Lorne Boswell, Scottish secretary of the union Equity, said that the Creative Scotland Bill, due to come back to Parliament this autumn after being voted down earlier this year, was a “British muddle” in which the new agency could be subject to “insidious” direction from ministers.

Boswell, speaking at the Festival of Politics session Who Pays the Piper? - Funding Scottish Culture, said: “We have a choice; arms length or the French model of a Minister of Culture who is directly responsible. Jack Lang [the French minister during the eighties and nineties] was an invigorating figure.

He made it clear that he did not favour the French approach: “If we did that I would leave the country. But instead we have got this British muddle where it won’t even be the Minister ringing up; it will be some civil servant ‘letting it be known’ that things should be done a certain way.”

The Scottish Government had committed to ensuring that Scottish Ministers would not intervene in matters of artistic or cultural judgement but the Bill still required Creative Scotland “to comply with any directions made by Scottish Ministers and to have regard to any guidance issued by Scottish Ministers relating to the exercise of its functions.”

Asked by a member of the audience if a democratically elected figure might not make sense, Professor Jan McDonald of Glasgow University and Vice-President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, observed that the principle of ‘arms length’ had been eroded in the eighties; an attempt by the Government to improve the governance of arts organisations had developed into more direct influence over the direction of organisations.

Boswell agreed with the sentiment of the questioner: “But if politicians want to take decisions [about what productions should be commissioned] then they should be accountable [for their success or failure]. If that was the case, I’m not sure there would be many takers for the job. What I object to is the backdoor way the power of direction was in the previous Bills and, I believe, will be in the next Bill.”