Chamber and committees

Surely, as far as the economy is concerned, it is much better having somebody working 35 hours a week than one hour a week.

Fair enough. Another issue that has come up is that we count people as in employment but they might be off sick for quite a long time with, say, long Covid in particular, or something else. Would that create a problem in comparing our data with that of other countries or do you think that that is fairly accepted internationally?

That is helpful, thank you. Mr Whyte, do you have any thoughts on any of those points?

Thank you for that extremely helpful and really interesting response.

Ms Fitton, the attitude of employers towards both disability and long Covid comes up a few times in your written evidence. In fact, it says at one point:

“Workers were faced with disbelief and suspicion, with around one-fifth (19 per cent), having their employer question the impact of their symptoms”.

Can you say a little bit more about that? What should we be doing to educate employers, help them or whatever?

I am sorry—we are running out of time. However, I think that you have made your point, which is great.

I want to give the final word to Ms Smith, who has also talked about poor treatment at work. Are the backlogs in the NHS affecting people in getting back to work?

We will have to stop now, because I think that we are out of time.

I have a question on that point, which is also tied back to something that you said earlier. One of those long-term trends might be that people are doing less shopping in town and city centres, and maybe less socialising as well. Those things stopped altogether when Covid happened, but there has been a gradual drift back. Where are we in that process? Will the situation that we have now continue—I am thinking especially of city centres—or do we need to wait a bit longer to see whether people will go back to work in offices in the winter when it is cold and so on?

On the question of early retirement, from the individual’s point of view, if they are well off—because they have been a general practitioner or something like that—they can afford it, so, in a sense, we do not need to worry about those individuals, but does the economy as a whole suffer if a lot of 55-year-olds just stop working?

Tom Waters, I saw you smile a moment ago. Maybe you are a futurologist—I do not know—but do you think that where we are is where we are going to be or do you think that things could change quite a lot, especially in town and city centres?

Can we at least assume that the minimum would be eight or nine care boards and the maximum would be 32?