 Good morning, and welcome to the first meeting of the Covid-19 recovery committee in the sixth session of the Scottish Parliament. My name is John Mason and I am convening the committee for the first two items because, as it turns out, I am the oldest member of the committee. I have to say that that was something of a shock to learn that. However, there we are. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all members to the committee and say that I look forward to working with you. For new members, I have to say that I find one of the most fulfilling things that I do in Parliament is the committee work and working with colleagues across the parties and with our clerks and with advisers and experts coming to meet us. I personally am very much looking forward to this committee and the months ahead. Before we move to the first item on the agenda, I remind everyone to please switch off their mobile phones or at least switch them to silent. We have no apologies from any members. We have all six members present here today. I now turn to the substantive business for this agenda item, which is the declaration of interests. If I can start with myself, I have no relevant interests to declare. I will now go through each member in alphabetical order and ask them to make a declaration. Can I remind members that you do not need to touch your microphone? That will be handled by broadcasting. First, Siobhan Brown will be followed by Jim Fairlie. Thank you, chair. Good morning, committee. My declaration says, per my register of interest, that I am a councillor at South Asia Council. Until May 7, when I resigned, I was a part-time caseworker for Alan Dorn's MP for Air Carat and Comic. Thank you, Siobhan. I will now turn to Jim and he will be followed by Murdo. Good morning, committee members and good morning everyone that is watching. I am going to just say I am delighted to be on this committee. I have no register of interest in this committee. Thank you very much, Jim. I will now go to Murdo Fraser to be followed by Alec Rowley. Thank you, acting committee. You are doing a fine job so far. Can I refer to my register of interest? I am a member of the Law Society of Scotland, although not currently practicing as a solicitor, and I own some property from which I derive rental income. Thank you very much, Murdo. I will now come to Alec Rowley and then after him, Brian Whittle. Thank you very much, John. I have no relevant interest to be clear. Thanks, Alec. Finally, Brian Whittle. Thank you, convener. I also have no interest relevant to this committee. Thanks very much, Brian, and everyone else. That concludes the first item on our agenda. The second item is to choose the convener for the committee. The procedure is explained in the papers that have been circulated. The Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish National Party are eligible for nomination as convener of this committee. The nomination of a candidate for this post does not require a seconder to support the nomination. Motion S6M-00393 confirms that it is to be a member of the Scottish National Party. Could I please invite a member of that party to nominate a candidate for this post? I will nominate Siobhan Brown. Thanks, Jim. Are there any other nominations? As there are no other nominations, I confirm that the committee has chosen that Siobhan Brown to be our convener. If anyone disagrees with that, it could be type N in the chat bar, please. As I see no one is objecting, I congratulate Siobhan Brown on being selected as the convener of the Covid-19 recovery committee. I now hand over to her for the rest of the meeting. Thank you, John. It is a true honour to be selected as convener of this really important committee. I believe that we should all take comfort that at least the word recovery is in the name of the committee, but we are all acutely aware of the responsibility that we all have on our roles in this committee, not only to Parliament but to all the people in Scotland as we work our way through the journey of recovery. I am really looking forward to working together with the works and all members. We are moving on to agenda item 3, which is a choice of deputy convener. In accordance with motion S6M-00393, the Parliament has agreed that a member of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party shall be nominated for the post of deputy convener. Could I please invite a member of that party to nominate a candidate for this post? I ask any member wishing to make a nomination to please type R in the chat bar to request to speak. Brian Whittle, I would like to nominate Murdo Fraser. Thank you for the nomination. Do we agree Murdo Fraser as our deputy convener? If anybody does not agree, please put an N in the chat now. I think that we all agreed that Murdo Fraser is elected as deputy convener. Congratulations, Murdo, and I know that you bring a wealth of experience to the committee, and welcome you and look forward to working together. I look forward to working with you and the other members of the committee in the weeks and months ahead. Moving forward to agenda item 4 is our approach to developing a work programme. The next agenda item is consideration of our approach to the work programme. Members will see that clerks and spies have provided some background information regarding the committee's remit. Members have also been provided with a copy of a session 5 Covid-19 committee's legacy report. Members will see that there is a suggestion that we delay making longer-term plans for the committee's work programme until after the summer recess, when we will know more about the other committee's priorities for scrutinising Scotland's Covid recovery and the Covid situation more generally. There are two action points for the committee to consider in paper 3 on the work programme in the meantime. First, there is a suggestion that we may wish to hear from the cabinet secretary for Covid-19 recovery in early course after the summer recess. The purpose of this session would be to provide an update on the Scottish Government's priorities and commitments for responding to Covid-19. The second suggestion in the paper is for the clerks to arrange a business planning session towards the end of the summer recess, during which we could explore our remit and scrutiny priorities in more detail. I invite members to comment on those two suggestions and to provide any other general comments about our remit or areas that you may wish the committee to explore further at future business planning sessions. Murdo, if you would like to go first, to the convener. Thank you, convener, and I thank the clerks and the SPICE for putting together the background papers that are very helpful. I would just like to support the two proposals that we have there. Clearly, we are about to go into recess for the summer. By the time we come back at the beginning of September, the world may have changed quite significantly, and I think that getting an update as soon as possible thereafter from the cabinet secretary would be very useful, and that will help to guide our future programme. In terms of broader topics, I think that looking at the economic situation with Covid recovery will be important, and indeed we will be looking at the situation in the health service, but I think that we have to be conscious of the fact that we do not want to overlap any work that other committees in this Parliament are doing. For that reason, I am sure that our clerks will be lazing with the clerks to other relevant committees to make sure that we are keeping abreast of what they are doing and not duplicating any work that they are planning to do. I am sure that they will do that at work, and when we get together in late August, that will give us a good steer as the sort of areas where we could usefully provide a contribution and which areas would be less useful. Thank you, convener. I think that we have broadly brought to what Murdoff said. One of my interests on top of that is how we ensure that, in parts of our recovery, our population gets access to physical and mental health issues. How do we kickstart the world of sport, for example, the world of physical activity? How do we ensure that that is part of mental health? How do we ensure that everybody gets access to mental health? I am warning everybody in advance that that is the direction of travel that I am interested in, and that would be part of what we do. Thank you, Brian. Is there any other members who would like to contribute, if they would like to put an R in the chat? John Mason? Thanks very much, convener. I echo what Murdoff said about the other committees. I am still just a little bit unclear myself where our remit ends and other committees start, because I know that I am also in the finance committee, and they will be looking at the budget impact of Covid, and I assume that the Economy, Economy and Health Committee will be doing similarly. My assumption is that we are doing all the stuff that the previous Covid committee did, looking at the vaccination programme and looking at any new variants. If something happens over the next two months during July and August—obviously, we hope that it does not—if a new variant comes up and there is a delay in the vaccination programme, would there be an option in exceptional circumstances for the committee to meet during recess if there really was a need? My suggestion would be that we would be happy for the convener and vice convener to make that decision. I think that that is my only question. I also very much support the idea of a planning day or business day, and hopefully we could meet in person, because I think that that is helpful for the committee, and it allows us to throw ideas around and do a bit of brainstorming, which I think would be good at the end of August. We are all probably going to say exactly the same things. There is definitely going to be a consideration of where the crossovers are. The specific areas that I was thinking about before we started this conversation were the economy, which sectors of the economy, hospitality, travel, health, and what areas of those are actually going to be specifically related to us. With that in mind, we should really be looking for regular updates from the clerks and the ministers who are relevant to those portfolios, and echoing what John said, we should be available to reconvene at any time if anything does happen. However, there are specific areas in the sections that I have just mentioned just now, which I would like us to be focusing on if it turns out that those are actually within our remit. Thank you, convener. I felt a bit compelled that I should say something, if nobody else did. However, I think that there are a few areas that we should be considering if nobody else did. I watched the select committee and Westminster in their interviews with Mr Cummings recently. It is easy to be a Professor behind sight, as has been said before in the Parliament, but it is clear that Governments in the UK were not prepared for a pandemic, and you might say well why would they be. However, to make the mistake once is one thing, but not to make it twice. Therefore, there are issues around how Governments prepare, and how do we in Scotland prepare, given that we are told by scientists that this could become more frequent. Are we better prepared? There is that issue. The issue that Jim mentioned there, I think that it is about—I would actually like to see us get something quite early in the committee when we come back on this. It is really strange out there, because you can go into some places and you meet some people and it is almost like everything is back to normal. For some industries, for some key sectors, that is the case. Indeed, there are people who have worked throughout that. However, there are other sectors where clearly it is not back to normal and it is not going to be back to normal any time soon, so aviation comes to mind as I think one that. Absolutely jumps to it, yes. Who knows where we are going to be? I think that it is those sectors, the sectors that Jim has such an interest in, but all those sectors where we need to know what challenges are facing and what key sectors are worst at. I think that we need to know, because the Government needs to know that fairly quickly. Where will the additional support be needed? Even if we did open up and got back to zero later in this year, there will still be sectors that will be absolutely struggling. I think that the committee having a better understanding of that would help us in our work and help us to focus on holding the Government to account and supporting those sectors. Thanks, convener. Thanks, Alex. I think that you raised some really valid points there as well. Just moving back to the suggestion that during recent recess, as we know with Covid, it is a very fluid situation and hopefully we will not be called back. Are members happy in agreement that if there was an emergency situation that we could reconvene during recess? Everybody happy? I will speak to the clerks about that and they will be in touch with members. Is there any other comments that members would like to make? Going back to what Alex was saying, we want that certain sectors have been specifically and very detrimentously affected by what has happened. I think that it would also be very useful. I think that this is something that the committees have done. Forgive me if I am being naïve. It would be useful to get the people who are directly affected. Whether it is the people who run the airports, hospitality events, big festivals or restaurants or hotels, we want to hear from them so that we know exactly what it is that they need in order to recover. The point that Alex made was that it is recovery. How do we recover from that? We need to know from those industry bodies what it is that they need to recover. One of the things that is probably going to come up in health is how do people recover from long Covid? I do not know if we will touch on that, but it is something that I know that we have learned about 80,000 people who are now living with long Covid. Do we look at that? Do we have to include that in our remit as we go forward? Getting real-life experiences is vital to taking the committee forward. I am in agreement with that. I wonder if there might be a bit of a blur between the health committee and ourselves, but I am sure that the clerks will direct us in the right direction regarding our remit. Is there any other member who wants to contribute? Thank you for all your comments. We are all agreed to hold a business planning session and to take evidence from the first deputy minister in due course. The clerks will take notes of the suggestions of the business planning day and will provide further information and arrangements of members in due course. Thank you to everybody. That concludes our first meeting of the Covid-19 recovery committee. I now close the meeting. Thank you.