Culture Minister Linda Fabiani today faced MSPs’ scrutiny on Scotland’s culture budget for the coming year. 

The budget for Creative Scotland, the new national cultural body being formed from the merger of the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen, was a key focus of Members’ questions at Holyrood’s Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee. 

The controversial issue of the body’s transition costs was raised with the Minister by Conservative MSP Liz Smith.  With the initial estimate of £700,000 revised to £1m and media reports suggesting that the final figure could increase to 5 or 7 times that amount, the Minister was pressed for an assurance that transition costs would not be considerably inflated. 

Fabiani dismissed the media speculations but would not be drawn on specific details of the budget.  With the Creative Scotland Bill being voted down in Parliament in June – the first parliamentary defeat for the SNP Government - the creation of the body is now contained within the forthcoming Public Services Reform Bill.  The Minister said the new Bill, due to come before Parliament in the new year, will provide the transition costs within its financial memorandum and it would be in appropriate and “disrespectful to Parliament” to comment on these costs before that point. 

“The reports of the media are spurious and have no basis.  Obviously the due process of Parliament means that the detailed transition costs for Creative Scotland will be presented to Parliament in the financial memorandum for the Public Services Reform Bill at the appropriate time… So we are currently scrutinising these costs in order to prepare the financial memorandum for the Public Services Reform Bill and at that point we will present it to Parliament” Fabiani said.

The difficult funding situation currently facing Scots language organisations was also discussed at the committee.  After threatened withdrawal of funding from the Scottish Arts Council for two of the main Scots agencies, the agencies recently received a six month ‘lifeline’ from the Council.  Labour MSP and committee convenor Karen Whitefield asked the Minister for assurances for the endangered agencies.

Fabiani said that she would not pre-empt the outcome of the Scottish Government’s audit into the Scots language, due to report in November, but committed to examine the funding mechanism that she inherited as Culture Minister for indigenous arts such as Scots.  Following a review in 2006 ring fencing of funds for traditional arts was removed leaving Scots with no funding guarantee – a situation she describe as “an anomaly”.

“It is quite clear that this Government puts a really high premium on Scots indigenous language…  I can repeat that I’m absolutely committed to that.  I do think it is anomalous that over decades we’ve had a system where our own indigenous arts are not given any form of guaranteed funding and that’s certainly something that I will look at because it is quite clearly unsatisfactory that we have our own indigenous arts in a situation where they’re grasping from year to year to look for specific funding.  I do not wish to pre-empt anything, I want to look at the whole picture and I’m very happy to do so and I welcome the Scottish Arts Council giving that lifeline” she said.