���˿���

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 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 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 will quote your paper again, although other witnesses might want to come in on the issue. Point B of paragraph 1 refers to the United States, and states that

“around one third of excess deaths may relate to non-COVID causes.”

My question is a more general one. Are there any lessons that we can learn from the United States, or from some of our closer neighbours such as France, Germany or the Netherlands, about how they have dealt with Covid and whether they have dealt with non-Covid cases differently during the pandemic and so on? Professor Elder, can you start?

I think that that is the area that article touched on. There was also mention of ghost patients. I understand that the population of people who are registered with a GP is higher than the population as a whole.

That is fine. Professor Leitch’s answer dealt with the problem. It is helpful to get it on the record.

We are expanding the vaccinations slightly and some people are getting a fourth dose or second booster. Will you give us an indication of where that might be going? Will we go right through the population again from the oldest to the youngest or will annual boosters wait until the autumn for the under-75s?

My next question is on testing, which has been mentioned already. If we do not get funding from the UK, or if the UK does not fund the testing kits and so on, will that seriously curtail what we can do?

Do any of the other witnesses know whether there are other European countries that we can learn from or that have done anything particularly well compared with us? I can see everyone shaking their heads. That is okay—I will move on.

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.