 Good morning, and a very warm welcome to the third meeting of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. Last week, as a result of Mr Harvie's new ministerial role, he has stepped down from the committee. I would like to thank Mr Harvie for his contribution during his time, albeit brief, but his place has now been taken by Mark Russell, who we welcomed to the committee this morning. We look forward to working with you and I would like to invite you to declare any relevant interest. Thanks very much, convener. I am looking forward to the work ahead and nothing to declare. Thank you very much. Agenda item 1 is decision-taking on business and private, and members are invited to decide to consider the work programme in private following today's public meeting. Agenda item 2 is BBC annual report and accounts agenda item. We will be taking evidence from Steve Carson, director of the BBC Scotland, Lee Tavazia, chief operating officer at the BBC and the BBC's annual report and accounts agenda. I welcome you both to the meeting this morning, and I invite you to make Mr Carson a brief opening statement. Thank you and good morning, convener and members of the committee. It's a pleasure to return to give evidence at the Scottish Parliament to this new committee with culture within its remit. I'm sorry that, once again, we're speaking via video rather than meeting in person, but I'm pleased that joining me today also from Pacific Key in Glasgow is the BBC's group chief operating officer, Lee Tavazia. The period covered by the annual report and accounts saw the BBC as a public broadcaster find itself at the heart of a global pandemic, not just in terms of how we served audiences in Scotland, but how we also continued to operate, sure that our teams were safe in delivering critical public services at an unprecedented time. Like other industries in Scotland, the broadcasting sector has continued to adapt and change at speed. In BBC Scotland, we produced daily educational content on TV while schools were closed, we increased our news coverage, elevised religious services while places of worship were shut, and we commissioned lockdown-specific content from the sector, including working in partnership with the National Theatre of Scotland, Screen Scotland. The on-going shadow of Covid impacted greatly in broadcast production in the year covered by the accounts. Many productions planned for filming last year have only recently restarted Swashbuckle, a major children's series, at the stock production in March 2020, and I am delighted to say that it is now back in the studio. Two series of Shetland are now shooting back-to-back this year to make up for delays last year. The impact of not being able to film regular and planned content for a number of months is clearly seen in the accounts, with the drop in network spend per the level of set for us as a target for Scotland. We expect that to be a one-off impact in the year of Covid with spend returning to meet or exceed its target in the current year and beyond. That snapshot of what was paused from March 2020 onwards in a way serves to illustrate the momentum that has been building for the screen industry in Scotland in recent years. Since launch, the BBC Scotland channel has established itself as the largest digital channel in Scotland ahead of many household names. It has just been nominated as channel of the year at this year's broadcast digital awards. BBC Scotland content has picked up several significant industry awards over the past year. These nominations and awards are a reminder of the important role that the BBC plays in building and growing the screen sector here. In 2017, we appeared at this Parliament to give details of the biggest single investment in broadcast content in 20 years, a move that has created the channel, increased investment in news and current affairs and uplifts in network TV programming. This year, or across the UK strategy, commits the BBC to spending an additional £700 million both on screen and radio outside London. We know that we have a role to play here, and our partnership with Screen Scotland has been instrumental in growing the creative sector. Partnership is also at the heart of our Gaelic services, too, and we are delighted that alongside MG Alibah, we will soon be launching SpeakGaelic, a multi-platform language learning course with programming across BBC Alibah, Radio and Angale and other services. I would say that, despite finally the profound challenges of the past months, it is once again a moment of hope for the sector as we start to emerge from the pandemic. Lee and I look forward to discussing the annual report on points and associated matters throughout this morning's session. Thank you very much, Mr Carson. If I could maybe, just before we move to questions from the committee, and if they could please, if they are able to direct the questions either to Mr Carson or to Ms Tavazzaeva, that would be very helpful. If I could just ask a general question, you rightly mentioned the launch of the new channel, and I wondered if you could comment just on some of the—whether you feel that it's met its initial objectives that were set for that. If we go back to April 2018 of Com, had rates concerns, particularly about perhaps a lack of new programmes and the removing the potential for opportunities for independent producers, and I know that that was raised. If you reflect on that objective and the other objectives of the channel, how successful do you think that that's been? I think that not just our view but the view of the wider creative sector was that the channel has been a success. In audience performance terms, as I mentioned at the opening remarks, it's from a standing start to years ago established itself as the largest digital channel in Scotland, well ahead of other household names that have been established for a considerable time. The Scotland channel, in the year shown in the accounts, grew its reach at the amount of people tuning in every week to 21 per cent. That's more than more than one in five Scots watching the Scotland channel every week. The average time spent for those viewers was one and a half hours a week. To put it in context, the digital channels, typically a success of digital channel would be doing about 1 per cent share of viewing, many household names, again less than that. The Scotland channel, BBC Scotland channel, has achieved 2.5 per cent share of viewing. The terrestrial channels, BBC One and three, channel five, the top five, are often considered the excess of digital channels. Our reach is not far behind. On regular evenings, in fact, you'll find that the BBC Scotland channel has had more viewers across the evening than channel five, channel four or even BBC Two. In terms of the creative sector, the investment channel meant that we've worked with more than 80 production companies, many of them are new to the industry as well. We've also worked to bring in other investment with other parts of the BBC, with Queen Scotland and others who did a really big and important part of the sector here. In terms of the industry response, I think possibly the clearest example that I could give you was that at the Royal Television Society Scotland Awards last year, a special jury prize was awarded to the BBC Scotland channel. The Royal Television Society Scotland is obviously made up of members of the industry here in Scotland. Thank you. I'm going to move to questions from the committee. I'm going to bring in Dr Allen, please. Thank you very much and thank you for joining us. I'm not sure I think that my question might be for Ms Tavisiva or perhaps Steve Carson as well. It's really just to get your views about this issue, that there's a long running question that there's always been about the spend that there is in Scotland. To say, really, I think that we'll all welcome the fact that there is more spend on big network productions that involve Scotland, but just to tease out, are those two slightly different things that we're talking about here? There's the part Scotland plays in big network-wide productions and the discretion that the BBC in Scotland has to actually spend its money on the things that it thinks are important to it rather than to be brought into something else. I just wonder if you could tease out those differences and say where we're going with the latter, by the latter and the local spend. Thank you, Dr Allen, for your question and thank you for having me today. I think that I absolutely focus more broadly on the group and you're right about the choices and the decisions that we make around where we spend and invest the licence fee payers' money on the productions and TV that we make and radio that audience members listen to as well. We have a very clear strategy at the group that we announced earlier this year, absolutely continue to shift more money and power and decision making outside of London across the UK, into our nations and across the UK English regions as well. That's critically important. We'll be moving £700 million for the digital spend outside of London over the next five years and that will include an economic benefit to the UK of approximately £850 million. We are shifting to a TV and video programme making to 60 per cent made outside of London and video and audio as well up to 50 per cent. So, these are significant changes. We're also moving people across the UK. We continue to support having the majority of our employees in the public service working outside of London. We'll continue to work towards that as well, including ensuring that the money that we spend is well invested and thoughtfully invested. I'm sure that Steve would like to comment more specifically on Scotland and some of the choices that we're making there as well. Yes, thank you. As you pointed out, the BBC overall spend in Scotland is a mixture of what we call network spend on our network channels and patients and services. Spend, which is directly controlled by BBC Scotland, which we use to provide our own services. Special programming, including news obviously, on BBC One Scotland. Scotland Channel are contributions to iPlayer and our digital services, Radio Scotland and Radio Nangail and in partnership with MG Alibah, the BBC Alibah channel. What has been a part of the strategy that Scotland has been at the lead-in is increasing the amount of co-commissioning between different parts of the BBC, potentially with other nations like Wales and Northern Ireland or with those network services. We've seen, as a matter of strategy, and it will be a very important part of delivering across the UK strategy a sharp uptick in co-commissions between our cells and network services. To give you some examples, for example, Gilt, the BBC Scotland channel's launch drama, was co-produced with funding from in Scotland, and also BBC Two. I'm delighted that Gilt series two, which was also delayed by Covid, is to return to our screens this autumn. That's a co-commission co-production, murder case, murder trial and some other big premium factual titles. It enables us to use the resources that we have, tap into other investment to create things of scale and impact for audiences in Scotland. Of course, to my player, audiences in other nations in the UK can access that programming too. Thank you very much. You mentioned some of the economic benefit there to dispersal work. I suppose that I'm interested in the last point that you're making there about the cultural benefit of this. For instance, one of the long-running questions that has always been about broadcasting in Scotland is about what can be done to commission more drama in Scotland. I do seem to remember a rumour when BBC Scotland, the new channel, was established that we were going to get a dramatisation of Sir Walter Scott's Waverly. I live in hope of that. I wonder what you can say about new writing and also a focus on drama. Everyone looks back to things like Tooty Frooty as great examples of both new writing and drama. Is the BBC in Scotland having a discretion to produce something like that now? As I mentioned in the opening remarks, I think that a momentum is building and has built in the creative sector in Scotland over the past number of years. In terms of our ability to support new writing and drama, I very much see BBC Scotland in partnership with others as part of a series of pipelines to nurture and bring through talent. We have our own discreet digital spaces and channels. We have, for example, in short comedy development, short stuff on Facebook. We have the social, which is targeted at bringing in new talent on young people. We are also then, through pan-BBC initiatives, like the writer's room, able to support development of new drama, scripted comedy and scripted writing. To give you one current example, we have on iPlayer co-funded with Green Scotland a short series called Float, which came again from an initiative through the BBC's writer room. I think that Steph Smith, the writer, is her first broadcast base. We very much see ourselves as the ability to try new things, to experiment, to bring things through our digital services on to something like the BBC Scotland channel, which is a very strong arena to experiment and innovate. Through the rest of the pipeline, through co-commissioning to network services and beyond Scotland and beyond the UK. The drama slit coming through, again partly entered by Covid, you can see a mentioned built series 2 now coming back. We can see an error this week, visual network drama, currently shooting in Scotland as control room and other drama coming through. The comedy slit, I'm delighted to see this week on Monday, BBC One Scotland Scots, which again came out of an initiative we ran last year to pilot new sitcoms and we went to the series with the Scots, which again was delayed but is now in on air. If you look forward six months you will have seen the work done really over the past three years and developing that pipeline coming through now. I take your point about the Waverly and we'll look at that. Thank you very much. The Scotland channel is very much focused on modern Scotland but there is room on BBC Scotland to cover our whole range of it. I want to ask some questions since probably of yourself, Mr Carson, I'm not entirely sure, more digging into the value for money in relation to the BBC Scotland channel. Firstly, you say that it's the largest but what are you using to define the largest? We have two main metrics when we're looking at performance of services. Share, which is the share of audience watching on broadcast hours, I could get it across a year. So BBC Scotland's share of viewing is now 2.5 per cent. As I mentioned to you, other digital channels, I can probably talk about BBC portfolio channels, so BBC News, BBC Four, would have shared 1 per cent or so, so other channels with the BBC would have shared between 1 per cent and 2 per cent. 2.5 per cent makes us, by audience, share the biggest channel in Scotland in year to date. The other thing we measure then is reach, so the amount of people tuning in via service or listening in across a week or a month, and the annual report in the country shows that our reach for the BBC Scotland channel is just one of our services. We have BBC One Scotland, we have other services, BBC Olive as well, just within TV and iPlayer. That's 21 per cent, so by reach and share it is the largest digital channel in Scotland. The reach figure then is look at channel 5. We're not delighted to discuss other channels' performance, but that reach figure is close to a terrestrial, which is very unusual for a digital channel. Okay, thanks. You said 2.5, but in terms of actual viewers, what is that in the number? Sorry. It could depend on the programme at hand, so we can get audiences of 100,000 plus on the channel and we can get smaller audiences, and that's partly what it's designed for. When we look at audience value, we're not necessarily always talking about, as a publicly funded broadcaster, mass audiences. You can have smaller audiences that highly value the content, and we find that on channel content and on our other services, such as BBC Alba as well. Bear in mind, of course, that the channel viewing figures are only one part of the consumption. The channel also has its own dedicated space on BBC iPlayer, and what we've seen since launch in 2019 is that the request of view of BBC Scotland's commission content on iPlayer has more than doubled. The year that we're looking at here is 70 million requests of view of that content on iPlayer, significantly in Scotland, but also in other nations of the UK as well. Okay, 70 million, but that's not 70 million people. That could be the same number. A small number of people accessing malters. I'm trying to get down to— Well, it would be 70 million, but it would be a significant amount of people. I don't think it's one person watching 70 million. No, no, of course not. We're being a bit ridiculous now, but I'm just trying to get a sense of good value for money and what is the cost per viewer of that 34 million pounds that we're investing in that digital platform, that's all. Well, of course, if you look at the overall investment that the BBC makes in Scotland, that's part of it. I think it's important, as I was talking about, to serving audiences, but also growing the sector that we have a dedicated service on TV and iPlayer for Scotland. It's a complementary service to the rest of the BBC portfolio, including, you know, I mentioned the Scots this week, that's premier around BBC One Scotland. We have very important news programmes reporting Scotland on BBC One Scotland. It's part of the overall mix, but, you know, I have to say, in the industry view, would be that, from launch, to get to where the channel would establish itself as the largest digital service in Scotland has been a real achievement. For the creative sector in Scotland, I mean, the investment announced was a challenge. Could the creative sector in Scotland rise to making a whole host, a significant volume of new programming, a whole host of genres from comedy drama to documentary? And I think that challenge has been made a real tribute to the sector in Scotland. So you're saying that your digital viewing is at 2.5 per cent, and it is higher than other digital channels, but what's your ambition? What are you trying to go out and achieve over the next three, five and maybe 10 years? I think that the ambition is creative. We want to help establish and grow the sector in Scotland to make great programmes for audiences in Scotland, and then through iPlayer distribution and co-commissions with network services across the UK. We're public broadcasters, we're here to serve audiences. The way to do that is to work with our own teams and people in Scotland and elsewhere, the wider creative sector working, as I say, with more than 80 suppliers now to make great content. You want to make sure that enough people are watching it, but, as I say, some programmes might not have high audiences, but if they're very highly valued, that's also important. We're going to move to questions from Ms Boyack, Ms Boyack's joining the committee remotely this morning. Thank you very much, convener. I'm going to ask two questions, one of each, witness, if that's possible. The first one is just to follow up on the issue of commissioning programmes in Scotland. You've talked a bit about rebooting coming through the pandemic. Can you give us the numbers on different types of new projects, drama, comedy and factual content? Can you give us a sense of how you are retaining and increasing employment opportunities not just for actors but for all the staff involved in making new content? Yes, I'll take that one first. So, as I said, production for a number of planned pieces was paused last year. We're now seeing that there was a requirement for scripted productions, comedy and drama that we needed in insurance under writing position. It's allowed that to happen. That's now gone through, so we're seeing the return of production in those sectors. Specifically during the pandemic hit, BBC Scotland and the rest of the BBC had a number of measures to support the wider creative sector and the craft skills that you cite. The small indie fund, which is operated by the BBC, admitted more than doubled, and 18 Scottish indies were supported through that. Directly through Scotland commissioning, we put a number of Covid-specific productions up and running to serve audiences. Again, it is the remaining in the sort of factual and entertainment area. One of them, Susan Cowman's self-isolation, was to get checks to writers or to performers specifically on that. There were a number of sector supports from Screen Scotland. They put a freelance bursary stream in very early, but essentially the best support that we can give is to help work with people to get productions back safely. Again, I would pay tribute to our own teams in Scotland, BBC Scotland and other independent producers for working out ways to get productions back safely. One example that I give you is Scotland's Home of the Year, a very successful title that came through the BBC Scotland channel, made by IWC. It managed to work out production protocols, so that could be made last year. I would pay tribute to everyone working through ways to do it safely. More broadly, we support the BBC's writers' room, we have our own talent development initiatives, as I have mentioned. Again, iPlayer is a chance to try things out, and BBC Scotland channel is a chance to try things out that could grow further. Is there scope for increasing that over the years to come in terms of new productions in Scotland? The direction of travel, the BBC strategy is clear. Across the UK, we will move more decision making and more spend content outside London. You can see the direction of travel that we are accepting in Scotland over a number of years. The co-commissioning initiative is across Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We are looking at £25 million, where the business is co-commissioned. As I said, the BBC Scotland has been trialling how to do that, which brings more investment from other parts of the BBC into Scotland to create that content. It would be useful to get a sense of actual job numbers afterwards, if you could write to us. I will ask a different question to Mr Aversever about what you are doing in addressing the challenges between different types of broadcasting, particularly the important role of public sector broadcasting, given that private online streaming services have rocketed during the pandemic and what consideration you are giving to the accessibility and different ways of accessing BBC products. Young people, older people, in terms of costs of accessing through connectivity and broadband, what has been done on that at the UK BBC level? Of course, the BBC is absolutely clear on its public responsibilities for universality and that we can bring a range of our services across watching, listening and, of course, our news programmes to all audiences across the UK. That is critically important to us. I will come back again to across the UK and focus on portrayal. Not only do we move money and power in decision making outside of London, but how we portray the communities across the UK, local communities and the BBC as a large public service forecaster in the UK has an ability to do that that none of the global media organisations can do. We have colleagues across the UK, across the UK Kingdom in local communities telling local stories and we need to do more of that, more representation of that across all of our programming and across our storytelling as well. That is what makes the BBC unique. It can be distinctive and different and tell these local stories and that is absolutely in line with our strategy. What we fundamentally believe our audiences want is that they want from us. As a public service broadcaster, we are putting audiences at the heart of everything that we do and really understanding those needs. We therefore need to drive the decision making and the choices that we make and where we therefore invest our money to be able to deliver on those needs. What impact has it made in terms of the shift, in terms of your future role, with people opting out and going on to online streaming, for example, that is private sector companies? How is that impacting on the BBC going forward? It is hugely important in terms of accessibility. I have particularly mentioned younger people's different viewing habits and older people as well, not to get into the detail of the licence fee, but those are important issues in terms of cost and accessibility. I will use two examples, particularly focusing on our younger audiences, 16 to 34 years old. We have seen, over the last years, if we are comparing the year before to the year of 2021, despite the pandemic, we have absolutely seen a shift in our younger audiences moving from linear television into our digital channels. The growth in iPlayer for those younger audiences is more than offset the loss to some of our linear TV-watching for those younger audiences. Your point is right about accessibility. We have a digital divide in the UK. We have audiences who are not able to access those streaming services in the way that many others can. A good example of our strategy to focus on that is taking BBC Three back into the linear channel. We recognise the huge success and popularity of BBC Three. We moved it very early on into an online channel. We also feel strongly that taking it back on to linear television enables those who are not able to access the streaming and download requirements on broadband on their mobiles or on any device that they are watching. Bringing that back on to linear television is an important example of how we are addressing that digital divide and ensuring that we can continue to deliver universally across the UK for all our audiences. I think that access to digital connections is absolutely crucial for people on low incomes and for older people who do not have the access to that. It is important that that it is prioritised. I want to make a voluntary declaration that I worked for BBC Scotland leaving 11 years ago. Steve, you commented on the reduction on spend in BBC Scotland on production last year, due to Covid. I understand, if I have read the figures correctly, that the actual hours still hit the target. I am interested to know what the mix of commissioning means, that there were cheaper programmes that were commissioned from Scotland. You also noted in your report that the BBC has committed, and you have said that you are committed to exceed network spend targets in future years. I am interested if you can give us an indication of what the programming types are and what the timescales are for that. You have both mentioned on a number of occasions the plan to move commissioners out perhaps of the London metropolitan area. I would like to know the timescale for that, if possible. I will take your middle piece first. The projections that we are making this year will meet or exceed the network spend target for Scotland. We cannot be completely certain, because we cannot be certain about what is going to happen with undemic that we are still experiencing. The commitment is to meet the target that we believe we will meet or exceed this year. If you look at the years pre-Covid, you can see an increase coming through there. In terms of commissioning power, that has been actively worked through across the UK strategy, BBC content, which is the network as you know, network TV and now radio division, we are in close conversations with them about increasing the amount of network commissioners that we already have in Scotland. We have a number. The co-commissioning piece that I talked about is a way of increasing commissioning decision-making without adding extra posts. We have a team of very talented commissioners in Scotland. The co-commissioning is making creative decisions that will impact on our own services and across the BBC. In terms of the drop in what we call BBC Scotland spend last year, Covid played a very significant part in that. There were also some savings, which across the BBC were made as well, but Covid was the key factor there. I think that you are right that you have noted that, despite that, the number of hours that we delivered actually increased slightly. As you said, there were some genres that we could not maintain in production. The Scots, the comedy for example, would have been one of them. That just was not possible to film last year, but I am delighted to say that it is back now. What we did then, and I pay tribute to the production teams involved, is to expand a whole range of other services. For example, things that we had not done before in religion, we, as mosques, churches and temples, closed. We just did quickly identified, and I think that the great thing is that we have done quickly. That is a spiritual need, so we put reflections from the key on really quickly. We for the first time just live broadcast the service on the BBC Scotland channel, and then in terms of education, and this was back to the digital divide. The school shot in Scotland, as you know very quickly, within a week, we were on air with the Bite Size Scotland on TV, addressing that need, knowing that not every child in Scotland has access to a laptop or broadband, so media wire, linear TV is part of that. We then, of course, had expanded news provisions, briefings, et cetera. If you look at the figures in the annual report, you will see some genres like drama, comedy, entertainment, music and arts, the numbers have gone down, purely Covid driven, but other genres were expanded. I think that we learned some useful lessons for the future there. I think that the religion that I put, there was a very strong public demand for that, and I think that complements what we do on radio Scotland, and, of course, no religious programming. Just as an anecdote, I have friends, and actually my mother was very appreciative of the religious output that the channel provided during lockdown. I'm interested, you touched on a bit about what you learned through the pandemic as well, perhaps in production ways, the quicker commissioning, so I'd be interested in a bit more expansion with regard to that. Also, the BBC Alaba channel started about 10 or 12 years ago, and it's longer than that, I think. You've mentioned them a number of times in co-productions. I'm interested to look at the different ways that BBC Alaba commissions. They commission PASCAN agreements or bundles of programmes from producers, followed by talk-up commissioning rounds. That allows an element of economies of scale for both the broadcaster and the programme producers, and allows them to plan their output. You could argue that it reduces risk on both the producer and the broadcaster. I'd be interested to know your thoughts on that model, perhaps for the BBC Scotland channel, but perhaps even wider across BBC Scotland. You're right to point out that BBC Alaba channel has been an extraordinary achievement led by our partners in the NGL and our own BBC Scotland team by Margaret Mary Murray. You're right, they have a slightly different commissioning model and they tend to do larger output deals with a smaller number of companies. That's a very important part of developing what was a small galaxy speaking creative sector at that time. We work—obviously, BBC Alba is a service within a portfolio done in partnership. One of the things that we've done over the past number of years in BBC Scotland is really to integrate our services and radio, TV, online and social. There are very close connections in a way that I don't think was there before between BBC Alba as a service and our other services. We've seen through co-commissioning and co-productions significant increases in places that can run on either or service. For example, this weekend in the transmit festival that was traditionally through our English-language services, that's not also appearing on BBC Alba for Galaxy speakers, too. We've increased I think by more than 50 per cent children's production on BBC Alba, increased news provision at the weekends there, I think, 25 hours a year. I think it is a mixed ecology. I think output deals do have their place and, as you said, provide sort of underpinning for some parts of the sector. I think through our other services it is good to work with the plurality of suppliers. We've talked about 80 suppliers that we work with. You know, you want the best ideas for the audiences first and foremost. I think that we've managed to find a model with partners like Screen Scotland who have been incredibly successful in the Agency for Scotland since began a few years ago. Do you think that we found a model that people are working well with bringing a significant amount of co-production funding? You know, since the year of channel launch, I think that we looked at some figures recently, but £10 million of licence fair, pay or BBC Scotland investment has leveraged £14 million of investment from other sources. So £10 million from BBC Scotland creates a £24 million pot for content. That's been a very successful model, I think. May I just ask one quick final question? I'm just shifting to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and I'm interested to know if the performances have been impacted at all by the inability perhaps to get performers over from Europe. I appreciate clearly with Covid situation that there won't be many live performances, but if there's been any impact or what you're doing for the future to perhaps alleviate any issues there. I'm glad that you pointed that out. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra obviously wasn't able to perform for audiences over the worst of the lockdowns, but I'm delighted to say that they're back now performing. I was just looking at some requests this week. There have been requests to bring people in to do that. Obviously, they work very carefully through the protocols on that, so it's proved more complex during Covid, but we've actually found ways to work within Scottish Government regulations to do that. The SSO are now performing again, had a very successful run at the proms, and I think later on this month as well. It's such an important part of what the BBC is here for in Scotland, and they again find ways to keep performing remotely through the worst of the lockdowns, but I know that they're all delighted to be back having an audience. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. I've got a question about the future and public service broadcasting in general. Ofcom produced a report this year that said that public service broadcasting faces considerable challenges and threats, and that's been exacerbated by Covid, in particular around rapidly changing consumption patterns, rapidly changing markets, and competition, especially internationally. They made several recommendations to the UK Government around modernisation. I'd be interested to hear from a BBC Scotland perspective. Do you agree with Ofcom's diagnosis, and what observations do you have to make on the cure, as it were? I'll lead from a BBC Scotland perspective, but I'm sure that we'll be able to get the overall picture as well. Ofcom quite rightly pointed out—it would be evident—that competition for what we call screen time is everything from gaming to people watching subscription video on demand, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime. That's only going one way. There's going to be more and more competition. The way to address that, frankly, is to make really good programming on all services that appeal to audiences, and all audiences. I think that one of the key things about being licensed to be funded is a near universal fee. It means that you have to provide something for everyone. However, in the BBC model, all audiences have equal value. Commercial broadcasters—subscription broadcasters—can't say that, frankly. Some audiences are more commercially valuable than others. I think that the BBC's licensee from the remit means that we then really look hard at serving our point of view all audiences in Scotland. Despite the competition in the market, I think that Ofcom's also pointed out that traditional broadcasting is still a very important part of the market. BBC iPlayer, if you look at Streamer's Netflix, Amazon, BBC iPlayer is a very successful large Scottish and UK streaming service. That's really its future, I think, will be increasingly protected by technical rights issues. However, if you recall, we used to, under the rights agreement, delete iPlayer content after 30 days. We can now keep it up for a year longer. That's already made a huge contribution to iPlayer viewing. The linear TV round is still very important. The media nations report that Ofcom did for Scotland showed—it was published in August—that people in Scotland watch 3 hours and 39 minutes of broadcast TV every day, and young audiences also consume BBC content in large numbers, including in Scotland. Our reach for texting to 34s across the BBC is still 80 per cent per week. There is more competition in the market. The licence fee model of funding does promote universal audio and make us think hard all the time about all audiences. I have worked for semi-commercial broadcasters in the past, and, to be frank, some audiences were more commercially valuable. One of the wonderful things about working for the BBC is that we believe that all audiences have equal value. I think that it had a relay, I think. Just to add a group perspective to Steve's excellent comments, we absolutely recognise the challenging competitive environment that the BBC now finds itself in, competing against global media organisations that have much deeper pockets, far more money to invest than we have, and are considerably doing so. I think that the BBC's strategy and our strategic priorities are absolutely clearly set with that in mind, reforming the BBC to enable us to tackle and optimise ourselves against that challenging environment. We have set clear guidelines around impartiality. That makes us different, and it stands out. It is what you would expect from a large public service broadcaster in the UK investing in great content, particularly that is distinctive and tells the local stories across the United Kingdom. Building our digital services, Steve talked about iPlayer there doing incredibly well in its own right against these large technology media corporations. Building our commercial business in that competitive environment returns money back into the public service. We welcome some of the discussions that the UK Government is entering into with regard to prominence and how we ensure that public service forecasters across the UK retain prominence. That is really important when we have licensing payers paying for the licence fee and paying for the services that they are able to access them. We also welcome the conversations on a level playing field. When we look at how to compete, public service broadcasters against these competitors globally in the UK have a level playing field and we are able to compete successfully with them as well. Thank you. Can I bring in Mr Ruskell, please? Yes, thanks. I am going to wrap up a couple of points that have been made. Just on that last one, the off-com review suggests more of a spread of public service media across different providers. I am just wondering what that does to your relationship with them because it has certainly been a bit frosty, hasn't it, with some of the online providers, the relationship with the BBC and others? Does that kind of spread of public service media across different providers improve or provide a challenge to the relationships that you have with them? Do you see it as still partnership or more competition going forward? Competition in any market is incredibly important and important across the public service broadcasting ecology. We value that we have a range of public service broadcasters in the UK. That has been essential to some of the work that has driven the creative sector and the growth in the creative sector, particularly working with independent production companies across the UK. Steve has spoken about the relationships that BBC Scotland has with over 80 independent production suppliers in the UK. We welcome that. What we need to do is understand our priorities as a public service broadcaster in that environment and ensure that we are really focused on what our audiences want from us and what makes us distinctive and the role that we play in providing universal services to all audiences. I would just come in to echo that. From a Scottish creative sector point of view, I firmly believe that the more people investing money in content creation, the better. Better for audiences, better for the sector that we are all building together. It is brilliant that Amazon, for example, are now shooting drama in Scotland. The streamers themselves would say that they value the public service broadcasting ecology in Scotland and the UK, so that they cannot do what they want to do without that broader public service media infrastructure that is already there. One part of that ecology, as you call it, perhaps is the Kelvin Hall facility, the Kelvin Hall studio. I am interested to know where you see that, what contribution you see that capacity bringing going forward and how that enhances the ability of the entire sector to produce content from Scotland. Certainly, going back five or more years, there was a problem with broadcasting infrastructure in Scotland and the inability to bring in productions because of lack, for example, of studio space for prescriptive productions. The Kelvin Hall development, as you know, is an initiative that is funded by the Glasgow City Council, between Scotland and others. It is developing over the next year. Part of the BBC, the commercial studio production arm, the BBC studio works in very advanced discussions with the owners of the Kelvin Hall development to become the operators of that. Again, the intention of the BBC is to grow the creative sector in Scotland as a whole if we can facilitate through our commercial arm adding more studio infrastructure and encouraging more productions to come in. I think that that is a good thing. However, the Kelvin Hall development has been developed with the BBC and, broadly speaking, new studio infrastructure that we have seen in the past three years has attracted additional content and additional demand into the sector. That is very much factored into your strategic thinking going forward, Kelvin Hall. It is the Kelvin Hall development from Glasgow City Council and others, but the BBC is very clear across the UK strategy to move content creation to Scotland and other parts of other nations of the UK, places outside London. That is part of what has attracted the BBC studio works through the commercial production arm of the BBC to engage in very close discussions now with the Kelvin Hall developers. Finally, if we can come back on the BBC Scotland digital channel as well, the metrics that you talked about this morning, the percentage, 2.5 per cent viewing share, that obviously compares very well with other digital channels. Is that now a bit of a comfort zone that you are doing pretty well compared to other digital channels, so that is all great? Or what the long-term aspirations are for that channel? If it is about substantial growth, as I hope it might be, what triggers that? Is it a big drama? I am thinking of S4C having a major hit with keeping faith. It went on to BBC and originating S4C. Is it that type of a trigger that can get more people watching BBC Scotland, or is it something else? Is it a big news event such as NDRF2? What drives that, or is it about slow, continual, moderate growth in that particular part? I would not underestimate the challenge that was given to Scotland and the wider creative sector in 2017, which is that we want to expand hugely to a very significant volume of hours, around 900 original hours of programming a year. That is going from a sort of a boutique content creation system we had before, where we are making a limited amount of hours that were inserted into BBC One and BBC Two into standing up to some channel. The very fact that the channel, we have seen other channel launches in the past few years that have not gone quite so well, the very fact that the channel was able to stand up, operate successfully and attract, as I say, significant audiences. If you look at some of those terrestrial channels, their audience shares might be between 5 and 6 per cent, to be 2.5 per cent, is genuinely a very strong performance in industry terms. You are absolutely right. Nothing succeeds like success. Having a number of high-profile big hits has been important. The factual genre in South Central Station has been a big hit. Scotland's home of the years has been a big hit. As I point out, the debut drama comedy on the Scotland channel has been an enormous creative success that has attracted a significant audience on BBC Two, and iPlayer has come back. The ambition, really, is to make sure that we keep on helping creative people in Scotland, backing their ideas, providing pipelines so that we are not just starting off with a network TV commission. We are able to identify eyes and ears on the ground all over Scotland. We can identify new talent, be different initiative schemes and services. We can start to help them to work through. As I say, if the channel was a standalone service in itself, I think that you could argue that it is viewed in Scotland and that is very important. Because it is available through iPlayer, which is the distribution platform of the future, that means that many people in Scotland can watch it, but many people in the other nations of the UK can watch it as well. However, the overall ambition is to get as many people watching as possible, or to get small groups of people who have very highly valued content, and then, through a very talented commissioning team led by Louise Thornton, to back talented people to make good programmes. What does the success look like going forward, then? Is it maintaining 2.5 per cent? We have already exceeded the reasonable loftcom projections. We had one projection, which would be for a channel that was bigger budgets. I would like to see as many people watch channel content as possible, either on the linear service or on iPlayer content. Again, as I mentioned before, when you look at our iPlayer performance, it is more than doubled. BBC Scotland's commission title is more than doubled since channel launch. I grew again strongly last year as well. It needs to have a certain scale and size to stand up as a service, which it does, but equally, as you say, it is about generating stuff that really has high impact and means a lot to people. If you look at awards that have been picked up over the past number of years, the book has digital awards last year. BBC Scotland's title is one best drama, best documentary, and those are the big competitive categories. Again, a question for either or both of you. You mentioned earlier on quite rightly how there are certain things that a public service broadcaster can do that, for example, Netflix canter doesn't in terms of providing a variety of programmes. How much pressure the BBC is feeling in different age groups when it comes to that competition with platforms such as Netflix? What things look like in competition among younger age groups? Also related to that, I suppose, how Scotland compares with other parts of the UK in terms of people essentially opting out of the BBC altogether? I'll maybe start in Scotland and they can give the overall BBC picture. As Lee said, competition in any market is good. Creative competition is really good. It keeps everyone on their toes. I think that we've seen a rise in production values in Scottish and British broadcasting over the past decade. To your point, it's not just young audiences who are accessing subscription, video and demand in large numbers. You can see that middle cohort 35 to 54 increasingly adopting the same patterns. And yet and yet, 16 to 34s still turn to the BBC and BBC Scotland in very significant numbers. I think that the time spent in the ARA is still seven and a half hours a week for 16 to 34 year olds. That's a lower number than over 55s. Scotland, briefly, we have a distinctive story to tell as well. We have unique services that are consumed by young people such as social, short stuff and other things that I've mentioned. The channel itself—and it is slightly wonky, if you forgive me—has a very significant 16 to 34-year-old age profile. It's got a unique reach. Unique reach are people who consume that service, but no other BBC TV service has a unique reach of 1.7 per cent of 16 to 34s. That's 1.7 per cent of 16 to 34-year-olds in Scotland watch the BBC Scotland channel and no other BBC TV service, so we're bringing people into the BBC portfolio. There are challenges to young audiences that have been there since I started in broadcasting 30 years ago. Yet and yet, we fight hard at this, but we do remain reaching relevance with young audiences. They can give the overall picture perhaps. Yes, thank you, Steve. Of course, we care passionately about our audience's reach, and we need to remember that digital services provide some challenge to that. Of course, we need to remember that 90 per cent of adult news BBC services on average every week on a 15 per cent of 16 to 34-year-olds. If you look at that over a month, you're getting much higher with regards to that. We remain the most used media organisation in the UK, and through the pandemic, we were able to further demonstrate the core essential of our mission, which is to inform, educate and entertain. Our ability to maintain that broadcast resilience at a time when we were seeing unprecedented closures in the economy was absolutely essential, but for us to be able to continue to inform our lockdown learning for the children who were no longer at school and our ability to continue to entertain, I'm sure that many of us will remember the great entertainment that we received from Strictly Come Dancing at the end of last year, too. Those things were important to the public, were important to audiences, but we are not complacent at all with regard to the challenges of the global media organisations and the digital environment. As I've already explained, our strategy, we believe, is the right one. We have a clear plan, and if we follow through on that, which we absolutely intend to do, it should put the BBC in a brilliant place for its future going forward. Just a very quick question leading on from what Steve was talking about, about the audience age range target for the BBC Scotland channel. I'm just interested generally how BBC Scotland is progressing with regard towards its diversity targets, both in front of and behind of the mic or the camera, and also the other big news story that the BBC was hit with with regards to equal pay? Yes, so in terms of equal pay, the BBC as a whole, I think, was over a number of years out of it with hundreds of cases, but we're now dying into low single figures. It's difficult to talk about that in any more detail without running the risk of identifying individuals, but the overall gender pay gap, which is not the same as equal pay, has been reduced to 5.1 per cent. There shouldn't be any pay gap, but compared to the wider industry, that is a lower figure. Diversity is incredibly important. Going back to looking at everything through the audience lens, and I think that many of us here can identify with that, you can't properly serve audiences if audiences don't see or hear people who live near them, look like them, sound like them on screen. Crucially, the people making the programmes, and this has been a key thing, the people making the programmes also need to follow that. Probably many of us grew up at a time when there wasn't many people from, in my case, Northern Ireland or Scotland being represented as often as possible outside our local services. The BBC has announced the 50-2012 initiative. The BBC Scotland is working through that, modelling very carefully how we get more people from Black Asian minority ethnic background, more people from disabled, working with disability background, and making sure that our gender splits are 50-50. We're starting from some position strength in some of those categories. It is a challenge, but it's an important one now. The people making the programmes, people who work correctly with the BBC, affect the audience as a whole. That's a very targeted programme of working with our head of HR, Jyoti Singh, over the next three years, and all our hiring managers to make sure that we achieve those targets. I could finish with a final question on the back of Ms Minto. In the BBC strategy, it says that it's one of the issues to reflect, represent and serve the diverse communities of all the United Kingdom's nations and regions, and in doing so support the creative economy across the United Kingdom. The creative economy is very important in Scotland, and as we move towards a wellbeing economy as well, culture is going to be at the heart of that moving forward. I just want to ask about BBC Radio Scotland, which did see some big change in the approach to some of the lunchtime programmes, removing popular segments, such as the paper review, and changing the make-up of that. Particularly the phone-in programmes, and I appreciate that as a personal observation. Quite often, people that are ordering members of the public that are part of that are the same people over and over again, not a very diverse group of people. Also, the opportunities for new programming—I think that Dr Allan was talking about things like Tutti Frutti—many of the BBC drama productions, screen productions, came from radio in the past. It's just to say that there are going to be opportunities for new talent, for new music talent being showcased, and for new drama and new opportunities for people on BBC Radio Scotland. Yes. I think that, just to note that you're right, we made several significant changes to schedules and then we trained individual programmes in breakfast, lunchtime and drive time early last year, just before lockdown. I think that creatively and from the audience's response we can see, including streaming, digital streaming, I think that that's been important in those services. All new services have been so vital during Covid, including our online services. We have a 37 million repressed-a-view or Covid page on Covid in Scotland. Unfortunately, we actually can't measure our normal radio figures because during lockdown, the RAJR measurement tool, which involves face-to-face contact, has stopped. Delighted, it started back again. I'll take away your comment on our phone-ins about the contributors. I'll discuss that with the production team. Radio drama has been traditionally a very good place to develop new drama. We've a very successful radio drama team here in BBC Scotland making a lot of network radio drama, and they've recently won a very significant podcast award. There are other pipe-mines to develop. For example, if you look at iPlayer, the series Float, I mentioned, that's a new pipe-mine to develop TV drama that wasn't obviously there a few years ago. That's through BBC Writers' Room and in partnership with Screen Scotland. Music is an incredibly important part of a radio portfolio. We've got BBC introducing for new music through. The way we're organised is that we have a multi-platform production team. If you look at a digital strand—a music strand—like loop or tune, arts and music, they exist for younger audiences in the social digital space. We also then can put that in TV terms on the BBC Scotland channel. I think that arts and culture are incredibly important to all audiences in Scotland, as we know that it's not just a wealthier audience. There's fantastic innovation in Scottish music and in the arts, and we've got a range of services that cover that, but we're always looking at that and seeing what we can do to make sure that we are identifying and nurturing on and at all levels. I'm going to suspend for five minutes while witnesses are swapped over. Welcome back. Our next agenda item is pre-budget scrutiny of the culture sector funding. As part of its pre-budget scrutiny work, the committee is currently looking at the continuing impact of Covid-19 on the culture sector and its longer-term future. This morning, the committee will hear from Paul McManus, the negotiations officer for Scotland at Vector, Barry Dallman, acting regional organiser for Scotland at Northern Ireland regional at the Musicians Union, and I welcome you both to the meeting this morning. I also thank you and the others who have provided written evidence for today's session. Given the time constraints, we're going to move straight to questions this morning, and I'll just let you know that Ms Boyack is appearing remotely this morning. I can remind members if they direct a question, if they could direct it to a particular witness, that would be helpful. I'm going to move straight to questions from Mr Cameron. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. My question is about emergency funding that has been distributed to the culture sector over the last year or so. For example, a month ago, £17 million was distributed through Creative Scotland. My question is to both of you. Is it reaching your members, either directly or indirectly? In some respects, it is indeed reaching the members. Sadly, in a lot of respects, it is not. There are still a great many freelances, people working various types of arrangements in the live event sector and the theatre sector who desperately need support and who haven't got it. There have been some issues between where people fall in terms of event Scotland, creative Scotland, screen Scotland, which has led to a significant number of gaps for people who are more based around theatres. No, very often they have, and employers are relying essentially on the furlough scheme. And a number of organisations have used emergency funding to future proof their box offices rather than in support and staff. Yes, I would agree broadly with what Paul said. The particularly hardship funding for creative freelancers provided through Creative Scotland during the pandemic has been an essential lifeline for some of them, but there are many of our members who have not been eligible for various reasons to do with the nature of their portfolio careers or the way that they operate. I would agree that some of the emergency funding that has gone to institutions has not necessarily been used in all cases to support workers. Again, particularly freelancers have been disproportionately affected because they were not eligible for the furlough scheme. The funding that has been made available and where members have received it has been absolutely essential for them. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who have been excluded from the way that things have been implemented, particularly from the Westminster Government, but also just because of the way that they operate and the rules around access to funding. Is there a tension between funding that goes to organisations and theatres or whatever it might be and not going to individuals? Is that a difficulty that funding might go directly to a small local organisation but will not reach individuals or is that not right? In my opinion, there is more to do with the criteria around what the funding could be used for and the way in which that is monitored or managed. There was a clear intent to try and support freelancers by the Scottish Government. We saw organisations like the Lyceum engage immediately in old-scale redundancies, but they then started hiring freelance designers and directors more than they have ever used in the past. On the face of it, they were saying that they were supporting the freelance community and they said that they would never have used that many freelancers in the first place. Staff lost their jobs and some freelancers gained more work out of it. We do not feel that the monitoring of the way in which the money was used was as robust as perhaps it should have been. Having said that, there are clear examples where theatres absolutely 110 per cent supported their staff for zero-hours contracts and freelancers all the way through. It was really left down to the ambitions and intentions of the organisations themselves as to whether or not they used the money, in our view, to the benefit of the workers and the staff or whether they did it. I agree that it varies from organisation to organisation. It is obviously very difficult when trying to move at speed and get money out there when we know that it is needed but also having the ability to properly dictate what should be done with that money and the way in which it should be used. I think that my members are probably slightly different from Paul's in that Paul probably has slightly more employed members than I would. My members who are employed are mainly would be things like orchestral musicians and perhaps teachers in some respects. Generally, the orchestras in Scotland have looked after the musicians very well, I would say. The majority of them have really tried to take care of their employees and in some cases have gone beyond what they were legally obliged to do even when implementing the furlough scheme. The problem for those organisations has been whether they work regularly with freelancers. A safe, for example, a symfony orchestra would supplement its core players as needed, depending on the nature of production, bringing in extra players where a bigger orchestra is required or using freelancers to cover absences from the core player team. That has just not happened at all during the pandemic, so those freelancers are not getting the work that they needed. Obviously, the funding that is given to the orchestra—some orchestras have given some support to freelancers, but the money that is given to them is not there to support freelancers, so they are obviously going to look after their primary responsibility, which is the orchestra and their employees. My member's situation is slightly different, but I would agree with the premise of your question that there is some tension sometimes between funding that is given to organisations and how that translates through to the workforce, but the key point that Paul made is that it is on an organisation by organisation basis, and it is quite hard to make generalisations about that, because it has been very different across the country. It's very much, Presiding Officer. It's good to see you both with us today. Can I follow up those initial points about people losing their jobs over the last year? Obviously, when live performances just had to stop entirely, have we got any sense of how many people we've actually lost from the arts and culture sector? There have been press articles about freelancers not getting support and basically having to go and get other employment. I would actually say that there is a significant problem in terms of the app as it is with freelancers. In terms of the freelancers, it is fairly straightforward. There is no work for any of them, and they were all scrambling about trying to access the various support that is available. The bigger issue now facing the arts and culture sector is encouraging staff to come back. The Prehouse Theatre was kind of to do a show on the Sunday. It was plenty staff shot if that performance had gone ahead. I spoke to a deputy chief theatre technician yesterday who said, when the furloughs group ends, Paul, I'm not going back. I make more money driving for justice than I ever made working in the theatre, so when I get my weekends off, I'm not going back. That story had been repeated down the time. Theatre and Coil across Scotland was said to be one of the advertising to open a brand new theatre. There are thousands of people being lost in the industry. Both freelancers and staff are the great many freelancers who have moved into film and TV, moved into other industries. As I said, to the level of the number of conversations that I've had with people who are much happier driving for a family than a justice now, and they love the theatre, but they don't want to go back to the kind of little pay-long-known culture. Probably the biggest digital channel facing the cultural industries just now is the loss of staff. I agree with that. It's very difficult to put a number on how many people have left the profession. We actually don't know and we won't know for some time because things still aren't operating as normal, if you like. I can tell you that when we did an impact study of our own members—this is UK-wide, the 32,000 members that we represented back in September 2020—a third of musicians, so around 34 per cent, were considering leaving the industry completely because of the financial hardship that they'd suffered. Seventy per cent of musicians were unable to undertake more than a quarter of their usual work in 2020, and nearly half of them, around 47 per cent, had been forced to seek work outside of the industry. That was back in September 2020, and then obviously we had a subsequent lockdown in January, so that will only have exacerbated the situation. From my member's point of view, we haven't seen too many redundancies. Fortunately, many of the orchestras are funded publicly, so they've been able to access the Government support schemes to keep people in employment. We haven't seen too many redundancies in the music industry, but what we have seen is the complete decimation of freelance work. It's not clear how many of those people are going to be able to return, how many of them have hung on, and how many of them, if they do, will come back in the same capacity that they did before, or whether they're going to be part-time in the industry. It's going to take some time before we see the skills drain really impact on the cultural landscape, because this could be anything from people who provide instrumental lessons for children in schools. It could be quality freelance orchestral players, meaning that the symphony orchestras and opera orchestras in the country can't get the quality of players that they need. The knock-on effect is just unknown at the moment, but it is real, and we're going to experience it in years to come. It's just very hard to quantify at the moment. Thank you very much, convener. I suppose that that takes us to the short-term crisis that you both speak about very eloquently. In terms of our thoughts about going into this year's budget, there are issues about venues, which you've both mentioned, but the issue about having performers hang all the staff that put performances on, admit culture counts and the nighttime industry association, and they're all very focused on what we do next. I'm just wondering about what your thoughts are. The issue about school tuition is local authority funding. Are there issues about how employment is structured going forward so that we attract people to stay in the industry or to come into the industry? What about the percent for art debate? It's 0.2 per cent, though one of our briefings is currently spent on culture by the Scottish Government, so do we need to change how money is spent and invest more? I'd be interested in both of your views on that. I think that there needs to be a fundamental rethink of how the culture is supported. There have been a great many meetings with civil servants over the past week, based on recent announcements. Universally across the live events and across the cultural sector, the staff shortages at all levels have been pretty much at the top of the agenda, whether it's front of house staff, whether it's stewards, whether it's technical staff, whether it's freelancers. There needs to be a fundamental rethink of how these industries are supported. I think that we would like to see longer-term funding. I think that we would like to see a significantly greater percentage spent on culture. In the live arts, the theatres are very much at the bottom of the food chain. People are working on the minimum wage for long hours, zero-hour contracts and even the permanent employees at the bottom of the food chain. A great many of them have seen the rapid expansion of film and TV and taken their skills into film and TV, where they can work significantly less hours and earn two or three times the amount of money that they are earning in theatre. My events are facing a slightly different challenge because a lot of the problems that are now coming on them are driven by Brexit, but I won't sidetrack into that discussion just now. I think that what we need to see and what we would like to see is that the Scottish Government is becoming much more focused on how it supports organisations. We are trying to give everybody a wee bit to help them by and really sit down and support training and reskilling initiatives in a strategic way. At the end of the day, we have the little bit of the likes of the fair work first principles and help to drive wages and conditions up to acceptable levels—never mind high standards. If they don't do that, there's going to be a constant struggle. More focus, more longer-term support, is what's needed now and significantly more support. Again, it's hard to disagree with anything Paul said. There are two priorities. The first has to be to retain the people that we need in the industry going forward. One of the key things that I wish to stress is that although there are certain things that are happening again now, events are happening, live performances are happening, theatres are reopening and so on, it's going to be a long time before freelancers can build up the portfolio of work to allow themselves to be financially sustainable in the way that they were before the pandemic. Let's not kid ourselves, many of them were not making huge amounts of money then, they were barely scraping by. We cannot take the view if we want to support this sector that now that things are opening and people can work again, that's all fine and it's back to normal, because it's not. If we don't provide immediate short-term financial support, particularly for freelancers, we're going to see continued hardship, we're going to see continually people leaving the sector and the skills train that we talked about before. In terms of how we approach things in the longer term, firstly, a commitment to approaching things in a long-term manner would be helpful. Part of the problem at the moment with the sector in general is the siloing of different activities because they're assigned to different budget holders, money is coming from different places. For example, what we might choose to do in music education is often not tied in with what we would do in terms of cultural events or music tourism. A more integrated approach between all the different funding bodies or budget holders, based on what we want the industry or the cultural sector in Scotland to look like in 10, 20 years' time, a more holistic big picture view would be helpful so that all the individual parts can work together to deliver that. In terms of funding, whether we're talking about local authority funding for things like the Youth Music Initiative, funded through Creative Scotland, which provides music provision for primary schools or funding to orchestras and theatres, those kind of things are done very much on an annual basis. It makes it very difficult for organisations to plan ahead. What you find is that even where people are potentially employed, they're only on short-term contracts because the organisations can't guarantee the position next year because their funding is only for 12 months and then they have to go through the re-application process again. The Youth Music Initiative mentions a good example. There are some of those programmes that they're running through local authorities, but for 20 years, every year they have to go through the re-application process. That creates uncertainty and short-term thinking in the way things are done. Longer-term planning, with guaranteed funding over a longer period, would allow publicly funded organisations to be more resourceful and to make more of the money because they can plan farther ahead and not be constantly worrying about whether they're going to have the money to do whatever it is that they want to do next year. The other key thing that we need to do, and that will certainly require a commitment to more spending, is to ensure that work principles go into the heart of the cultural landscape. I've been involved in some meetings recently with officials talking about how we implement fair work. The one thing that I think is quite clear is that, if we want this in Scotland, we have got absolutely no chance of persuading commercial organisations that they have to adopt fair work principles if it's not being done in organisations that are funded publicly. One of the things that we need to do is ensure that where public money is being spent and where people are engaged through publicly funded organisations or schemes, that they are being paid fairly, that the conditions are as they should be, that they have job security and all the other principles of fair work. In order to do that, that's going to require increased resources. We talked earlier about when money is distributed to organisations and what happens to it from there. Part of the problem at the moment is that unorganisations such as Creative Scotland do not have the resources or the remit or the instruction to go on and follow up and ensure that the money is spent in ways that it was purported to be. There are no checks and balances against organisations that might secure public money under one application and then choose to do something slightly different with it or they're not paying the workers what they said they would. A more holistic view with longer term funding, with fair work at the heart of it and a government commitment to put the money in to ensure that that's possible is probably what we need, as well as a more integrated communication between the bodies that are responsible for funding the cultural landscape. I suppose that in terms of longer term planning, obviously for certain types of culture where you've got performances moving around the country, those venues are already thinking about not just this year but the next two years. That point is very well made about the public sector needing to think about longer term funding, whether it's three or five years as well. I think that's something for the committee to reflect on. Thanks, convener. I was looking through the submissions today and you've mentioned that the UK music industry, specific Mr Dallman, is suggesting that it could be a three-year recovery cycle. If you've been listening to the news, which I'm sure you are, that you'll know later today that the Government in Scotland is likely to vote for vaccine certification to be introduced. I'm wondering how that might impact on the recovery for your sector and what will be needed to either compensate, financially support, implement, manage those passports for access to venues and for live events. Thank you. Yes, it does seem that that's likely to happen in Scotland. The Musicians Union, in principle, isn't against additional measures at festivals and events and concerts. One of the big concerns that we have with vaccination certification is that it's potentially discriminatory. We would hope that any measure that is introduced like that would also allow use of things such as recent negative tests, on-site testing or whatever it is, to allow people who are unable to be vaccinated due to underlying medical conditions or what have you, wouldn't be excluded from taking part in those cultural activities. Of what the industry needs, the problem with that for festivals, venues and events is that they are then going to be responsible for checking the certification, for dealing with the people as they arrive, and in terms of security, administration, staffing levels, that's going to put increased costs on those events and venues at a time when they are already massively struggling. The concern is how that's going to be implemented and what support is going to be given to them to allow them to carry out the instructions of the Government if that does indeed go through today. Mr McManus. Thanks, convener. As Barry said, there are obviously a lot of logistical challenges about implementing those proposals. I think that the consensus of the feedback that I've had from members is why just eventually over 10,000 I work in a theatre that's got 1,700 people. I've got no idea if those people are vaccinated or infected or anything. Why am I not protected by having to check for Covid vaccinations for all events and why the difference between night clubs and other sectors is surely a good principle, then it should apply to everybody. It will undoubtedly add logistical challenges and I think that the Scottish Government could help significantly by working with the industry to come up with whatever technical solutions, digital solutions to make it as seamless as possible. Again, in line with comments that we've made earlier, I think that the Government needs to be more robust in any support that it gives. The likes of Ambassador Theatre Group received about 300,000 in emergency funding at a time that they were trying to drive through reductions in terms of conditions of employment and laying staff off. That's a company that makes £20 million a year profit. Again, a great many of our members said, why haven't we forgotten all the profits that we've made in previous years? Surely they should put their own hands in their pockets. There are some huge hugely successful commercial organisations that I'm talking about in football live events culture who should have to bear some of the cost of this and some of the inconvenience. It's a public health issue. People have to queue a bit longer or it costs a bit more to get them in and that there's a bit of a hit in the profits of that. That's a price worth paying to ensure people's safety because, again, fear of Covid is one of the big factor in people not returning to the cultural industries. All of a sudden, having gone from being at home or working online, they're suddenly faced with going back into buildings with 500,000, 2,000 people facing them. That's a big stress factor for people who are not returning to the industry. I know that that was all right. I was going to have a very quick follow-up on that one, just to ask whether you have been consulted at all in what shape the enforcement and the checking will take place. Have you had any discussions with the Scottish Government regarding that? I think that I've been in four meetings now since the First Minister's announcement with the Scottish Government about Covid, about the proposals. Yes, we are being consulted extensively on it. I was reading in the back to a written submission that you speak about the expectations and ambitions of your workers. Across the sector it's changed significantly and I'm making the assumption that relates to some of the fair work principles that we've heard, but I was looking for a bit more detail and specifics behind that statement, because you've also said that the essence of the industry is the live experience and that that is unlikely to change. I'm just wondering if there's potentially a conflict between what the consumer expectation is and what the worker in terms of that fair work will be conflict and how might that hamper or be an opportunity in terms of you going forward in your recovery? I'm just trying to weigh up where that might sit. My understanding across the live events and theatre sector as a whole is that organisations just want to get back to doing what they have always done. They want to get the doors open, they want to get the public in and they don't see any significant change in trends, they believe that the public wants to get back in and see shows that the issue which you're raising there is in terms of the staff in theatres and live events, they don't want to work in that industry any more. Their expectations have changed as many other people have done across many other sectors like hospitality. Whether or not the Government puts more support on the table or changes its approach, the industry will need to change its approach. There are theatres and venues out there just now who cannot function because they don't have the staff coming back or the freelance is available to serve their needs. As I said, Playhouse wants to do a show on Sunday with 20 staff short. That would cause chaos if they tried to go ahead with the show. Other theatres around the country producing theatres, rural theatres, we just don't have the staff. This is going to be an issue for us, we're not going to, shows are going to be affected and they're coming around to the realisation now, they're starting to be conversations now to say how much do we have to increase our rates of pay and our improved conditions of employment in order to get people to come and work for us. That's a live conversation that's being on just now. Similarly, you've got the big commercial operators who are essentially saying, well, we're just going to plough ahead regardless. We're not going to be improving terms and conditions. They spent most of Covid trying to reduce them. There's going to be real tensions going forward, regardless of what we think, regardless of what the Government does. That is a big issue just now. I think that the Government can help alleviate it, but it needs to dress urgently. Theatres are facing these problems, live events are facing these problems right now, light clubs are facing these problems right now. I wonder if we could ask Mr Dallman about a question that I know his organisation and others have raised in the past, which is about the impact of the loss of freedom of movement around Europe on what your members do. Obviously, the situation, I'm sure, varies from European country to European country to some extent, possibly. I don't know, but what is involved in, if you can give examples, in artists in Scotland seeking to work in the EU now? I would love to be able to answer that with 100 per cent certainty. The problem is that there is still a huge amount of uncertainty around exactly what is required for musicians and artists on tour. This is another time bomb that we've got coming down the line. The only reason it's not a bigger issue than it would be at this stage post the withdrawal from the European Union is because Covid has kept everyone from touring. However, as we emerge now and hopefully live music will continue to be allowed to resume, people are going to want to tour, and they're going to find that there are huge problems of barriers that didn't exist previously in the web. One thing that I want to stress is that it's not just about the freedom of movement of individuals in order to work. Although, at the moment, every European country that you go to will have different requirements, it's not always clear what they are in terms of visas and all work that permits. We continually pressure in the UK Government to try and get some reciprocal agreement with the EU to allow musicians on tour to move freely between those countries. However, it's not just about the individuals themselves, it's about the vehicles that they take with their equipment in. It's about the equipment that they're taking and customs regulations. It's about sabotage rules that involve transport vehicles and whether their transit van, for example, can cross more than one border on a tour. It's about what's required in terms of customs paperwork for taking their merchandise to sell. All of those other things that are now problematic post-Brexit that weren't previously are huge threats to the touring industry and are hugely restrictive. It's going to be a real problem. Yes, the freedom of movement for people is massive and we desperately need a reciprocal agreement on that, but that alone will not solve the problem. For touring musicians, there's a whole host of other factors that we desperately need the Government to start addressing because otherwise, it's going to be prohibitive and there's going to be a whole chain of events set in motion by that continuing impact on the industry, lack of lots of reputation. The UK is one of the only net exporters of music in the world. That's going to be seriously under threat if UK artists can't tour the EU, given the size of the UK as an island and the number of people in it, the number of venues. The EU has been our domestic market, if you like, and being able to travel freely and play in those countries has allowed musicians to build a profan base, become self-sustainable in ways that they just can't do as things stand at the moment. It's a massive threat. It's going to cause huge problems down the line and we desperately need something done about it as soon as possible. Are there funding streams in the past that you accessed from the EU that you think you'll notice you're not accessing once you do get back to touring? I'm thinking of things like creative Europe funding streams like that. Is that a major consideration for you when you're planning ahead? It depends on levels and it depends on artists. I think that the problems around the increased administration costs and red tape of touring will not affect the top-level artists. People who are household names will put £2 or £3 on the price of an already three-figure stadium concert ticket and that will cover it. It's the grass roots, it's the emerging artists, it's the bands who have a falling domestically who need to get out and broaden that fanbase and need to develop their audience. They're the people who would be reliant on funding and would be reliant on support mechanisms to allow them to tour in order to build up that reputation of fanbase. It might well be that those funding sources are significantly reduced through Brexit. It's certainly another fact that it's going to make it harder for people to talk. Following on from Dr Allan's questions, I'm interested to hear a bit more about the touring that we hopefully will be able to start seeing happening within Scotland and also your thoughts on the fund that the Scottish Government introduced through the programme of government to get musicians and theatre companies out to the more rural areas who are also crying out for much more culture and creativity to come back to their areas. I live on Islay and there's a very successful festival, Cantalina, which brings in young musicians. I'm interested to hear about what the M.U. is doing to try and support young musicians again, because clearly through lockdown their education will have been in their own rooms online and what support structures that the M.U. would suggest that are needed to ensure that we continue the throughput of the emerging artists in Scotland. Obviously, during the pandemic, access to music education was much harder. Certainly, as a union, we try to support our members that teach by giving them advice about providing lessons online, about advocating for online lessons, encouraging schools to move their peripatetic tuition online and help teachers to have the equipment and training that they needed in order to carry out those lessons safely and effectively. The digital activity that's come about because of the pandemic is probably going to be one of the few positives in that people are now much more familiar with using technology in that way and are much more open to the idea of working remotely. For musicians and students in rural areas, particularly who might not have local access to the quality of teachers that they need or the musical activity that they can see physically in person, a greater emphasis on the digital side of things can help to join the dots a little bit more. However, I agree with you that it's hugely important that, regardless of where you live, that you have access to cultural experiences because it's those experiences that can inspire you or light a fire in you that set you on the path to become a professional musician or an actor or an artist or whatever it happens to be. I know certainly many of my personal friends musicians were inspired by seeing a particular orchestra or a band or being taken with the school to go and see a production of something, and suddenly a world that they didn't even know existed was open to them. I think that it is vitally important, particularly when you have concentration of activities around major cities that the Government does try and encourage that activity to be taken across the whole country and provide that kind of access and opportunity to as many people as possible without them having to come to the cities all the time. I support those kind of initiatives and I think that the digital access is good and we should look at expanding that to help to join the dots but there is no substitution for the in-person experience, so we need to focus on that as well and I thoroughly support that. I think that the one comment that I would make is that it goes back to what we are talking about, the funding to support the type of rural and outreach work. It goes back to the strategic thinking if we look at the Eden Court in Inverness, which is a long history of doing very successful outreach work out into the Highlands and Islands. I had to scale back in that work in recent years because of local authority cutbacks. While there are ambitions from a number of organisations to do that type of work and to support it on an ongoing basis, we will get two challenges—constant local authority cutbacks and back to the annual funding cycle, particularly smaller organisations that are trying to support that. I mentioned the division's initiative in my submission. Our managers spend half the year lobbying for public funding to support the following years' work. Public funding is sitting in somebody's bank account for four, five, six months until we get it agreed and then maybe four, five, six months to spend it and then the whole cycle restarts all over again. More strategic funding would allow people to spend less time and money on administrative processes and more time supporting the delivery of such valuable initiatives. Convener, if I may, I just wanted to make one quick point on the last question about the European situation. For every musician that goes out and tour around Europe, there is anything from 20 to 200 support staff and truck drivers and all the rest of it that goes with them. In the UK, there is a net exporter of that talent and a great many of the bigger American companies come into Scotland, come into England, pick up their whole crew because they prefer to work with English-speaking crews and then tour them, take them around Europe, be equally. Many of our members do not just go with one band or one act and do a tour and come home again. They have integrated networks with European companies that mean that they spend anything between eight to ten months a year touring around Europe. When one act finishes and heads home, they join another tour or they join another company that their whole work and lives are planned in that. Those people are now either moving to Europe or have left the industry because they are saying that if I have lost nine to ten months, I am not going to get that work back in Scotland. That goes across TV as well. If you look at all the sports coverage, Formula One, The Golf and The Tennis, it tends to be the same crews who should follow the tour. That talent has been lost because those people have now moved to Europe. I can live without the couple of months of work that I got in Scotland, but I cannot live without the ten months of work that I got in Europe in the Middle East, so the relocated. That is, as Barry said, and that train has already started. Since January, we have seen the big European companies, the big crew companies in Europe, Primarily and Holland, Germany and Poland, advertising for their normal levels of crew with UK passport holders that need not apply. That has affected hundreds of members in Scotland and thousands across the UK. I thank you for that. That was a very stark picture that you painted there, Mr McManus. I would like to move back to the tours and the fact that we have festivals that have musicians coming across from Europe as well. It is thoughts on how that is impacting on the work that our musicians are doing. In some respects, what I have heard from musicians is that they are concerned about the creativity and the sparking of other traditions from other countries across Europe. If there is anything that we can look forward to in the funding that we can do to support with that, following on from what Dr Allan was saying about losing out from culture Europe. I bring in Mr McManus and then Mr Dolman. I am sure that they both want to contribute. I think that what we expect to see is that the costs of running those festivals will increase, other than the quality will decrease because, as Barry pointed out there, the bigger acts, some of them, will be able to afford the increased administration costs of moving between Europe and the UK. The smaller acts, the ones that are trying to establish themselves and probably some of the types of acts that you would see in festivals across Scotland, simply do not come. It would be too costly, too administrative. As Barry said, if you think about the logistics under the current rules of trying to get a transit van that is worth the gear across Europe and into the UK, the feedback that we are getting from a lot of colleagues in Europe is that they are just not going to come. You either find a lot more money to hire the bigger acts that can afford to come or you lose that quality. Equally, the other impact that a number of music promoters are talking about is that if they choose to come from Europe to the UK, they will not get the same experience. We will fly the artists then and they will get a better stage with a few lights because we are not bringing our whole experience across to the UK because it is just prohibitively expensive and logistically impractical. One of the key issues is not so much at this stage about funding. We are not a conversation but certainly something that will need to kick in a little farther down the line. The key problem at the moment is the logistics of getting people in and out of the country to perform. Both in terms of Scottish festivals, booking European artists can perform on their bills and provide access to the live experience that we talked about before as being transformative and vital in inspiring the next generation of artists and musicians. That will be more difficult to happen now. Simultaneously, Scottish and UK artists will lose out in getting opportunities to play at festivals and events in Europe because it will be so much harder to book musicians from this country than it is to book them from other countries in Europe. It is just easier and cheaper just not to bother. That reduces the opportunities available for everyone. It reduces access to music and performances for audiences in Scotland but it also reduces opportunities for musicians playing abroad. In terms of collaborations, the advantage of digital technology has allowed people to start working with musicians in other countries very easily. After an initial digital collaboration, many musicians would then go and gig with artists that they have been collaborating with in EU countries. They are probably not going to be able to do that now. What we are likely to find if we do not get some resolution on making it easier for people to move and work in this industry is that the industry is going to become smaller, more insular, with fewer opportunities, more isolated, and that will have a damaging impact on the financial aspect but also on the broader cultural aspect and the value and role that the cultural and music sectors play in our society at large. In terms of funding, what we will need is inevitably, even with some better reciprocal agreements in place that may reduce some of the logistical issues that we have been talking about, it is undoubtedly going to be more expensive for artists to tour Europe, regardless of what agreements are in place. There are going to be administrative requirements that they are going to have to fulfil. It is going to be logistically more difficult. It is going to take more time. It is going to cost them more money. Again, as we have been stressing, it is not the household names that will be hit by this. It is artists that previously would have been at the stage in their careers where they now need to go to Europe and start developing a fan base abroad. They are just not going to be able to. The word Scottish Government can help is perhaps to provide some funding to enable touring to happen and to make it easy and offset some of those costs. One of the things that UK music has been calling for is for the Government to set up a UK music office to help with the export of music. Some ring fence funding to help touring musicians in Scotland from the Scottish Government could do something in particular for this country as well. However, that is where they are going to need support when it comes to the point where they just can't talk because it is not viable for them. That is where the Government can help. From a Scottish point of view, the bigger problem is the UK Government and the reciprocal agreements that we need to make it easier for people to move and work in the first place. Those were really interesting answers to pressing problems at the moment. Can I pull things back out to the bigger picture? We have a national performance framework in Scotland. There are four indicators on the dashboard about our cultural health, cultural events, participation and activity, growth in the cultural economy and the number of people working in arts and culture. I wonder whether you have views on whether that adequately describes shows us where we are in terms of the health of the sector and our cultural health more broadly. I am still reminded that, looking at your submissions, particularly whether that metric around just the numbers of people working in arts and culture adequately describes what is going on in terms of fair work, insecurity of contracts and other issues. Do you have thoughts on how that could perhaps be improved or are those metrics on the dashboard the right ones to be thinking about right now as we recover from Covid? I do not have an issue with the metrics of the dashboard. I think that there needs to be a rethink on the emphasis of how we achieve it. A great many of our members see the value that is placed in culture and just wish that similar values were placed on their involvement in culture and what they get out of culture in Scotland because they feel that they are somewhat disconnected from those metrics. It always seems to be about what does society get out of that and what impact does culture have in the economy and the wellbeing of the Scottish people when they feel that they are not part of that equation. Ironically, the vast majority of them are certainly in the live arts because they love it, not because they want to make a living out of it, because that is impossible. They have always felt that the emphasis has not been sufficiently weighted towards the experience of working in culture from their point of view. All the entertainment unions have put so much emphasis on the fair work principles that the agencies such as Creative Scotland, Screen Scotland and Event Scotland need to champion the people working in the industry much more significantly than they have done. To be honest, the past year or so, as I said before, a lot of people have been abandoned by those agencies rather than supported by them. The metrics are there. There is a good barometer of where we want to find and get to, but more emphasis needs to be put on taking the workers in the industry with us on this journey. I think that the metrics are okay as far as they go. As long as we understand that A, we are only measuring certain things and there are many more things that you could choose to measure, and B, that they are not really giving us a full picture of what is going on, and C, that those things are notoriously difficult to get accurate numbers on anyway. When we talk about the number of people working in the music sector, how do we define work? There is a big difference between somebody who is first filing with the RSNO and somebody who has a nine-to-five job and who is also gigging in a band in local pubs at the weekend for fun and a bit of their money. Those two people are both technically working in the music industry, but they have very different roles and are coming from different places. In terms of attendance or cultural events, again, what are we talking about? If you are just looking at numbers of people who went to an event, you can skew those figures massively based on whether you include Edinburgh Festival or not, for example. It is not just about numbers of people going to things, it is about understanding that the numbers themselves cannot be the only indicator. One of the other key things for me that is not really coded about that is to do with education in the cultural sector and the creative arts, particularly. I am very welcome that the recent commitments about removing instrumental tuition fees for all children in Scotland are great, it is something that we are really pleased to see. There is also a much bigger conversation to be had about the value of culture and the way that we perceive culture, both as a subject in education and also in the role that it plays in our society. For too long now, the creative arts particularly are somewhere down the bottom of hierarchy of subjects, where we have English and Maths and Sciences at the top. The creative arts are seen as almost like a hobby, a nice to have, but not really that important. If we want to thrive in the cultural sector, we have to inculcate the notion that creative arts are valuable and essential to society on just as important as the other subjects. Similarly, in terms of the way that we view the cultural industries and the people that work in it, the perception too often is that the creative industries are not real jobs, they are hobbyists or it is something that should be done for fun. If it is hard to make a living, then you should go and work in another industry where you can. We saw that in the pandemic with those reprehensible adverts from the Westminster Government about your next job should be in cyber, go and retrain because you cannot continue as a musician or as a ballet dancer or whatever it happens to be. That attitude that culture is an add-on is an optional thing rather than a totally integrated, thriving, vital part of the human experience and our everyday lives. Until we change that perception, I think that we are always going to be struggling a little bit. For me, those softer, perhaps harder-to-measure intangibles are still worth striving for and are probably a better indicator of the success of culture and creative industries in Scotland rather than just looking at spreadsheets of numbers of people attended and access to events. If I can make a point very briefly, which I wanted to make before, about access to events as well, one of the things in the written submission that I wanted to stress again was uncertainty around events in the years going forward. At the moment, particularly with the rising case numbers in Scotland with the discussion around vaccination certification and the real fear that restrictions could come back, it is a very uncertain and nervous time for event organisers, festivals, management of orchestras and all the rest of it. One thing that is really important for me to say today is that, although it is not really the main remit of the committee, to be on the record as saying, a reintroduction of restrictions and social distancing measures will be absolutely disastrous for the cultural and creative industries. Events and gigs will not be able to happen because they are not financially available. The fear of those and the fear of the return at the moment is making it really difficult and there will be events that, on the assumption that we do not have a reintroduction of restrictions, will not go ahead because of the worry of that possibility, and that is a shame. I think that the Government needs to recognise that and start to take some measures both to ensure that there will be financial support if events have to be cancelled, but also to try and give some confidence to the industry to ensure that, in that short to medium term, people can plan to host events and they can make commitments, engage artists and all the rest of it, which they are very, very twitchy about doing at the moment. Is Mr McManus want to come back in finally? Yes, I think that it shows the different perceptions you got across the sector. As I mentioned earlier on, following the First Minister's statement last week, a great many of our members were saying right, but why aren't we protected by these measures? It varies dramatically whether you are face-to-face with the audience. I made the point at meeting the other day that there are different aspects or different challenges that need to be thought through. People need to understand the realities of that. The football clubs have an issue and a challenge with getting 10,000 people into stadiums and checking their Covid vaccination. However, the staff working on the outside broadcast to film that football match have all been tested and all have to prove negative, but then have to work their way and intermingle with audiences. They are again fearful for their safety that they have no idea who they are intermingling with. Logistically, it is a big challenge. Public health has to come first. As Barry has said, every decision that the Government makes about addressing Covid going forward needs to be there ready to support, and it needs to have robust measures in place. One of the final points that I would make is that, through Covid, we have seen a number of commercial operators submit inquiries into some of the Scottish theatres to see if they would be willing to sell out to the big commercial operators. The commercial operators, as I said, generally through Covid across the UK, their approach has been to trying to reduce staffing costs, reduce terms and conditions and go in an opposite direction from what I believe we are trying to achieve in Scotland. Again, if some of those organisations are not supported to rebuild in the right way, we could end up with commercial operators coming in and taking us in the opposite direction. We have had discussions with some of them and Ambassador Theatre Group, for instance, who run the Playhouse in Edinburgh. I think that it is safe to say that they are horrified by the prospect of fair work principles coming in. At a time when we are trying to take the cultural industries, live events, theatre, film and TV to new levels of improving the life of the people who work in them, many of our members in the live events in fear do not want to have a discussion about the BBC. People liken them to the big commercial operators in the theatre world. The commissioning tariffs and the introduction of the BBC Scotland channel has essentially been erased to the bottom. We have seen more and more of the BBC Scotland sliced off power sent away to London in terms of the staffing, the production, the commissioning, rates are being driven down and people see that more commercial operators are allowed to come into the theatre world in Scotland and operate in the same way as the BBC, then effectively they see us going in a diametrically opposite direction to what we would prefer to do in terms of investing in the staff and the workforce in Scotland. Just a very quick one. Clearly, the cultural sector is hugely important in its own right, cultural activity is really important in its own right as well. I suppose that in terms of what it does for the rest of society as well, whether that is being captured by funding streams at the moment, I am struck by some cultural organisations that are doing a lot of regeneration work, a lot of place making work or whether they can get access to funding at the moment to do that kind of stuff that does not easily fit into one box or another. Mr Dolman, if you could try to keep your answer short, that would be really helpful at this time. It is a little bit difficult for me to say purely from a music point of view, just on the basis that with so many freelance members it is working in such a variety of different situations. We represent the individual musicians, not the organisations. What I can tell you is that most of the orchestras are doing increasing amounts of outreach work with more emphasis on education and broader cultural engagement than they might have done previously, where, in years gone by, they would have just run a concert series in a hall. I think that those things are tremendously important. Culture, not just in terms of the economy but, as I mentioned before, the fabric of our society, is the thing that everybody turns to during the pandemic. What did everyone do? They started watching Netflix and listening to music and consuming culture produced by the creative and cultural industries. It is the heartbeat of our society. Yes, there is a big role for culture to play in linking up with people, in regeneration, in bringing communities together, in reaching out to rural communities and providing access to opportunities. Given inspiring people showcasing a different range of possibilities than you might have ever received from the day-to-day society around you. That is part of the reason why I am so passionate about our industries and why I think that they are so important. It goes way beyond the economic impact because it is to do with who we are and how we live our lives. Again, as I mentioned before, those things are hard to measure on a spreadsheet but they are crucial. That is part of a much bigger conversation about the society and the country that we want to live in and what we want life to be like in terms of quality of life, not just how much money you make or your financial security. I would like to see an ever-increasing, more strategic approach to all those sorts of initiatives. Too often, as I said earlier, we are just trying to give whatever money we have got to as many people as possible who seem to be trying to do the right thing. At some level, we need to sit down and make a conscious decision and say, right, let's try to pull all those different strands together. The local authorities, the national agencies, we need to come up with a clear strategy over the next five to ten years and then fund it as best we can. There is always budget pressures but decide that this is the proper level of funding that those organisations need to deliver our priorities and we can't go on just trying to chalk money at everybody. When I say most strategic, I'm thinking of things like we recognise that the cultural industries are essential for people's wellbeing and the more people engage in the cultural industries and sport, the less money will be spent on treatment in hospitals and all the rest of it. Are we going to get any of the hospitals of the national health service to put money into culture because they've got their own bills to pay? Somebody needs to make a decision there and say we can save x amount in hospital bills if we put more into culture. That's what I mean back in a more holistic and strategic approach across the piece. Thank you very much. I think that your final comment winds up in some of the areas that perhaps we haven't been able to touch on today about how the culture community is going to be absolutely essential to the wellbeing economy agenda. Although we are very focused on the funding for the cultural sector for this inquiry, we've already seen how many areas this takes up, including the fair work agenda. We didn't talk about the climate, we didn't talk about net zero targets and how that will affect touring companies and the industry going forward, but there's a lot there to discuss. Obviously, there's a pre-budget scrutiny in the budget that will be published, but the programme for government has been mentioned with the announcement of the Turing fund. Interestingly, because it did come up, the Government has said that it is committed to providing regular funding by green three-year funding settlements. I'm sure that the committee will be interested in seeing what the detail of that is going forward from the evidence today.