Chamber and committees

I might return to that point. I was interested in Daniel Johnson’s questions about what people think of the voluntary sector, because it covers an incredibly wide range of things. At one end, you represent what I would call the small charities that are wholly staffed by volunteers and get no public money; you also represent big organisations—Quarriers and so on—that get a lot of public money. Have some of the organisations in the sector become too dependent on public money? Presumably, they started off relying on donations, mainly.

Multiyear funding, which we addressed in the previous evidence session, too, is an issue at every point in the process—the UK Government gives money to the Scottish Government; the Scottish Government gives money to local government; and local government gives money to voluntary organisations.

If, say, Glasgow City Council could not guarantee a particular charity 100 per cent funding for the next five years but could guarantee 80 per cent funding, that would give some certainty to the organisation, which could then flex, depending on what else it could get. Would that be an acceptable compromise?

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?

I take that point. I am very much in favour, for example, of the fact that, as you will probably know, the Burrell Collection has been upgraded. However, by that argument, you could say that any expenditure anywhere will give poorer areas a boost, but it needs to be targeted to some extent.

I go back to your letter. One of the questions was about what would happen if, during the bid process or in spending the money, something untoward were to happen. You answered that to an extent, but what would happen if a bid came in and inflation—which is a bit higher and looks likely to remain persistently higher than most of us expected—took off? Would there be any extra money?

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?

I will quote your paper again, although other witnesses might want to come in on the issue. Point B of paragraph 1 refers to the United States, and states that

“around one third of excess deaths may relate to non-COVID causes.”

My question is a more general one. Are there any lessons that we can learn from the United States, or from some of our closer neighbours such as France, Germany or the Netherlands, about how they have dealt with Covid and whether they have dealt with non-Covid cases differently during the pandemic and so on? Professor Elder, can you start?

I think that that is the area that article touched on. There was also mention of ghost patients. I understand that the population of people who are registered with a GP is higher than the population as a whole.