Chamber and committees

I agree that there were pressures before Covid. I do not think that anyone can or should deny that those pressures have been significantly exacerbated by Covid, and not only here in Scotland: we see similar pressures on health services across the UK, and further afield.

Because we have been aware of those pressures, we have been working to address them. Last year, we commissioned a working group to agree and implement a range of actions to improve turnaround times. As part of that, 296 additional ambulance staff are being recruited as a result of the investment that we have made available in the past two years. In the north of the country—the part of Scotland that Douglas Ross represents—there will be an extra 67 front line staff, who will be a mixture of experienced and newly qualified paramedics and technicians along with nine patient transport service staff, who will be located across the region.

I will not stand here and suggest that it is in any way acceptable for anyone to wait too long for an ambulance. In the week up to 7 September, which is the week for which we have the most recent figures, the Scottish Ambulance Service responded to 10,435 emergency incidents, which was more than in the previous week. The median national response time in that week for all calls about immediate life-threatening need was nine minutes and three seconds. That is slightly higher than we want it to be; the target is seven minutes.

The Ambulance Service is working hard under incredibly challenging circumstances. My job, and that of the health secretary, is to support them with funding and in other ways, to ensure that they can meet the challenges for the sake of all patients across Scotland, who deserve timely responses from the Scottish Ambulance Service.

The point that I am making is a serious one. It does not in any way take away the Scottish Government’s responsibility for addressing the problems in Scotland. However, I think that most people understand that exceptionally difficult circumstances have prevailed over the past 18 months, and they understand the difficulties that all Governments and health services are having as we try to recover. That is why we are making investment, why we have the recovery plan and why we will continue—every single day—to support our health service and everybody who works in it to recover and to get the NHS fully back on track.

I do not think that we can argue about the impact of United Kingdom Government austerity on services the length and breadth of Scotland—it has been utterly devastating. The problem is that, unless we do something to get ourselves out of the grip of Tory Government after Tory Government, people across Scotland will suffer more.

Just this week, we have seen a national insurance increase that will punish the lowest paid in our society—[Interruption.] Well, we all want to see extra money for public services but raising that money in a way that punishes the poor is the bit that we do not agree with—no one should agree with it if they care about those issues. We are also about to see the UK Government make the biggest overnight cut to social security since the 1930s, when it takes away the £20 per week uplift to universal credit.

It may be something that Alex Rowley and I have to disagree on—he can explain that to his constituents. It is right that people in Scotland have the opportunity to choose a different and better future, in which we take control over social security and how we raise funds, into the Scottish Parliament, so that we do not have to stand here and—to use Alex Rowley’s phrase—argue about the impact of another Government on people the length and breadth of Scotland.

The Minister for Transport meets ScotRail and trade unions regularly. He met trade union representatives on 24 June, and subsequently met Abellio. I met the Scottish Trade Union Congress on 12 August. On each occasion, we expressed our disappointment about the current dispute affecting ScotRail’s Sunday services and urged all parties to seek resolution.

I understand that the transport minister is meeting Unite the union today and has offered with to meet the other rail unions. We want all parties to get around the table and identify solutions to the challenges that our rail services face.

I can give an assurance on fair work; in my view, part of fair work is having good industrial relations as well as engagement and discussion with trade unions. I expect that to be at the heart of ScotRail services as they come into public ownership.

I know that members are aware of the reasons behind the current dispute, which arose from an agreement made during Covid for enhanced rest-day working. Now that additional ticket examiners and conductors have been recruited, the issue of excessive rest-day working has been resolved. The unions and workers—I understand why this is the case—want to keep the temporary allowance and make it permanent, whereas ScotRail’s view is that that is not sustainable. Again, I call on both parties to get around the table to find an agreement. It is in no one’s interest—not least the workers’ interest—for the dispute to continue any longer. We will continue to encourage the parties to do that. We will also continue to do the work to bring ScotRail into full public ownership, which we expect to conclude in the early part of next year.

I thank Rhoda Grant for her perfectly reasonable question, although I am not sure that anybody would describe it as a vanity project. There are sustainability issues in the services as they are. The project is about improving and securing the sustainability of the services in the future. The project is still at an early stage, but it is proceeding in line with the approved business case. HIAL obviously has the responsibility to ensure that that continues to be the case.

There can be no compromise on safety on any aviation matter, which is why, to return to a point that I made in my previous answer, the processes that must be gone through, ultimately resulting in approval by the Civil Aviation Authority, are so important.

I recognise the concerns. A change such as this will always result in worries and questions for people. Therefore, HIAL and, indeed, the Scottish Government will address those in order to give people the reassurance that they need.

That is an excellent and extremely important point. In fact, it should run through all the work that we do as a Government.

The programme for government recognises the point that Karen Adam makes. The impacts of Covid have been, and will no doubt continue to be, experienced disproportionately by various groups, including women. I assure her that our engagement on the development of just transition plans will seek to amplify the voices of underrepresented groups, and to actively work to ensure that we create a better, greener future for all.

More generally, we have committed to take forward a programme of work to embed equality, inclusion and human rights throughout Scotland. That is an important part of our overall commitment to ensuring that while the transition happens, it happens in a way that is just and fair.

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.