The painful progress of Creative Scotland, the successor to the Scottish Arts Council, has been a cause for concern ever since the Bill to set it up was published

The SNP government talks a good game when it comes to Scottish culture. Its delivery is less impressive. The painful progress of Creative Scotland, the successor to the Scottish Arts Council, has been a cause for concern ever since the Bill to set it up was published.

MSPs rejected it in June after finding its finances unconvincing. A body which was to take responsibility for the creative industries (where art and industry come together) had apparently not been given the resources to deliver them. More worryingly, there seemed to have been a general failure to think through the remit and the responsibilities of the new body.

The decision to amalgamate Scottish Screen, which funds film-making, into the new body, which supports the arts in general, had been taken by the SNP's Labour predecessors, and though many of those in the movie world remained unconvinced by the arguments for it,

the idea was never seriously challenged. Now, it seems, there has been a marked

absence of rigour when it comes to looking at the financial implications of

the amalgamation.

The request from The Times for detailed figures has drawn a response that is wholly inadequate. With less than a year to go before the delivery of the plan, it seems that no one -- neither ministers nor civil servants - knows how much it is going to cost. The government owes it to the arts world and its audience to explain exactly what is going on.

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