Chamber and committees

I take your point about the attitude to jobs in the hospitality sector. We need to address that across society, not just on the islands. The hospitality sector is a fantastic sector to work in, and we need to make such jobs far more professional so that they are seen as an opportunity, rather than as just being for students or people who cannot get work elsewhere.

As Jenni Minto said, it is a huge panel. However, I see that as a positive, given the disparity of the populations that we are talking about and the range of challenges that island communities face.

I will focus my questions on job opportunities in fishing, agriculture and tourism. Those sectors are clearly big economic drivers in the communities, but how will they be affected by Brexit?

The initial concerns that I had about the passport scheme when it was first announced have, by and large, been allayed. I am comfortable with where we are, and even more so after this morning because all the witnesses today have given a good account of the evidence paper that was released yesterday.

However, what still concerns me—it has come up this morning—is messaging to deal with vaccination hesitancy among certain demographics and how we get to those people. I am comfortable with us having the vaccination passport, but I am concerned that some of our communities are not engaging with the process. By not doing so, they are putting themselves and wider society at risk.

What is the Government doing in respect of messaging to get to the communities in which people are genuinely concerned about vaccination? I accept that we cannot treat people as “other” because they have a problem with getting a vaccine. How are we getting to those people to make them trust the system in the first place?

I welcome the witnesses. First, I would like to know how to pronounce Stephen Reicher’s last name, because we have heard it pronounced in different ways.

I have listened carefully to what has been said today and I have read the committee papers. I have to say that this is a hugely confusing and conflicting conversation, but I have drawn some conclusions, which I will quickly run through. We know that the virus is endemic in the population and we know that it kills people; the target scheme is working, which we know because we are getting an uptick in the number of people who are getting vaccinated at the moment; the vaccine reduces infection by up to 50 per cent, as we heard in a previous meeting; the virulence of the delta variant is much higher, as we have also heard previously; the post-vaccination passport messaging requires a strong focus on continuing with hand washing and mask wearing, because of the false sense of reassurance that you have spoken about today; and, largely, the Scottish Government is trusted on what it has done so far, which is helped by the fact that the scheme that we are discussing is subject to a sunset clause—I know that there is a debate in relation to time and data.

To me, events and venues do not transmit the virus—people do. By and large, the nightclub industry has worked incredibly hard to make the venues as safe as possible. I take the point that you are making about venues and events, but I would argue that it is the people who transfer the virus, not the events, so I have a couple of questions.

Conscientious objectors have a choice: you are right to say that they absolutely can choose not to take the vaccine. The scheme is a targeted one. People do not have to go to the events that they will be excluded from if they do not have the vaccine. However, following on from what Professor Reicher has said, by allowing conscientious objectors access to events, are we taking away the rights of the people who are in the venue and also discriminating against the business owners, because having those conscientious objectors in the venue could put other people at risk and cause the business owners a problem?

My second question is one that I have asked on numerous occasions. Care home workers in my constituency have been sacked by a care home owner because they will not take a double vaccine. The owners have taken the view that, on balance, the rights of the residents are more important than the rights of the workers. We have discussed that at length and it is something that we need to delve into. The question is, whose rights are more important: the conscientious objectors or the people on the other side who want to see a vaccinated population?

I want to make a point about the backfire effect, which I will leave open for further discussion. If the backfire effect occurs, events cannot open and businesses cannot trade. If there are people who simply refuse to get vaccinated and continue to spread the virus and put pressure on our NHS by blocking beds and preventing other people getting various treatments—all the stuff that we know is already happening—how does the rest of the community react to that demographic, whether the reason for their not getting the vaccine involves a hesitancy or a failure to believe that it will work? How does that affect the majority of the community who are saying that those people are stopping everyone else from getting on with their lives? I know that is controversial, but I would like to discuss it.

Will we have time for questions on the farm animal side, convener? It might be better if I ask my question in that section rather than while we are discussing the broader picture.

Mr Pizzi, at the start of your answer about the food regulations and standards, you said that we could be offshoring them. Do you agree that the Neil Parish amendment, which was agreed to in the UK Parliament, represented a missed opportunity?

I will focus on three main things—bovine viral diarrhoea, TB and Johne’s disease. Dr Allan talked about our ambition for the industry and what we want to achieve. We are well on the way to eradicating BVD, if we have not already done so; our TB status is far better than England’s; and we now have a plan to get rid of Johne’s altogether, although that is a long-term plan and it will not be easy. Do we not need to have a very Scotland-centric system to allow us to continue with the standards that we have and eradicate Johne’s?

I have a specific question on veterinary capacity. You will know that the Scotch brand demands that a veterinary plan is in place and is updated every year, whether it is for a beef herd or a flock of sheep. In the field, we are finding that more veterinary practices are focusing on small animals and are going away from working with farm animals. Do you see a point at which there will not be capacity in the veterinary service to allow us to do what we currently do, let alone follow our ambition to where we want to go?

When the idea of introducing a vaccination passport was proposed, it slightly concerned me. However, we all accept that coronavirus kills people and that we cannot really know with any certainty how the virus will change or what other variants there will be. We also accept that the vaccine has had a huge impact in relation to helping us to control the virus, which has enabled us to have the current freedoms. That is my starting point. I am pretty sure that everyone on the committee would agree that that is what we should be considering, given that there is a world pandemic.

Earlier, Alex Rowley touched on an issue about care homes. I will go to the extreme end of how we deal with the situation: we either shut down society, or we go to the next extreme end. There is a care home company based in England—I cannot remember its name—which, I think, has a care home in my constituency. It is sacking people who have not agreed to get vaccinated on the basis that they cannot be guaranteed to protect the people whom they are employed to protect. The care home is balancing the human rights of the person who does not want to be vaccinated against the rights of the person who requires to be protected. How do the witnesses feel about that situation?

We are not saying that we will use vaccination passports in isolation to try to suppress the virus. The messaging is still the same: we are still asking people to wear masks indoors and take all the necessary hygiene precautions. We are still doing everything else that we are currently doing. Vaccination passports are an add-on that are targeted at a specific area where we want there to be a greater uptake of vaccines and to ensure that we suppress the virus’s ability to spread. You said that we reduce transmission by 50 per cent if people get the vaccine. The policy is another layer of our ability to suppress the virus. Do you accept that?

My reason for asking that was to do with proportionality in relation to balancing the rights of the individual against the rights of the community. The care home is a microcosm of our approach. We accept that we are giving people a choice. We say that people can work in a care home but that they must do certain things to protect those who live or work there. As Jonathan Montgomery said, we can make it a condition that they have to be double vaccinated.

In the process of deciding whether we will have Covid vaccination passports, we are also giving a choice. As someone who believes in independence, I do not necessarily agree that we should take our lessons from elsewhere—we should be free thinking ourselves—but Covid vaccination passports are being introduced throughout the world. People have the choice to go to a nightclub or to football. Those are social events. Is it proportionate to say that, because we know that football matches and nightclubs are places where the virus spreads, if people choose to go there, they have an obligation for the greater good of society to try to mitigate the effects of the disease? Do you agree with that principle?