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Thank you for that recommendation. Claire Stevens’s question is one that we have as well. It strikes me that doing an inequalities impact assessment can save problems further down the line when projects are launched and policies are put into action.

Yes, we can hear you now. On you go.

That really goes to the heart of the matter, in our inquiry.

Thank you, David. You will notice that we switched you to audio only, which improved your signal quite a bit. We might not be able to see you, but we can certainly now hear you fine.

I will deal with a bit of housekeeping. To those of you joining us online—specifically, the two Davids, David Finch and David Walsh—if you want to come in on anything, please type R in the chat box and my clerk will let me know.

I want to pick up on a couple of things that were said in witnesses’ opening remarks. Gerry McCartney mentioned the place-based approach. I want to delve a bit deeper into your thoughts on that. You said that, to your mind, a place-based approach might not have the effect that people think that it will. We hear an awful lot about the issue from Government ministers and commentators generally. Can you expand on your point?

Claire Stevens earlier talked about those who have simply been left behind or overlooked by public policy and services. We heard from a lot of people in those marginalised groups in our two evidence sessions, a lot of whom had no recourse to public funds. Could you expand on your point? Who did you have in mind when you said that policies and services are not getting to those people or taking those people into account? Which policies and services did you have in mind?

The issue comes back to our general ethos as a health committee, which is that we think that every portfolio should have a health aspect to it, because quite a number of the drivers of health inequalities do not fall within the health portfolio. An example of that is transport. Quite a lot of the people to whom we spoke on Friday and Monday talked about the cost of transport and the cost of food, which they said were having an impact on their health and their ability to access services.

David, would you like to come in on Gillian Mackay’s question?

Since no health committee meeting would be the same without this line of questioning, we move to questions from Paul O’Kane on the impact of Covid-19.

In informal sessions, we certainly heard very strongly: “Don’t just consult us—involve us in the decision making”. Your point about almost road testing things with focus groups of people that the decisions will affect is absolutely important.

I will pick up on a few things with David Walsh before I open the discussion up to my colleagues.

David Walsh talked about mitigation measures and the issues that are faced when things outwith your control—in particular, austerity measures—have an impact. Obviously, austerity measures were put in place by those who thought they were a good idea, or to save money. However, what is the long-term cost of austerity measures when we look at what you said about the impact on people’s health? Where does the Scottish Government sit in relation to mitigation with a fixed budget?

That rounds off our session. I thank the four of you for the time that you have spent with us. It has been very interesting and a very good start to what we hope will be an important and interesting inquiry, at the end of which—we should always remember this—we will make some recommendations.

At our next meeting, which will be on 31 May, we will continue to take evidence as part of our health inequalities inquiry. We will focus on the impact of the pandemic on health inequalities and the work to tackle those.

That concludes the public part of our meeting.

I said that I would leave human rights to the very end, because it has run through a lot of what we have been talking about. The human right to live your life well is fundamental.

It is difficult to talk about conversations from our informal evidence sessions when three out of four of the witnesses who are here today were not party to those, so I will not use specifics. However, I was struck by people we spoke to who are seeking asylum and people who are advocating for family members and friends who are in prison, and we also heard about Gypsy Travellers and people with no recourse to public funds. The thread going through a lot of our conversations was that people do not feel that they are getting access to their basic human rights.

What would a human rights approach to tackling the structural inequalities look like? What specific interventions could be made to make human rights the thread that runs through the delivery of absolutely all our services, regardless of whether people have recourse to public funds and whoever they are in society in Scotland? What would that look like? It is a huge question, so you can see why I left it till the end.

I was particularly struck by what people told me about our prison population not getting access to healthcare, including medication, even if they have clinical health conditions when they go into or come out of prison. That will stay with me for a long time—frankly, it blew my mind. Other people from marginalised communities also feel that they do not have access to healthcare. Could there be interventions to ensure that they get that access?