Seòmar agus comataidhean

Sometimes tax gets more complicated because we are trying to make it fairer and, if we make it simple, it is not so fair. Do you agree with that dichotomy?

So the ball would start to be in the Government’s court. It would propose three or four options in a particular area, and then committees, the Parliament and perhaps the public would discuss those options. Is that the kind of approach that you envisage?

In the section of the report on the transition from response to recovery, paragraph 28 says:

“the Scottish Government will need to have a clear understanding of how it plans to transition”.

Two lines further down, it says that the Scottish Government

“is also likely to need to maintain a flexible approach”.

It strikes me that those two points are somewhat in balance against each other. Is it possible to get a balance there?

That is quite an interesting thought. If the Government announced more money for health, who would then challenge it not to spend so much on health but to spend more on education? I do not know whether that is the role of this committee, but maybe it is up to it to consider that point in the future.

I will leave it at that. Thank you very much.

We need to be able to understand how the decision was made, even though it could have gone either way. That is helpful.

In your briefing paper, you made the point that there have been 300 spending announcements in the context of Covid. Was there an implied criticism there? Have there been too many announcements and too many funds? Has it all been too complex? Would we have done better to have just two funds—one for the health service and one for business—and just got on with it?

Most members have asked about the tracking of Covid expenditure. I will continue with that theme.

Is tracking Covid expenditure possible? Is it helpful or necessary? For example, if someone’s operation—a hip replacement, say—has been postponed because of Covid and they now need more painkillers while they wait and they have to see a nurse or a general practitioner, how do we track the cost of the painkillers and the appointment with the nurse or GP? The nurse and the GP are there anyway, and the appointment is not directly related to Covid, but we could say that those costs came about because of Covid. There is never going to be a right answer to how that spending is tracked. I can see arguments on both sides, so surely a judgment has to be made. Will you comment on that?

On that point, we have had restrictions for the past year and a half, most of which have been brought in at two or three days’ notice. This one is the slowest that we have ever done; it has had the most consultation and discussion of any of the restrictions that we have had up to now. Do you have the same criticism of all the other restrictions that we have had, such as closing schools? Have all of those failed from a human rights perspective?

We have lost Ms Robertson. Maybe Professor Montgomery can answer.

We have a situation now in which our hospitals are struggling and the Scottish Ambulance Service is swamped. We must take action. From listening to your answers so far, I wonder whether it would be cleaner and neater from a human rights and equalities point of view just to close all the nightclubs, stop all the football matches with attendance over 10,000 and stop all the concerts. That would prevent any human rights issues, would it not? It would just be cleaner. Would that be your preference?

Perhaps Professor Montgomery will come in. I have been looking at the Ada Lovelace Institute paper from May, in which there was an emphasis on things such as testing behavioural impacts. That is all very well if we have time but, surely, we do not have time to do all that kind of stuff when we have to act quickly.