Chamber and committees

We agree on the importance of the recovery from Covid. I wonder whether Douglas Ross will take the opportunity to comment on any of the 26 and a half pages of the statement that set out bold and ambitious plans to lead Scotland out of the pandemic. It is his speech, but perhaps we can hear some of that in due course.

It is particularly important that I behave responsibly in responding to that point. I am not aware of the stage of the court case today, but it may well be a live criminal case. Therefore, it would not be appropriate for me to respond in substance. As soon as it is possible for the Scottish Government to do that, however, we will.

Douglas Ross wants to know what I was saying to the health secretary. I said that listening to Douglas Ross is like listening to playground politics and that we should all raise our game. Now that he wants to join me in that, perhaps we could hear some substance from Douglas Ross instead of what we have had for five minutes into his speech.

I thank Pauline McNeill for the question, the way in which she asked it and the offer of support, because we should all come together to tackle this issue.

I say clearly—and I know that everyone across the chamber will support this—that I take the view that, for anybody who chooses to live in Scotland, whether they and their families have been here for generations or whether they have come to Scotland very recently, it is home. This is their home and we should not allow anybody ever to say—[Interruption.]

As I have set out in Parliament on previous occasions, we have strongly urged UK ministers not to push people into poverty through the cut of £20 to universal credit. Most recently, the social justice secretary joined colleagues in Wales and Northern Ireland in writing to the UK Government on the matter. I know that the same calls have come from the children’s commissioners, poverty campaigners and even those on the Prime Minister’s own back benches, although I am not sure that we have heard it from Conservative members in this Parliament, but I may be wrong on that.

We know that families are struggling. This cut risks pushing a further 60,000 people in Scotland, including 20,000 children, into poverty. Just to put that in context, the cut would be the biggest overnight reduction to a basic rate of social security since the beginning of the modern welfare state more than 70 years ago. I hope that we can unite in this Parliament to call on the UK Government not to take that £20 away from the people who need it most.

I do not agree with Alex Cole-Hamilton on many of those points, but I have a lot more respect for his position than I do for some of what we heard earlier, because it is a principled position and a legitimate debate.

As I have said before, I have my own concerns about the use of vaccine certification, but my view is based on the following. We are still in the grip of a pandemic. The virus is highly infectious and doing nothing over the next period is therefore not an option. We have to stem transmission and the question therefore becomes how we do that in the least restrictive and most proportionate way.

We can take nightclubs as an example. As we get into winter, it may be—although I would hope that this would not be the case—that the choice with regard to nightclubs is not between vaccine certification or no restrictions at all, but between something like vaccine certification or having to have heavier restrictions and perhaps facing closure again, which none of us wants.

This is a proportionate step, and I hope that it will be a time-limited step. It will be very limited in terms of its application to settings. As I said yesterday, certainly at this stage, we do not intend to extend it to hospitality more generally, and we would not do that without full parliamentary consultation.

Vaccine certification schemes are operating in many countries—in Ireland, for example, which is the closest to us—on a much wider-ranging basis than I set out yesterday. I genuinely wish that we were not in this position, but we are; therefore, we have to think about every proportionate measure that we can take to protect people.

We will set out the detail. Some legitimate questions have been posed, and we have to work with other countries to make sure that we have interoperability. None of these things is straightforward in our current circumstances. My judgment is that it is a proportionate step, but of course it will be the Parliament that gets to decide next week.

It is the responsibility of the Government to support the NHS and to help NHS staff get through what is an extremely challenging situation for countries across the world. Most people recognise that we are in a global pandemic that has had a significant impact on our NHS. Anas Sarwar is right to say that there were challenges in our NHS before Covid, but as we can see from the waiting times improvement plan that was in place then, waiting times were starting to be reduced through the investment that we had made.

We obviously all know the impact that Covid has had on the NHS. This year’s recovery plan is backed by £1 billion of additional investment, and looks to build capacity in our NHS in relation to in-patients and day cases—a 10 per cent increase in capacity over five years, with a 20 per cent increase for in-patients and a 10 per cent increase for out-patients over the five-year period. The plan also sets out reforms to the way in which healthcare is delivered. Just last week, I visited the Golden Jubilee national hospital to look at some innovations in robotic procedures and at changes to how diagnostic operations are done.

I will not stand here and in any way underplay the challenge. However, we support the NHS through record increased funding, support for staff and the biggest agenda for change pay rise in the history of devolution—the largest pay rise across the United Kingdom—to ensure that we are delivering for patients as we come out of, and recover from, Covid.

Again, I say that that is what people look to their Government to do.

No one in the Government underplays the seriousness of the situation that we face right now or how difficult the challenges ahead are for all of society—the NHS in particular. However, it is only a matter of months since the Scottish people had the opportunity to look at all that and to make a choice about whom they trust and have confidence in to lead the country through those challenges. The public chose this Government.

We take that responsibility seriously every day, as we continue to navigate the country through the crisis and into recovery. We dedicate ourselves to that responsibility today and every day that we are in office.

The Conservatives do not like to hear this but, right now, not just in Scotland but across the UK, we are in the quite incredible situation—unlike other countries across the European Union, and this is not about Covid—of seeing shortages in our supermarkets and having shortages of other supplies, with children being told that there might not be toys at Christmas because of the disruption to supply chains.

Conservatives should take some responsibility, because the situation is entirely inflicted by their obsession with Brexit. There are two things that it is important to remember here. First, Scotland did not vote for Brexit. Secondly, it was utterly reckless of the Conservatives to plough ahead with Brexit in the middle of a global pandemic.

Those issues illustrate the fact: those are things that are being done to Scotland, not by Scotland. The only solution is for us to take control of all our affairs in Scotland—and, yes, that does mean being an independent country.

I would say that it is my responsibility to support the national health service to recover from a global pandemic. The difference between now and 2003 is not the difference that Anas Sarwar tried to suggest, but is a global pandemic that has placed significant pressure on our national health service. Before the pandemic, the difference was the changing demographic of our country. Every nation across the UK is grappling with that.

That is why the Scottish Government has ensured record investment in the national health service—which would not have happened had Labour stayed in government—record staff numbers in our NHS and a recovery plan that targets £1 billion at building the capacity of our NHS.

I would say to patients that in opposition—I know, because I have been there—it is easy to come up with slogans, but in Government the responsibility is to deliver investment to support staff and to make changes for patients. That is exactly what we will continue to do.