Chamber and committees

Pippa, have you seen any signs of good consultation on temporary changes?

I would like to bring David Allan back in to comment on the question of public bodies consulting on temporary changes to determine whether they will fall away or stay. Are they just temporary for the pandemic?

It is quite important that we learn these lessons. We need to ask whether this is the right time to be engaging with people in order to learn these lessons or whether we are too early and we should really be doing this in six months or a year, after the pandemic is—we hope—adequately under control.

I am the MSP for Midlothian North and Musselburgh.

You make a good point.

I have a question for Anna Fowlie. Given that the number of public bodies that are seeking that sort of engagement and feedback is limited, is there any indication that the ones that are seeking the feedback are using it in a positive way?

I am pleased that, in the course of the discussion, we are recognising the contribution that communities made during the pandemic and are continuing to make.

The Auditor General said that funding is all too often provided on an annual basis. The problem is that the Scottish Government is funded on an annual basis and does not have certainty about what its budget will be, and that uncertainty trickles down to other organisations that get funded by the Government and makes things a bit harder. I think that that is fairly common in the public sector these days—everything is short term.

I want to look forward a bit, because it is important that we do not lose the momentum that we have gained. Are public bodies now seeking feedback from communities on what has been learned from the pandemic? How are they doing that?

Did you hear my initial question?

We hear a lot about bottlenecks. Some of those are caused by Brexit, but others, we are told, are due to Covid and people restocking. Containers are in the wrong place and ships are in the wrong place and so on. When you think about it, it is logical that some of those bottlenecks must resolve themselves when places are fully stocked and the containers are back into their correct cycle of being exported and so on. How long do you think that will take? Which specific elements of the bottlenecks would you say are going to resolve themselves?

I am trying to get my head round the issue of bottlenecks, which we hear about a lot. I can understand that some have arisen from the Brexit shambles, but I am told that containers being in the wrong place as a result of Covid, or people restocking—perhaps overstocking, because the just-in-time concept is a bit wobbly at the moment so people take extra goods to cope with it—cause other bottlenecks.

How many bottlenecks will resolve themselves when containers are in the right place and stocks are full again? There must be a point at which that situation will ease in certain aspects, although perhaps not in others. I am trying to understand where that easing might come from. Can Richard Ballantyne come in on that?