Chamber and committees

Unless anyone else wants to answer my question, I am happy to leave it there.

Good morning. Dr Phin, you have opened a whole Pandora’s box regarding my specialist subject of prevention—we could probably take up our whole time on that. However, I want to return to your point that vaccination is a key element of Covid recovery. We are currently vaccinating over-50s again. This is anecdotal but, judging from those whom I have been speaking to, there seems to be a higher number of people deciding not to take the next vaccination than was previously the case.

Referring to your point that we require the level of vaccination to stay high to prevent Covid in future, how do we keep the rates high, and how do we keep the public informed? How do we maintain the importance of vaccination?

One area that we need to touch on is the level of funding that the Scottish Government should allocate to future pandemic preparedness and long-term resilience. Obviously, inflation and supply chain issues are currently putting pressure on that. Pre-pandemic, through exercise Silver Swan, we knew that the biggest threat to our public health was likely to be some kind of global pandemic, yet we allowed that work to slide. How do we maintain that preparedness? How robust do we need to be in order to make sure that our preparedness is kept at that level? I put that question to Dr Foster.

I should probably declare an interest: my daughter is a medic in a neonatal unit. I knew how complicated the question was. My point is that priorities shifted drastically during Covid, out of necessity. That has left a major issue that we must deal with at some point. When there is pressure on NHS budgets—as there is—how will all that be considered? Carolyn, do you want to have a go at that?

There is no criticism whatsoever. It is easy to look back to 2020 but, if we had to go through it again, would we alter the approach?

Good morning, panel. I want to go back to the way in which things were communicated. The Government or Governments—certainly the UK Government—used the term “follow the science”. Generally, there was a lot of comfort to be had for the general population that there was a reason why they were being asked to take such extreme measures to look after public health.

The term “follow the science” was well recognised as a good one. However, did we do enough to explain to people what it actually means? Of course, science is a moving picture. To give a simple example, early on in the pandemic, the First Minister and the Prime Minister stood up and said that there was no evidence that face masks would make any difference, until the science said that they did make a difference. The message about following the science is great, but did we do enough to explain what it actually meant?

The question that I am really asking is around that communication. If we had communicated and discussed the potential risk more, would that have prevented more people getting—

It is not a premise; it is a question.

I think that you have missed my point, Mr Leitch.

That is my point, though. The phrase “follow the science” was a good message, but we did not communicate properly what it meant and that the science would continually evolve. We did not communicate that message to the general public, so what people thought was, “I need to do this. Oh, but now I need to do this.” Should we have gone further and said, “Follow what the science currently says, but it will evolve as we learn more about the virus”?