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I am all for budget discipline. In your letter, you talked about helping to “troubleshoot delivery issues”, which is a bit vague, but I am encouraged by the fact that you have said that you would “look sympathetically” at such situations, which is a bit stronger and will probably reassure people a bit more.

To change the subject, you have a very long ministerial title. I want to ask about the intergovernmental relations part of it. Liz Smith touched on the budget and issues such as transparency, but I am thinking about the timing of it. It is clear that the past few years have been strange, so, in a sense, we can leave them aside. For me, the ideal scenario would be for the UK to set its budget, after which Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland could set their budgets, and then local government could set its budget. That would seem to be the logical process, but we have not had that recently.

I do not know whether that falls within your remit; I am sure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and other people have a part to play in that, too. In the longer run, do you think that we can get to a place where first the UK sets its budget, then the devolved Administrations and local government set theirs?

I also take the point that you made in answer to Michelle Thomson that the first bid that appears will not necessarily be typical of what will come thereafter. The first one in Glasgow that I am aware of is for £13 million for the Pollok stables. I am all for horses and I am all for a bit of culture, but some people would feel that that is not the top priority if we are trying to level up the poorest communities in Glasgow. I presume that we could build 130 houses for that money. What is your answer to that? I would have thought that that bid sent out a strange signal.

I take your point that there are poorer people in all communities. I have been in Aberdeen and seen the poorer areas there, for example. However, it could also be said that, in general, a poorer person who lives in a richer area will do better than a poorer person in a poor area. Would you accept that?

Last—I will let others decide whether it is least—I would like to return to the question of whether the money is going to the neediest areas, although I realise that colleagues have already touched on that. In your helpful letter to the committee, Mr Gove, you say that 60 per cent of the bids have gone to priority 1 areas in Scotland. I find that a little bit surprising. If we are really levelling up, should it not be 100 per cent?

We have a cross-party group on industrial communities, which tends to focus on the former coalfields and other industrial areas. It also works closely with the Industrial Communities Alliance. It did an analysis of the 105 successful bids and made the point that, of the 94 successful bids in England, Scotland and Wales, only 42 came from the poorest third of sub-regions, going by gross value added per head, and that 14 of the successful bids came from sub-regions in which GVA per head is above the UK average, including six in London. Based on those figures, people might think that the money is not just going to the poorest areas.

I take that point. I am very much in favour, for example, of the fact that, as you will probably know, the Burrell Collection has been upgraded. However, by that argument, you could say that any expenditure anywhere will give poorer areas a boost, but it needs to be targeted to some extent.

I go back to your letter. One of the questions was about what would happen if, during the bid process or in spending the money, something untoward were to happen. You answered that to an extent, but what would happen if a bid came in and inflation—which is a bit higher and looks likely to remain persistently higher than most of us expected—took off? Would there be any extra money?

That was helpful.

On the strategic framework, there has been some mention of what we can perhaps do for Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda. Can you say anything about what we might do for them?

Dr Miles’s points about mortality and morbidity tie in well with my first question, which is for Professor Elder. I am not sure that I understood what you say in point D of paragraph 5 of your written paper:

“Consideration should be given to the relative priority of treatment for high morbidity-low mortality conditions (for example joint replacement for degenerative joint disease) and treatments for conditions with higher mortality.”

Are you saying that we should put more emphasis on morbidity than on mortality?

Do we as a society put too much emphasis on avoiding death?

In people’s thinking, there is a little bit of a difference between what is law and what is just guidance. I was down in England last week, where the restrictions tend to be more based on guidance and, despite what Murdo Fraser said about people’s good sense, people were not adhering to a lot of that guidance. Therefore, it is too early to lift the restrictions. I agree that we do not want the legislation to be in place for any longer than it needs to be, but it is a little bit too early to change direction.