Chamber and committees

It was interesting that, as Gillian Mackay was asking that very pertinent question, the Tories were getting very twitchy. They do not like to hear or to listen to the reality of the damage that their policies are doing to people the length and breadth of Scotland. They will not be able to hide from that damage in the weeks and months to come.

Regarding immigration, in the run-up to the Brexit referendum and since, the Conservatives have given the impression that people from other countries are not welcome to work here. Now, they want people to come here for three months to help the UK Government out of its self-imposed crisis, only to send them back again on Christmas eve. That is absolutely disgraceful.

Across a range of issues today, we have heard the power of the argument for this country to be independent, so that we can take such decisions ourselves and are no longer dependent on the decisions of a UK Government, and so that we can respond to the needs of people throughout this country here, in the democratically elected Parliament of our nation.

I continue to believe, and intend, that that will be the case and that people across the country will have the opportunity to choose independence in a referendum within this session of Parliament and, I hope, within the first half of the session.

First, the £41 million to which Anas Sarwar refers is, I assume, what will flow from this morning’s UK Government announcement of a UK-wide £500 million fund for low-income families. I am surprised to hear Anas Sarwar talk about that fund positively. It was announced by a Tory Government that is taking £6 billion out of the pockets of the lowest-income families through the universal credit cut and expecting praise—which it seems to have got from Anas Sarwar—for putting £500 million back. It is an absolute disgrace and an insult.

I give the absolute commitment that every penny of consequentials that we get from that fund will go to support low-income families. That will be in addition to the support that I have already talked about—a £130 support payment by the end of October that will go to every household that receives council tax reduction, supporting more than 500,000 households across the country.

We are also doubling the carers allowance supplement in December to try to help carers with the cost of living increase and, as I have already said, we have introduced the Scottish child payment. Only yesterday, I visited Social Security Scotland in Dundee, which is delivering 11 benefits already, seven of which do not exist anywhere else. That is how seriously we are taking the obligation to help those most in need.

I come back to the point that our resources are finite. Anas Sarwar is asking me to find money from within a devolved budget that has already been allocated in order to mitigate—again—the impact of reserved policies. Would it not make more sense for us to have the powers here, in this Parliament, with the accompanying resources, so that we can take different decisions?

I make Anas Sarwar two open offers. First, I ask him to back the Scottish Government in its call to devolve all, and not just some, of social security to this Parliament. Secondly, if he wants us to make another payment, he can, by all means, tell me from where in the already allocated Scottish budget he wants me to take over and above the £41 million that he has mentioned, which, as I have already said, will be fully allocated. If he wants anything over and above that, he should come and tell me where from within the Scottish budget he wants me to take that money. I am happy to listen to him if he is prepared to do that.

We discuss such matters with the UK Government on an on-going basis. The Scottish Government has on many occasions made clear its opposition to the UK Government’s immigration policies—in particular, the ending of free movement. We welcome anything that enables more people to come here to work.

However, to describe the changes to the visa rules that were announced last week as a sticking plaster would be an exaggeration, because I do not think that they even amount to that. They are woefully inadequate.

I am afraid that the price of those policies will be paid and felt by people across the country for some time to come.

Yes, I agree whole-heartedly. I am a very strong believer in a woman’s right to choose on abortion. I am, if it is possible, an even stronger advocate—as everybody should be, regardless of the fact that people have different views on abortion—of the position that any woman who has an abortion should be able to do so without fear of, and without actual abuse or harassment. There is work to be done to make sure that that is the case.

My party’s election manifesto had things to say on the matter, as did the manifestos of other parties, and we will consider steps that we can take to ensure that women can exercise that right in reality.

All of us understand how vital those services are to many people, and I understand the concern that any changes to the operation of such services brings. The Glasgow health and social care partnership has sought to assure the Government that the suspension of services is temporary. The situation will be regularly reviewed and services will be reinstated as quickly as possible.

We have been working, and we will continue to work, closely with all local areas, including Glasgow, to ensure that services are delivered safely. That has included introducing measures to address recruitment and retention issues, such as working with the Scottish Social Services Council and key partners to promote opportunities and encourage take-up of vacant posts, which includes work on training and developing the workforce. In addition, we are running a campaign to attract more people to the sector, and we are accelerating routes into the sector in recruitment processes.

There is no particular scientific evidence beyond what I have said. It is a balanced judgment. I absolutely accept the concerns that Gillian Mackay has set out, and I share many of them. I have tried to be as candid as I can be about the difficulties in making that judgment and the reasons why we have arrived where we have.

If there is a non-aligned position across the UK, the danger—in fact, the likelihood—is that, simply because of travel patterns, we would end up in a position in which people who were travelling back to the UK would simply route through English airports. We would therefore lose the public health benefit of testing anyway, and in the process we would also incur damage to our own aviation and travel sector. It is a pragmatic judgment.

On the issue of alternative surveillance measures, we are discussing that with Public Health Scotland and looking at potentially asking people who have returned to Scotland to take part in testing on a sample basis. We will set that out as quickly as possible, because it is important that we continue to have good surveillance through PCR testing so that we can also do genomic sequencing. We are very keen to do that quickly. To reassure travellers, I have said that such testing would not come at additional cost to them. We will set out the detail of that as quickly as possible.

No, I do not accept that. It is not consistent or credible for the Conservatives to come here week after week and say, “Listen to businesses and do what they are asking,” and then, when we do exactly that, to complain and moan about it.

The measure is a pragmatic way forward and will help with implementation. It is not a delay to implementation; it is a sensible measure to give businesses time, once the legal obligation comes into force, to test and adapt the arrangements that they put into place. The arrangements that will be set out further in guidance, later today, take a proportionate and common-sense approach.

Any organisation or individual in the country that we live in has the right to take legal action. I would never criticise any organisation for doing so if it thinks that it has a basis for that. Obviously, it would not be appropriate for me to comment, but the Government of course thinks carefully about the basis for all the steps that it takes in relation to Covid, and will continue to do so.

I will say one thing about all the steps that we have had to take over the past 18 months and are still required to take, which might be worth all of us—including me—reflecting on in the debates that we have in this chamber. Even if we disagree on the wisdom or otherwise of some of the steps, we are all trying to do the right things for the right reasons—to keep the country as safe as possible from Covid. Perhaps the tone of our discussions would benefit from all of us—including me—remembering that.

I agree. We are taking a range of actions to tackle the issue of delayed discharge now. Just a few days ago, the health secretary and I were discussing those actions in detail with our officials.

It is partly about increasing the resource that is available for social care, which we are doing and will continue to do in this session of Parliament. It is also absolutely about respecting people’s choice. I think that we all agree that, where somebody has no medical or clinical requirement to be in hospital, it is not the best place for them. Supporting appropriate discharge—including where that is to care at home—is therefore really important. However, in many cases, a care home will be the best place for people.

Rightly or wrongly, over the course of the pandemic, some families will understandably have had concerns about their relatives being admitted to care homes. We therefore also need to assure people that care homes are good and appropriate places for people to be. A range of work is under way.

As we have warned for the past two years, we are facing a challenge around the social care workforce, which has in large part been exacerbated by the impact of Brexit, as we are seeing across many sectors. That will continue to be an added challenge in this area over the next months, and possibly beyond that. However, we are taking a range of steps as we build towards the national care service, which the Parliament will debate in full as that process develops.

Proof of a full course of vaccination will be accepted at venues for domestic purposes. Proof of vaccination will be accepted from across the UK and from Crown dependencies, as well as from members of the European Union Covid certification scheme. Tourists from other nations—for example, the United States—will need to provide the same proof of vaccination status that is currently accepted for entry into the UK. We want people who are visiting Scotland to be able to go to football matches or night-time venues, but we want to do everything possible to ensure that they, just like Scottish residents, can do so as safely as possible.

Had I listened in past weeks to Douglas Ross, who has opposed every measure that the Government has introduced to try to stem the rise in Covid case numbers, we would not be in the position in which we are now, with falling Covid case numbers; case numbers would probably still be rising. Douglas Ross has stood here and opposed everything from face coverings to continued mitigations. That is a regular feature of the management of the pandemic.

I will take the issue of Covid vaccination certification first. It is because we have listened, and are listening, to businesses that we have today announced a very pragmatic compromise. The scheme is ready and will be introduced on Friday, but businesses understandably want to have a period without the threat of enforcement in which they can ensure that their compliance arrangements are working well and in which they have the time to adapt those arrangements if they think they have to do that. We have done that because we are listening.

I return to the central point. Covid cannot simply be wished away, although I think that Douglas Ross sometimes believes that it can. We must take active measures to get it, and keep it, under control. Vaccination certification is a proportionate and targeted way of doing that, and it is already being used by many countries across the world. Scotland, Wales in a few weeks and even Northern Ireland—although it has not yet moved to a mandatory scheme—are encouraging Covid vaccination certification. As with many things, it might soon be the case that the only part of the UK not to have such a scheme is England, although the Prime Minister has not ruled out having such a scheme over the winter months. We will continue to take the sensible way forward.

I will take Mr Ross’s other points in reverse order. He mentioned international travel plans. We did not stall; we did what any responsible Government should do in the face of a pandemic. We carefully considered the balance between the understandable economic imperative of trying to align across the UK and the equally understandable concerns about the risks to public health. We did so in the same way that Wales and Northern Ireland have been carefully considering those things. We have come to a balanced judgment that I think is right. I have been candid in saying that there are concerns but that we will seek to take other steps to mitigate those concerns and to guard against new variants.

The NHS continues to be under pressure. The issue of beds is an important one. There has recently been a slight increase in the number of acute beds. We are trying to ensure that we free up capacity in our NHS, including bed capacity, through the range of measures that we are taking. We are again reducing delayed discharge through support for care packages and moves to care homes. We are working to avoid unnecessary admissions to hospital. The key, and most important, thing that we must do to free up bed capacity in our NHS is to reduce the number of beds that are occupied by patients with Covid, which is currently just above 1,000. That intense work is under way across Government and the NHS.

I am not complacent. We have a hard winter ahead. A and E waiting times are still far worse than we want them to be, but they are better than they were last week. There has also been a very slight easing of the demand pressure on ambulance response times and a corresponding improvement in the past week in the performance of our Ambulance Service. That does not mean that we no longer have difficulties. This will be a challenging winter, which is why the Government and I remain focused on taking steps to support our NHS as it faces up to those challenges.