Chamber and committees

With the college regionalisation process, it took quite a lot of time to align the staff terms and conditions and pay. Is it fair to say that that would be quite a major process?

My final question follows on from that. Many people are comparing the NCS with the NHS. The NHS has quite a mixed model because, in effect, general practitioners and dentists are private businesses. Is it that the kind of mixed model that you foresee as the way forward?

I also want to touch on the issue of long Covid. The committee will do a separate investigation into that, so we will not go into it in huge depth right now. However, one of the trade unions suggested that people are afraid of disclosing long Covid to their employers. A suggestion came from elsewhere that, perhaps, some employers are more sympathetic to staff who have long Covid than other employers. Do any of the witnesses have a comment on that or any experience of that? Louise Murphy, do you have any thoughts on it?

That is helpful—thank you.

Hannah Randolph, do you have any thoughts on that?

That is helpful. It struck me that some students might work for only a few hours a week and some might not, but some would be counted as economically inactive and some as active.

We had evidence from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which talked about “the effective workforce”. It will be interesting to hear what other people think about that but I take it to mean people who are doing full-time jobs.

The other angle on that is that some people have definitely reassessed their whole lifestyle and work-life balance. A lot of us would say that that is a good thing—you can spend a bit more time with your family and so on. I heard one guy on the radio last week—a musician—saying that he previously never took breaks, and now he is taking breaks. That is good in a sense, but it probably contributes less to the economy.

I am struggling a wee bit here to ask a specific question. Is the issue that people are doing fewer hours and have a better work-life balance, but that is actually damaging the economy? I am not sure who wants to answer that.

That is helpful. I am interested in where things are going as we move forward, so I will link that to a suggestion in your paper, Professor Fothergill, that in some areas there is no point in investing in or boosting the economy further because those areas already have full employment. You said that we should target our support more at areas where there is not full employment, which I presume are the needier areas.

You are involved in the cross-party group on industrial communities. Is your suggestion that, if the Scottish Government has money, it should focus on the needier areas—the old industrial areas?

There is a lot to follow up on. I want to clarify some of the data—perhaps this is a question for Mr Freeman from the ONS. It is about the term “economic inactivity”. Do I understand it correctly that people who might only work one hour a week and people who might work 35 hours a week are all lumped together and defined as economically active? Is that correct?

That is a one-word answer—thank you.

I am thinking specifically of city and town centres. We do not really know whether they are going to recover and whether people will eventually go back. Do you want to expand on that “No”?