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I am sorry to go off at a tangent, but John Mason said something about the value of having a stockpile. There is a purely financial value, but there is also a value from a qualitative point of view in being able to deliver the system at the time at which it is needed. Do you see what I mean?

Yes, or to have 10 suppliers coming in with different methods of production and what have you. If some of them dropped off, you would lose that critical mass when you needed it most.

That local supply chain is now up and running, and there is huge value for us as a country in ensuring that we keep it functioning.

We are paying someone here in Scotland.

I really do not envy you guys the job that you do in trying to juggle all of that while not knowing what is coming down the road.

Dr Phin, I want to ask about recovery from long Covid, which we talked about immediately before you came in. Is there a budget to deal with research and treatment? Every one of us has constituents coming to us who are suffering from long Covid, and the message that we are getting is that not enough is being done and there is not enough help. Is there enough budget and is there research into how to deal with long Covid?

You clearly read my mind, Dr Phin, because that is exactly what I was going to ask about.

One problem with being the last speaker is that many wee questions have sprung up over the course of the meeting. I will try to rattle through them quickly. The witnesses might have answered some of them.

The first thing that came into my head was the cost of funding the response to the pandemic in the first place. I have never done budget scrutiny before. Where did that budget come from? Carolyn Low said that an unending amount of money was available to deal with the pandemic. We now need to ensure that we get vaccine uptake and deal with long Covid—I will come on to that in a minute—and there are a load of other costs. Are they being absorbed by the original NHS budget or is there extra funding over and above that to deal with the extra challenges that are coming out of Covid, despite the fact that we might not be out of it?

I will press you a wee bit because of something that Mary Morgan said earlier. John Mason talked about the just-in-time supply chain and you talked about 85 per cent being the most efficient bed occupancy rate. How much financial value should be placed on the ability to have a continuity of supply—a resilient supply chain—in order to keep a critical mass? Is there a financial value in having the critical mass that you talked about? That question could also apply to bed occupancy. Do you understand what I mean?

We hear phrases such as “moving towards regenerative farming” being used all the time in this committee, but we are not moving towards regenerative farming—we are farming. That is what farmers have always done, and I find it particularly frustrating that the farming community is being demonised in relation to the carbon capturing that we must do. The farming community accepts that there is work to be done, but it is not a case of chucking the baby out with the bath water. I just wanted to put that on the record.

Following on from the budget question that the convener asked, I would like to make a couple of points. First, I want to ask about the key differences between the system that the Scottish Government is putting in place through the use of the ARIOB and what happened previously. Am I right in thinking that, with the ARIOB, the point was to consult the industry in its entirety, whereas, down south, the new system was simply put in? What will be the key differences between what is proposed and what has been done in the past?

In relation to the longer-term future, I understand that 97 per cent of the agriculture budget comes from the United Kingdom spending review. How do you plan to make progress on the long-term funding of agriculture if the system down south is completely different from the one that we have here?

I have one final question. How are you able to make a commitment to ensure that the farming infrastructure stays in place? If the funding will change down south in 2027, how will the Scottish Government be able to give a commitment on long-term food security? It is vital that we have a resilient food system in Scotland. Let me put it this way: how important is food resilience to you?