Chamber and committees

It is obviously disappointing to see the 2020 household recycling rate fall back, but we must acknowledge the unprecedented and challenging year that everyone has had, including local authorities, as a result of Covid. SEPA believes that the Covid lockdowns and unavoidable disruption to recycling services, including the closure of recycling centres for a period of time, had an effect on local recycling rates. However, despite the challenges, kerbside recycling increased during 2020, and I know that local authorities worked really hard to keep priority services going throughout the pandemic. I thank their staff for all their efforts.

We are determined to accelerate progress to meet our waste reduction and recycling targets. The Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity recently announced £20.3 million-worth of landmark investments from the recycling improvement fund to help to deliver a step change in our recycling.

Douglas Ross is absolutely right to raise the critical importance of vaccination and the speed of vaccination. Before I come to his question, I underline the point that I made in my opening remarks, which was that, in the context of the race between the virus and the vaccines, we are, of course, going as fast as we can and will continue to pick up pace with vaccination.

However, a person who is vaccinated with the booster today will not immediately get the protection of immunity; it will be some days before that is the case. Right now, cases of the omicron variant are doubling every two or so days. Therefore, no matter how fast we go with vaccination the variant is, at the moment, running faster. Yes—we need to speed up vaccination, but while we do that we must also act to slow down the virus. That is a simple statement of fact. Protection of health and lives, as well as of the economy and businesses, depends on our doing that.

As Douglas Ross rightly mentioned, yesterday we became the first part of the UK to have vaccinated more than 50 per cent of over-18s with the booster. We still have the fastest vaccination programme in the UK. We are picking up the pace every day, which the figures that I have given today demonstrate. One of the most important things that we are doing—and there is still capacity to be got from it—is that we are shifting our focus from the remainder of the flu vaccination campaign to boosters. In the past two days, each day we administered more than 70,000 vaccinations; some of them—I think there were 14,000 yesterday—were flu vaccinations.

We are also opening up more facilities. For NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, we are using Hampden park. Glasgow central mosque is already available as a mass, or large-scale, vaccination centre. In NHS Lothian, Lowland hall at Ingliston is already operating as a large-scale vaccination centre. In NHS Lanarkshire, there are the facilities at Ravenscraig. We are also seeking to bring in additional facilities for Edinburgh, including the Edinburgh International Conference Centre and the corn exchange. All those are under active preparation for coming on stream.

Given what I said about switching from flu vaccinations, I am confident that we can get to around 70,000 vaccinations a day, as we want to. Everything is being done so that we can achieve that. However, I ask members, please, not to lose sight of the first point that I made, which was that no matter how fast we go, the virus is running so fast that we must also take action to slow it down.

I am going to answer the question. The inquiry is a statutory public inquiry, convened by Lord Hardie. I am not sure whether the member is genuinely asking me, as a minister, to interfere in the conduct of an independent statutory public inquiry. That would be deeply inappropriate. Let me hazard a guess that, if I ever did so, the Tories would be the first ones on their feet complaining about that.

The judge will take forward the public inquiry in whatever way he sees fit, and he will provide conclusions. I am sure that, at that point, Parliament will fully consider and scrutinise those conclusions.

Yes. I will come on to that in a second, but first let me complete a point on vaccination.

I understand why Douglas Ross and everybody else—I include myself—want the programme to go as fast as possible. It is important to give credit, as Douglas Ross rightly did, to the vaccination teams across the country. I repeat—because it is important—that we currently have the fastest vaccination programme in the UK. Although I want it to speed up even more, that suggests to me that what we have been doing, including our mix of facilities, has been right. However, we now have to go faster.

For reasons to do with staffing and people not attending, we do not have mass clinics where the geography does not support them. Many members have raised the difficulties that people have had in travelling to mass vaccination clinics. It is not the case that we would have vaccinated more people had we had more mass clinics instead of several smaller ones. That is not how it works—the situation is not that straightforward. We need the right mix, which is what we will continue to have.

Let us be clear. I hope that every member in the chamber will continue to scrutinise our progress. I absolutely welcome that and think that it is important. However, I also hope that they will, please, accept the assurance that right now nothing is more important to me, to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and to the entire Government than getting boosters into people’s arms as quickly as is feasible.

On guidance and regulations, the regulations will come into effect at one minute past midnight tomorrow morning, Friday 17 December. In fact, high-level central guidance on the announcement that was made on Tuesday was published immediately after my statement on Tuesday. I said in Parliament then that more detailed guidance would follow this week. That guidance will be available online from today. In fact, I suspect that it will—because I cleared it just before coming here—go online during this First Minister’s question time. We have been engaging with business organisations throughout the week on the issues and the guidance for various sectors. This time is difficult for businesses—that is one of the things that I stressed in my earlier remarks.

I will come back to the central point. We are now facing, two years into the pandemic, a variant of the virus that is spreading faster than anything that we have experienced so far. Omicron cases are doubling every two to three days in Scotland. In parts of the UK, the doubling time is currently less than two days. I expect that it will be the dominant strain in Scotland by tomorrow. It has a reproduction number that some assessments say is above 4.

We do not have time to waste; we do not have time to waste when it comes to vaccination, and neither do we have time to waste in putting in place the protective measures that will help to slow omicron down.

Lives are at risk, livelihoods are at risk and the NHS is at risk. That is why the Government has to speed up vaccination, but we also all have to come together to do what is required to slow down the spread of the variant. The UK Government has to step up and provide the financial support that businesses need.

Like Mark Griffin, I feel strongly about the issue. I set out clearly why the current law is not sufficient to allow us to achieve what he is asking for. I encourage retail employers—particularly large retail employers—to give their staff appropriate time off. I know that some retailers, such as Morrisons, Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury’s and Aldi, have already announced plans to close for an additional day over the festive period.

The current law allows us to restrict trading in certain premises. It allows us to insist that stores are closed; it does not allow us to insist that employees get a day off, so stores could have workers in stocking shelves. Crucially, the law does not allow us to insist that any day off that workers do get is a paid day off. It is simply not possible to achieve the outcome.

That is why, as the minister told Parliament, through our retail strategy, we want to look at how we can get to a situation where the ends that I think that Mark Griffin and I agree on can be achieved in a way that benefits workers without inadvertently penalising them.

I hope that Mark Griffin will accept those points and will work with us to reach that outcome in the months ahead.

I know that all of us in the chamber and most people in society will be shocked and appalled that women and girls are still facing assault and violence in our society today. During the recent 16 days of activism, we highlighted in the chamber that we must all stand together against gender-based violence.

The Scottish Government has taken and will continue to take robust action by improving our laws and providing funding to services that support anyone who has experienced domestic abuse, rape or sexual assault. We are delivering our long-standing and well-respected equally safe strategy in collaboration with a wide range of partners. We think that that is the best route to tackle and challenge the attitudes that underpin violence against women and girls and ultimately to prevent it from taking place. However, we will continue to listen to views from across the chamber to ensure that we are doing all that is necessary.

Given the situation that we face, I think that it would be wrong for anyone, and certainly for me, to rule out new approaches, fundamental or otherwise. I take very seriously the call that has been made for a commission, and I want to assure the member that that is something that we continue to give consideration to.

I am not sure in my mind whether establishing a commission is necessarily the right thing to do and the thing that will make a difference. It is really important that we continue with the equally safe strategy and the increased investment for the organisations that are working at the front line. However, I do not close my mind to anything that might help us to make a more significant, fundamental step change.

I am also mindful of the fact that I have my own advisory council on women and girls—we are in the process of refreshing it at the moment—which has done a lot of good work around many of the issues that women and girls face in our society. It may be that the advisory council, in its refreshed form, can look at the subject on that more holistic and fundamental basis.

I undertake to continue to update Beatrice Wishart on our considerations around the matter, and I absolutely give her an assurance that we will consider in good faith any suggestions that are made. I hope that she will accept the absolute determination that I and the Government have to tackle these issues, which are so fundamentally and utterly unacceptable in modern-day society.

I will certainly undertake to consider that. It is an important point. We are extremely fortunate in this country—of course, we are not alone—in that we have excellent support and advocacy services for women and girls, in the form of rape crisis centres, Rape Crisis Scotland and of course Scottish Women’s Aid. Across the country, there are many other organisations that do fantastic work. Our focus, working with local authorities, is to ensure that they have the support that they need to provide those services to women.

We have increased and are increasing over the current session of Parliament the funding that is available, but ensuring that it gets to the services that have the experience and expertise to help women is important. The point about putting services out to tender, the way in which services are funded and the guidance that underpins that is a very valid one. I will certainly undertake to have a look at that and write to Clare Adamson when I have had the opportunity to do so.

I will. I am sure that the whole chamber will join me in thanking everybody and every vaccination team across the country. They are doing truly heroic work right now to get booster jags into people’s arms as quickly as possible. I do not think that I can find the words to properly convey the depth of my appreciation and gratitude to every single member of those teams. I encourage them to keep going. We will do everything that we can to support them.

This is a key point. The responsibility on Government, working with health boards to ensure that capacity is there to meet the target that we have set ourselves for the end of the year, is obvious. I accept that unreservedly. However, we also need people to come forward. We need people to get on the system and book their appointments where they can, as quickly as they can. Everyone who is over 18—apart from those in our island communities, where communication is different—can do that using the online portal now. That is the case for mainland Scotland.

Please book your appointment. We will do what we need to do to ensure that the capacity is there. I hope that, together, through this national mission, we can use booster jags to get us out the other end of the new challenge with omicron.

No, he was right.