Chamber and committees

The other thing that struck me was that international collaboration and co-operation in a pandemic seems absolutely logical. If we are going to tackle a pandemic in the future, we need international preparedness. We can be as prepared as we like in isolation, but if the rest of the world is struggling, it is inevitable that we will struggle as well. Where are we, globally, on international preparedness?

On the back of that, I am reminded of the scramble for vaccines and how, all of a sudden, international cooperation broke down. We could say that we were the winners in that, but I do not think that anybody is a winner in situations of that kind. Where are we with international collaboration?

Do I have time for one more question?

Thank you, convener, for indulging me. Following on from Alex Rowley, I think that part of preparedness is about the ability of our healthcare system to cope with what comes down the line. If the same thing happened again, I fear for those on the front line if they were asked to step into the breach the way that they were last time. As part of the work that you are doing, will you look at how we look after our healthcare professionals?

Good morning. It is good to see you again, Mr Harris. I was considering our conversation of last week and the implications of what you had to say. I am looking at it practically. Since then, I happened to meet up with constituents of mine—an elderly couple who get their groceries delivered by the supermarket. They already recycle. They have a glass bin, a plastics bin, a general waste bin and a garden waste bin. Those are collected by the council. They will be unable to return the items that will be subject to a 20p charge, which will no longer be collected by the council. Obviously, they will be out of pocket.

Given that, as you said, you will be ramping things up from the start, a significant number of people will be in a similar situation and unable to take part in the deposit return scheme. I recognise your role as an administrator, but is it not the case that the practical realities of the scheme are such that people in that situation—which includes those who, as my colleague Mr Ewing said, are probably among the poorest in society—will have to pay for the scheme, as it ends up? They are the last people in the line.

Thank you, convener. What we are discussing here are the practicalities of the scheme—we are looking at people’s ability to get their deposits back and to recycle product. In that circumstance, neither of those things would have happened.

Oh!

Good morning. I will take forward the point that Jim Fairlie made about education and ask about educating our health professionals about long Covid.

GPs are supposed to have a certain amount of time for continuing professional development built into their day or week. I hark back to my time on the Health and Sport Committee when, any time that we did an investigation into any condition, we found that there was a need to educate our healthcare professionals about that condition.

That is fine in theory, but we know that GPs are under incredible pressure at the moment, so in practice CPD is probably the last thing on their list. Given that the committee has heard stories about GPs’ lack of knowledge around long Covid, how can we create a health service where—if you will pardon the expression—they have the time to breathe that will allow them to take on CPD?

That is helpful. I want to go on to another topic. Quite rightly, Scotland has a world-renowned reputation in medical research. The committee has heard evidence about data collection, which Scotland is also good at. Where we fall down is on deployment of the data and using it to our best advantage. The cabinet secretary and I have a shared interest in information technology. Covid, and now long Covid, have highlighted that there is an issue with how we use our data, and with the fact that our IT systems are possibly not capable of using it to our best advantage. If we strip the matter right back, should we not now look again at how different IT systems across our nation interact so that we can deploy data in the most effective way?

I would appreciate that, cabinet secretary.

On long Covid specifically, the world-class research that we have in this country highlights the issues that we have just talked about. How do we best deploy in our communities the data that has been gathered for our healthcare professionals on what long Covid looks like and what the symptoms are? We have heard and we know that what is happening practically on the ground does not match the research that we are doing, so how do we connect them? That has to be the starting point. What work are you doing on that? As you said, the data is cloud based, so it is about gathering all that knowledge together so that we can deploy it.

I was just thinking about a point that Murdo Fraser made when he raised the potential advantages and disadvantages of having long Covid clinics. Have you considered that if we were to have such clinics where people with that condition, or who potentially have it, coalesce, one of the advantages would be an ability to gather data on it, because we would know where those people are.