A Holyrood Committee established to scrutinise the Scottish government’s response to COVID-19 recovery has met for the final time.

The Scottish parliament’s COVID-19 Recovery Committee will be formally dissolved next Friday following a vote by MSPs.

The decision to wind down the Committee comes after First Minister Humza Yousaf opted to omit the responsibility for COVID Recovery from the portfolios of his new group of Ministers.

Committee Convener Jim Fairlie MSP said the COVID-19 Recovery Committee has played an important role in monitoring and scrutinising the government’s response to the pandemic since it was established in 2021:

“We’ve carried out several high-profile inquiries into the impact of the pandemic on Scotland’s labour market, how future public health messaging campaigns could be improved, made recommendations on long COVID, and considered how Scotland’s dental services are recovering.

“The Committee and I are incredibly grateful for the many valuable contributions from the public and other stakeholders who engaged with us, all of which helped shape our and inform our work, particularly throughout our long COVID inquiry.

“Although the work of the committee has now come to an end, this legacy report will be available for the parliament’s other committees to consider and take into account as Scotland continues its journey towards recovery from the pandemic.”

The Committee’s recently launched Inquiry into NHS dental services will go uncompleted.

Mr Fairlie wrote to Public Health Minister Jenni Minto on Wednesday to highlight prevalent post-pandemic backlogs and calls from dentists for a “root and branch” reform to the current outdated dental service model.

In a legacy report, members of the Committee recommend that the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee take forward its work and continue to monitor dental services for the remainder of the parliamentary session.

The recovery of NHS cancer services and the delivery of Scotland’s new Cancer Strategy was also highlighted by members as a priority.

Read more: “Snapshot” of dentist recovery underway; Long COVID Inquiry launched

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