Chamber and committees

Yes, it is certainly the position of this Government that free prescriptions will remain. People should have access to the medicines that they need without charge and without having—as some people used to have to do—to make invidious choices between taking their medicines and feeding themselves. I never want to return to that. It beggars belief that elsewhere in the UK there is a consultation on taking away free prescriptions for people over 60. That is not my decision, obviously, but I hope that we do not see that direction of travel. I am categoric that, as long as this Government is in office, free prescriptions are here to stay.

I answered that in my first answer, but since the member said that she did not quite catch it, I will go through some of the detail again. She is right: there are challenges on our Ambulance Service because of the pressures on our national health service caused by Covid. We have not just produced a 28-page plan, important though that is; we have invested an additional £20 million—additional to the £1 billion over the past four years, which I spoke about—to support the on-going review of the Scottish Ambulance Service.

As I said, in the north of Scotland that has already resulted in 67 extra front-line staff: a mixture of experienced and newly qualified paramedics and technicians, and nine patient transport service staff. As I said, that is more than 250 across Scotland. That is what we are doing immediately.

On the performance of the Ambulance Service, again, the service is under pressure and I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to paramedics, technicians and everybody working in the service. However, in the most recent week the Ambulance Service advises that it responded to around 10,500—10,401—emergency incidents, which was up 1.2 per cent from the previous week; for the most urgent calls, the median national response time was 8 minutes 55 seconds. I recognise that there will be people waiting longer than that and there will be some people who have waited completely unacceptable lengths of time—that is why we are investing in this way. However, we are taking the action, making the investment and supporting the Ambulance Service in the excellent work what it does.

It will be Parliament, next week, that decides whether to introduce vaccine certification. I set out the reasons for the Scottish Government’s view on that yesterday. Of course, all ministers—all 29 hard-working, dedicated ministers—are bound by collective responsibility under the ministerial code.

This is a question of how we best continue to control Covid in the least restrictive, most proportionate way. I think that vaccine certification, in the limited way that I set out yesterday, has a role to play in doing that.

I say very clearly that there is never any excuse or justification for hatred or bigotry and I unequivocally condemn anti-Irish racism and anti-Catholic prejudice. It should be called what it is and it should be called out.

Scotland is a diverse, multicultural society. That diversity strengthens us as a nation and that is why it is so important that we tackle all forms of prejudice and discrimination. Police Scotland is committed to protecting our communities and will act on all incidents of bigoted violence, disorder and vandalism, including follow-up investigations based on evidence that has been gathered. Those who commit criminal acts that are motivated by prejudice can expect to feel the full force of justice, and I know that, just this morning, the police have issued a comment about the progress of a particular investigation.

We have a recovery plan. The NHS, supported by Government, starts planning for winter much earlier in the year. Those plans are there. There is enormous pressure on our national health service right now. That is partly because of rising Covid cases, which, because of the delta variant, many countries are grappling with right now.

I would say in passing that, had it been down to Douglas Ross, we would not even have in place some of the mitigations against Covid that we do have in place, because he wanted us to remove all of them and have no protections against the transmission of Covid.

As a responsible Government, we will do what requires to be done to protect the public against Covid, and we will do that for as long as is necessary. We will support our NHS with £1 billion of additional targeted resource to aid recovery. When I saw one of the Tory spokespersons commenting on the matter last week—on the day that the recovery plan was published, I think—she seemed to be saying that it was bad that we committed £1 billion, because the Tories had wanted us to commit £600 million. I was not entirely sure that I followed that logic.

On long Covid, we have invested £2.5 million in research projects and money in support services through Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland, which is making a number of legitimate points today about the further work that we need to do to ensure support for those who suffer from long Covid. We will continue to do what needs to be done and to take the decisions to support the NHS and the country to get through the Covid crisis, which is the responsible action that people expect from their Government.

I welcome all contributions from across the chamber to that discussion. Perhaps Douglas Ross can raise his game a little bit from screaming about U-turns and so on and actually be part of finding the solutions that the country needs now.

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.

First, in the face of a global pandemic of an infectious virus, the public should be—and I suspect are—very wary of politicians who suggest that any Government should take a dogmatic, unchanging position, because that is not the way that we keep the public safe.

We have been considering the issue carefully. I could probably paper the walls of this chamber with quotes from me expressly saying that we had not ruled out vaccine certification, that we wanted to consider the issue carefully, that we were keeping our minds open and that we had ruled out ever asking for vaccine passports for essential public services but that, for settings such as night clubs, there was a debate to be had and a case to be made.

Regular viewers of First Minister’s question time—I am not sure how big a group that is—will have heard Douglas Ross say to me that this Government needs to respect Parliament. Cabinet discussed the issue on Tuesday and I came to Parliament yesterday to tell it that it was the Government’s intention that we would take our proposals to Parliament next week. We are engaging with sectors across the economy. We will put the detail to Parliament to allow Parliament to decide, and then, assuming that Parliament agrees, we will implement our proposals. That is not just the way that Government should operate; it is often—until it does not suit him—the way that Douglas Ross demands that Government operates.

This is a really serious situation, not just for Scotland but for the United Kingdom and for many countries across Europe—and vaccine certification is already operating in many of those countries. Is it too much to expect, in these serious times, that we have a leader of the Opposition who can engage properly with the substance of these matters?

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.

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.