Chamber and committees

I will take each of those points in turn.

First, I take the opportunity to agree with Douglas Ross that, if someone has not already had their first or second jag, it is important to get it as quickly as possible. It is never too late, so I ask those people to come forward now, and they will be vaccinated. The sooner people get their first jag, the sooner they can get their second, and the sooner they will be able to get the protection of a booster vaccination. I reiterate and underline that point.

Secondly, in terms of the funding, I am not trying to cause a row with anybody. There are structural problems in how our funding arrangements work. Across the chamber, we have different views on the Barnett formula, which I will leave to one side. However, during a public health emergency, we have learned that the Barnett formula is not fit for purpose. That view is, I think, shared by the Governments in Wales and Northern Ireland. We are trying to propose constructive ways of ensuring that we are all able to discharge our public health responsibilities fairly and equitably.

I welcome the announcements that the Treasury has made. The money that was announced this time last week is not new money; it is already budgeted for—largely for the health budget. Therefore, to spend it now, we have to remove money that the health service is already planning to use.

We think that the announcement that was made on Sunday gives us extra spending power now, being money that is not already budgeted. I am saying today that we will allocate every penny of that to business support. Between my announcement last week and my further announcement today, we will find, through very difficult budgetary decisions between now and the end of the financial year, an additional £200 million. That means that we are creating a pot of £375 million to help businesses over the next period. That is proportionately significantly in excess of the £1 billion for the whole of the UK that the chancellor has announced today.

Based on my announcement last week, the grant for hospitality is up to £6,800 per hospitality business, compared with the grant of up to £6,000 that was announced by the chancellor today. We are working to get the grants to businesses as quickly as possible, and we are working with councils to do so.

The point about self-isolation is an important one that is under on-going consideration by the Government. The fundamental point is that it is not self-isolation but the virus that is creating staff absences. At this stage, given the infectiousness of omicron, if we do not have households isolating when one member is positive, we will have many more cases of the virus spreading, which will compound, not alleviate, the problem.

That is the position right now, but we want to migrate to something more proportionate as quickly as possible. I can tell members in the chamber that the Government is actively considering, as the booster programme meets its target, moving away from the current situation to something more proportionate. However, it would be counterproductive to do so right now, because the current household isolation policy remains one of the protections that we have in place.

Yes. That view is shared by the Labour First Minister of Wales and the Democratic Unionist Party First Minister of Northern Ireland.

Let us put views on constitutional matters, whatever they are, to one side for the moment. The Barnett formula depends on decisions being taken for England by the UK Government. That then triggers resources for the devolved Administrations through consequentials. We have different views about that. It may be appropriate in some circumstances but, in a public health emergency, when we all have our own responsibilities to act to protect public health and to do so quickly, that situation self-evidently does not work. It is not fit for purpose in these circumstances. We are making that case. I hope that we are getting some understanding of that and that we might be able to see some changes.

We are making available as much money as we can from within our own resources. I welcome the acknowledgement today by the chancellor that help is needed, but further help is required. It is not just me saying that or even the Governments of Wales and Northern Ireland; many voices across England are saying that now. Hospitality businesses and others are facing all the same pressures that businesses in Scotland are facing but, even after the chancellor’s announcement today, they will be getting significantly less funding to help with that.

The position is unsustainable. I suspect that some in the UK Government understand that. The quicker they act, the more we will be able to get on top of this latest phase of infection.

First, I accept the points about the impact on the events sector and the knock-on effects of that into hospitality and other parts of the economy. That is why it is so important that we do everything that we can to deliver financial compensation and, with others, encourage the UK Government to provide more wherewithal.

On the points about a pingdemic, the issue is important and legitimate and I will address it directly. It is not people being pinged but people getting the virus that is causing the problem. Therefore, we need to suppress the virus. That is an inescapable truth, which leads to some of the difficult decisions that Governments are again having to take. Some of the decisions that I have outlined today are in common with decisions that are being taken by Governments in many other parts of Europe—indeed, they are being taken in other parts of the UK, such as Wales. The Republic of Ireland, slightly further afield, has taken many of those decisions, too. It is suppressing the virus that will ultimately help us to relieve the pressure. Self-isolation, which is where the pingdemic comes from, is part of the way in which we can help to suppress the virus. I go back to the comments that I made in response to Douglas Ross.

Lab testing capacity is being increased across the UK right now. I will give the Scottish Parliament information centre the up-to-date figures for our daily capacity. It is increasing, but it is still a bit of a moving feast—if you forgive me for using that non-technical expression, Presiding Officer. We have ample capacity right now. In addition to the UK network capacity, we have the three regional NHS labs and pre-existing NHS capacity. If cases continue to soar, we will reach a point, not just in Scotland but across the UK, where we start to challenge that capacity. That is another reason to keep a downward pressure on cases.

Lab capacity is, of course, only one half of our testing capacity; sampling capacity is another. However, right now we have testing capacity and people who have symptoms or a positive lateral flow test result should go forward and get a PCR test. We continue to have constructive discussions—this is an area of very good joint working between the four nations—about how we continue to increase the testing capacity as far as we possibly can.

I will take advice on the clinical requirements for PPE in the health service—I have done that throughout—and respond accordingly. The guidance on PPE, if my memory serves me correctly, is produced on a four-nations basis, so we use the same grading of PPE in different circumstances. However, if clinicians say to me that something additional is required, then of course, as a non-clinician, I will listen to that and act on it.

Yes. I hope that test and protect is out of sight for most people, because that means that they are not being contacted by it, but it is doing incredible work every single day to help to break the chains of transmission of the virus.

I take the opportunity, as Christine Grahame has invited me to do, to remind people of the importance of test and protect. If the service contacts you because you have tested positive, make sure that you fill in the details that it asks for so that your contacts can be given information as quickly as possible. If you are contacted as a contact of someone who is positive, make sure that you follow the advice that you are given. That is really important.

I end on Christine Grahame’s final point. The app is really important. If you downloaded it at the start, go and check that it is still active—that you have it properly switched on and activated. Doing that absolutely helps test and protect to do its job and make sure that people are getting the protection that they need.

First, I note that most employers are treating it seriously, but I would very strongly encourage all employers to do so. Where staff have concerns, I encourage them to raise those with their employer, or with their union reps where that is appropriate, or to contact Scottish Hazards and the local authority environmental health team for advice and support.

Remember—this is a message to employers from last Friday—it is a legal requirement for businesses to take all reasonable measures to minimise the spread of Covid. The guidance makes it clear that one of the measures that employers must take is to allow employees to work at home if they can. We expect businesses and employees to take that requirement seriously. Working from home is a really important measure in controlling this more transmissible version of the virus. We continue to engage regularly with business organisations and trade unions on encouraging working from home.

I encourage businesses to remember that suppressing the virus is in the interests of business and the economy, as well. It is not a choice between protecting health and the NHS and protecting the economy. If we do not protect health, the economy will suffer. We all have an interest in ensuring that all the guidance is followed.

LFD kits are available for everyone. Let me be clear: a prescription is not required nor is there a need to be registered for any form of community pharmacy service in order to obtain a kit from a local pharmacy. The Scottish Government wrote to the community pharmacy network on 17 December re-emphasising that point, along with providing other advice for streamlining the process for distribution to relieve pressure on community pharmacy teams, which are extremely busy and have done heroic work over the course of the pandemic.

The community pharmacy network is a vital part of the public health response to Covid. Since the introduction of the pharmacy collect arrangements in June, the network has distributed more than 1.3 million packs—nearly 10 million tests—helping to keep us all safe during this time. I place on record my thanks to pharmacists and their teams in communities the length and breadth of the country.

It is a very important question. Delayed discharges are not in the interests of the people who are delayed in hospital, but they are not in the interests of the wider health system, either. We are working hard to try to reduce delayed discharge. I will come on to the issues that are compounding the challenge, but one of the key things that we have done—the health secretary reported this to Parliament in the recent past—is to provide funding for the recruitment of 1,000 additional workers to help with exactly the problem that the member outlines.

Right now, of course, all those problems are being compounded by staff absence due to the virus. That is happening in social care, the health service and across all sectors of our public services and the economy. That brings me to the essential point that I keep coming back to today: we have to get the virus under control. That will not solve all those problems, but it will at least mean that we are not exacerbating them with the absences that we are seeing right now. That is one of the big factors behind the decisions that we have set out today—not least the cancellation of large-scale events to reduce the pressure on the Scottish Ambulance Service, for example, which is already struggling with some of these issues.

That is a really important question, because, although it is vital that we get the uptake of boosters high across the whole population, we also have to make sure that the uptake is high in particular communities that we know have been disproportionately affected by Covid. Black, Asian and ethnic minority communities are certainly a key grouping in that regard.

We are working with health boards, which have inclusion plans within their vaccination programmes that set out how they will actively offer vaccination to groups that we know face barriers to uptake. Decisions on the location of clinics are often taken with that very much in mind. Clinics have been set up in places of worship, for example. Glasgow central mosque is not the only one, but it is probably the most prominent example of that in Glasgow. The Scottish Ambulance Service is also providing mobile outreach units to get into communities that have been harder to reach.

We are also working closely with organisations such as BEMIS, which is the national umbrella body supporting ethnic minority voluntary sector groups in Scotland. A whole range of work is being done, and I know that health boards will keep at it for as long as is necessary.

I very much welcome the JCVI’s recent advice, which moved pregnant women into the at-risk group for Covid vaccination. That demonstrates the importance of women getting vaccinated when they are pregnant, to protect themselves and their babies against what we know are the risks of Covid in pregnancy.

Uptake remains much lower among pregnant women than it is among non-pregnant women, but it is increasing. The most recent data that Public Health Scotland has published, which covers September and October, shows that the uptake among pregnant women in those months was more similar to the uptake in the general female population than had previously been the case.

The fact that the uptake is improving is encouraging, and I continue to urge all pregnant women who have not already done so to book a vaccination as soon as possible: it is really important, to protect not just your own health but the health of your baby.