Chamber and committees

Okay. The proposals for an expanded role in grazings for the commission were not subject to final board approval before the national development plan was published. What have been the consequences of that?

How long do you anticipate that continuing?

Does anything still need to be done to improve that relationship or to make it more effective?

I will raise an issue that has been touched on already. Incredibly, no PPE was made in Scotland prior to the pandemic, but 88 per cent of all PPE, excluding gloves, is now manufactured here. What kind of support was given to Scottish companies? Was financial support given? Were there already specific skills in Scotland to develop that? I will pick somebody at random to answer: Mary Morgan.

We are still some way from being able to say that the pandemic is over. How resilient is the PPE supply chain? Is it reasonably secure as far as you can project?

In his opening questions, the convener talked about export markets. To what extent are such markets not necessarily important but significant in maintaining the viability of the local supply chain? In other words, is the production line geared to Scotland, with just a wee bit of export activity, or does its viability rely on a certain proportion of exports?

I am going to have to pick Gordon Beattie again to answer that.

I have a final question that you might or might not be able to answer. The companies producing PPE have geared up their production lines in order to produce the required quantity and types of PPE. That will probably not continue at the same pace forever—at least, we hope not—and, at some point, it will settle back to what might be called a normal level. I suppose that this is a question about resilience. At the end of all this, will the companies be able to repurpose their production lines so that they can move into other areas, or will it be a case of their having to lay off all the surplus people and reduce production?

It appears that convenience stores, like other retailers, are anticipating that the wholesaler will provide that just-in-case back-up, but there will be a cost to that, which will feed down at some point.

Obviously, that has cost implications and so on.

You are talking about a dramatic shift in terms of the volume of goods that you are holding. Where are you finding the storage for that?