Chamber and committees

Thank you for letting me come to the committee, convener. I endorse everything that my friend Fergus Ewing has said. He is absolutely right to say that there is strong cross-party concern about the issue. My colleague Jamie Halcro Johnston apologises—he would have been here this morning to support the petition, but he has been detained elsewhere.

We are holding a debate on the issue in the chamber this afternoon, so I will say more about the matter then. However, briefly, to summarise, I have a strong personal interest in the matter. More than 30 years ago, I was involved in a head-on collision on a single carriageway section of the A9, which left me with multiple fractures. I spent weeks in hospital recovering. However, I was one of the lucky ones, because many other people who have been involved in similar accidents have not survived, as Fergus Ewing made clear when stating the stark figures for the past year, during which 12 people died on single carriageway sections.

There is little doubt that, if we had had a dual carriageway with central barriers between the lanes, there would not have been the same level of serious fatality and accident on the A9 as we have seen. It is a crucial issue from a road safety perspective. There was a lot of celebration in the Highlands and across Mid Scotland and Fife—the area that I represent—particularly in Perth and Kinross, when the current Scottish Government announced in, I think, 2011 a timetable for progressing the A9 dualling project to complete by 2025. We know that that will not now happen, which was confirmed by the minister just two weeks ago.

It is important that we keep on the pressure and press for a completion date and that we better understand the reasons why there is not faster progress. I entirely endorse the call for a parliamentary inquiry to be done by a committee of this Parliament. Such an inquiry could drill down into the issues and ensure that we have a proper understanding of what exactly is holding up this vital road safety project. If it does not progress, there will, sadly, be more fatalities over the next few years.

Good morning to you all. I will pursue a similar line of questioning, but I will look at the specific question of training on long Covid, which Stuart McIver mentioned.

As a committee, we have already picked up anecdotally that a lot of medical professionals simply do not have an understanding of long Covid. As you can imagine, GPs are very busy dealing with many other things, and when people present with long Covid, they do not understand the condition.

There are some obvious questions. What specific training would be helpful? Are you aware of any examples of good practice that already exist around training, not just for medical professionals but for employers in the public sector and elsewhere?

Jane, do you want to start?

Rob Gowans, to go back to my original question, are you aware of examples of good practice in training? A number of people have also mentioned long Covid clinics. Do you have a view on whether those would be a good thing?

Thank you. That is really helpful.

In response to a question from the convener, you suggested that there were pre-Covid areas of spending that were not as well targeted as they could have been, but they have just carried on. The Government has not really made an attempt to look at how effectively the money has been spent. Did you have anything particular in mind when you said that? Can you give us any examples of areas of spending that you think needed to be looked at more closely rather than just being rolled forward?

Okay. I appreciate that that was probably not a fair question to ask you. It is our job to find the waste in the Scottish Government’s budget, not yours.

I have one more question about looking ahead. We have been through the Covid pandemic. We might have more variants or strains of Covid, or we might have another pandemic. Do you think that Governments across the OECD countries, including in Scotland, are doing enough to plan ahead for a potential future pandemic?

Good morning, and thank you for your evidence this morning. I will pick up a couple of the issues that the convener highlighted at the start.

Álfrún, a moment ago, you mentioned the comparison with 2008 and how countries responded to the financial crisis at the time, and the differences that we have seen. Can you expand on that and say a bit about what lessons we can learn from the responses in 2008? Is a different approach being taken now, either in other OECD countries or in Scotland?

The Covid recovery strategy is currently due to wind down by the summer of this year. Is it still your intention to wind it down on that timescale?

Good morning, cabinet secretary and colleagues. I am interested in exploring a little bit further how Covid-related measures will be funded in the budget for the coming year. You mentioned the booster vaccination scheme and you will recall that we had an exchange about that in the chamber yesterday. Is it expected that, in the coming year, there will be another programme of booster vaccinations? Has funding already been set aside for that in the budget for next year or are we waiting to see what happens elsewhere?

If another variant or—perish the thought—another pandemic occurred in the coming financial year so there was a need to step in with new interventions such as bringing back the track and trace service, would there be anything in the budget to fund that or would you be reliant on Barnett consequentials from what happened elsewhere in the UK?

That money has been set aside in the overall health budget. Should it not be required, could it be redeployed elsewhere?