Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you, convener. I appreciate the opportunity to ask this question. I want to go a little bit further with Jim Fairlie’s line of questioning. The aspects that we should continue to monitor as we travel on this journey were alluded to earlier. In an earlier session with the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Professor Leitch mentioned the extensive data in a paper in The Lancet, which includes global measurements. What should we continue to monitor locally so that we can put our data into a global perspective, perhaps using the World Health Organization’s advice on data gathering?

I point out that it is not about sport for sport’s sake—it is about education through sport and physical activity. I would rather use that phrase, because everybody thinks, when I talk about sport, that I want to make people run eight 400m laps. That is not quite where I am at—I would not attempt that myself.

Moving on from that aspect, I go back to the question of data. Perhaps it would interest the cabinet secretary to look back at the work that the Health and Sport Committee did in the previous session of Parliament on sport and social prescribing. The data is incredibly important, as Professor Leitch highlighted when he discussed the importance of global data.

A lot of the evidence that we have gathered, which has followed the committee through from the previous session, shows that there is a lack of co-ordination in relation to data collection. That will hamper our ability to plan ahead and to reassess—recreate, if you like—the way in which we deliver healthcare.

On top of that, we do not have an information technology system in the NHS that is fit for purpose. For example, the data does not follow the patient from primary care into secondary care, and it does not link up with the third sector. We need all of that to happen.

When we discuss IT platforms, it is incredibly boring, but they are an incredibly important first step. I do not know where the Government is with that.

I want to follow on from John Mason’s questions about data.

In my time on the Health and Sport Committee in the previous session of Parliament, before Covid, one of the recurring themes was that we seem to be behind the curve in relation to not only how we collect data but how we analyse it. That has been exacerbated greatly by the pandemic. Do we now have an opportunity to reset how we collect data, to the benefit of the healthcare system, and use that data to drive Government policy on health?

In the previous parliamentary session, there was a recurring theme about how we could improve the way in which we collect and analyse data. To take that a stage further, I was interested to hear what Lawrence Cowan said about inequalities and how access to the work that his organisation does around group physical activity has been restricted because of Covid. That is more likely to happen in areas that are lower in the Scottish index of multiple deprivation. I am thinking about the collection of data on physical activity throughout the pandemic and the impact on excess deaths related to that. Using that data alongside or cross-referencing it with the health data that we are talking about would probably help us to integrate the third sector offering into NHS offerings. Lawrence Cowan, do you have an opinion on that?

I will finish off my line of questioning by tying up what Dr Fenton has just said and Lawrence Cowan’s comments about the need to share data. This is probably a difficult question to put to you, Dr Fenton, but do we have an IT system that enables us to collect and analyse the data?

The question that you have raised about who owns the data and therefore how it can used that has exercised the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee and its predecessor for a while. We will not get into that in this committee.

Lynda Fenton would like to come in.

Good morning, panel. I am interested in the potential impact of the bill. I want to look back on the way in which legislation was initially introduced in the Parliament two years ago, and the way in which we responded to coronavirus over the period of the pandemic. I note that it was an extended period—the pandemic did not happen to us suddenly. We watched coronavirus move around the world: from China, across Europe and into the UK and Scotland.

If it had existed back then, what difference would the legislation that is before us have made to the way in which we responded to coronavirus? The Parliament legislated quickly once a decision had been made, and I am struggling to understand what difference it would have made had the legislation existed in the first place. I ask Professor Hunter to answer that in the first instance.

My question, though, is: what difference would the bill have made to the impact of Covid and the decisions made during that time?

I will be brief. My interest lies in the impact of Covid. Before the pandemic, business debt and personal debt were being managed, but the impact of Covid has put a lot of strain on that. I know that we are talking about having a moratorium that would enable people to get back on to an even keel. However, at the end of the day, bankruptcy is about trading while insolvent, so how do we square that circle? How do we enable people to get back on an even keel if that means that they might potentially be trading while insolvent during that period?

Finally, on that point, leaving aside the £5,000 threshold, which it has been suggested is perhaps too low, should the bill contain anything to do with the issue that I spoke about with regard to the time to address the way in which Covid has impacted on debt?