Chamber and committees

That is a very important question because, although we understandably and rightly, to some extent, focus on the domestic impact and implications of Covid, it is a global pandemic and none of us will be truly safe from it until it is well under control across the whole world. In summary—I can provide more information for those who are interested—we have provided support to our existing international partners; undertaken a review of our approach to international development at an early stage of the pandemic so that we could better target support; and authorised over £3 million of support from our international development fund, targeting Covid-specific initiatives in our partner countries, which are Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia and Pakistan. That includes £2 million to UNICEF to help prepare health systems to distribute vaccines and £0.5 million to support vaccine roll-out and online learning on healthcare. More recently, our donations of vital medical supplies include oxygen concentrators, ventilators and personal protection equipment through the NHS Scotland global citizenship programme. We also sent oxygen and ventilation equipment to India and, lastly, our humanitarian emergency fund has supported vulnerable communities in countries such as Syria, Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and Afghanistan.

I am not aware that that is the case. I will look into it and if there is any issue there, I will undertake to ensure that it is resolved.

Not everyone who applies for a self-isolation payment is eligible for one. If her constituents are eligible, and Jackie Baillie wants to send me the details, I would be happy to look into the circumstances. Although I am not aware of the flow of resource being a specific issue, I will undertake to investigate that.

Yes, I want to give that assurance. Clearly, we are working to resolve the cross-border issues. As anyone would realise, we are not in control of what happens in England, and it is not something that we can do unilaterally. That is why the discussions between Governments are important.

We hope and expect that a solution will be in place soon and we will make the details of that known. However, it is in nobody’s interests to disadvantage anybody. The whole point of vaccination certification is to allow people to go about their normal lives and not have to see places close or be unable to access them. The policy is about enabling activity in the economy, not the reverse.

The provision of training and support is important. As we said previously, we are working with sectors on an on-going basis on all the operational issues around certification. We are working to provide appropriate sector-specific guidance that will allow businesses to provide information and appropriate training to staff. That has to be sector specific, because the requirements in, for example, a nightclub with a relatively small number of people attending will be different from the requirements at a stadium with many people attending. That sector-specific guidance is currently being developed and finalised.

As I said earlier, we will move as quickly as possible, but we will also move in a way and at a pace that allows informed consent to be arrived at, which is particularly important for that age group. I have expressed frustration in the past that it has taken so long to get to this point, but we are where we are and it is important that we now move forward at pace.

The information that is provided will be important, because it needs to be accessible for young people themselves, not just their parents or adult carers. It is important that people in drop-in clinics and vaccination clinics are available to address concerns and answer questions. Of course, vaccinators are used to doing that with other vaccination programmes, so they are best placed to do that.

It is also important that we strike the right balance between encouraging people in that age group to engage and get vaccinated, as I will do unreservedly, and being understanding about the issues and questions that younger people will have. If we proceed on that basis, we will have every reason to be confident that we will achieve uptake levels in that age group that are as good as those in other age groups.

James Dornan is absolutely right that we cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with long Covid. I do not think that any country can. We are trying to recognise the need for flexibility in all the approaches that we take.

As James Dornan will be aware, we recently established a £10 million long Covid support fund. That is additional resource that is designed to strengthen services throughout the country for people with long Covid. We are also working with boards and others to identify where that additional resource is most needed and where it will have the biggest impact for those affected. As he has rightly said, supporting health boards to deliver tailored responses to meet the differing needs of people with long Covid is key to that. That will allow people to access services that are appropriate to their own health needs and appropriate to the part of the country that they live in. I very much hope that that fund will, in the weeks and months to come, lead to a lot of developments that will help those who are living with the condition.

We will continue to work across the education sector to make sure that we take all appropriate actions to support the safe return of teaching, and to ensure that physical distancing remains in place, face coverings continue to be used and vaccination continues to be encouraged. There is an opportunity over the next few weeks to really maximise the uptake of vaccination, and to use testing to full extent, too. There is a big responsibility on the part of everybody here to make sure that everything possible is being done to reduce the risk of outbreaks in the weeks to come.

First, lateral flow testing is not the only mitigation that is being applied in schools. The work around carbon dioxide monitors, leading to the assessment of ventilation, is under way. A range of other mitigations are in place and, of course, contact tracing has not been ended in schools; it is being done, rightly, on a more targeted and proportionate basis because, before the summer holidays, we knew that significant numbers of young people were having their education disrupted when that was not strictly necessary.

On how we get more young people to take lateral flow tests, we make the tests available free of charge and they are easily accessible. I think that it is incumbent on all of us, both in the chamber and in our own constituent networks and in every possible way, to encourage young people to take those tests. I understand that, for young people in particular, they are not pleasant and are inconvenient, but they provide us with an added layer of protection. I take the opportunity today to encourage all young people—and encourage parents and carers—to take up the opportunity of LF testing twice a week and additionally if they get a low-risk contact letter.

We should remember that 85 per cent of the adult population are now fully vaccinated, and that number is increasing daily. In Scotland, first doses for 18 to 29-year-olds increased by 11 per cent in the 12 days following our announcement of Covid certification compared with the numbers in the previous 12 days. Again, I think that we can see—although it is still early—that that is having an impact in driving up vaccination uptake.

We encourage everyone to get vaccinated. Some people will not have completed their full vaccination course when the certification scheme comes into place, but people can check their vaccination status through NHS Inform, and details are available of how to do that. The app will go live later this month, which will make the system even easier.

These are all things that none of us wants to have to do and I hope that the vaccination system does not have to be in place for very long. However, while it can give us an added layer of protection, particularly as we go into the winter months, it is important that we take advantage of it.

I want to take the opportunity again today to express my gratitude to the nurses and everyone else who is working so hard across the national health service. We have a record number of staff in our health service, including nurses, but we need to do more to support them. We have made a commitment to further increase the number of those working in our national health service over this parliamentary session.

We will continue to work closely with health boards to ensure that they are supported to minimise any need to postpone or cancel elective treatments and to ensure that the most urgent treatment—cancer treatment comes under that definition—continues as people need it to.

However, there is a fact at the heart of this: if we are to get our NHS back to normal—as everyone is working hard to do—we need to get Covid cases down further and to keep them down. This comment is particularly relevant for those on the Conservative benches: we need to be prepared to take the action that gets Covid cases down. Over the past few weeks, almost every mitigation that we have proposed to try to reduce the number of Covid cases has been opposed by the Conservatives. Covid cases will not fall of their own accord—they will only fall through the actions that we take individually and collectively. We all desperately want to reduce the pressure on our national health service, and if we are to do that, we need to keep doing all the things that we know will reduce transmission of the virus.