Chamber and committees

We are aware of the situation at Hairmyres through the daily contact that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care and/or officials have with health boards. NHS Lanarkshire is under significant and sustained pressure, but it has confirmed that it is deploying staff from other areas to ensure that services can deliver key and effective patient care.

We will continue to work closely with all boards, including NHS Lanarkshire, to review their contingency plans and assist in any way possible—for instance, through mutual and military aid where appropriate—and to ensure that appropriate use is made of the exemption system to allow critical workers to return to work on the basis of certain precautions.

The £100 million pot that I have announced today is the limit of what we can do within the resources that we have, and we are going to have to make really difficult choices in order to make that money available. I am being candid with people about that. However, that amount is not insignificant. I am genuinely not trying to be political here, but I note that the Conservative spokesperson said that they wanted £10 million. We have delivered 10 times that amount today, and I think that that is right, but that will not go near full 100 per cent compensation for the losses of business.

I hope that what is being announced by the UK Government today—I will not repeat what I said about not knowing the detail of that—will allow us to go further in compensating businesses for the losses that are associated with our current advice, and that it will give us the flexibility to do more should we need to go further, although I hope that we will not have to do that.

I will look at that, and we will do more if we can, but we have, I think rightly, made available today the maximum that we can provide within the resources that we currently have at our disposal.

I have set out very clearly and very candidly where we are with financial resources. We are making available every last penny that we can. When we have a pot of money, there are difficult decisions to be made about how thinly that is spread versus giving, perhaps, a smaller group of businesses more significant amounts.

The Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy and her officials will consult affected sectors and get to the best possible outcome. We will help as many businesses as we can. If more money is now available from the UK Government, I hope that that will allow us to do more, but we have to see the detail of that.

These choices and decisions are awful for the businesses that are affected. I understand that. It is perfectly understandable that members come to the chamber and read out such messages. However, nobody should be under any illusion that I do not know the impact of the situation or understand how awful it is.

I do not have a choice. I cannot continue to tell people that it is safe to go to certain settings in groups, right now, given the way that omicron is running. I and the Government have to make those choices and to deal with the impacts to the best of our ability. That is what we will continue to do.

Yes. I will come on to the point about the online system in a moment. Supplies are under pressure because demand is rising. That is a good thing. Let me say again, as a statement of fact, that although the devolved nations make a financial contribution, the procurement and distribution are done on a UK-wide basis.

The issue yesterday with the online system—it might be that the issue has kicked in again while I have been in the chamber—was not supply but distribution. There has been a limit—work is under way to increase it—to the number of tests that can be distributed daily through the Royal Mail, and the number was breached in recent days because of increased demand. That is a distribution issue, not a supply issue, and because it is not a supply issue we can say with confidence—although I know that other procurement efforts are under way—that, if people cannot order online, they can go to a local pharmacy or test site to get supplies. Supplies are also being distributed to local authorities, to be made available in other areas.

As I said, I took part in a four-nations call on Sunday, during which the head of the testing system went into a lot of helpful detail about the work that is under way to increase supply and ensure that distribution is sufficient. It was not a problem with supply that led to the issue on the website.

I think that I have addressed that issue in the chamber before. We encourage people who come into the country to take the PCR test on day 2 after their arrival, but they are actually able to take it within two days of arrival, and the regulations have always allowed that. Therefore, people do not have to wait until boxing day if they arrive in the timescale that Emma Harper set out. They should make sure that they know how to get their test; a list of test providers is available on the UK Government’s website.

I encourage—or would have encouraged—the member to listen to my statement. We will issue guidance. We are asking hospitality businesses to take measures to avoid crowding in bars, but we have not so far asked people to go back to table service. We are trying to be as proportionate as possible while having an impact on transmission.

If the member wants to say to me that we should close nightclubs, she should perhaps say that. If there is funding in that regard, we can consider it, but let me add that I do not want to close any business again if that can properly be avoided.

There is never going to be 100 per cent consistency, and there never has been since the days when we simply made everybody stay at home all day apart from going out for one walk.

As elected representatives, we have a duty, right now, to explain to people why they are being asked to do certain things and why one thing might look a bit inconsistent with another. We are political opponents across this chamber and we have vigorous disagreements, but we are again in the teeth of a serious public health crisis and our overriding duty is to unite to explain the advice to the people of Scotland, so that they have the best chance of following it.

At this stage, we intend for the change in regulations to take effect on Friday this week and the guidance to be issued before that. I return to the point that I made to one of the member’s colleagues: we want to give businesses as much time as possible, but we cannot lose sight of the fact that we are facing a variant of the virus that means that cases are doubling every two to three days—it is closer to every two days. It is moving very fast, and if we do not try to move as fast as it is moving, we will have very serious problems.

There is a real issue there, and it is not being political to point it out.

For whatever reason, and whatever anybody’s view of this is—I am not going to comment on that—it is very difficult for the UK Government to impose more protective measures, while, in my view, those protective measures are really essential. That is the right of the UK Government, which is responsible for protecting public health in England just as the Scottish Government is responsible for doing that in Scotland. It is just as entitled to take the decisions that it thinks are right. However, what is not fair, right now, is that, when it decides to do things, it can trigger financial support that is denied to us when we take decisions that we think are necessary.

Hopefully, we will get to a better position and today’s announcement is indicative of more of a willingness to listen to that point—as I have certainly seen, in recent days—than has been the case at some previous points in the pandemic. However, that basic issue of public health fairness is at the heart of it. Not only am I raising that issue; the Welsh and Northern Irish First Ministers have raised it. The devolved Governments are responsible for protecting public health; however, if we are denied the wherewithal to do that, we are in an invidious position that is unfair not just to the Governments involved but, fundamentally, to the populations that we serve.

Yes, we will take steps to do that. I have not been aware of particular issues at local pharmacies. There are more than 1,000 community pharmacies and dispensing general practitioners across the country that are providing access to lateral flow tests, and they can place daily orders to ensure that supply is sufficient. We are working with the UK Government to encourage pharmacies to place daily orders and increase the amount of tests that they are able to order each day where that is needed.

In the event of any supply issues in a particular pharmacy, people will be redirected to collect at another local pharmacy or testing site. If you want to know where your nearest source of lateral flow devices is, you can go to the website and put in your postcode, and it will tell you.

In general—I raised this at a four-nations discussion on Sunday—we need to ensure, given the higher demand for LFDs, which is really positive and good, that their procurement and supply stays healthy. I know that the team in the UK Government that is responsible for LFDs is working extremely hard on that. There was a temporary issue with the online ordering system yesterday, which has been rectified today, but it is really important that we keep the supply of these tests flowing, because they are an important part of our defence.

Yes, I agree. We are pressing both for funding arrangements that are, even if only in the Covid context, more appropriate to the situation that we face, and for as much clarity as possible. I will not repeat what I said about not knowing the detail of what was announced just after 2 o’clock.

This is a basic issue of good sense when it comes to dealing with a pandemic. We cannot have our hands tied on public health by funding arrangements that are asymmetrical and unfair to the devolved Administrations.

I hope that we are going to see some progress. It is really important that we all have the maximum ability to steer our way through the next phase of the pandemic without businesses unduly paying the cost of what we do because we do not have the wherewithal to compensate them properly.