COVID has cast a long shadow over Scotland. Its legacy will continue to affect future generations.
We still don’t know the full extent of its impact but the picture we have is grim.
Nicola Sturgeon during one of her daily coronavirus press briefings[/caption]
The first lockdown caused a serious recession – and highlighted existing weaknesses that have long been ignored[/caption]
The economic impact caused by the Covid lockdowns was unprecedented[/caption]
The first lockdown caused a serious recession and while subsequent lockdowns were less severe, the economic impact was unprecedented.
The economy bounced back quickly and reasonably well though continues to underperform.
Working from home, introduced during lock down as a convenience, has created expectations that this should be the norm with mixed views amongst employers.
But there has been no bounce back from Covid across public services.
The pandemic highlighted existing weaknesses that have been long ignored.
Despite numerous warnings dating back many years, the Scottish Government’s tendency to manage decline and focus on presentation and communication meant that these weaknesses were cruelly exposed and at enormous cost.
Robert Black, Scotland’s late Auditor General, amongst many others, had been warning that there had been under-investment in our public institutions, including hospitals, over fifteen years ago.
Expert voices were expressing deep concerns at the lack of preparedness from the outset.
As Professor Mark Woolhouse, Edinburgh University’s Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, explained in his scientific memoir of the pandemic, the Scottish Government was claiming everything was under control when that was not the case.
The lack of urgency in the early days arose from a failure to listen to appropriate experts.
The challenges were not helped by attempts to score political points throughout the emergency.
Party politics should have been shelved but the temptation to claim that the Scottish Government was performing better than London – though the hard evidence shows this was simply not the case – and exaggerate differences was a distraction.
The Scottish First Minister wanted a ‘good old-fashioned rammy’ with London, as her chief of staff revealed in one of the WhatsApps that was not deleted.
The health impact has been massive with many lives lost but the pandemic has also had long-term bleak consequences in health.
Dealing with the massive backlog of cases postponed during the pandemic as COVID took precedence over other medical practices and procedures.
Cancellations of cancer screening is estimated to have resulted in over 10,000 premature deaths across the UK.
Significant mental health consequence have followed the anti-social nature of lock down.
The disruption of teaching not only had an impact on learning but on childhood development.
Social interactions are essential for the development of children. The shift to online teaching and communication proved a vital short-term expedient but has created long-term problems.
Many young people struggled returning to school. Poor attendance in class rooms continues to be affected even now and mental health problems persist.
And now the pandemic is being used as an excuse for Government failures.
The pandemic has certainly made the Government’s tasks more difficult.
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But there had been little progress on the much trumpeted commitment to close the educational attainment gap before the pandemic.
Hospital waiting lists are longer because of the pandemic but we cannot pretend that these waits for appointments, treatments and operations are entirely down to the pandemic.
Using the pandemic as an excuse is blocking serious attention to weaknesses in our public services that have long existed.
The resources available to address these challenges have diminished. The debt incurred through enormous borrowing will not be paid off until well into the future.
Children not yet born will be paying for Government policy during the pandemic and a good part of public spending today goes towards paying annual debt repayments.
This drag on the public finances has implications for spending available for the health, education and other services.
But we should not ignore the remarkable public service we witnessed from numerous public servants and community volunteers.
The resilience and strength that was evident in our communities ought to have taught us important lessons.
Serving communities and delivering public services is done locally. Ministers deliver speeches but little else.
The Scottish Government had little choice but to let go and let local authorities and communities get on with the job.
But sadly, the old command-and-control from the centre in Edinburgh has re-asserted itself.
