Chamber and committees

We will consider any reasonable proposal. As people will know from her background, the new Lord Advocate has a very strong interest in ensuring that victims of domestic abuse and women who are victims of male violence get appropriate and speedy access to justice. I know that she is very keen to ensure that all the Crown Office’s policies and procedures are helping to ensure that that ithate case.

I have commented on the underlying driving reasons for domestic abuse and violence against women and girls. When women and girls experience them—it is important to recognise that some men experience domestic abuse, but the majority of people who do are women—it is important that the justice system responds appropriately.

Although the numbers are deeply troubling—that anyone is a victim of such crimes is deeply troubling—the increases in the numbers might mean that people are now feeling that they are more able to come forward and report such crimes, which we should welcome. In addition, of course, Parliament, to its great credit, passed a new law that made criminal certain behaviour—coercive and controlling abuse—that was not previously criminal. We must bear those factors in mind when we look at the numbers.

However, making sure that people have access to justice is an important part of our overall approach to reducing the impact of domestic abuse and violence on women.

These are serious matters that the Government has taken and continues to take seriously. The Government commissioned the independent review, and I do not accept that it is discredited, although the Government also accepted that there had to be further process to ensure that parents and families who had been affected by what happened at the Queen Elizabeth hospital knew that it had been fully and properly investigated. The Government established the public inquiry that is under way. It will take its course and is completely independent of Government and, of course, of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. As Anas Sarwar has said, there is also a live police investigation into some of the cases that have been discussed in the chamber before.

For all those reasons, it would not be right, appropriate or helpful to the families concerned for me to get further into the detail of any of those cases, given the independent processes that are under way. However, as I have said before, I want to leave no one in any doubt about how seriously the Government and I take these issues, or about how determined we are, through the processes that we have established in the form of the public inquiry, to get to the answers and the truth. Then all of us, as a Parliament, will have the opportunity to reflect on those findings and consider what further action is necessary.

I agree: that is important. Every reasonable person recognises the impact of Covid on not only libraries, but many of the other services that local authorities deliver. There will be a period of getting back to normal and of again reconfiguring services that had to be reconfigured at the start of Covid. It is important that libraries fully re-open, unless there is a very good reason why that cannot happen, such as a need for refurbishment or use as a test centre.

It is important that libraries give people—especially young people—access to books. It was access to a library that fuelled my own love of reading when I was young. That is vitally important. Libraries are also used for many other things these days. It is important that that community provision is there. In Glasgow, where my constituency is, the vast majority of libraries are open again, as is the case across the country, and that is welcome. It is important that we support councils to open the remaining libraries as quickly as possible.

We have guidance in place for the sectors that are required to do Covid vaccination certification. As I said last week, and as I have said again today, the reason why we left the two-week gap between the introduction of the scheme and the enforcement provisions coming into force was to allow for testing and for the guidance to be properly applied and understood by the businesses that are required to undertake that.

I accept the point that Alex Cole-Hamilton made about public confidence, which is why the early experience of the app was deeply regrettable. However, it was also important for us to quickly rectify that and continue to take steps to ensure that we monitor and rectify any issues that arise.

After 18 months of the pandemic, I do not think that the public particularly wants there to be any restrictions in place. However, equally, from the interaction that I have had with people, it is my view that there is a pragmatic understanding on the part of the majority of the public that we cannot simply bury our heads in the sand over the virus as we go into winter and, if we want to live as normally as possible while keeping the virus under control, we have to accept some compromises. In my experience, most people accept Covid vaccination certification. Actually, in some of the media coverage on Thursday and into Friday, the people who were doing interviews and vox pops were pragmatic about the acceptance of showing vaccination status as an alternative to some of the more restrictive options.

None of us wants to be in this position. I wish—possibly more than most in the chamber—that we could just wash our hands of the virus and stop having to consider any of this or having to deal with the headaches and teething problems with the things that we have to introduce. We are doing this to try to get through the winter with Covid kept under control and the economy and our lives operating as normally as possible. Is that easy every single day for anybody? No, it is not, but I am afraid that it is essential while the virus continues to circulate.

We are taking a range of steps—as we have been for some time now—to encourage people to use lateral flow devices, ideally twice a week. There are particular groups that we give particular advice to, such as pupils and staff in secondary schools. Every time that I stand here, I remind people about the importance of using lateral flow devices. The importance of lateral flow device testing has featured in a lot of our marketing and advertising campaigns around Covid, and we will continue to encourage people to use those tests.

It stands to reason that, when cases rise, people are understandably more anxious and are possibly more likely to use the tests more and that, when cases fall again, there might be a tendency to fall away from doing that. That is why it is important for me, the Government and all of us to send the message that people should not drop their guard as cases continue to fall. It is still important that we do all of the things that we have been doing in order to prevent cases rising again, and testing ourselves with lateral flow devices is one important way of doing that.

The announcement of the £25 million fund to support small businesses to enhance ventilation—I think that we made that announcement at the end of September—has been warmly welcomed by a number of stakeholders, including the Federation of Small Businesses. Since making that announcement, we have been working with delivery partners, as I indicated that we would, to take forward the next steps. We recognise the importance of that work as we enter the winter months, when it might be less practical for businesses to keep windows and vents open.

We will set out further details of the grant and funding scheme and, of course, we will report on uptake and spend, as we have done for previous funding streams for businesses.

We recognise the clinical reality that someone who has recently had Covid may continue to test positive for some time and that, depending on the rules in the countries to which they are travelling, that could prevent them from travelling. People therefore need to check the entry requirements of the countries that they are planning to visit before arranging a trip.

We consider on an on-going basis what we can do to ease the difficulties that are being caused by such issues. However, it is simply one of the features of Covid that people have to think about when they make decisions about travelling or, indeed, doing things here.

We absolutely intend that those tests will remain free of charge. They are an important part of our protection against Covid. Emma Harper is right in saying that a significant number of people who contract Covid will not display symptoms, and certainly not in the early part of their period of infection. That is why lateral flow tests are so important.

Our advice is to take a lateral flow test twice a week. In addition, I advise people to do that before they go somewhere or, if they forget to do it once or twice a week, definitely to do it if they are due to visit somebody or to go to a particular event. The other part of the advice is that anyone with a positive lateral flow test result should book a PCR test to get confirmation of that result and should, of course, isolate immediately.

It is really important that we continue to do these things over the winter. If we all follow all of that advice, we have the best chance of keeping cases on a downward track.

We have addressed the fact that not everybody will have a driving licence or passport and that, therefore, not everybody will be able to use the app. That is why we intend to continue to offer people the alternatives of ordering a paper copy of their vaccination status or downloading a PDF file—not just for a few days, but throughout this. Both of those things can be done without using the app at all. It is important that those alternatives are there and that people are aware of them.

Before I address all the questions that Douglas Ross has asked, I will pick up one of the points that he made. If he thinks that the four Es is a new approach, the only question that that begs is this: where has he been for the past 18 months? The police and environmental health officers have been using that approach day in, day out in relation to all the regulations that have been in place. He might just want to haver reflected a little bit on that before he poses his questions.

I will now deal with the substantive points. It is the case that we now have an extremely positive trend in terms of cases and all the associated impacts on hospital admissions, occupancy and intensive care that flow from Covid cases, and I hope that we will start to see a reduction in the number of people dying. That is really positive.

When I was standing here a month or even three weeks ago, I would not have been entirely confident that we would be in this position. I understand that people will look at the situation and ask why we need any mitigations or restrictions to keep cases under control. That is not an illegitimate question, but the answer is very clear. We do not know—no country does—what pressure we will be under from Covid this coming winter.

This will not be the first winter that we have lived through this pandemic, but it will be the first winter in which Covid will be circulating and there will be no lockdown restrictions in place in terms of our everyday lives. I wish that this was not necessary but, in my view, it is prudent to have in place proportionate steps to give us the best possible chance of keeping cases under control—so that we do not have a health impact or people losing their lives or more pressure on the national health service—while keeping our economy fully open and trading.

That is why we are asking people to continue to wear face coverings and to do all the other basic things that are really tedious for everybody but still important. It is also why we consider—we are far from the only country in this position—that Covid certification has a part to play. We think it important to have that in place over the winter months.

Last week, the app did not work as we intended; there is no point in my trying to say anything different. I have tried to set out as clearly as possible the technical reasons for that. The situation is deeply regrettable. In essence, the issue was the linkage between the app and the NHS systems, and action has been taken to address and resolve that.

When we are in a position to do so, we will publish data around the app—the downloads, including the numbers of successful QR code downloads. However, the figure that we have—we rely on Google and Apple for some of the download information—is that, as of midnight on 3 October, almost 380,000 people had downloaded the app. We will continue to monitor the data and we will publish information as soon as we are in a position to do that robustly.

We will continue to make sure that we have those proportionate mitigations in place, because of what might happen if we do not. I reflect again on a point that I made last week: if I cast my mind back over these statements, going back probably for months now, almost every mitigation that we have put forward to try to keep cases under control has been opposed by Douglas Ross and the Conservatives. We are not in a position of being able to do nothing in the face of the virus over the winter, so we seek to do the most proportionate things possible. That is the action that we will continue to take.