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To stick with Mike Gray’s fire service analogy, are we looking for a retained fire service in the scientific community that can respond quickly and keep the information flowing? Is that effectively what you are asking for?

I find the stuff that you have all talked about really interesting. People have said that barriers have come down as a result of Covid, not only in your sector but across society. What bothers me, though, is that the barriers were there in the first place. Have you gone back into your silos? You have all said that there has been good co-operative working and that we should do that. Are you not still doing it? Have you all gone back to working independently of one other? I would have thought that that co-operation should be used across huge areas and many disciplines, whether that involves surveying for other diseases or all sorts of other public health issues. Where are you with co-operation now?

George, do you want to comment?

We heard in an earlier session about how the personal protective equipment system was established. It was learned very quickly that people cannot stick PPE in a cupboard and wait for five years until they need it. There has to be a continuous rolling of stock. Collectively, how able are you to say to the Scottish Government that you need funding to keep that going and develop it?

The PPE system has grown to become almost an industry on its own. How do you collectively say, “We can provide this, this and this through the funding that you give us, and then we can use that if there is another emergency”? Do you see what I mean? I am trying to find the quid pro quo for keeping it going, because we might wait for 50 years for another pandemic, or we might wait for five years. We just do not know. How do you do that? Are you looking at it?

That answer has given me an idea for a question to ask the next panel.

It sounds as if you should all have regular conversations with one other.

You said that Scotland is poorly served in terms of the workforce. Why?

Okay—thank you.

With your reference to food-borne pathogens, you have just raised a whole new load of questions. That work is vital, given the global food supply chain. Indeed, a number of years ago, we had an E coli outbreak that killed quite a number of people. Are you doing any work on that in the food industry?

I have to say that you kind of confused me when you said that you were flipping the approach on its head. Where do you go to catch an outbreak in the first place, if you do not yet know that there is a problem?

Does that allow you to forward plan?