Chamber and committees

Last—I will let others decide whether it is least—I would like to return to the question of whether the money is going to the neediest areas, although I realise that colleagues have already touched on that. In your helpful letter to the committee, Mr Gove, you say that 60 per cent of the bids have gone to priority 1 areas in Scotland. I find that a little bit surprising. If we are really levelling up, should it not be 100 per cent?

We have a cross-party group on industrial communities, which tends to focus on the former coalfields and other industrial areas. It also works closely with the Industrial Communities Alliance. It did an analysis of the 105 successful bids and made the point that, of the 94 successful bids in England, Scotland and Wales, only 42 came from the poorest third of sub-regions, going by gross value added per head, and that 14 of the successful bids came from sub-regions in which GVA per head is above the UK average, including six in London. Based on those figures, people might think that the money is not just going to the poorest areas.

I also take the point that you made in answer to Michelle Thomson that the first bid that appears will not necessarily be typical of what will come thereafter. The first one in Glasgow that I am aware of is for £13 million for the Pollok stables. I am all for horses and I am all for a bit of culture, but some people would feel that that is not the top priority if we are trying to level up the poorest communities in Glasgow. I presume that we could build 130 houses for that money. What is your answer to that? I would have thought that that bid sent out a strange signal.

I am all for budget discipline. In your letter, you talked about helping to “troubleshoot delivery issues”, which is a bit vague, but I am encouraged by the fact that you have said that you would “look sympathetically” at such situations, which is a bit stronger and will probably reassure people a bit more.

To change the subject, you have a very long ministerial title. I want to ask about the intergovernmental relations part of it. Liz Smith touched on the budget and issues such as transparency, but I am thinking about the timing of it. It is clear that the past few years have been strange, so, in a sense, we can leave them aside. For me, the ideal scenario would be for the UK to set its budget, after which Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland could set their budgets, and then local government could set its budget. That would seem to be the logical process, but we have not had that recently.

I do not know whether that falls within your remit; I am sure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and other people have a part to play in that, too. In the longer run, do you think that we can get to a place where first the UK sets its budget, then the devolved Administrations and local government set theirs?

That is a fair answer—it is actually quite a good one. I will leave it at that.

I take your point that there are poorer people in all communities. I have been in Aberdeen and seen the poorer areas there, for example. However, it could also be said that, in general, a poorer person who lives in a richer area will do better than a poorer person in a poor area. Would you accept that?

Do we as a society put too much emphasis on avoiding death?

In people’s thinking, there is a little bit of a difference between what is law and what is just guidance. I was down in England last week, where the restrictions tend to be more based on guidance and, despite what Murdo Fraser said about people’s good sense, people were not adhering to a lot of that guidance. Therefore, it is too early to lift the restrictions. I agree that we do not want the legislation to be in place for any longer than it needs to be, but it is a little bit too early to change direction.

That seems to be another part of the issue.

We continue to have a problem with misinformation and people who are Covid sceptic or vaccine sceptic. I understand that some of the data that has been produced has been misused, misquoted or twisted and, as a result, Public Health Scotland will not continue to publish some of the figures. There was an interesting article by Helen McArdle in Saturday’s Herald, which, to be frank, I struggled to understand. Will you clarify what the problem was? I think that it might have been to do with how the unvaccinated population is counted. Will you clarify why the data is not solid and why it is not being published?

That is helpful. I certainly remember that, when I was young, we saw the same GP every single time.

On a slightly different issue, the Scottish Intensive Care Society’s submission mentions resources, which is touched on in other submissions. It says:

“The health service budget is finite and was under resourced given the demands even before the pandemic.”

We have already mentioned preventative spend. Dr Miles, are you arguing that we as a society need to spend more on health? Assuming that we are not going to cut that money from universities or schools, are you arguing that that will probably mean higher taxes, or are you arguing that we should be using money differently and better in the health service?