Seòmar agus comataidhean

Sorry: if they can find a dentist.

I echo your thanks to everybody who has contributed to the committee. I thank our clerking team, the Scottish Parliament information centre and all those who have helped us. I also thank you, convener. Your stint as convener has been a very short one, but you can put it on your CV for future reference that you convened a parliamentary committee, albeit for just a few weeks. Thank you for leading the committee in collegiate style.

I also thank our committee advisers, whom we have not seen for quite a long time, but who were initially regular attenders at the committee: Professor Peter Donnelly, Professor Susie Dunachie and Professor Helen Stagg. Members will recall that they came more or less on a weekly basis to give us updates at the height of the Covid pandemic, and their input was extremely useful to us. We should record our thanks to them. I do not know whether we are going to write to them formally to express our thanks, but I think that we should do so.

As a personal reflection, I was the first convener of the COVID-19 Committee in the previous session. If I remember rightly, the committee was established in May 2020, and here we are, just over three years later, bringing this particular journey to an end. I hope that that is an indication that Covid is behind us—and I hope that my saying so does not give a hostage to fortune.

Nevertheless, there are some very important lessons that we need to learn from Covid. A lot still needs to be done and put right, post-Covid, in the public sector and in public services, and I hope that the important work that the committee has been doing will be continued by other subject committees as we go into the next parliamentary year.

Witnesses should not feel that they need to repeat what other people have said, but if anyone has anything to add, please come in.

You have raised interesting points. Our committee is looking specifically at the impact of Covid, so I am interested in the extent to which that situation has happened because of Covid, or was it happening anyway?

So you are not splitters.

There are a lot more questions that I want to ask. On your last point specifically, Dr Bashir, you said that it would take more than two years to get rid of the backlog. I am interested in getting the perspectives of David McColl and Douglas Thain on that. I think that David took a much more pessimistic view on whether we will get rid of the backlog at all.

Is that the view of all of you?

Finally, will we clear the backlog without reform?

I am just trying to work out what the relationship is between the three of you.

I just wanted to understand where everybody is, so that has been helpful.

Moving on to the substance of the inquiry, we are interested in looking at the impact that Covid has had on dental services across Scotland. The BDA’s written submission contains a striking statistic. It states:

“Dentistry has lost over half (52%) of its capacity since lockdown”.

My first question is for Mr McColl. How long will it take us to get back to where we were, if we ever do, and what needs to happen to ensure that we do?