Chamber and committees

I think that Oliver Mundell meant to ask me about ensuring that there was no disruption due to avoidable reasons, not “unavoidable” reasons.

I do not want any further disruption to children’s education, because of the impact that it has on attainment, not just in Scotland but, as any reasonable person knows, in all parts of the UK and in countries across the world. That is why we are determined to keep schools open.

We have already provided additional resources, so there are already additional teachers in our schools, and there are plans to recruit more teachers as a result of those resources. We have done what we said that we would do when it comes to electronic devices for pupils—starting, of course, with those who are in the most deprived circumstances.

On the situation more widely, as, I am sure, Oliver Mundell is aware, guidance was issued to schools before Christmas, which addressed some of the things that they could do to make their environments as safe as possible. It provided advice on, for example, minimising, where practicable, contact through groupings indoors and tightening restrictions on school visitors, and it gave updated advice on ventilation and CO2 monitoring, as well as on asymptomatic testing.

On staffing, I am sure that Oliver Mundell is aware that the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers has previously agreed a number of contingencies for flexible staff resourcing in order to maintain continuity in education, such as the ability, if necessary, to combine classes in stages, to increase class contact time or to relocate staff temporarily.

Those arrangements are already in place, and our funding for additional teachers has already resulted in there being more than 2,000 extra teachers in our schools than was the case before the start of the pandemic. The ratio of pupils to teachers is now at its lowest level since 2009, partly because of that additional recruitment.

I do not have that information to hand. I will check with Public Health Scotland to see whether we can get that information and, if so, I will ensure that it is published.

What we know beyond any doubt is that being fully vaccinated with a booster or third dose of the vaccine significantly reduces the likelihood of becoming seriously ill. I will check the information that we have, and how up to date it is, on the vaccination status of the people who are currently in hospital with Covid.

We will continue to do everything that we can do to support unpaid carers with the carers allowance supplement. Scotland is the only part of the UK that has a carers allowance supplement and I am personally committed to maximising it. We have doubled it during the pandemic and we will continue to maximise support through it.

Everybody is struggling with the impact of the pandemic, but there is no doubt that some of the most difficult toll is being paid by unpaid carers, who already have a difficult set of challenges to deal with daily. With the additional financial support, some of the changes that I have announced today will reduce pressure on the formal social care service. I hope that that will help. I also hope that reducing the overall pressure on the NHS will help unpaid carers to avoid some of the possible additional pressure that might otherwise fall on them.

In a series of difficult and concerning aspects of what we are dealing with right now, that is one of the most difficult and concerning. I cannot magic away the impact of the virus, but everything that we are doing is about trying to reduce the burdens as much as possible. We will continue to make sure that unpaid carers are not ignored in that wider consideration.

Following on from my answer to Pam Duncan-Glancy, in which I talked about how worrying the additional pressure on unpaid carers is, I say that the Government is also extremely concerned about the impacts of Covid and staff absences because of Covid on social care packages. Those impacts include reduction in the support that is available and unavailability of time slots. Of the many things that concern me about the current situation, those aspects are right up there at the top of the list. What we have announced today on self-isolation will help, but we need to get Covid rates down in order to reduce that pressure overall and to allow services to return to something that is more like normal as quickly as possible.

We engage with local authorities on an on-going basis, individually and collectively through the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. The Deputy First Minister and the cabinet secretaries for local government and health are meeting the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities this afternoon to discuss collectively what more we can do to address the particular challenges around unpaid care and social care more generally.

I think that I heard that that was about the installation of smoke and heat alarm systems. If I am wrong about that and am about to answer a question that was not asked, I apologise in advance.

There is a requirement for home owners to install alarms by 1 February, but there is also flexibility for home owners who are unable to do it by that date. Mains-wired alarms can be fitted by an electrician, or longer-life battery alarms can be fitted by residents themselves. The important thing is that nobody will be breaking the law or criminalised if they need more time; there are no penalties for non-compliance, so issues around the impact of self-isolation are catered for in the broader arrangements that are in place.

I say again, Presiding Officer, that if I have answered a different question to the one that Stuart McMillan has asked me, I will be happy to provide an appropriate answer if he sends my office an email after this session.

There already is mass access to lateral flow testing for secondary school pupils and staff in education settings. It is a question of encouraging people to make use of that, and we all have a part to play in that. We cannot force people to use testing, but we can strongly encourage it. As we have been dealing with the omicron surge over the past few weeks, there has been a significant increase across the population in the uptake of lateral flow testing. I certainly hope that that will be reflected in the approach to school testing as the new term begins.

We will always continue to do everything that we can to encourage people and to inform them of the importance of testing and the benefits to them and the wider population of taking full advantage of it.

Yes, I can give that assurance in summary terms, and I am happy to ask the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care to write to Beatrice Wishart to set out the assurance in more detail.

The question gives me the opportunity to reiterate an important point. When you do a lateral flow test, you should record the result, whether positive or negative, through the website that allows that to happen. Obviously, that is particularly important if the result is positive, not just because there will then be a record of it, but because it will mean that test and protect will kick in. We can do that in Scotland—we can trigger contact tracing on the strength of the results of lateral flow tests and not just PCR tests.

Those are important points, and I will make sure that the health secretary sets out the detail on them in more depth. It is about ensuring that we fully use our capacity across the different modes of testing and making sure that, when it is highly likely that somebody has Covid—even if they do not have symptoms—the advice and contact tracing kick in as quickly as possible.

The reason why I am not sharing the data on people who are in hospital because of Covid versus people who are in hospital with Covid is not that I am not being transparent. It is because I do not have that data yet, because Public Health Scotland is doing careful work to make sure that the data, when it is published, is robust and reliable.

Public Health Scotland previously published data on that aspect, with regard to previous variants of the virus, and it is doing that work again. We are not trying to hide data; we want to make sure that the data is reliable and that what we publish is data that people can have confidence in. It will be published on Friday, because that is when Public Health Scotland considers that it will reach that state. There is no point in publishing data that is not reliable, because that does not help anybody.

Beyond that, I will continue to be as open and transparent as possible about data and evidence. As I said, however, ultimately the data and the evidence do not make the decisions—they inform the decisions. The decisions have to be taken by those of us who are elected to carry that responsibility, and that involves the application of judgment. That is what I am elected to do and it is what I am held accountable for.

We will be as open and transparent as we have been all along about the data and the evidence that underpins it, but I make no apology for wanting the data to be as robust as possible.

On the other issue, I do not accept the member’s characterisation of testing capacity. As of today, Scotland’s allocated share in the UK’s testing network is about 50,000 tests a day. Over and above that, we have NHS Scotland’s capacity of around 32,000 a day. Testing is fluctuating; it always fluctuates, for a variety of reasons. For example, if there is equipment failure in one of the labs, it will be down while equipment is repaired. Right now, one of the reasons for fluctuation is staff absences due to Covid and self-isolation in our laboratory network—as is the case in so many other parts of society. That is another reason why the changes that I am announcing today are—at the moment, I think—appropriate.

We continue to work daily with UK Government colleagues to maximise testing capacity. However, we need to see testing capacity in terms of not just PCR testing—important as that is—but of utilising fully the capacity for LFD testing, which is what lies behind the testing change that I have announced today.

The fact that we have allocated £500 million today is an indication that we know the impact that the restrictions on large gatherings and spectator sports are having on the profitability and no doubt, at some point, the viability of sports and sports clubs. We are working as quickly as possible with sportscotland and with ice hockey and basketball clubs, and with football, rugby and horse racing to determine fully the financial impact that the current measures are having. Following that, we will get the money to clubs as quickly as possible.

As I said last week, some sports will be able to recoup losses as events start to be rescheduled in, I hope, the not-too-distant future. For other sports, that will be more difficult, so we need to ensure that we get the money to where it is needed most. That work will be taken forward at pace—[Interruption.]

Yes, I understand the importance of sport, including football and other spectator sports. Its benefits are seen in terms of mental health and a whole host of other ways. Nobody, including me, takes the decisions that we have had to take over the pandemic lightly.

I have tried to set out the rationale for limiting large-scale events. It is about the superspreading nature of big events, given the higher transmissibility of omicron, but also about the greater impact that those events have on emergency services that are already stretched and the risks that are associated with travel to and from events. It is not easy, and nobody wants to be in this position, but those are the reasons why the Scottish Government, in common with many other Governments, have taken these decisions. Hopefully they will not last for very long.

There is always the ability to point to inconsistencies. When questions such as that one are posed to me, I am never sure whether the argument is that we should not have restrictions in football or that we should also have restrictions on shopping malls. We want to limit and minimise the protections that are in place, and therefore the restrictions on people’s lives.

However, I would ask people to remember that the bedrock of the advice that we are giving now is to stay at home as much as you can—certainly more than would normally be the case at this time of year—to try to limit your contact with people in other households and to keep those contacts, where they are happening, as small as possible. That applies regardless of the setting.

There is no magic wand to wave to get ourselves out of that. The closest that we have got to that is vaccination, which is why it remains so important. However, while we navigate this latest wave of infections, given the greater transmissibility, all of us have to accept that some of these things are just inescapable and that acting in line with the guidance will get us through them more quickly than would otherwise be the case.

I, of course, understand and, as a citizen, I experience the restrictions just like others do. None of us wants them to be in place for any longer than is necessary.