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If you appear in the pub, you are simply recording the fact that you have been there. What I want to know is, how does the bouncer know that you are who you say you are, and that you have the double vaccine? What, specifically, appears on his screen? It could not be a green tick, because if it was, I could take your phone and go in. What, specifically, appears on the bouncer’s screen to give him or her an assurance that you are who you say you are, and that you have been double vaccinated?

Gathering the data and compiling the evidence of what has happened is one thing, but implementing a series of measures so that we avoid bad outcomes is another. It is not as if we are trying to compile the data in order to learn lessons should we see Covid occur again in the future; it is to deal with the damage that has taken place now. Do you have sufficient assurance that we will see this journey through to the end and that there will be measurable implementation of different initiatives to make sure that we tackle the worst of the impact of Covid on particularly vulnerable children?

Yes. I draw the committee’s attention to my entry in the register of interests, which details that I am a member of East Lothian Council’s education committee.

Good morning, Mr Boyle. I think that it is commonly and widely accepted that poverty and inequality are very stubborn stains on the fabric of modern Scotland. You said in your opening remarks that those living in the most challenging circumstances would be hit hardest by Covid. In paragraph 87 of the report, you speak of the need for the Scottish Government, councils and their partners

“to fully understand the impact of Covid-19 on all young people and gather the relevant data if they are to support the development of appropriate responses.”

Are you satisfied with the action that has been taken to date in relation to that?

Over the past 18 months, councils, and their education departments in particular, have been working round the clock to set up hybrid learning and distance online learning and to get in-classroom learning back up and running. Do you think that councils have had sufficient resource to compile the relevant data or is that something that could be lost in the scramble to get education back up and running?

Your report explains that improving outcomes for children and young people through school education requires the contribution of wider stakeholders—health, social work and the third sector—and that the Covid-19 children and families collective leadership group, which was established in May 2020, will help to provide scope to build future cross-sector collaboration. How important in improving outcomes is the contribution of those wider stakeholders and why?

The children and families collective leadership group was set up in addition to the Covid-19 education recovery group. How effectively do you think those groups, specifically the children and families collective leadership group, are in sharing and highlighting good practice? Do you as yet have any indication of whether good practice is finding its way through to measurable and implementable solutions?

The question is actually a little bit unrelated. Something that has not come up today is the Government’s plan for the creation of a national care service. When we talked previously, we discussed the role that Audit Scotland might have in relation to that. This week, the First Minister called the proposed national care service

“perhaps ... the biggest public sector reform that Parliament will ever have undertaken.”—[Official Report, 31 August 2021; c 13.]

Given the scale and scope of the proposed service—it could touch on adult social care, children’s services, social work, drug and alcohol services, GP provision and the criminal justice system—what role do you see Audit Scotland having in relation to development of the policy and the service so that we can achieve good outcomes, and so that you do not have to produce in, perhaps, five or 10 years what could be one of the largest “What went wrong” reports in the history of the Parliament?

Anybody who turns on their television set will see the impact that Covid has had on our courts, schools and hospitals. To what extent do you anticipate that certain sectors, such as the NHS and the education and justice systems, have been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic? What work will you undertake in order to specifically track their recovery in future months and years?

Welcome to the meeting, Mr Boyle, and thank you for setting out your programme and priorities so clearly this morning.

You mentioned Covid and your work on following the pandemic pound. The committee very much welcomes what you are doing, given that, as you have pointed out, such spending amounts to £13 billion and counting. How do you plan to track the spending to mitigate Covid, and how will you assess its effectiveness?

Following up on Graham Simpson’s point on the definition of dancing, I wonder about the use of regulation 5(1)(r), as it raises a question about the context. The provision governs nightclubs but, hypothetically, if I were to dance my way round a supermarket—or go very fast round the supermarket, as in the TV programme “Supermarket Sweep”—would that be a form of exercise that would allow me not to wear a mask?

Mr Simpson raised questions in relation to the definition of dancing, but I also wonder whether the way in which the provision is framed opens up an issue to which we should be alerting the lead committee regarding the context and the premises in which the activity takes place.