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Jackie Baillie is saying that it was much higher—I do not think that it was. I will go away and check the data set.

It is not an unusual experience in our conversations, Mr Fairlie.

I will invite Christine McLaughlin to provide some information about that. I make the point that we now have significant health protection for the population as a consequence of the effectiveness of the vaccination programme, so there is no longer a necessity for the scale of arrangements that we had at the height of the pandemic. Even if there is a new Covid variant, the level of population protection is very high because of the vaccination programme.

Having said that, it is still important to have effective surveillance and monitoring arrangements in place to ensure that we can accurately gauge whether we have a wider problem that needs to be arrested. Some of the information that I placed on the record in my opening statement set out the type of societal assessment that we routinely undertake to ensure that we have those preparatory arrangements in place.

I invite Christine McLaughlin to say something about the ONS survey.

I think that I can confidently say that it will do that.

We are making provisions in the budget for what I describe as a baseline level of preparedness for further challenges from Covid. However, I make a distinction in my response to Mr Fraser’s question between a new variant and a new pandemic, because those are two fundamentally different propositions.

On the basis of what we know and the variants that are around, we are fairly confident that the level of population-wide vaccination protection would enable us to withstand the effects of a new variant, given the level of protection that is inherent in the vaccination and the nature of the variants that are emerging. A completely different pandemic would be a different matter altogether. That could conceivably require us to put in place the type of arrangements that we have experienced over the past three years.

Obviously, we hope that it will not happen but, to enable us to respond to all those scenarios, we have certain provisions in the budget for the surveillance activity that Christine McLaughlin talked about. We have provisions for a level of testing, the delivery of a further vaccination programme and a level of workforce considerations, personal protective equipment issues, equipment considerations and some wider factors. Those are built into the budget. That is funded from the overall budget that is available for the health and social care portfolio, which is in excess of £19 billion.

A certain amount of consequential funding from the United Kingdom Government comes generally for health and social care priorities as a consequence of decisions that are made in the autumn statement and announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. However, the Scottish Government is putting more than those Barnett consequentials into the health service. It was an explicit part of the statement that I gave to Parliament in December that I was making tax changes and applying tax increases to enable me to be in a position to better fund the national health service, which we have been able to do.

I agree about the importance of long Covid and supporting the recovery of individuals who experience it. However, I challenge Jackie Baillie on the point about a significant increase in economic inactivity, because that is not what the data says. Data that was published on Tuesday shows that economic inactivity in Scotland has reduced by 0.8 per cent over the year. The fall was larger in Scotland than in the rest of the United Kingdom. I appreciate that there will be ebbs and flows within that, and that some people will become economically inactive because of long Covid, but for the accuracy of the data that the committee has before it, I note that that is the position on economic inactivity.

There has been a significant amount of discussion about the appropriate means of addressing individuals’ experiences of long Covid. Fundamentally, there will be a need for health interventions to support individuals. It is difficult to disaggregate what is spent in the health service on supporting people with long Covid, because that will be felt in a variety of areas, such as services in community settings—for example, the work of general practitioners—and more specialist clinics, where people will be provided with support that addresses their experiences.

As I said, the health budget has been increased by more than £1 billion during the year to provide the capacity to meet the health needs of the population. That will of course include people who have experience of long Covid, and it is important that individuals who have that experience are supported in the appropriate way.

We will have to work carefully with trade unions and staff associations over the course of the four-year spending period to reduce staff numbers. The profile of the four-year spending envelope that is available to us could generally be characterised as less challenging in the first two years but extremely challenging in the last two years.

Those are the provisions of the current United Kingdom Government, and the Opposition in the United Kingdom Parliament has made it clear that it would sustain those numbers, should the election result in a change of Government, so we have to prepare on the basis that, in dialogue and partnership with trade unions and staff associations, we will have to carefully reduce head count over the next four years.

In my opinion, the budget provides the appropriate resources to assist Covid recovery in a variety of policy areas. Covid recovery applies not just within the health service but in the education and justice systems. We have people who are waiting for court cases to be resolved that have been delayed because of Covid and I have to ensure that the burden of a victim is lifted by having those cases resolved. Therefore, I have to allocate resources to a wide variety of areas and have endeavoured to do that across the Government’s budget.

However, there is a finite sum of money available. I have chosen to expand the amount of money that is available by increasing tax on higher-income earners. I know that Mr Whittle’s party does not support that, but I have made that choice to maximise the resources that are available to invest in public services.

Yes, I think that the budget will reflect our ability to deal with the fallout, but I also have to be candid with the committee that it will take us some time to recover from Covid, because it has been a significant and disruptive force in our public services and our society.

The local government budget is going up by more than £550 million, so it is not being cut.

I certainly think that we should be open to that, because, along with the other data that I was talking about, employment levels in Scotland are at their highest on record, and unemployment is very close to a historic low of 3.3 per cent. As Mr Fairlie will know from engagement in his constituency, which has a very similar profile to mine, we cannot speak to a local employer—in the public or private sector—without hearing that they are short of employees. Therefore, the need for us to be flexible about engaging people in the workforce is an absolutely central challenge, and the Government is doing some work on that in relation to the four-day working week pilot and various other measures of that type.

Of course, there will be some complicated interactions around pension provision, and that is particularly the case in some circumstances in relation to the health service. Some of those issues are not immediately under our control, because they are more about pensions rules than employment rules. The more that we have an open and constructive dialogue with the United Kingdom Government—which regulates many of those issues—the better, in order to address some of them.