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So you input data.

I thank our panel members for joining us. We will suspend briefly to change witnesses.

Thank you.

This question might be more difficult to answer. An additional £200 million has been added to this year’s budget for adult social care and the national care service. How should that money be allocated to achieve the most effective outcomes? You can see now why I said that it might be more difficult for you to answer.

The second item is an evidence session on NHS waiting times. I welcome to the committee Katie Cuthbertson, who is the national director of NHS Scotland’s national centre for sustainable delivery; Professor Farhat Din, who is a council member of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh; and Peter Hastie, who is the policy and public affairs manger, Scotland, from Macmillan Cancer Support. Max Warner, who joins us remotely, is a research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. We will move straight to questions.

I think that Mr Warner wants to come in.

Thank you. We might go into that in a bit more detail later on.

Is there a specific workstream that explores productivity as opposed to service redesign, or is that a thread that runs through your work?

Max Warner wants to come in on that question.

Good morning, and welcome to the 18th meeting in 2024 of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. We have received apologies from David Torrance. James Dornan and Carol Mochan join us remotely.

The first item on our agenda is to decide whether to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private. Are members agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

When do you anticipate that you will start to see that being reflected in waiting times coming down, either for diagnostics or for patients waiting to be seen?