Chamber and committees

Thank you, Jackie.

We will now move on to the substantive business of the meeting. The committee will consider monitoring the Covid-19 recovery.

I welcome to the meeting Álfrún Tryggvadóttir, lead, spending review and machinery of government, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development; and Indre Bambalaite, junior policy analyst, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Both are joining us remotely.

We estimate that the evidence session will run to around 10 past 10. Each member will have approximately 10 minutes to speak to the witnesses and ask questions. I am keen to ensure that everybody gets an opportunity to speak. I apologise in advance, because I may have to interrupt members or witnesses in the interests of brevity if time runs on too much.

I invite Álfrún Tryggvadóttir and Indre Bambalaite to briefly introduce themselves.

We will move on to questions from Brian Whittle, but I will try to get back round to members.

I will ask the first question, which is very simple. Will you explain how genomic sequencing works and what it is?

That is really helpful.

I know that I have missed most of the session, and I apologise for that. It has been fascinating to read in the papers all the work that has been going on, and I commend you for that, because, in the dark cloud of Covid, there has been a silver lining in such ground-breaking work. Thank you.

Thank you for that. I will bring in Murdo Fraser.

I will bring in Professor Rory Gunson.

No, it should be done for us.

Were you already working together as a team or were you brought together when Covid came in March 2020?

I will come in on one point. I know that there is currently no workforce development strategy in place. I take it from what you have said that genome sequencing is quite specialised. Would there be any challenges with training staff, or staffing issues, if you were to develop a future workforce strategy?