Chamber and committees

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.

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.

Tuesday.

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.

The Scottish ministers first wrote to the UK Government about this emerging problem back in July. The Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Islands has written again this week seeking a meeting to discuss the challenges. The fact that we have had to ask for such a meeting tells its own story about how urgently, or otherwise, the UK Government is treating the issue.

We have warned repeatedly of the damage that would be caused by Brexit. We knew that the loss of freedom of movement would be particularly damaging. Sadly, staff shortages are now putting real pressure on food and drink supplies, and the images of healthy food rotting in the fields are astonishing. Frankly, the Tories should be hanging their heads in shame for this whole sorry situation.

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.

Anas Sarwar should know the answer to that last question, because it was set out in our revised strategic update. I announced it to Parliament and he asked me questions about it at the time. Our strategic objective is to reduce the virus and keep it at levels that are sufficient to reduce the harms from the virus. If that was not known to Anas Sarwar, I gently suggest that it should have been. [Interruption.]

Anas Sarwar says that our strategy is not working. Every country is grappling with a highly transmissible strain of the virus. We had a spike in cases in early July, when our case levels were the highest in the UK. We then had a period throughout the rest of July and much of August when we had the lowest case levels in the UK. Our schools have gone back ahead of those in other parts of the UK, so we are again seeing a rise. The situation that we are grappling with is not different from the one that most other parts of the world are grappling with.

Anas Sarwar is wrong. I also take issue with his point about winter planning in the NHS. If he is saying to me that we should be starting winter planning now, I could not disagree with that more strongly. We started winter planning a long time ago. If we were starting it only now, that would be seriously remiss of us. Last week, we set out the NHS recovery plan, which is integral not just to the medium to longer-term recovery of the NHS, but to ensuring that the NHS is equipped to deal with the variety of pressures that it will face in the winter.

Test and protect is working, and it is working extremely well. PCR test kits come via the UK Government and they have been received. There have been some pressures on them in recent weeks, but those pressures have been met by new supplies arriving. Most people are getting their PCR test result within 24 hours. Test and protect is working well and contact tracing is being targeted on the highest risk areas first. That system will always be under pressure when case numbers are high, but it is working well and I am deeply grateful to those across the system who are putting in so much effort to make sure that it is working well.

On the booster campaign—again, I have said this so many times directly to Anas Sarwar and others—we await the JCVI recommendation. If we did not take the JCVI recommendations on this, we would simply be taking decisions that many people would rightly turn around and tell us did not have the right evidential base. However, we are ready to get the booster campaign under way as soon as the JCVI gives its final recommendation. We have interim recommendations, which have been the planning basis for that.

People can hear—and will have heard before—that I am frustrated that we have not yet got updated advice on 12 to 15-year-olds. I hope that, like many other countries, we can start to vaccinate in that age group soon and that the JCVI soon feels able to say that the evidence allows it to recommend that. Again, we stand ready to do that as quickly as we are able to.

We are looking at different ways to reach 16 and 17-year-olds. Some health boards are already looking at taking vaccination directly into schools, and that process will continue. We will continue to do all those things.

However, to come back to the central point, this is an infectious virus that has got a lot more infectious. All of us need to make sure that we are playing our part, and as politicians and leaders of the country, all of us need to play our part in getting those messages across. The Government will continue to lead by example in doing that.