Chamber and committees

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?

Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland is doing a fantastic job, supported by funding from the Scottish Government. It has made a number of important points today and published an action plan that has four key recommendations. Broadly, I have sympathy with them all, but we want to discuss them in detail with Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland, which is what we will do. Recommendation 4 is on a long Covid capacity fund, to which, in the course of our budget discussions, we will give serious consideration, as we will do for the other three main recommendations.

We will do everything that we can, through our powers and resources, to make sure that we lift children out of poverty and do not allow them to be pushed into poverty. I absolutely respect and sympathise with the sentiment behind that question, but there is a hard issue for us in this Parliament. Every time the Conservatives at Westminster make a cut to social security and save money from that cut, they do not transfer that money to the Scottish Parliament so, every time we have to mitigate such a cut, we have to take money from elsewhere in the budget. It is an unsustainable way to proceed so, although we all want to lift children out of poverty, it goes back to my previous point. I am not that hopeful that I will get Conservative agreement to that point, but I am more hopeful that I will get the agreement of people such as Pam Duncan-Glancy, because I recognise her sincerity. We need to bring all those powers to the Scottish Parliament, so that we can do those things sensibly and we can—[Interruption.]

Conservatives who cannot bring themselves to oppose their own chancellor taking £20 a week away from the poorest children in our society have no room to lecture me about using powers in this Parliament. Let those of us who genuinely care about lifting children out of poverty come together in opposition to that callous, uncaring Tory Government.

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.

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.

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.