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My question is for Dr Armstrong, mainly because NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde is the biggest board. With regard to waiting times, Dr Iain Kennedy, the new chair of BMA Scotland, has said that figures that have been compiled suggest that patients are not getting a realistic picture of the delays with orthopaedics, and orthopaedic surgeons are saying that only the most urgent care is being prioritised while patients

“face languishing on waiting lists for years due to lack of capacity.”

How do you respond to that and what can you do to ensure that we get those waiting lists down?

It is important to say to anyone who is watching that, if you are eligible to get a vaccine, please, please go and get one, because it will save your life.

I thank the witnesses for coming to see us. I listened to what Ms Lamb said with a lot of interest and I will pick up on Tess White’s question. You said that £7.5 million had been spent on modelling. You have not talked about anything specific that is being done to improve what will happen. Are you confident that the NHS will cope this winter, based on the modelling that you have spent £7.5 million on and all the work that you have been doing? Will you tell us about the things that you have done under the strategies?

In answer to an earlier question, you talked about the increase in workforce, but the British Medical Association has said that consultant vacancies are now at 15 per cent and that there are 6,000 nursing vacancies. We have talked about the right care, right place guidance, but I note that the community pharmacies that David Torrance asked about choose to close for a half-day on Saturdays so that they can move staff to another pharmacy and get paid double.

We have also mentioned out-of-hospital capacity, but I note that OPAT was being used at Raigmore hospital in 2015. You talked about the strength of integration with regard to delayed discharge, but we have actually had a decrease in bed numbers and a record number of people who are ready to go being delayed in hospital. Moreover, staff and patients do not really like the redesign of urgent care.

I just want to look at what you say has happened and the problems that we are seeing now. For example, the cancer statistics that have just come out show that only 76.3 per cent of patients are being seen within the target. That figure is the worst on record, and it is a priority area. How are we going to address and fix the situation?

Most important, what is going to happen with other things? We know that we are going to get a winter surge, but how are we going to help cancer patients, for example? Our stats have come out. The figure of 76.3 per cent is the worst on record. Clearly, it is a priority area. How can we protect those patients when it comes to winter, and get that flow continuing?

I wonder whether Leigh Johnston might have a thought on that as well.

Local authorities and other stakeholders are also very concerned about the administrative and structural costs of establishing a national care service. Do you share their concerns that a high administrative cost will lead to less financial resource for service delivery?

Forgive me—as you said, you cannot track the spending, but what would you like to see happen? How can we track that spending? My question was about what difference we can make to make it easier for you.

I might email you on that last comment about hearing aids, because I had never heard of that before.

However, moving on to the theme of the national care service, a lot of the responses to the call for evidence deal with the financial memorandum, which was presented just before the summer recess. For example, the West Lothian integration joint board said:

“there is so little detail provided in the Financial Memorandum as to the basis of the costs, it is impossible to say if the costs included are reasonable and accurate.”

David Bell, do you share those concerns?

You are saying that you are unclear about it—what can we do to make that data available to make it clearer as to what is happening?

I want to ask Leigh Johnston a follow-up question. You talked about data and how you are struggling to find information. My question has two parts. Would you like outcomes to be explicitly stated when spending in the NHS is announced? If not—or on top of that—what can we do to improve data so that we can see what the outcomes are? Let us be honest: outcomes are the most important thing.