Chamber and committees

That touches on one of the other issues that I want to raise, which is mentioned later in your report. It concerns the idea of decentralisation, flexibility, collaborative working and all those sorts of things, as against setting a clear ambition for national accountability.

I suppose that I would feel that that is the case; you can either go too far one way or too far the other. If there is a clear, driving ambition from central Government, that means that local government and everyone else will get squashed. On the other hand, however, if you allow local government—or local health boards or local anything—to do whatever it wants, there is no coherence to that. I feel that, ultimately, that is impossible to square.

I was going to ask what your timescale is for that.

I will continue Brian Whittle’s line of questioning. We have heard different evidence from down south. Is one of the problems that some GPs are not familiar with the codes, which is why they are going through the free text route? I am not a medic or a scientist, so will you explain what free text is?

On the point about face-to-face meetings with people, does that vary between different health boards in Scotland? Do some do more face-to-face meetings than others, or is it a national problem?

I found your paper interesting. I confess that I did not understand some of it, but it is good. I will press you on the issue. What is the prevalence of long Covid? At one point in your paper, the figure of 1.8 per cent is mentioned, which would be, perhaps, 90,000 people.

Lyme disease is an interesting example to bring up. As a hillwalker, I am always a bit wary of that.

I move on to some questions for Professor Duncan and Professor Cooper. Your paper suggests that GPs are reacting to long Covid in different ways. Are some of them wary of diagnosing people with it?

Thanks for that. We could explore that further, but I have to stop as I have used up my time.

The commonly used figure is about 170,000. Do you feel that that figure would be reasonable, if you are underestimating the prevalence?

That is fair—that is what we want to hear.

I will come to Dr Scott, but first I have another question for Professor Robertson. I was interested to see that more of the long Covid seems to have come from the alpha and delta variants, with less of it coming from omicron. Is that what you found?

You are quite keen on long Covid clinics, about which it would be fair to say that we have had mixed evidence. For example, we have heard that they are extremely costly per patient and that people with other conditions might be diverted away from GPs to long Covid clinics, so other illnesses could be missed. Are GPs key to all of this? In England, GPs refer people to long Covid clinics, so they are the key people.