Chamber and committees

I will certainly take away the latter suggestion and consider whether that would be helpful. I will make a couple of brief points. First, increasingly, given the way that modern healthcare is delivered, although we can distinguish between the NHS and social care, we cannot separate them because they are so closely integrated. Equally, we must give strong recognition to the role of unpaid carers in the delivery of social care. That is something that we always do.

We have been supporting unpaid carers in a range of ways—for example, through increased financial support through the carers allowance supplement. There will be an additional payment of that over the course of the coming winter. I understand the pressures that unpaid carers are under. It has been an incredibly difficult set of circumstances for them, and we will always consider what more we can do. We will certainly give consideration to the suggestion of a stand-alone strategy.

As I said before, we are aligning on international travel rules because of the practical considerations of having different rules in place in different parts of the UK, and the potential for that to damage our travel industry without delivering any additional public health benefit. We have not always been in agreement about all the changes, but we continue to discuss those matters carefully with the UK Government on an on-going basis.

On post-arrival testing, people will still require to be tested—the same arrangements are in place around that. They will be able simply to do a lateral flow device test in the first instance, as opposed to a PCR test. If that LFD test is positive, they will then book a PCR test in the normal way. The requirement for testing is not being removed; it is simply the type of test in the first instance that is being changed. However, all the other arrangements around testing after people’s arrival remain as they were previously.

The NHS Scotland Covid check app is available for businesses to download and is free to download. It is a verifier app that businesses can use to verify vaccination certificates, and I know that many businesses are using it. However, we have made it clear that visual checks are also acceptable. We continue to engage with the sectors that are affected, and we will encourage more use of the app as the scheme continues to develop.

It is important that everybody who needs mental health treatment gets that treatment in the best possible setting. That is especially important when we are talking about children and adolescents.

The Government is already taking a range of actions to further develop community wellbeing services for children and young people. For example, we are providing funding for counsellors in schools so that there is much earlier intervention for young people so that fewer of them require the services of more specialist provision. A range of work is under way, which we will continue to progress with additional funding over the months to come.

I think so, Presiding Officer. I apologise to Bob Doris—I missed the start of the question. The sound could not be heard here in the chamber, but I think that I got the general thrust of the question.

Such issues are important, given the expected demand for smoke alarms ahead of 1 February next year, when the new standard is due to come into force. There is significant public interest in the matter because of the public awareness campaign. We know that some retailers might have short-term supply issues, but we have been assured by manufacturers that there is a sufficient supply of alarms available to meet expected demand.

We will continue to consider whether there is more that we need to do to support home owners to be compliant with the new standard. We will take a range of actions, should we consider that to be necessary. The public awareness campaign has been important in making sure that people have increased understanding of what will be expected as of February next year.

The education secretary met the chief executive of the SQA earlier this week and impressed upon her the need to deliver against the section 23 agreement. The EHRC’s findings refer to historical omissions at the SQA. Learners can be assured that all the required equality impact assessments regarding the awarding of national qualifications in the past two years were completed and published by the SQA and the Scottish Government. I welcome the SQA’s action plan and its commitment to complete any outstanding equality impact assessments for all of their current policies and practices, with 28 new equality impact assessments already having been published since August.

Entry to school can be deferred if a child is not yet aged five on the first day of primary school. Not all children who are deferred are yet automatically entitled to a funded place in early years education. However, we have introduced new legislation to guarantee funding for early learning and child care during any deferred year. That legislation comes into force from August 2023, on a timetable that has already been approved by the Parliament.

There are no plans to change that timetable, because it has been developed in partnership with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities so that it is realistic and achievable. In the meantime, we have already committed £3 million to fund five local authorities to deliver early learning and childcare in 2021-22 as part of a pilot programme to support the wider roll-out of that commitment. The Minister for Children and Young People will soon announce additional pilot authorities for 2022-23.

I will come to that point in a moment, but I want to complete the point that I addressed in my first answer.

I think that I said explicitly that I was not criticising the process that Douglas Ross is going through, but in his initial question to me he said—I think—that he had published a bill this morning, and I was simply making the point that that is not the case.

We will consider the consultation fully and with an open mind, and when that is translated into an actual bill, as I expect that it will be in the fullness of time, we will consider that in the normal parliamentary processes that all legislation goes through. I do have an open mind and I hope that we can find maximum common ground. I suspect that there will continue to be issues that divide us on the correct responses to the drugs crisis, but I hope that none of us in this chamber allow those issues to get in the way of the areas where we can build agreement and consensus.

On the issue of a visit, I am glad that Douglas Ross accepted my suggestion earlier in the week that we go together to a working-class community. My office will be in touch to take that forward shortly. I am certainly willing to meet organisations and, indeed, individuals affected by drugs misuse, as I have previously.

This is an equally important point and I hope that it is one that will be accepted by Douglas Ross: the issues faced by working-class communities go beyond drugs. Indeed, drug misuse can, in some cases, be a symptom of deeper issues—poverty, for example—so I am sure that Douglas Ross will agree that, if we are to undertake such a joint endeavour, it will also be important to meet, for example, those who have just had their universal credit withdrawn, driving them deeper into the poverty conditions that then sometimes lead to the other issues that we are talking about. So, I look forward to finalising the details of that and to meeting people who will, no doubt, have things to say about Scottish Government policy, what we are doing and what more we should do, but also people who are being deeply affected each and every day right now by United Kingdom Government policy that is doing a lot of damage in working-class communities the length and breadth of the country.

Yes. It was deeply regrettable that the Prime Minister treated the very serious issues of animal welfare with such disdain on Sunday, just as it was outrageous that he made an entire speech to his party conference yesterday and did not mention the fact that his Government took away £20 a week from the poorest families across the country on that very day.

The Government is monitoring the specific issue that Jim Fairlie raised very carefully. At the heart of that issue is labour shortages, which are impacting on many sectors of our economy. Those labour shortages have been significantly exacerbated by the ending of freedom of movement that came about because of Brexit.

Although we will do what we can through employability and skills work to try to address that, fundamentally, the answers and the solutions have to lie with the United Kingdom Government. I call on it to take urgent action to ensure that the problems that are already being experienced do not get even worse as the winter progresses.

I believe that the health secretary has met long Covid patients and am sure that he would be more than willing to meet others. It is a serious issue, the impact of which we will be living with for some time.

I am not going to comment, because I am not an expert on the arrangements south of the border, but I suspect that they do not in detail live up to how they are talked about in the chamber—but that is another matter.

We have published the long Covid strategy to which Alex Cole-Hamilton referred. There are 16 commitments in it that are backed by a £10 million funding commitment. Part of that is for furthering our understanding of the reasons for and the implications of long Covid, so that the services that are developed properly address them. There is nothing to stop health boards from establishing specialist provision right now, but we also want to make sure that, throughout more general national health service provision, clinicians are capable of addressing the impacts of long Covid as they present.

The issue is serious now and will continue to be an obligation on the Government, which is why the commitments in the strategy are so important.