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No—far from it.

Thank you for your answer. You said that you hoped that I was not implying that the pandemic was over—it is quite the opposite. I am probably one of the more cautious people, given my background.

With regard to learning the lessons, and splitting up elective provision and emergency provision, would it be fair to say that, had we had elective clinics already in place, we would have had fewer excess deaths?

It is for anybody who wants to answer it. You guys are the experts.

Thank you very much; that is very helpful.

Thanks very much to witnesses for coming along to speak to us today.

I will come back to the issue of staff morale in a minute or two, but I will start by telling you what my thinking is. This is an inquiry into excess deaths. What do you feel the value of the inquiry is to your profession?

I go back to Dr Shackles—I will come back to Professor Elder in a moment.

Do you believe that the purpose and value of the committee’s inquiry is that it can shine a light on the deficiencies that already existed?

Sorry—I want to come in on that. Surely it would not be viable for us to have that level of staffing at all times in order to cope with a potential peak.

I know. Given where we are in the pandemic, what is the World Health Organization’s advice on testing?

The point that I am trying to get to is this: how do we surveil to ensure that, if a virus is moving about in our community, we catch it as early as possible? We know that the current system is sufficient. Will what we are moving to be sufficient?

I reiterate what Mr Whittle has just said: the message that came across clearly this morning was that you cannot follow a patient regardless of where they are—the information does not follow them from one department to another. My understanding was that it could go right across the country but, from what we heard this morning, that is not the case.

There are so many things that I would like to talk to you about.