Chamber and committees

I recognise Fiona Hyslop’s constituency interest in the matter alongside that of Angela Constance. I know that she was in the chamber when the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care answered a question on that issue a few moments ago.

The UK Government’s decision to terminate the contract with Valneva was taken unilaterally by the UK Government. As the health secretary has indicated, he was informed of that on Saturday by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. We do not have the full details of everything that lies behind that decision, but I know that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has indicated in the House of Commons today that the vaccine might not receive Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency approval. I repeat the call from our own health secretary that the UK Government should publish all the relevant information on that for transparency.

On the Scottish Government’s part, Scottish Enterprise is already in contact with the company. We will do everything that we can to support the company in light of the decision because, obviously, we want to see that facility not just remaining in Livingston but going from strength to strength in future. We will do everything that we can to support that.

It is important to reiterate the point that the health secretary has made that, however regrettable the decision might be, it does not affect our ability to extend the vaccination programme in the ways we have talked about today.

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.

The Ambulance Service is receiving additional money. We increased investment by more than £10 million last year, and additional investment of £20 million is being invested this year. The £1 billion recovery plan funding will include support for the Ambulance Service, just as it will include support for health services across the country.

I do not challenge any of what Douglas Ross is saying; there are big, big issues facing our national health service. However, because we know that, we are making the investment and doing the work with the service to address the issues.

However, I take issue because the issues for Scotland, and for other countries in the United Kingdom and around the world, have been significantly deepened and exacerbated by a once-in-a-century global pandemic—although saying that does not make things any easier for patients across the country who are waiting too long for elective treatment, for A and E treatment or for an ambulance. We need to support our NHS to recover from the pandemic.

There are headlines today from other parts of the UK about the longest waiting times on record. Some of the problems that our Ambulance Service is facing are problems that ambulance services elsewhere are facing. That does not remove the responsibility—[Interruption.]

First, I have not changed my mind. I said to the Parliament, on 3 August most recently, but before that in April and February, that we were considering the issue of vaccine certification. We had not ruled it out but had wanted to properly consider all the issues, and that is what we have done.

We have also listened to and continue to listen to a range of evidence. Ahead of the debate today, I recommend that all members of the Parliament read on Twitter the comments of Steven Reicher, who is one of the members of the Scottish Government Covid-19 advisory group but who is entirely independent. He sets out very fairly, and very well, the benefits of vaccine passports, the conditions that need to prevail in order to make their operation a success and, frankly, some of their limitations.

That takes me to the nub of Anas Sarwar’s question. Vaccine certification is not a 100 per cent solution in and of itself. All the things that Anas Sarwar rightly ran through have to be done but, in addition, vaccine passports can provide an added layer of protection. Take, for example, a nightclub, where people come together and there is the potential for superspreading events. If we make sure that, in addition to all the other protections, everybody in that nightclub has been fully vaccinated, we do not eradicate the risk of transmission, but we reduce it and significantly reduce the risk of illness. Crucially, we also give an alternative to the possibility, as we go into winter, of the closure of those kinds of events.

Is it a complete solution? No, but in the face of this challenging pandemic, there is no one single solution. We have to take all the ways that we can to act as proportionately as possible to keep the country as safe as possible. That is the responsible way in which the Government is going to continue to act. Some of what we have heard from the Opposition suggests that a bit more genuine grown-up politics on this issue would go a long way.

Engagement is and will continue to be on-going, and the Parliament will debate and vote on the issue this afternoon. We engage with the public on a range of issues all of the time.

I made a comment about Anas Sarwar’s position—it was not a comment about anybody else’s position. To say categorically, as he did at the weekend, that, no matter what, he would vote against something is, frankly, opposition for opposition’s sake. I think that that reflects rather poorly on Anas Sarwar, but that is my opinion, and people can agree or disagree with that.

Of course businesses have concerns about any of the measures that we have to take to try to tackle and contain Covid. I wish that we were not in this position at all—I wish that we were not even having to consider any measures to constrain the spread of an infectious virus—but we are in this situation. It is a very difficult situation, particularly with the increased transmissibility of delta, which is one of the other things that have changed since we first started talking about this. I would think that, for businesses in higher-risk settings, it will, on balance, be a choice between being able to continue to operate over the next few months or finding themselves facing a period of closure again. I am sure that there will be a variety of opinions, but I think that many such businesses would prefer this targeted, proportionate measure to closure.

Scotland is not alone in considering vaccine certification. An increasing number of countries across Europe are already using vaccine certification on a much more wide-ranging basis than we are proposing. In some cases—France, for example—vaccine certification is pushing up rates of vaccination uptake and helping to constrain and reduce transmission. We need to use every tool at our disposal to drive down infection rates and keep people safe while, at the same time, keeping our economy open. Anybody who buries their head in the sand in the face of that is not doing the economy or businesses any favours.