Chamber and committees

The assurance group that flowed from the oversight board is due to meet on 17 November. It has been a couple months since it has met, if I am correct. More than 80 per cent of all recommendations of the oversight board have already been implemented, just as the recommendations that came from the independent review have been. That is the action that has been taken to address concerns around the Queen Elizabeth university hospital while we await the work of the independent public inquiry, which Anas Sarwar previously called for.

That is absolutely shameless!

Since the start of the pandemic, businesses have benefited from more than £4.4 billion in Scottish Government support, including an extension of non-domestic rates relief for all retail, leisure, aviation and hospitality premises in 2021-22. The small business bonus scheme is the most generous of its kind in the United Kingdom, offering up to 100 per cent relief to qualifying properties and saving small businesses around £2.5 billion since 2008.

The Scottish Government also provides a range of financial support and advice to small businesses through enterprise agencies and the Business Gateway network. The finance secretary regularly meets business organisations to discuss issues such as economic recovery and will set out what further support will be available in the budget that she will deliver this afternoon.

I am deeply concerned by the impact on households of recent energy price rises. Given that powers relating to the energy market are reserved, I am disappointed not to have seen action from the United Kingdom Government to support low-income households in particular.

The Scottish Government has already taken a number of actions to build on the support that we provided last winter. Our £10 million fuel insecurity fund will ensure that direct financial support is available to those who are at risk of self-disconnecting or self-rationing. We have allocated more than £1 billion since 2009 to tackling fuel poverty and improving energy efficiency. We also continue to fund Home Energy Scotland, which can provide advice on how to make homes warmer and cheaper to heat.

I agree. The UK Government’s decision to remove £20 a week from the poorest households, to which I have already referred today, was the biggest overnight cut to welfare in 70 years. It would have been a callous act at any time and was particularly so at a time of rising prices and rising energy bills. It is important that we do not quickly forget that; we should remember that needlessly callous act, which has been carried out on the poorest in our society.

I urge anyone who is concerned about their energy costs to seek support from advice services such as Citizens Advice. We have also launched a campaign to raise awareness of the services that are available to people with financial worries. Home Energy Scotland can refer families for benefit checks and to support from the fuel insecurity fund.

The Scottish Government strongly supports the principles underlying international anti-corruption day, as enshrined in the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. It is incumbent on all of us in leadership positions to set high standards, and the Scottish Government will endeavour to operate on the basis of openness, candour and transparency in all that we do.

Yes, I do. While Gillian Mackay was asking her question, I had members of the Tory group shouting at me from a sedentary position that these issues have nothing to do with us here in the Scottish Parliament. I beg to differ. I think that the principles and values of openness, integrity and transparency matter to all of us who care about democracy in this country.

Boris Johnson has many questions to answer. There are more questions surfacing today around the whole Downing Street wallpaper issue, but I will leave them to one side. I do not think that it is simply a corrupt incumbent of number 10 that has to go; I think that it is time for Scotland to get rid of the whole broken, corrupt Westminster system that is holding us back, and we can do that only by becoming an independent country.

That is one of the most serious questions that is being posed to us all right now, and the unavoidable and inescapable implications of dealing with Covid—what it might mean for health and, indeed, the much wider impacts across the population—weigh very heavily on me. I assure the member and the chamber that those considerations are always very high up in my mind, as they are in the mind of the Government.

Specifically on cervical screening, cancer screening generally is really important. We had to pause the screening programmes for a period during the early part of the pandemic, but they are now operational again. It is important that people can get appointments for cervical and other cancer screening. It is also important that we encourage uptake of screening programmes, and that is particularly true for cervical and breast screening in women. There is a great deal that we need to do, and I repeat my assurance that it is a high priority for us.

Yes, I support the calls of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, and I certainly call on the Prime Minister to take whatever action he can to ensure that we get vaccines equitably to the population of the world as quickly as possible. I also take very seriously the responsibility that is on the shoulders of my Government to make sure that we are doing everything possible.

It is understandable that we often focus on the implications for ourselves and our country, but Covid is an unprecedented global crisis. Earlier in the pandemic, the Government allocated funding for our international development budget to provide Covid support for our partner countries Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia and Pakistan. The UK also participates in COVAX, which is an important way to help other nations to access vaccines. However, it is fundamentally the case that, as omicron reminds us, until everybody across the world is safe, none of us is truly safe, so we are keen to explore further routes that support equitable access to vaccines. I will write to the Prime Minister on the issue to encourage him to take whatever action is necessary and offer the full co-operation of the Scottish Government in doing so.

I have set out today some of the steps that we are taking to generate additional demand—to get the blue-envelope letters that I spoke about to particular age cohorts, and to encourage people who have not yet been vaccinated that, even at this stage, it is not too late and that they should get their vaccination. We will continue to use such methods to encourage people to come forward. By the end of January, of course, everybody who is over 18 will have been offered the booster vaccination.

I say, pretty bluntly: if you are eligible and able to be vaccinated but are choosing not to be vaccinated, you are being deeply irresponsible and selfish; you are putting your own life much more at risk; and you are putting more at risk the lives of everybody you come into contact with. That was true before the emergence of omicron and it may be even more true now. Please, therefore, for your own sake, get vaccinated. However, if you are not going to do it for your own sake, do it for the sake of others you are coming into contact with and, for goodness’ sake, do not put their lives on the line.