Chamber and committees

The Scottish Ambulance Service is currently carrying out a national review of demand and capacity. The review will ensure that the right resources are in place across the country to help meet both present and future predicted demand. Over the past four years, we have invested more than £1 billion, and we continue to invest, with just over £20 million in additional funding being made available to support the review. That has resulted in 67 extra front-line staff in the north of Scotland, with a mixture of experienced paramedics, newly qualified paramedics and technicians, along with nine patient transport service staff. The Scotland-wide figure is 296.

Work is also under way in partnership with health boards across the country to put in place improvement measures to reduce any unnecessary delays for ambulances waiting at hospitals to hand over patients.

We continue to support the plan with £1 billion of investment and 1,500 additional staff for the national treatment centres. We will continue to support the NHS in that way. If Anas Sarwar wants to come forward in the forthcoming budget process and point to where he thinks we should take extra money from to add to that, I would be very happy to listen. However, he has to do that with responsibility and not in a way that suggests that he can simply conjure money out of nowhere.

We have a big responsibility to get waiting times back on track. Incidentally, one of the other differences between now and 2003 is that our waiting times targets are so much more ambitious than they were under Labour because we are delivering more for patients and—[Interruption.]

The last point—[Interruption.]

I recognise the important role of exams in the Scottish educational tradition, and not only in the Scottish educational tradition. There is a need to properly consider for the future how we certificate the achievements of young people and what the correct balance is between formal exams and on-going assessment. We should all enter into that debate, and we should come at it from the perspective of what is best for our young people. I look forward to hearing views and contributions on that from across the range of perspectives. We will continue to take responsible decisions as we get our education system back on track and through the Covid recovery.

Presiding Officer, I have just had a comment made to me from a sedentary position. I would not normally do this, but I am so deeply offended by the comment that I want to take it up with you after this meeting, so that, with your permission, the member might be asked to reflect on that and to withdraw the comment. It was a comment that would have been unacceptable in any context, but in the context of what we are discussing right now, I am deeply aggrieved that any member thought that that was an appropriate thing to say.

I go back to the very important question that was asked. All of us—all of us—have a duty to stand against racism, prejudice and bigotry. I dedicate myself, not just as First Minister but as a citizen of this country, to always do so. I look forward to working with anybody who stands with me and with people across Scotland in that. I thank Pauline McNeill again for her question.

Tuesday.

Perhaps Douglas Ross should, first and foremost, concentrate on what his views on vaccine certification are: whether he supports it or opposes it, or whether he is going to continue simply to engage in the infantile opposition that characterises so much of the Conservatives’ response to Covid.

This is a global pandemic. It demands of politicians—particularly those of us in government—really tough decisions, and we have all got a responsibility to live up to that. On the detail, we will produce the detail of how the scheme will work before we bring the proposal to Parliament for Parliament to debate and decide, through a vote, whether we go ahead with it. I say to Douglas Ross that, had I stood here yesterday or even today and announced as a fait accompli exactly how every single aspect of this was going to operate, he would be here today criticising me for taking for granted the views of Parliament and not giving Parliament its proper place. We will do this properly and we will do it in the way that people have a right to expect of their Government.

Of course, we saw across a range of sectors yesterday an understanding of the reasons for the proposal. Nobody wants any form of restrictions, but, while we have this virus, we have to determine the least restrictive way of keeping people safe. Geoff Ellis of DF Concerts said:

“The Government are doing all that they can to avoid another lockdown. As an industry we all have to support that, and we all have to do our bit.”

The Federation of Small Businesses said that it does not want the prospect of stricter restrictions:

“We believe the business community will accept this change.”

The Scottish Football Supporters Association said:

“If Covid certificates are what it takes to allow fans to keep supporting their clubs then it’s better than no fans present.”

There is a degree of understanding and pragmatism among people on the front line. Perhaps Douglas Ross could take a leaf out of their book and engage with this with a degree of responsibility and recognition of the severity of the situation that we face.

I thank Douglas Lumsden for raising that issue. I take the opportunity to thank everybody who has participated in vaccine trials, because they have contributed hugely to the safety and wellbeing of us all. We have already made it clear that nobody who took part in those trials, including the member, will be disadvantaged in any way. The vaccination will be recognised, and we are working on ensuring that that can be evidenced. I will write to the member to update him on exactly how that will happen.

I will happily write to Jamie Greene with more detail on that. My understanding is that those changes are certainly not permanent, and that they would not be made permanent without full and proper consultation, but I am happy to write, or to ask the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care to do so, to the member with more information on that.

There is a serious issue here. The intended removal, which I hope does not go ahead, of the £20 a week will push thousands and thousands of people into poverty, and that is not something that any of us should sit back and be in any way comfortable about. Neil Gray is absolutely right. The Tories say that they would rather that people were in work. Of course we want to support people into work where they can work, but so many of the people on universal credit are already working—that is the point that is being missed here—and many others are not able to work, but they will all have that £20 a week taken away. As I said a moment ago, in Scotland alone that means 20,000 children pushed into poverty.

That is why the other serious aspect of this is the one that Neil Gray raises. We have rolled out already, and are rolling out, the Scottish child payment and there are, rightly, calls for us to go further with that and to increase the value of the child payment, which we are committed to doing. However, that £20 cut simply takes away money that we are trying to put into the pockets of the poorest in our society. It is ridiculous to take such decisions. People surely do not even have to support independence to say that it would be much better if we could join up all of this within the powers of this Parliament so that we can decide and set aside the resources that we need to lift children out of poverty and not see them pushed back into poverty.

This is an issue, but not the only one, where I hope we can find real consensus across the chamber and can act to tackle child poverty, rather than do what we can while watching a Government elsewhere do the complete opposite.

On the latter question, that deadline was in order to allow schools and local authorities the opportunity, as schools went back, to assess ventilation across the school estate, to ensure that they were using CO₂ monitors to do that, and to put in place any remedial plans that were required. That on-going work is being closely monitored. It is incumbent on local public health teams to provide appropriate support to schools or any other settings that experience outbreaks.

We changed the rules—as was set out to Parliament—around contact tracing and isolation in schools in order to try to reduce the number of young people who were being asked to isolate and were therefore having their education disrupted when they were not, in reality, at risk of getting Covid. A risk-based approach is now being taken, led by test and protect and public health teams. There are public health teams in every area of Scotland to offer advice and support to schools and to others who need it.