so contextual that it is hard for us to be able to measure what is adequate provision and then apply a report on whether or not that has been met or not. Can I move on? The question is really directed at Audit Scotland and Ms Calder, but I would be interested in other views as well. Ms Calder, the Audit Commission's 2021 overview of local government highlighted the value of partnership working and empowering communities to deliver services that meet local needs. How do you feel the work of local authorities and allios doing that community-based work alongside what has been done nationally by national agencies and programmes that are trying to do the same thing? I think that there is a lot more that could be done in terms of community empowerment. If we try to take Covid out of the equation, I think that there was a lot of activity in councils working in partnership with allios to provide local services. I suggest that the people who know best about what local services are needed and the local context are local authorities, councils and local partners in the third sector. We do not have any reporting that we have recently done that can draw any conclusion to answer your question about how well they are working together with national partners, but it is a very important role for local authorities and their communities and their local partners in providing services for communities. The two should work together, but I cannot give you any clear answer about how well that is working, because I have not done any audit work in that area. Do you sense that they should work together, but you found the evidence of there being an overlap or duplication or any tension? Is that fair? I would not be able to say one way or the other, because we have not done any work in that area. I cannot comment on duplication. I really do not know, but I think that there is real opportunity for national bodies and national organisations to be working collaboratively with local partnerships to deliver services. Whether that is the case and whether there is duplication, I simply do not have any evidence to support one way or the other. Do either of our other witnesses want to comment on the local authority approach and the national approach and the interplay between them? Duncan Dawnon, would you like to comment? Yes, thank you. The engagement of communities and community-driven provision is enormously important, but it still has enormous growth necessary to make that fully inclusive and to allow full-scale engagement. I do not think that there is overlap or competition between national agencies and local authority provision. I think that the field still has enormous growth left to get to that point where there is competition. I think that the challenge for community engagement is that it is intensive work. It takes a lot of time to build confidence and to fully empower communities, and it often requires professional support and access to core facilities in the fundamental infrastructure. Of course, financial pressure has an impact on that, so I think that that has slowed the rate of progress. I do not think that there is competition between national government and local authorities in that sphere. That is very helpful. Kersti Cymru, do you have any observations on that? My observation would be similar, but I do not think that we have not sensed any competition or duplication as such. I think that there are opportunities for perhaps closer alignment, particularly if we look at the culture strategy and how that strategy at national level is adopted and embedded at local authority level and what that looks like in terms of local authority provision feeding up into a national strategy. I do not think that that connection is yet as strong as it could be, so there is perhaps potential there. The other comment that I would make is certainly from the perspective of our membership. They are all independent charities that have independent boards, so they have a strong connect to communities by having a community representation on the boards. There is also the role for trusts to work with local partners and to offer facilities and to take a bit of a role around culture and place at a local level, which is working quite well in most areas. I wanted to kick off with a question as to whether we need core funding for community and cultural facilities. They are clearly integral to successful outcomes in delivering wider mental health and wellbeing benefits, but the evidence that we have had shows that the pressures on councils financially over the past decade have particularly impacted libraries, which is the key service for young people to be able to read, overcome educational inequalities, gain confidence and access for older people or people accessing digital services. The Accounts Commission said that culture services are not statutory funding, so face cuts, sorry, quote, budget restrictions when local authorities face pressures. Is there an issue here about core funding for local authorities to be part of that process to do the heavy lifting that was mentioned by lots of our witnesses and the budget evidence at the community level to do the interconnection that someone has talked about? I think that there is an issue about core funding. Over the past 10 years from local government benchmarking framework data, the smaller services—when I say smaller, I am talking about all the council services that are not digital care, adult care and education—have all bombed the brunt of cuts. We know that, over the past 10 years, the only services that have had a net increase in expenditure in budgets are social care and education. Of the other services, cultural services and culture and leisure have taken the biggest cut. There is not a lot in it, but we are talking almost 30 per cent over the past 10 years. Other services such as planning roads are also very high up in the mid-twenties, so all those services have reduced in funding. That trend is an increasing trend. If we take the one of Covid funding out of 2021, then there is a net decrease for councils in budgets. Over the past seven years, we have reported in our local government overview—our financial local government overview came out earlier this year. Over the past seven years, although there has been a 7 per cent real-terms increase in funding, if you take out that one of Covid funding, it is actually a 4.2 per cent decrease in funding for councils overall. That is at odds with the funding for Scottish Government, so that budget has gone up in that period of time, but the funding for councils has gone down. I am thinking about that in a wider context. Within that context, councils are dealing with multiple pressures. There are backlogs following Covid. There is an increase in demand for dealing with an ageing population, increasing poverty, increasing the cost of living. It is a very complex and uncertain environment in terms of policy direction, the new national care service, reform and education, financial health poverty and climate change. All those pressures are on local government, and the funding has gone down. What is happening is that those smaller services are bearing the brunt of funding cover. That is helpful. I am very clear about the evidence. Ten years on after the Christie commission report, we need more investment in those services to deliver on health and wellbeing, supporting people from mental health issues, especially as we come out of the pandemic. Given the pressures, shouldn't we be seeing more of a focus on those services to enable that community investment to deliver on the transformative change that Christie recommended? Both the Auditor General and the Interim Chair of the Accounts Commission were very strong on that. So, from your perspective, what does need to change in terms of that capacity for local government to have that expenditure to put directly into Christie commission, which would then take pressure off the immediate front-line challenges? I think that the core funding is an issue. I think also that multi-year funding. Longer councils are not really able to fund long-term. I know that I can't speak for COSLA, but I know that COSLA's position is that the flexibility in the funding that they are given in councils is reduced year-on-year. The Scottish Government has a very different position on that. It depends on what you consider to be ring-fenced. The Scottish Government takes a defined view of ring-fenced, which is money that is very specific purpose, and they suggest that about 8 per cent of the budget is ring-fenced. COSLA's position is that it is more like 60 per cent when you take into account money that is funding that is given with policy expectations, whether statutory services need to be delivered, and when there are demand-driven services such as health and social care. When all of that is taken out of the equation, COSLA calculates that there is only 40 per cent of the budget that is left with flexibility about how they spend it. It is two things. It is both the funding settlement and the certainty of funding over multiple years, so that councils are more able to plan how they deliver services. However, if I add to that, I think that it also requires a different definition or a different thinking about what we consider to be health funding, because health is much broader than the NHS. There are councils and many of the council services, including community and culture services, which are about wellbeing and community connectedness. Investment in those services can actually reduce the demand on other co-services of health. It would be interesting to understand Public Health Scotland's perspective on that as well. I think that that would be something that the committee might wish to consider, but that is the three things that I would suggest. It is the co-funding, the multi-year certainty to allow for longer-term planning, and a wider definition about what is health spending. That is really helpful. Thank you so much for that, Carol. If I could then pick up on those points and take them to our other witnesses and maybe start with Kirsty Cumming, because you make some of those kinds of points in your submission about how we see that community investment to actually see the investment on the ground. You have talked about significant loss of reserves across public culture charities and the solvency issue coming through the pandemic and the future pressures. Do we need co-funding and more investment? How would you link that through to the preventative investment, which actually brings multiple benefits and looks at the outcomes rather than just the inputs? I think that the previous witness talked about core funding for services and the disproportionate cuts to culture and, indeed, ledger as non-wing-fen services, and that is absolutely what we have seen. We appreciate that local authorities are under huge amounts of pressure, but from the perspective of ensuring and protecting services, there really needs to be core funding on the longer term as well, so long-term funding agreements to ensure that those services are both protected in the immediate term and as we emerge from Covid, but in the longer term we are able to actually kind of rebuild and really fulfil the role that they have the potential to do within communities. We talked about it in our submission and, as you have mentioned, the loss of reserves. From the perspective of our membership entering the next financial year, there is no real financial safety net. Those reserves were used up to support through the pandemic and to kind of get remain solvents and remain functioning through the pandemic, but if there is further pressures—and we know that there has already been talk around—some of the pressures that are coming, particularly energy, increases as a significant one for our members in terms of the high-scale age of buildings that they are operating. That is going to have quite a significant impact in the short term. There is not a financial, as I said. There are not reserves there that are really available for our members to dip into. There needs to be support from somewhere else, be that local authorities who are already under extreme financial pressure or other sources of funding. I guess that is a kind of short-term view in the longer term and the discussion around health. Well-being is an interesting word. That is the word that our members use to describe what they do. They very much see themselves as well-being. Organisations and culture leisure is the kind of delivery mechanism for well-being, so it is kind of a bit of a change of positioning over the years to where we are now. However, there certainly needs to be a better connection across portfolios. It has already been mentioned again around health, being I guess it is viewed maybe as a treatment service to the NHS, but actually there needs to be a much more of a shift towards prevention. We have got the evidence base around the contribution that culture can make. We have got evidence around some of the pilots that have taken place and the role that it can have if it was to be properly scaled, properly resourced, but at the moment there is not the resource or the funding to really roll that out in a meaningful way. We absolutely know that it could do much more in terms of supporting health, wellbeing for communities, but it is absolutely stretched at the moment. My final point on this would be consideration around protection of services at the moment as well. We are seeing changing customer behaviours. We are seeing extreme financial pressures. What we really want to avoid is short-term decision making that looks to save money into the next couple of years, but actually may lose services in the long term. We really need to look at a long-term view of culture, the outcomes where we want to get to and a bit of a roadmap of how to get there. Otherwise, we are at risk of losing asset services, but also the skills and expertise that we have seen quite a loss over the last two years, people exiting the sector. We really need to understand the role of culture more broadly across portfolios. That comes across very clear, that core funding but also multi-year funding to planning ahead and deliver. Can I ask Duncan the same questions about both the funding aspect but also the impact on wellbeing preventative help that was highlighted by the Christie commission? At the very substantial points, I echo the comments of the previous contributors about the trajectory of our budgets over the last 10 years. We have seen a real-terms reduction in budgets. That has ever happened alongside the substantial growth in the use of our services, with the museum fruitful increasing by at my around 50 per cent over the same period. That is the effect of reducing the net cost per visit, which is very encouraging, but obviously puts enormous pressure on facilities. The budget impact has been on-going and we are now at a stage where we seriously risk the loss of professional skills and infrastructure capacity to sustain those services in the longer term. I think that that is particularly problematic given the substantial impact that we know that services have on health and wellbeing. That is even more the case post-pandemic, where we have increased levels of mental health issues, isolation and also the economic dislocation. Cultural services in the recovery from a pandemic in an environment where retail has been very badly affected and many centre-centred businesses in particular are struggling to recover after the disease of lockdowns that we are obliged to have will require cultural infrastructure as we have joined people back into the city centre to regenerate them to maintain economic life. We are in a position where in fact cultural services are not in a position to bounce back and to be able to sustain this. They are simply struggling to maintain that their current levels of delivery. I think that the point that we made about core funding is extremely important. A period of stability is also essential to understand the funding scheme over the next three years. It has been enormously valuable and allowed planning to look at the mix of public funding and commercial funding. However, we are in a situation now after 10 years of steady reductions in funding where services are hanging on by their fingernails and that is when we are not in a position to be able to respond effectively to demands that make place upon us. That is very clear. If you want to do the community investment, the community prescribing, where are you fixed for being able to deliver on that agenda? That is hugely important but, as I mentioned earlier, that level of engagement is in the first instance very expensive and that means that it is very difficult to divert scarce resources to do that whilst maintaining existing services to other citizens. That requires investment. We believe very strongly that the benefits are enormous and there is very clear evidence to support that. However, we need to identify that preemptive investment in addressing health and wellbeing issues before they become clinical as to be prioritised and has to be funded to make it really effective. So, pretty consistent feedback from the witnesses there. Thank you very much all of you. Back to the convener. Thank you. Can I turn next to Maurice Golden please? Thank you convener and perhaps I could start with Carol Calder. I think in your answers to Sarah Boyack, you were quite clear about the funding side of things and the picture there, but I wondered if you have assessed the costs aspect and the inflationary pressures, both on energy, on wages, on building infrastructure and how that could potentially squeeze service delivery. The short answer to that is no, we haven't done that, we haven't done any specific audit work and culture services for some time now. The information that I have is the overview of local government, so it's local government finances and looking at the spend patterns in local government. Those figures are corrected for inflation. The data that I was talking about uses the spice method for correcting the average inflation over the period, but in terms of energy costs and specifics of wage costs and so on and so forth, we haven't done any work in that area, I'm afraid. You mentioned ring fencing, but at least part of, even within the leisure and culture space, is the requirement for retrofishing to become more energy efficient and meet our net zero targets. Within that space, which is clearly going to drive up costs for the right reasons, is there any work or plans to look at how that might impact leisure and cultural services? We have a programme of work that is looking at net zero, specifically achieving net zero in councils. That may cover elements of culture and leisure services, but it's not a specific focus of a work programme at the moment. Perhaps if we move on to Kirsty Cumming. Kirsty, in a similar vein, and you touched on it in your earlier answer, but if you could say perhaps how costs are increasing, but also specifically within the culture and leisure estate, that net zero requirement for buildings is going to drive up costs irrespective of the costs that you may have seen increasing anyway at the moment, so I'd be keen for your views on that. Thank you. I guess I'll split into two parts. The first part in terms of general increasing costs, there are a number of factors at play here. One is the return rates and restarting of events, particularly income generating events on the culture side, so those tend to be live performance events, festivals that can actually reinvest some of the profits into cross subsidising other cultural services that are free to access. Because those have been delayed as a result of the Covid restrictions and combined with perhaps still some anxiety amongst the public to return, the return rates are certainly lower than they were pre-Covid and not expected to get back to pre-Covid levels for quite some time. We don't expect to see a return to 100 per cent of pre-Covid levels until 2023 at the earliest, so there will be an impact there on income through customer footfall and the secondary spend that also supports a lot of our members. Obviously, accessing museums and libraries is free, but a lot of the income that is generated is through those secondary spends, gift shops, cafes, etc. activities that are taking place, so there is an impact in terms of income there. There are also increased costs, I guess the other side, increased costs in terms of some of the Covid protocols that are still in place, so there is obviously still enhanced cleaning, PPE equipment, face masks, etc. still being used within our members, so there is obviously a higher operational cost required to run venues and facilities. There are other wider factors that are not specific to culture around the increases to no national living wage, which is increasing by 6 per cent, which is a significant increase, and that has a knock-on effect for pay rates across the rest of the organisations. It is quite a significant pay rate, plus the inflation rate being so high at the moment. Then there is energy, which has obviously been touched on, which is going to be a critical factor going forward for our members. The other cost and income management fees are obviously a critical part for our members, the management fees that they receive from local authority partners. Those are moving back towards reductions. We have seen additional funding through Covid to maintain organisations. However, we are predicting—well, we know actually for 2022-23—that there will be a move towards reductions in management fees, which were planned pre-Covid, so we are moving back towards that decrease in budgets and our estimates from what we hear from members is that that is up to 50 per cent reductions over the next four to five years, so it is a significant reduction. From our perspective, 2022-23 looks like it will be stable for members. We are not seeing a crisis, and I use the term crisis to mean really at the point of insolvency, but in the next three to five years it is going to really be at the point where things have to be cut, and that is going to be a real real challenge. There will be decisions that will be made that are not decisions that anybody wants to have to make around maintaining services if we continue on the current trajectory around cuts, which we think that we are moving towards. On the second part of your question around environments and net zero, we are at early stages with our membership in terms of exploring how we support around this. I guess that there is a lot of unknowns at the moment in terms of what is the best technology that can be used, but also what is the investment that is required. There is going to be a need for investment and refurbishment, retrofitting of facilities, venues, etc. What the cost is, I do not think that anybody has a clear idea as yet, so it is moving through to understand what that looks like. With the expectation of it, it will be significant, as it will be for other sectors as well, particularly heritage venues, particularly buildings that were perhaps built. We have a lot of 1970s infrastructure across Scotland that probably needs a lot of upgrading and investment to get anywhere near to where we want it to be in terms of that emissions perspective, but an on-going piece of work for us, so nothing too concrete on that as yet. Thanks for that, Kirsty. I will perhaps move on to Duncan Dornan next. What are your thoughts in terms of inflationary pressures and increases in costs? In addition, has there been any assessment particularly for museums and collections that costs of retrofitting could run up into millions of pounds if you are going to keep similar building infrastructure? It is a very good question. Obviously, the impact of the financial pressure over the last 10 years has been particularly significant in relation to building maintenance and infrastructure, which is an area that can often be delayed. We move into the period of staggering energy inflation, not in a particularly good position. If we look beyond the current cost crisis to achieving net zero, we are not uniformly moving forward on that at all. We know from what we have recently done in the borough that a great deal can be achieved, but that requires investment in an old, even 80s, iconic buildings. Significant investment in remodeling of the buildings to achieve substantial energy gains, given that we are unable to deliver often even fairly basic maintenance, which seems almost impossible to figure out how that would move forward. The creeping financial pressure and the impact that is hard on our ability to invest and to plan how we react cannot be overstated. If we are simply trying to keep the doors open on a year-by-year basis, it is very difficult to step back from that and start to look in the longer term about how an estate might evolve. That is, as I mentioned before, one of the challenges. Most of our buildings are critical public infrastructure. They serve enormous range of needs for communities and provide enormous opportunity and cohesion for communities. If those buildings are to be sustained into net zero, they will require significant investment. We need a longer-term strategy, if we plan to enable us to do that. Currently, with annual funding and declining annual funding, that simply is impossible. Thank you for that, Duncan. It is very helpful. Back to you, convener. Thank you. Can I turn next to Alasdair Allan? Thank you, convener. Questions again for Duncan Dorn, although perhaps he might be able to speak for the culture sector more widely, if we can ask him to do that. There has been quite a discussion about what place-based culture means. We have had some written evidence giving a definition of that. Place-based working is a person-centred bottom-up approach used to meet the unique needs of people in one given location. That was from Charity iris. What do you understand that to mean? How do we celebrate, genuinely celebrate, local culture, local contributions that can be made to the cultural life? I am not as to my ad as I have done before, making a case against money going to national companies or anything like that. In budgeting terms, how do cultural institutions get that balance right? That is a very good question. It seems to me—and it is certainly our practice in Glasgow—that engagement with local communities and individuals in communities is absolutely the fundamental to how we operate, even in an institution that has a national role and an international role and draws an international audience. For any cultural activity, it is essential to have the voice of local people represented in that activity and that our content, our collecting, our interpretation is driven by engagement with local people. That sense of local and sense of place is enormous survival and addressing the health and wellbeing issues within a community. But equally for someone coming to Scotland or coming to one of our cities, one of our museums, to get a clear sense that the institution genuinely represents local people and is actually part of their lives and part of their cultural experience is really fundamental. Although that is often presented as something new, I would suggest that, actually, for any successful institution historically, that was pretty fundamental. I think that our approach is now more sophisticated and I think that our audiences are more than open to that. People are very enthusiastic and keen to be involved and, certainly, the work that we have done in refurbishing the borough and particularly working with non-users of the museum and pre-closure, we found enormous enthusiasm to be involved with that collection and for people to have their voices heard within new displays. Although that clearly, when it is explained, sounds like a very local thing providing local content and local experience, that sense of place and that personal voice is really fundamental to any institution, whether they are local or national, and that is what gives us the authenticity, which is fundamental to promoting Scotland to the wider world. Thank you. When you mentioned the wider world, you lead me nicely into the other issue that I was going to ask about, which is, obviously, Scotland is presently preparing to welcome people from Ukraine, we hope, in the coming days. Again, this touches on budgeting. Do you think that cultural institutions need to start thinking about how to celebrate the culture that they are going to bring with them, but also how to involve people in that community in the work that you are already doing? I think that that is absolutely essential. As you be aware, Glasgow has had a significant number of people who have come to the city over the past few decades from other countries and have increased our population. We have worked very closely with those communities to give them a voice and to represent themselves in our institutions and also to Glasgow and to the wider world. We know from their feedback that that has felt to be hugely important. One of the things that gives people a sense of dignity and a sense of belonging is if they see themselves represented in the city and the nation's cultural institutions. In addition to all the tangible things that we do for Ukrainians, I would suggest that it is absolutely fundamental that we engage them with our cultural institutions as quickly as we can to recognise the presence in our communities and also to give them a sense of dignity and a voice to express their own experience and to explain where they have come from and why they are here to the wider communities. Without that, one of the greatest things that we can do to reach out our hands and to give a sense of belonging is to ensure that people are represented and their voices are represented in our cultural institutions. I would like to draw out a bit more on the collaboration side of things. We took some evidence from Sen Scott who suggested that there might be attention between local leadership in communities and how you work with grassroots organisations. I am interested to see how you collaborate with local organisations and specifically around Covid. We have heard throughout the session of examples where local grassroots organisations have pivoted with support of larger local authorities, but there has been a quick… I am interested to hear how local authorities perhaps have changed the way in which they deliver their cultural side of things. What learnings from Covid have been? That is a very good question. The way in which we operate with community groups has been evolving over a very long period of time. In Glasgow, we established the open museum almost 30 years ago, which was expressed to work with people who could not or would not visit museums. They have been developing and evolving their methodology over that whole period of time. We have moved to a position where the default in our service should be to work with communities in developing content rather than the exception. We would in museums expect all of our creators to work with a community group wherever possible to inform the collecting process, to inform the development of content and interpretation, to ensure that what we are saying is authentic, but also to ensure that we fully engage those communities in using those civic services that we provide, so that they become a fundamental part of that. One of the major challenges is in establishing trust and confidence, because it is still not universal. It takes time for people to accept that we genuinely mean that we wish them to have a voice in the institution and that we genuinely want to co-produce and work alongside them as equal partners. We still have a way to go and a lot to learn. That is a difficult transition to make, just as communities need time to have confidence in that, but we know from the evidence of the work that we have done that it really does work. It has significant benefits for communities, and I believe that it has significant benefits for the institution in providing that authentic representation of our communities and our cities, which otherwise we cannot do. That is a huge beneficial. I would suggest a relatively cost-effective way to integrate communities, provide greater cross-community insight, and at the same time promote health and wellbeing, which of course we know culture does. There is a huge price to be gained there. Our challenge is that this is the most difficult work that we do, because it is labour intensive. It takes time to build confidence, and we have to have public services on which we can co-operate to be able to drive that co-oprys in that partnership. That is helpful. Before I was elected, I managed a small museum on Islay. I think that trying to spread the love, I suppose, of objects that are held within Scotland in the national institutions is building that trust and confidence to work with local organisations so that an object that you might have that is appropriate to somebody who grew up on Islay would be wonderful to get that out. It is just understanding how you do that, but I think that it is right about the trust and confidence. From your perspective, we have been through clearly a really difficult time with Covid, but we have changed the way that some things are done. I am interested to know what you have learnt. You suggested that you had lots of good evidence examples of where social prescribing is preventative, so I wonder whether you could share a few of them with us, if possible. There are a lot that has been learnt. There are a lot of positives in a strange way from Covid, but in terms of the opportunity to pause and reflect, things had to close for a period of time, and it was looking at new ways to engage people. There has been a real drive towards digital, which was probably at the early stages for some of our members, certainly pre-Covid, but that has been expedited. We have seen huge numbers of people accessing library services as an example, a huge increase in appetite for libraries, looking at new ways to deliver classes, social isolation. We have seen online coffee mornings, so a lot of our members have looked at some of the social side, why do people want to attend some of the cultural events, and a lot of it is the social connection, as much as it is the actual cultural engagement, though it is how to make sure that people feel safe and connected through some of that. There has definitely been learning around some of the technology that can be used. I think that a lot of our members are using hybrid approaches at the moment, and some of that will stay going forward. It is equally understanding what does not really work as well. If we look at live performance, for example, a lot of the feedback has been that it is about the atmosphere of being in a place with other people and that joint sense of connection, watching something together, which with the best will of the world does not really translate to somebody watching something being streamed in their house on their own. It is in a strange way highlighted to the real mental health benefits that come through. From a public perception as well, people that work in the sector have absolutely understood a lot of the benefits around mental health while being social isolation, but in the public side, people are much more aware of their own mental health coming out of the pandemic, but also the role of culture in seeing the benefits that they actually get from going to a library, going to a museum, taking part in experiencing live performance, and understanding that it is not just a leisure activity but actually benefits their health as well. I think that that is important that we build on that. We do not lose sight of those wellbeing benefits while they are slightly more present perhaps in people's minds as we come out of the pandemic. I guess that there is a bit of an opportunity there. In terms of the social prescribing and wellbeing prevention side, there is a whole wealth of work that is going on across our members at the moment. There is some really interesting work taking place in Highland at the moment around social prescribing, working with Edinburgh University, around the cultural prescribing and looking to roll that out. We have got our member in Fife on Fife who delivers books on prescriptions, social prescribing, which is a really well evidenced programme. One of the challenges that we have on the cultural side, obviously we have physical activity referrals and things like that, which are perhaps more widespread, but on social prescribing it is the availability of venues and spaces for facilities to be open seven days a week for people to be able to access. A consistency of offer is perhaps more challenging than it is for somebody to take part in a physical activity where there are gyms that tend to be open in most places longer hours. If we look at referrals into art, for example, that is probably more dependent on where somebody lives as to whether there is that opportunity locally for them to access. There is definitely the evidence base that sits behind it and there is some great practice going on, but what we need is to be able to scale that much more across Scotland and see it as the prevention and put some kind of investment to make sure that people are not prejudiced by where they live in terms of what they can access. That is very helpful. Thank you, Kirsty. I was a concert at the weekend and it was notable to see people together and the smiles and the enjoyment that people were experiencing. If I may turn to Carol, I am interested to find out how audit Scotland value is. It is easy to audit numbers that my colleague Maurice Golden was talking about, but how do you audit value added in respect to wellbeing, the softer benefits, I suppose? We do, and we certainly try to do that. Through a number of ways, sometimes it is through our review reports, automatic reports and sometimes it is through our audits of individual bodies. I am more familiar with councils because that is my portfolio. What the council commission has said, in last year's last local government overview 2021, it was very much focused on the practice examples of what was happening in communities, but councils were working with communities in responding to the initial impact of the pandemic. The pivot towards digitalisation of services, there are lots of examples in that report. We are just preparing our report for 2022. One of the case studies that we highlight is library services and building on what the last witness was saying, we have seen such innovation in services across the board, but in libraries particularly, I mean obviously the footfall, it ceased, but some of their online offering and more innovative approaches to delivering services, click and collect and home delivery and digital storage, online book clubs, all of those are activities to support mental health and wellbeing in communities. The commission has said in its last local government overview, and we will be repeating the message in this one, that councils need to consolidate on all of the learning and the innovation that was developed through the community engagement and the start of the pandemic. The pace that we saw services, councils and community groups pivoting in order to provide services in a very different way very quickly was unprecedented. I do not think that we can underestimate how well those services did pivot to try and continue to deliver services in circumstances that we have never experienced before. We are definitely keen to ensure that that learning is consolidated. The way that we audit that is through case studies and through our, we hold to account, but we also are about supporting improvement. We do use case studies and examples about where councils or services and councils, where they have worked with partners, where they have worked with communities, community empowerment is a big interest of the Accounts Commission and also the Auditor General. We produced our principles for community empowerment last year, the year before. I am not sure quite what year it was, but that was very well received. We are looking at the way in which communities and partners in the third sector are involved in the design and delivery of council services, whether that be culture or otherwise, but there are some really good examples of where culture services have been pleat of foot and very much focused on mental health and wellbeing, and not to lose sight of that and not to lose all of those gains as we go back to a new normal. If I may finish with a question that returns to the issue of funding, obviously there has been a lot of interest in the cross-portfolio approach to funding cultural services with particular investment linked to health and wellbeing, and some examples have been given to the committee. For example, providing some level of core funding to cultural organisations from budgets outside the culture portfolio is one. Another is a project funding approach, which could allow organisations to build capacity for things like social prescribing, et cetera. Is that kind of innovative approach to funding something that you would support? I will start with Duncan Dawn, please. Yes, thank you for that question. It is. The potential to support health and wellbeing and to work with other services is enormous, but that is not something that we can respond to substantially within the existing cultural funding. That is not adequate to sustain our services. We can potentially expand and focus our services on cultural prescribing and on reaching integrities where our need is greatest, but that will require investment. As I said previously, that is some of the most difficult work that can be done. To look at a cross-portfolio funding model to support that kind of activity would be hugely helpful. If not that, then certainly project funding would look specifically at delivering that. If we continue to attempt to deliver from within cultural funding, which is essentially what we have been doing for a substantial period of time, the progress will be painfully slow. We will not have the population-level impact, which is really the thing that we want to try to get to. I think that Duncan has articulated it very well, but I think that one of the key points that I would add is the impact of cuts. A small cut to funding in culture actually has a disproportionate impact on what can be delivered. It is being very mindful of making sure that we are not continuing on a trajectory of cuts and reductions, as well as looking at innovative funding. I echo what the previous witnesses have said. From an Audit Scotland perspective, what we look at is what are your priorities and how do we see the funding streams change to meet those priorities? How does the Scottish Government match funding to outcomes? We try to track the money through. Where it comes from, which pot it comes from, is not really our concern. Our concern is to look at what I know chief, what are your priorities and can we see that funding is moving towards those priorities? The next panel that we have is the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Hamza Yousaf, and the Cabinet Secretary for Constitution and External Affairs and Culture, who are appearing in a joint panel. If you had to give them a message in a sentence, what would that message be? If I could start with Kirsty Cumming. My sentence is a challenge, but there are probably three points for me. One is to recognise and understand the value of culture and what it currently delivers in terms of health, well-being and wider benefits. The second one would be to look at the funding, look at long-term core funding for these services to enable future delivery. The third one is the flexibility to give time and space to understand the impacts of the past two years on public behaviour and the appetite for the ways in which people engage with culture and to allow organisations time and space to adapt and have flexibility at a local level to make sure that what they are delivering is targeted and appropriate for their communities. My message would be that the engagement with cultural services we know is usually the effect of improving health, wellbeing and economic outcomes. We need to find the courage to invest in developing that engagement to allow that to be manifest at population level. If we do that, we can have a much healthier, more prosperous country, which is not relying on clinical intervention and which will improve all our economic potential. That would be my statement promoting culture and the benefits of our services. Finally, I appreciate that you have come at this from a slightly different perspective. I am glad that you came to me last. That is a heck of a question, but it is a really good one. I think that I could probably be a 45-page report in time, but trying to capture that in a sentence, I guess it is more about funding certainty for a local government and appreciating the contribution that local government makes to health and wellbeing as well as other sectors and thinking about health in its broadest terms. Thank you very much. Apologies for putting all on the spot at the end there. That concludes our discussion with you as a panel. I thank Kirsty Cumming, Duncan Dornan and Carol Calder for all your contributions this morning. It was a very helpful session. We finished this panel a little bit early and the cabinet secretaries are not yet available, so I am going to move into a private session until 10.25, and then we will be back in a public session for our final panel this morning, but for now we move into private session. Welcome back everyone. Our next agenda item, agenda item 3, is a further and final panel on the Scottish Government's resource spending review. I am delighted to say that we are now joined in person by not one but two cabinet secretaries and by their officials who are online. I welcome from the Scottish Government Angus Robertson, cabinet secretary for the constitution external affairs and culture, and Humza Yousaf, cabinet secretary for health and social care. Online, the officials joining us are Penelope Cooper, director of culture, major events and Covid coordination, Erica Hawes, team leader, wellbeing and prevention unit and Rebecca Crook, finance, business partner, health and finance. I believe that both cabinet secretaries wish to make brief opening statements and can I ask you to be as concise as possible and can I start with Humza Yousaf, please? Thank you so much. Good morning to you and I hope that you and committee members are keeping safe and keeping well. I can be very brief. Let me thank the committee for their invitation to appear alongside my colleague Angus Robertson when considering our budgetary decisions. It is important that we set that in context in terms of the key priorities but also the key challenges that we are facing in the health and social care portfolio. I have just come from another committee of the Parliament and reiterated there that this week I think it would be fair to say in my conversations with health boards up and down the country is the most challenging week of the pandemic. If not the most, one of the most challenging, but certainly the feedback that we are getting is that it is extremely challenging. That has been the context of the past couple of years throughout the pandemic. However, as we look forward, we need to reform the NHS and social care. How we do that and recover is clearly set out in the recovery plan. NHS boards are facing a population that has faced the accumulative effects of the last two years and all the health implications that come with that. They are facing a population that thankfully is living longer, but that does mean that they have more complex needs. Maintaining current services while clearing that pandemic backlog and while we are dealing with levels of staff absence, those are all the accumulative challenges. We also need to develop the national care service, which will require significant investment. I do not say that in a way to say that the health and social care portfolio has the largest budget in government. I say that because we have to think bold, radically, transformative in terms of that recovery. I believe that culture and the arts can play a role in that. Just as we know that physical activity can increase our mood, can help with sleep, can reduce stress and anxiety, undertake cultural activities and the arts can undoubtedly have a range of benefits. For example, bringing people closer together helps with reducing isolation. There is a clear potential for grass roots community interventions such as the craft cafe in my constituency in Govan. I am keen to explore the benefits of broader health and wellbeing activities, including the role that culture can play as part of our work on social prescribing. I am sure that we will get into the detail of that in the committee. Our 2021-22 PFG programme for government made a commitment that, by 2026, every GP practice in the country will have access to mental health and wellbeing service, helping to grow community health resilience and directing social prescribing at a grass roots level. The committee will be aware that, in October last year, we launched the community's mental health and wellbeing fund for adults, which has now increased to £21 million. Although local third sector interface partners are still processing the awards, we certainly expect that grass roots cultural activities will contribute to community wellbeing and benefit from that fund. There is a range of examples, which, again, I will not go into the detail of how that is already happening. I will conclude on this point. My overarching focus must be on revitalising our NHS and social care as we recover from the pandemic. I certainly see the benefits that cultural activities can bring to people's physical and mental health, not as a bolt-on, but as a really important integral part of that recovery and transformation. We will certainly work together closely. We have already had a constructive meeting in this regard to see what more we can do to promote culture and the arts within our recovery and renewal of the NHS and social care. Thank you very much, Deputy convener. A pleasure is always to be back on, it seems, a weekly basis in front of the committee. I welcome the opportunity to discuss this morning the resource spending review for the Constitutional Affairs and Cultural portfolio. In particular, the important synergies between the cultural side of the portfolio and the health and social care portfolio. As the resource spending review proceeds, we want to hear about the experiences and views of the people who use public services and of those who help to deliver them. It is helpful to have the committee's views drawing also on the evidence that you have received. There is in addition, as you know, a public consultation that closes on 27 March. The review is clearly an opportunity to bring about a longer-term financial planning to March 2026 for the bodies funded directly by Government and organisations funded through those bodies. That is what the culture sector in particular has been seeking through evidence to your committee and its predecessor for some time. The committee is a champion for securing more resources for the portfolio at overseas. That is understandable for any subject committee. You will not be surprised to hear however that I and my cabinet colleagues will face some difficult choices to live within the total resources without borrowing powers at our disposal and the pressures on public services continue to grow. To finish on a more positive note, the review does give us the opportunity to be discussing joint approaches at a strategic level given the positive potential of culture to contribute to health and wealth being outcomes. We agreed how vital the contribution of culture is to our shared goals. Our culture strategy was published in February 2020 right before the start of the pandemic, which has disrupted its implementation. However, we still made significant progress. We have launched three new innovative programmes, the culture collective arts alive and creative communities. Together, those are working to empower communities to develop cultural activities to bring creative residences to education settings in areas of multiple deprivation and use cultural projects as a positive diversion away from crime. We also launched the national partnership for culture, which recently provided recommendations to ministers on the sector's recovery and renewal. The pandemic has shown us that the key message of the culture strategy is that culture and creativity are valuable in its own right, and everyone in Scotland has a right to a cultural life, no matter where they live, is more important than ever. Culture is at the heart of who we are and also underpins our economic, social and even environmental prosperity. Culture is therefore something that all parts of government have a stake in. On that basis, we have been working to develop closer cross-portfolio relationships, including with health and social care, and this is something that we will continue to prioritise. Thank you very much to both of you for those opening statements, and we move now to questions. If I can begin on that subject of cross-portfolio working, particularly when it comes to funding, many witnesses before this committee have suggested that if we are truly focused on outcomes, that opportunities to take a cross-portfolio approach when it comes to funding cultural services is a key. We just heard in the last panel session from the director of museums and galleries at Glasgow Live, who made quite a firm and powerful point that he could not rely on the culture spend alone to really power the cross-portfolio working in terms of health and wellbeing that he would like. Some examples have been given to us. For example, we have had examples of providing a level of core funding to cultural organisations from budgets outside the culture portfolio. We have also had examples of people preferring a project funding approach, which could allow organisations to do this cross-portfolio working. If we are to truly make this happen, then funding requires some kind of imaginative thinking. First of all, I will be really keen to look at that evidence and hear that evidence, and I will give it serious consideration as I will do this committee's evidence. It is right that we ensure that we take a cross-governmental approach to this work. Since I have been health secretary for the past 10 months, I have made it really clear to my officials and my colleagues across Government that we are not fortress health, that we are not going to have our arms around what is now going to be a £18 billion budget and just try to protect it for ourselves, because we absolutely understand the need to work across Government. That has been done previously, undoubtedly, but we want to expand on that. The work that the Deputy First Minister is doing and his role within Government that reaches and brings Cabinet colleagues together regularly—trust me, if he has a sniff of siloed working, he is quick to make sure that that is dealt with. We are working in a way more collaboratively, more cross-governmental, more cross-portfolio than any other time before, so that is a positive thing. On funding, we can already point to examples. As we go through this committee session, I can give you numerous examples of really good projects that are being funded by the health service and a lot of that by our mental health budget, to arts therapies, to community initiatives that are helping particularly young people with some of the effects of mental health. Where that requires budgets to be shared—that is a strange word, because we are one Scottish Government, but where that needs to be—where the might and muscle of the health budget can help with that. Of course, we have a really good report, as you know. The National Partnership for Cultures recommendations that I think was published just yesterday have a number of recommendations about funding and funding streams. Again, I give an absolute commitment to look at those recommendations with an open mind. My first reflection would be that this is very much work in progress. The illustration that you gave about different preferences for how one might seek synergies or different funding arrangements is a good example of the fact that it is something that people have very different views on. Trying to find the appropriate way in and through Government and through different parts of Government is part of the challenge that we are trying to pick our way through. I think that we are being very well advised at the moment. I made reference in my opening statement to a number of ways in which we are being advised to think about how we can mainstream, in my area in particular, culture and the arts in other parts of Government. Obviously, there is a particular focus today in the broader health area. The challenge for Government is to work out how we can remain flexible and adapt to the different potential ways in which culture and the arts can help to deliver in partnership with health. I am extremely open minded about how we do that. My Cabinet Secretary and I, Yusif, have already met to discuss on the basis of both of us being extremely open minded about how we can do that. There are some really, really good examples of things working already. I take heart from the fact that we are not trying to reinvent the wheel here. What we are trying to do is work out on the basis of a lot of the advice that there has been in recent years, particularly on health, mental health and wellbeing, on how we can deliver that across the piece. That is a challenge for us all. We are not at an end point, but we are at a stage where we are keen to hear people's priorities. I know that our civil service colleagues who are on the side of this hearing are extremely keen to learn from different stakeholders to make sure that we are remaining flexible, that we are thinking about the different ways that we can deliver on the basis of much that we are already doing, but where there is evidence of that which we should perhaps be thinking about in new ways, we are not set in old ways. We are keen to adopt best practice if we can. I keep on saying this at the committee, but it is a genuinely held view. I am keen to hear your advice on that issue as well, because we are in this sweet spot at the moment of a place where we are thinking about all of this. We are trying to find the mechanisms to make this work. The examples that you might give might come out through questioning, but it might come out through your report as well. It is something that we are very much looking forward to. If I could turn back to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport and pose a question that I posed to the Constitution a few months ago, which is this question. There are examples of good practice and you gave some examples of programmes that are existing in terms of work and culture. It strikes me that we really need a paradigm shift, particularly primary care, for example. How do we get GPs to prescribe a trip to a gallery or a museum or an arts event of some sort? How do we achieve that in terms of shifting mentality? We can all think of really good examples of that happening anecdotally, but it strikes me that we need a much greater system shift. I wonder if you have any views on that. I agree with you, because you are right. I could give you tens of examples of where it is being done well across the country, but whether we are doing that more systemically is the question. That sounds like a very perverse thing to say in the middle of a global pandemic, but there is an opportunity to fundamentally shift how we are doing that work. I think that it is our community link workers and the 1,000 mental health and wellbeing workers that we have committed to by 2026, so that every GP practice has access to them. I think that they are the key. I think that they already play an excellent role and have a really good relationship with our community link worker in my constituency. They are absolutely invaluable in terms of the connections out to various different community initiatives, cultural programs, art programs, art therapies and the trust that the GPs have in that community link worker. It is really heartwarming and evident for me to see. The two things that we have to do, one, is to invest in the community link workers, the mental health and wellbeing workers. Angus Robertson, I spoke about in a recent engagement was how do we ensure that this is a continual thread throughout our recovery process. I am very open minded to seeing how that can be the case, but I think that the paradigm shift really will come from those community link workers plus the additional mental wellbeing workers that we have committed to. The other bit of that equation is that it is one thing that people have the awareness that this is a good thing to do. Then is the question, where does one plug in to the arts and cultural offering? Are all arts and cultural organisations aware that they can play this part and should play this part? How do we then get that partnership up and working at scale in the way that you highlighted is the challenge, because there will always be early adopters, and the challenge then is how do we make sure that we can ensure that this is a provision that is offered across the country without geographical or social demographic variances? That again is something that is going to be a work in progress to make sure that we can match things up. You might imagine that in advance of a session like this, we are well advised about the state of play in our departmental settings. I was really heartened to look at and happy to go into some detail to share with the committee, because I think that it shows that things are happening. If we look, for example, at some of our national companies when looking at the cultural side of things, the programmes that they are already involved in should give us great heart that there is a lot of work that is on-going. The question that I would have, and I need to work with my cabinet secretary and colleague here, is so that we can be satisfied with the areas that we are responsible for, that the transmission mechanism is there. When, as Mr Yousaf outlined, the support workers are in place, the mental health professionals are there, and the GPs who would be pursuing the prescription of these opportunities, when all of that is in place, we make sure that we have that transmission mechanism for want of a better description about how that should work. That, again, is the work in progress that we are going to have to make sure that the cogs or the gears are working in harmony. Thank you. A quick final question, which is about the Christie commission, which, as you know, is 11 years old now. You spoke about, Mr Yousaf, the silo working and trying to avoid that, which was, of course, one of the central tenets of the Christie commission. Another main tenet of that commission was around preventing negative outcomes and preventing to spend, and that is something that you will be well aware of. I suppose that 10 years on from Christie, what are your thoughts on progress? We have made significant progress. I look at the health service and every conversation that I have with clinicians and every conversation that I have with health and social care workers is geared towards prevention. Again, our funding, although I appreciate that it can be difficult to necessarily see it within individual funding lines, is geared towards the preventative. It has to be. Given the scale of the challenge that we are now facing in our recovery, we have got to invest in preventative. I just came back from another committee where Brian Whittle MSP is, unsurprisingly, asking me about the role of sport and physical activity in the preventative space. It has to be a cross-government agenda. I work with the education secretary, for example, when it comes to how we educate particularly young people, not exclusively, but particularly young people, when it comes to their eating choices at a young age, and that is some work that is on-going. There is always going to be work to do in this, but the preventative agenda is for the most agenda when it comes to our recovery. I will try to be quick, but maybe this is an appropriate point to give some examples. You mentioned Christy and how long ago that made recommendations. I am struck when looking at the concrete examples that I gave a sneak preview of have been operating for some time. The question then is, how do we make those scalable? To give some concrete examples, the committee will be aware of Big Noise, as it is called, run by Systema Scotland, which is the high quality music education social change programme that works intensively with kids, with young people and families within specifically targeted communities. Benefits of that, and how those relate to the national performance framework, child focus wellbeing outcomes, increased resilience, happiness, sense of belonging, fulfilment, emotional wellbeing—this is a scalable programme. It is up and running. Do we recognise it for what it is? Yes, absolutely. Is there more that can be done with it? Yes, there is. Scottish Ballet danced for health programme across Scotland since 2013. That is not just the last few years that has been up and running for a while. It is considered a global leader in the field. Many referrals, particularly for those living with Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis, have already come from partner consultant neurologists at Ninewell's hospital, for example, and the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital. That has been going for some time. Is it scalable? Yes, it is. National Theatre for Scotland has just been running a two-year project addressing ageism, social isolation and transphobia, supporting recreational, artistic and social rights of the LGBT plus over 50s. Is that scalable? Yes, it is. National Museums for Scotland tailored programmes for people with dementia, offering social experience connected to collections and reminiscing. I could go on from the National Museums. There is more that they have been doing. There are theatre groups who have been doing this. The Scottish Book Trust has been doing it. There is a wide range of things that are up and running, have been running for some time, relating to the Christie commission recommendations. The challenge is how do we build on that really good work that is currently happening to make sure that as we scale up and have the wider awareness that the schemes are up and running, to make sure that they can then provide the capacity when the GPs that Deputy convener was alluding to are adopting social prescribing across the piece. That is going to be the challenge, the awareness that these schemes are there. Is it at scale enough to satisfy the demand as that becomes more mainstream in the approach that we are trying to get between health and social care and culture and the arts? Thank you for those answers. Can I now turn to colleagues' questions and start with Jenny Minto, please? Thank you, convener, cabinet secretary. I reflect very positively on what the cabinet secretary for culture has just said about systemic and big noise having been involved right at the start of that. I think that that is a really good example of different organisations pulling together to produce something that is so beneficial to those receiving it, but also those giving it as well. I am also looking at the Christie commission, the thing about duplication, making sure that we do not duplicate. I am interested just to hear, given that you were at the Covid committee earlier, what you think that both areas, both health and culture, can learn from the work that has got people through the pandemic? For example, I was in Oben and there was a fantastic piece of artwork and art exhibition that people had used to help them get through Covid, the isolation side of things, and how we can use that to get us into the recovery and through recovery as well. Have you got any thoughts on that, cabinet secretary? Thank you to Jenny Minto for a really important question. I think that there is a lot in that space. Our approach thus far to using culture and the arts is a really important social perseverance tool. At the moment, as I say, it has been largely through grant funding, local initiatives and it is working and working really well. Part of the learning—and it is part of the challenge that the deputy convener put to me—is, well, how do we do this in a more systemic way? That is where the conversations between Angus Roberts and I are really, really important. In terms of areas where I think we can get significant benefit, where the public can get significant benefit, for me is in the mental health space, particularly amongst young people, but not exclusively. We know the challenges that we are facing in relation to CAMHS and the backlog of CAMHS, and I will be the first to absolutely say that there were issues pre-pandemic and they have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Going back again to the points about Christy that you have raised and the deputy convener raised, we want to look at the preventative, we want to look at how we can stop people from getting to that crisis point. When we get to the crisis point, of course, CAMHS will be there to assist and to help, and we have got to clear that backlog. However, some of the work that we have funded, which goes back to Angus Roberts's point here, is that where we can scale up good initiatives, we should do that. The Government is, I think, again holding our hands up. We can sometimes suffer from pilotitis. We need to be able to make sure that we can scale up some of those good initiatives and do that within time. If the pandemic has taught me anything, there will not be a number of things, but one of the things that has taught me is that if there is a will to move quickly, we can move quickly. That might mean that we do not quite get a 100 per cent absolutely perfect first time going at it, but in the benefit of risk analysis, the benefit of going quickly and scaling up quickly can have real benefits. I definitely think that the mental health space is a lot there. I can talk to many other areas, but I'm a little conscious of time, so I think that a particular focus for us in this space will absolutely be on mental health, and particularly young people's mental health. If I may just add to that to share where the challenge for us all in this is, so we agree with the concept, we understand there's already good work that's going on, we know that amongst the organisation, say for example, in the culture space that are nationally known organisations that are doing things, that's one thing and that's a good thing, of course it is. The example that Jenny Minto has given is the classic challenge, I think, for how do we help firstly have an awareness of much that goes on out there in Scottish society that happens anyway? It's not necessarily funded by anybody, it could be voluntary, it can be third sector that are doing really, really good things, so how do we make sure that there is an awareness that that is happening, and how do we then make sure that those that are prescribing are also aware of that good work that's going on? I think we did discuss this in a previous evidence session, which was how can we match up those sort of examples with those who will be socially prescribing, and I don't think we're there yet in working out how we can capture that information and make sure that then those people who are in a position to socially prescribe, for example, participation in a scheme in Argyll can do that, because I think it's going to be much easier to kind of go in the culture space, kind of go, well, what's Scottish Bally doing, what is, what are other performing companies, what are our national museums, what is historic environment Scotland doing, I think that's one thing and that's going to be quite easy to identify because you know the memo will go out from culture central saying what's happening here, but how do we in the cultural part of Scottish Government and Creative Scotland and so on, and so on, how do we know what's happening in Argyll and so how do we work through that and that's something that we're going to have to make sure that we are capturing that, because I think, I mean I said this to the committee before, politicians don't do culture, nor should we, it's for people who do culture on the arts to have the support that they're needed, and you know they're in, yes, let a thousand flowers bloom, but we are trying to work out how can we incorporate all of that great practice that's going on out there and match that up with what we're trying to do in this example and with health and social care, so to answer Jenny Minto's question, I'm not sure I have the answer, I have ideas, I'm not sure there is an answer, but so long as we're asking the question, I think we've got a better chance of getting there. Thank you both, I've just jotted a few things down in collaboration and flexibility being two, and I was having a conversation at the weekend about bringing people in with a cultural background in to look at the way we do things or the way that we budget, and I think that's perhaps an interesting way to move forward as well, because people are coming in with perhaps a different perspective as to how things could work, and I'll just finish there, I think. I've dropped a wee pebble in and I'll have a wee think about it myself. We need to open things up because we certainly don't have time to do this, but there is also a question on what is culture in this context, because again we can go establish cultural and arts community and organisations, and then it's very observable what a local arts or cultural group might be doing in Argyll, as Jenny Minto has said, but there are so many other things that we know from the research has an impact, but it might not be viewed as capital C culture, if that makes sense. Sorry, I'm not wanting to open up a conceptual conversation, Deputy convener, but I'm really keen that we are able to capture that as well. For example, gardening, allotments, there are a whole series of things that wouldn't necessarily be thought of as being capital C culture, but do you clearly impact on people's wellbeing, and is part of a continuum of what might be offered and supported? I think that that is a huge conversation to have. It'll be a future evidence session, perhaps, Deputy convener. I'm normally well up for a big conceptual discussion like that, but I think that in the time available we will move on to Alasdair Allan. Thank you very much, convener. Mr Yousaf, you've talked about breaking down the barriers between silos, and I think that this is something that's come up in a committee before when we're talking about budgets and the relationship between health and culture. Of course, apart from the department that you run centrally, there are territorial health boards. Do those messages about working across those barriers, do they get through to health boards? What can you do to ensure that they are thinking about culture, and what is the culture of culture in health boards? Given the pressures that they're under, how do they accommodate some of those ideas? Yes. The deputy convener wanted to avoid a conceptual discussion, and then went to Dr Allan, of all people. I'll only say that. I say that tongue-in-cheek, of course I do. The question is a very pertinent one, so I meet regularly with the chief executives and chairs and public health directors, for example, of health boards, and of course, that includes Western Isles health board. The challenge isn't just—we will show the challenge—me communicating my expectations to the health board. There is a whole level of management below that, which is going to be crucial. That gets to your point about the culture against small sea culture within health boards. Those people who are on the ground again, senior management, expect to be really close to a ground level, and that may be easier in slightly smaller health boards. To do, I expect that in larger health boards, too, but it can be more challenging. It can be challenging on rural health boards and the scale of the size of NHS at Highland, for example. We really rely on every part of the management structure understanding what my direction is as Cabinet Secretary for Health in this regard. The challenge of being upfront about it has been that the vast majority of our conversations that I have had with health boards, as you can imagine, have been about the immediate pressures of the pandemic and our recovery from that. What I am really keen to do is, when we get into some more of the detail about that recovery, which we are absolutely doing, not to lose sight of that. It may well be worthwhile considering how I bring in the likes of the Cabinet Secretary into those conversations with chief executives and chairs of health boards. I am not just doing it for Angus Robertson, but for some of my other Cabinet Secretary colleagues, too. It is an important point raised by Dr Allan and one that we can make further progress on. There is a parallel point to this, of course, which is that it is not just health boards, it is where local authorities are, as part of the conversation, in terms of being joined up. There are some outstanding examples of local authorities and their arts officers, for example, who are already doing a lot of the work in the area that we are talking about. How is it that we are pulling together all of those best practices as we go forward with things? Now, we all know that different local authorities will have their own local priorities, and that is quite right and proper. For some of them, they will view the likes of arts officers as being a priority in other places that they do not. There is a conversation to be had, and I am very careful not to be steering and instructing local government colleagues on this front. However, if we are agreeing that it is a national priority—I count some of these local arts officers as personal friends of mine—I know exactly the value that they bring, and especially in the areas that we have been talking about. This goes back to my point about how we bring all of that together to make sure that we are delivering across the piece and across government. By bringing people at a local level, as well as national government, and local authorities on a national level through the Conventional Scottish Local Authorities, I think that it is definitely going to be one of the pieces that we are going to have to make sure that forms a jigsaw puzzle of getting us to where we want to get to in this area. Thank you, and my only other question again for Mr Robertson. Visitors to Scotland often comment on the effect and their wellbeing of being able to see Scotland's natural environment, historic buildings and so on. There must be a huge potential, when we have thought, for working between health and culture to utilise the resource that is, I suppose, simply Scotland itself. Of course, there are many people who either do not know that those opportunities are there for them or who know that they are there but who cannot afford to go and visit places around the country. Is there more that can be done to try and break down some of those barriers that might be caused by deprivation in some cases? Indeed. That is where this is not just an issue of social prescribing and so on. For example, mental health outcomes are worthy though that is and important though that is. In terms of the Government's priorities, it is also a huge opportunity to address other priorities such as dealing with social deprivation and so on. I think that there is much more that can be done with, as has been outlined, the natural heritage that we have, the natural environment and the built heritage that we have, and making sure that we have much more accessibility. That is something that I have been talking with colleagues in culture about. What is it that we can do to bridge that gap? I think that there are a number of imaginative ways in which we can do it. I think that there are some encouraging ways in which we can scale that up quite quickly. Dr Allan is asking the right question. We are still at a stage of working out how we can bridge that gap and how we can make that happen. That all needs to be seen within the context of the spending constraints that we are operating under. The Cabinet Secretary for Finance is sitting there virtually in my mind because we are having to be extremely thoughtful about what is it that we are able to do with those constraints in imaginative ways that might not cost money or where we can identify other funding streams to make that happen. For me, the key point is that it has to happen. How do we make it happen? That is very much where the discussion is. I say to the committee that if you have views on that, I am really keen to hear that. I think that there are ways of finding and marshalling resources that should make this possible and I am keen to make sure that it happens. Thank you. Just one observation on that, listening to that last exchange, it is plainly important not to forget about social care in this conversation. With the design of the national care service coming up, I hope—and I am sure that it is—that the cultural considerations and mainstreaming of that conversation is taking place as well in terms of social care. I can give you a brief reassurance in the conversation that the cabinet secretary and I had to discuss the national care service and discuss that very issue. Again, going back to my point, those matters should not be seen as a bolt-on, but much better to include consideration of culture, the arts and the benefit of that from a health and wellbeing perspective at the inception stage, as opposed to towards the end. The very last thing that I would say is that, on social care, Angus Robertson is absolutely right to reference that point about local authorities. Our integration authorities across the country are already doing that work, and many of them are doing it very well. The challenge for us is sometimes the inconsistency across the country, so that is where the national care service might be able to help with that. However, it goes to the very core of your original question around the preventative space, so to give you a reassurance that is absolutely being considered as part of the national care service. I am very pleased to hear that. Sorry, cabinet secretary. I think that this is one of the really exciting opportunities with all the work that is going on, thinking about the national care service, of this being a priority right at the inception. As things are being put in place, the thoughts are being made about how should this come together and how should this work, that the considerations that we are now looking at form part of that thinking right at the start. It is not something that one is then having to add on later, but it is right there at the beginning. I think that the timing is very opportune. Thank you. On one level, that is really heartening, because I think that the cabinet secretary is saying the kind of things that we would like to hear, but in a year's time, post-pandemic, what will you be able to show us that has changed? Cabinet secretary for health, as the convener said at the start, Christy commissioned 11 years on, we have not seen the transformative change. We can all quote brilliant projects locally, but they are facing massive post-pandemic pressure. This morning's evidence was our local authorities have had a decade of cuts and culture is not core funded. There is a real issue about 2026 for GP access, which is 15 years on from Christy. We both have said that preventative spending is not just good but really important in terms of pandemic recovery. What is the kick-start approach to actually deliver that on the ground? We will lobby the cabinet secretary for culture, feels like on a weekly basis. You have the big budget that potentially cuts right across our community, so what can happen in the health budget that is the transformative issue? It is not just link workers, but their support to work with those local projects on the ground so that they are still there in a year's time. I would say that we are not starting from base zero. It would be wrong to suggest that there has not been progress since Christy commissioned 11 years ago. I can give you numerous examples of how we have managed to make some inroads in relation to that preventative spend in terms of outcomes. We could give you examples of that. I am happy to provide the committee examples now or if you want them, for example. I am happy to provide them. The community link workers are an example of that. We have 200 community link workers in place based on or aligned to a GP practice or a GP cluster. We are not starting again from base zero, so we will talk about those 1,000 additional mental health and wellbeing workers that every GP practice will have access to. They are going to be building upon the good work of the 200 that we already have in place. The second thing is that the NHS recovery plan that we have is—for the period of this parliamentary term, I am saying now very clearly that we are going to embed social prescribing as part of that and as part of that, of course, culture and the arts will feature. Then it goes to national leadership. Again, it refers back to the question that Dr Allan asked me. If I am providing that leadership and we are collectively providing that leadership and our expectation of health boards' integration authorities, local authorities, about the importance of this agenda in our health and wellbeing and perhaps focusing on some key areas such as mental health and young people's mental health and providing the necessary funding in that respect, then we will continue to make transformative change in budgets. You are right to ask those questions about budgets. We often hear and know that saying very well. I will show me your budget and I will tell you your priorities—18 billion pounds, a record 18 billion pounds going in health and social care in the next financial year. Using the weight and the muscle of that budget for the outcomes that we have discussed is something that I am very keen to do. Just to clarify, I did not say that there had been no progress since Christy. I was basically—at the thing to look at, I think, from the cabinet sex perspective is the Auditor General for Scotland's blog. Christy's Clarion call Can't Wait Another Decade and the Interim Chair of the Accounts Commission published Christy. It really is now or never in October. Those kind of representations we are really trying to get centre stage here. For the cabinet secretary for culture, the evidence that we have had sends Scotland, creates Scotland, audits Scotland and COSLA, highlighting the massive pressures from the pandemic that the cabinet secretary will know about what we have talked about. Is that issue about what is the recovery strategy that is going to look like and what is going to change? I would particularly be interested in your views on the recommendations from the national partnership for culture and how you see funding coming, which could be from the culture budget, the health budget and the local government budget. What are those funding streams going to look like as a recovery plan, not just the short-term but the long-term multi-year funding that we have had calls for? First, on the recovery plan, the most important thing that we have discussed is getting from a Government perspective is getting Government to understand that culture is important across Government, the mainstream of thinking and approach across Government. This is an example, this is what we are talking about today. Point 1, we have identified this. Two, we are doing it, we are trying our best to work our way through it. The recommendations that Sarah Boyack is talking about have received them and are to be published shortly. We should be looking closely at what those recommendations are and we should be taking them seriously. I am happy to come back when we are at that stage. I go back to the original question, where will we be in a year's time? It is exactly the right question. I know where you all are going to be and I know where I am going to be because I am going to be sitting in this chair and you are going to be saying that we are now a year on from when you said we are starting to do this and that. We are not beginning from a position where progress has not been made since Christy it has been, but how do we scale it up? How do we make it delivered right across the country? That is the challenge. We will have to play our part in making sure that we are doing that. Given the constraints that Sarah Boyack has identified as well, I am optimistic. For one thing, because I think that there is consensus that this is what needs to happen, point one, I am not sure if you have heard any evidence that this is not the way we should be approaching things going forward. There is consensus, so how do we make that happen and happen consistently? I am optimistic that there will be considerable change and improvement and I am excited about playing a part in making that happen, because it will be transformational for people and we just need to make sure that we are doing it so that it reaches as many people as possible. I think that that is a welcome commitment and you are booked for a year from now. I am going to be back here, but I am not waiting a year. At the moment I am coming here every week to convener, so I would be massively disappointed if you are only having me back in a year's time. The test is not just the culture and creative budgets, but it is that right across the public sector. That is the question from the Scottish Government in terms of cross-government working. What are the budget issues in terms of going back to the Cabinet Secretary for Health? The preventative spend benefits are that you save money but you have to start the expenditure to get the infrastructure in. It is just a plea to go back to the very opening comment that you meant about 2026gp access, because the evidence that we have had in social prescribing is that it could be a very critical way to help people not just to get through the pandemic but to recover from the pandemic and that cuts across culture but clearly mental health and wellbeing for young people, older people and low incomes. We have evidence today that it is not reaching the low-income communities in the way that we want, so that is how you make that transformative change now. Probably a little for me to add other than to agree with Sarah Boyack. The point that I would make is that we talk about a year from now, although I am, hopefully, very confident that we will be out of the immediate grip of the pandemic a year from now. We are making progress in the absolutely right direction this week and the last couple of weeks have felt extremely difficult, but we will get through this wave as we have done other waves. The challenge of the NHS recovery is going to take years—I do not think that there is any Government across the UK that would suggest otherwise. The second point to make is how people access their health service that may well also change. GP access is a good example. We want to restore where we can, as much as we possibly can, face-to-face access to GPs, but we know that that will be part of a hybrid model—telephone, video consultation, face-to-face. We have got to make sure that our digital infrastructure—I know that this is a particular issue in the NHS—a digital infrastructure keeps up with that. If we are going to do that through digital, we have got to take the points on that Sarah Boyack mentions, which is digital exclusion. We know that inequality exists more so in areas of deprivation. If I was to think about the pandemic and I will finish at this point, there is no way that anybody can truthfully say that we were all in this together. There are people in communities that have been harder hit by the pandemic and those in ideas of deprivation. We will look at the excess death figures—for example, 2.5 times more likely—to have died for Covid. We cannot say that we were in this all together. Any work that we do to build up on culture and the arts as being part of mental health and wellbeing and physical health and wellbeing solutions to the future has to be on an equitable basis. That may well mean that this is something that those who are involved in the deep end project, who we might be known to the committee, say to me very often that we have got to make sure that we continue to direct the resources into those communities that need them the most. Thank you, deputy convener. Perhaps we might start with the cabinet secretary for health. Clearly, within the health portfolio there are lots of metrics and targets. How or what is your assessment of how the NHS boards and even down-to-GP practices can better report activities within the context of culture? Thank you for what is a really good question. It is not too dissimilar to the question that I just had at the Covid-19 committee. That was based on evidence that they took from GPs and staff-side representative organisations that represent GPs. The message coming very clearly was that we need to improve our data from primary care. There is just no getting away from that. I have said this from day one in my job. There is something about the fact that we have a particular independent contractor model, which is different to the model that we have within our NHS acute services. Therefore, we have to work within those IT systems to be able to extract data far better than we are doing at the moment. There is a project under way, some funding under way to assist with that project, which is going to help us to extract far greater data than we currently have. The good thing is that, in the initial extraction of that data, I think that it was close to 95 per cent of GPs' practices that participated in that initial extract of the data, which has come to me. We are now getting it quality assured and so on and so forth. Once that is done, we will absolutely publish that data, but it is going to be key. It is absolutely right. If you were to try to extract data on social prescribing, for example, it would be patchy. Therefore, it has to be improved. Thanks for that. In a similar vein, how can we better get data from local authorities on their cultural activities, pretending to health, more generally? That is an area that Jenny Gilruth, before she recently took up responsibilities for transport, was in dialogue with local authorities about. I know that her successor, Neil Gray, is now very focused, as we might all imagine, and we wish him well in supporting the refugees from Ukraine. It is definitely a dialogue that needs to continue so that we better understand where things are with local authority partners. I think that it is an area that we can be doing more working in partnership with local authority colleagues and I am very keen that we do. Thanks for that and a supplementary to the cabinet secretary for culture. We have heard this morning about a kind of financial squeeze within the culture and leisure sector whereby costs are going up and funding is being reduced. That could have an impact on developing additional services in the context of health. I was also wondering in terms of another cross-departmental Government working of achieving net zero and the impact of the cultural sector, particularly when we think of museums, the assessment of cost, which, from the evidence that we have heard, no one has looked at yet, and what support the Scottish Government could give to provide that assessment of cost, of retrofitting, of energy efficiency to the cultural sector? Not just museums and galleries, but you could add to that the very significant housing stock, but you know what I am trying to say in relation to Historic Environment Scotland in terms of the built environment that we have. Similarly, there is a dimension to that which feeds very much into the net zero side of things. We are very conscious of that and it is something that we need to understand better and we are engaged in making sure that we do that. It is the right question and we need to get the answers for both of those reasons, both for the net zero side of things but then also for the cultural resource, if one wants to call it that, or opportunity that we can have going back to the earlier discussion about the partnership working between national companies, culture on a nationally funded level but then also at a local authority level. At the heart, if I do not want to put words in Maurice Golden's mouth, but I think that we are talking about just trying to unlock as much of the resource allocation which is already there. Again, it is not about reinventing the wheel, it is just about how do we get everything to work as well as we possibly can and identify if there are gaps somewhere and the only way that we will know if there are gaps and so if we are getting that data back, so whether that is from the health side of things but then also from the culture side of things and that is definitely a takeaway from me to work out what is the quality of that information and happy to come back or just for Maurice Golden's benefit but if committee colleagues are interested in finding it more happy to share that with colleagues as well. Thank you very much. My final observation is one of priorities and it is directed to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport. You spoke about some of the most challenging weeks that you have had in the pandemic over the past month or so. We all know about the recovery longer term and the need whether it will be waiting lists, waiting times or whatever. You can understand that cultural cross-portfolio working will not be high on the priority list for a health board or in government more generally. I suppose that it is a plea that does not withstand all the understandable pressures that the health service is under to maintain culture and the importance of it and the mainstreaming that we have spoken about. Thank you for putting the plea on the record. If I can give you some assurance that I am not going to treat anybody around this table like a fool at all, we are under significant pressure and there are a huge number of priorities. However, the pandemic and the recovery from that pandemic are at the top of it, but I do not see what we are discussing as being separate to that. The challenge will be, and this goes to Dr Allan's point, how do we embed that within the recovery and that is where there is a piece of work that we are admitting has got to be done here on the recovery. If we can embed it in first principles as part of that recovery, as part of the national care service, then it will be far easier moving forward. I do not see them as a separate and nice to do, a bolt-on. We already have some good practice, particularly in the mental health space, how to build on that and make it part of our recovery moving forward. Thank you both very much and your officials for your time this morning. It has been a very fruitful session and in the spirit of the cross-portfolio working that we have all been discussing. Thank you very much indeed and can I hereby close the meeting.