Chamber and committees

Those questions are all perfectly reasonable. I will try to go through them all; I think that I noted them all down. If I miss any points of detail, I will either return to them later or write to Anas Sarwar afterwards. Most of the questions were are about vaccination, so I will spend most of my time responding on that.

The only thing that I take issue with in Anas Sarwar’s questioning is a turn of phrase that I do not think was reasonable, whereby some young people were described as “still awaiting” a first dose. All over-18s have been offered a first dose. Some have not taken up the offer; however, use of the word “awaiting” makes it sound as though they have not been offered it. We will continue to work to get uptake rates as high as possible. Uptake rates are high—higher than I might have anticipated in the younger age groups—but not as high as we want them to be.

Overall, our vaccination programme is going extremely well. We are above England and Northern Ireland for numbers of first and now, possibly, second doses of the vaccine having been administered, in terms of percentage of the total population. However, all four nations are doing well on that. Our vaccination programme is a success; everybody should recognise that, because it is down to the hard work of those to whom Anas Sarwar rightly paid tribute.

On the first question about whether we will have more pop-up vaccination clinics or sites, the answer is yes. We are looking at all possible ways to access young people where they are, as opposed to expecting young people to go to clinics. We cannot get to everywhere that young people spend their time. I had a conversation this morning—at the moment, it is just a conversation and not necessarily something that will happen—about the night-time industry and whether, as nightclubs reopen, there are ways to use them to increase vaccination of young people. We are also looking at sporting sites and other places where young people go regularly. We are looking to get vaccine promotion material into those places and, where it is possible and practical, to offer vaccination in or near those places.

Although I would never rule anything out, I have more scepticism about door-to-door vaccination, simply because of the labour-intensive nature of that approach, given that the vast majority of eligible people have been vaccinated. It would involve a lot of effort to go to a lot of doors where everybody has already been vaccinated. Therefore, I am sceptical about whether that would be the best approach to take, but we do not rule anything out. We want to get to as many people as possible.

On the points about the JCVI, we are trying to reach eligible 12 to 17-year-olds as much as possible before the schools go back. I have said that we will, given the nature of that group, build in a bit of flexibility and offer first doses by the end of August, but we want to do it as quickly as possible between now and the schools returning. Of course, the schools do not all return on the same day—some go back later in August than others.

As I said in my statement, we hope to get updated advice from the JCVI over the next day or so. The JCVI is our advisory body, so it has to give us the advice that it thinks is right, and I respect that. I hope that it will recommend going further on vaccination of young people. I am particularly concerned with being able to offer vaccinations to 16 and 17-year-olds, if possible, which will obviously be important for those who will, for example, be going to college or university and mingling with older young people who have been vaccinated. We will see what the advice is, and we stand ready to implement it as quickly as possible.

We await the final position on booster vaccinations. My expectation is that there will be some form of booster programme, but we are making that assumption in order to get preparations under way. We will seek to notify people over the next few weeks and, certainly, into September.

Finally, I think, the most important thing that we can do for businesses is not just to get them open again—as of Monday, no business will legally be required to close under Covid regulations—but to build the confidence of their customers to start using their services again. That is one of the reasons why a cautious and careful approach is required. If people do not feel safe in venues, they will be less likely to go to them. We will work with businesses to encourage them to think carefully about the environment that they offer their customers.

We will continue to consider financial support for as long as is necessary, but, of course, we want to get businesses trading and making money again, because we do not have infinite sums of money to spend on business support. I again encourage the United Kingdom Government to extend the furlough scheme for longer, so that we do not have to cut that support to businesses earlier than would be appropriate for many of them.

I think that I have covered most of Anas Sarwar’s questions, but if I have missed any I will come back to them later.

On that last point, Angela Constance, the Minister for Drugs Policy, will make a statement on Scotland’s drugs deaths statistics as soon as I have finished taking questions on my statement. Angela was appointed by me, as all ministers are, and she reports directly to me. I will continue to ensure that the Government addresses that challenge and takes the necessary action. Angela will say more about that later.

As I listened to Douglas Ross, I struggled to understand whether the statement that he listened to was the same as the one that I delivered. I have spent every day since March last year trying to communicate clearly. I am sure that I have not always succeeded—I readily concede that. Sometimes it feels as if Douglas Ross and his colleagues have spent many of those days trying to undermine that clear communication; I caught a whiff of that again today. I will try to take him through it again.

First, Douglas Ross is right to say that the Tories have called for most of the changes that I announced today. The difference is that they called for those changes to be made at a time when it would not have been safe to do so. Those changes would have put people at risk. That is why we have continued to take a safe, cautious and steady pace towards our exit from lockdown. That is right and proper and I will continue to do that, whatever brickbats I get as a result.

My fundamental duty as First Minister is to act in a way that keeps the country as safe as possible. Douglas Ross called the statement a “mixed bag”; I call it sensible and cautious. It will keep people as safe as possible. Keeping the virus under control and keeping people as safe as possible is also the best thing that this Government can do for our economic recovery.

With the exception of the rules on face coverings, most legal restrictions will be lifted from Monday. That is exactly what we said would happen. I do not know many people—Douglas Ross may be one of them—who think that continuing to wear a face covering while the virus continues to circulate is a significant hardship. Most of the people I speak to and most of those who contact me, although not all of them, think that that is a reasonable price to pay, not so much to keep ourselves safe but to keep others safe, in the hope that others will do likewise to keep us safe. That is part of the collective solidarity that most of us feel as we go through the pandemic.

Douglas Ross asked whether I am seriously suggesting that I might impose local restrictions or travel restrictions in the future. I say clearly to him that I fervently hope that that will not be necessary. If we all continue to exercise the care and caution that everyone has exercised for the past year and a half, we will minimise the risk of that becoming necessary. I am sure that every leader of every Government in the world would say this: the responsibility to keep people safe has weighed heavily on my shoulders every day for the past year and a half.

In direct answer to the question, I say that if I thought that such action was necessary to restrict and curb an outbreak or spread of the virus or of a new variant that would put lives and our national health service at risk, then, no matter how difficult or unpopular it would be, I would take that decision. I am elected to take the tough decisions to keep people safe. If Douglas Ross does not understand that, he should never want to be in this position. Leaders must be prepared to take those decisions, however much we hope that they will not be necessary.

We have taken a route that has been cautious, careful and steady—sometimes too cautious for some people. Monday will be perhaps the most significant date so far. That is positive, but I am not going to shout that we are free from the virus, because that would mislead people. The virus is circulating and the risk of new variants is there. It is no longer proportionate to have legal restrictions in place in every respect. The Government must act lawfully. We will continue to advise people to be sensible and cautious and to follow the routine mitigations that minimise the risk. Anyone who thinks that that is wrong is not acting responsibly. I will continue to do my duty as First Minister to the very best of my ability.

I hope that Sarah Boyack will forgive me, but I answered—rightly so—a lot of questions in the session last month, and I cannot remember exactly what the subject matter of her question was. There may be a good reason why we have not been able to respond to it yet, but I will ensure that that is looked into as soon as I get away from this session.

On the first point, we have looked at that—I have personally looked at it—over the past few days. I will be corrected if I am wrong in any point of the detail here, but I do not think that I am wrong. The Scottish Government is not able to unilaterally change the cost of the NHS test; that is decided through the UK Government. In many respects, changing that would be the simplest thing to do, but we are not able to do that unilaterally.

We have therefore been looking at whether we can open access to privately provided tests. The reasons why we have not done that so far have been concerns about the quality of the service, the turnaround times of the tests, and the reporting of the tests to allow proper analysis and reporting. Further work has been under way, including work that I know that the UK Government has been doing on looking at ensuring that performance standards are mandated for private providers. We are looking at that right now, to see whether that opens up the possibility of tests being accessible from other providers at lower costs.

I hope that everybody—particularly Sarah Boyack; I know where she comes from on such issues—recognises that ensuring that people have access to quality tests and that the service around that is of an acceptable standard, given what we are dealing with, is really important. That is why we have thus far mandated NHS tests.

That is an important question. I indicated in my previous parliamentary statement, and also before that, that the app was in development, although I give credit to Paul O’Kane for suggesting that it was his call for it at the weekend that led to my statement today. The app has been in development for quite some time.

I cannot give an exact date, but we anticipate that the app will be launched by the middle of next month at the latest. Obviously, we will try to accelerate that if at all possible. We are working with the other UK Governments to ensure that there is consistency in our approaches, although we are using different systems in Scotland.

Paul O’Kane mentioned the paper-based system for vaccine certification. We have been working on the wording and the branding of that, too.

Compatibility and consistency are important for use between the four nations. I refer back to what I said in previous statements and earlier answers about that. We have not yet decided whether we will seek to use vaccine certification for domestic purposes in Scotland. We are developing the functionality to make that possible, but we have not yet taken the decision that that functionality will be used.

That is a really important point. We have worked closely with the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland to understand the views and experiences of people who are living with long-term conditions, including those who are living with long Covid, as we remobilise services in the health service generally and as we consider our response to long Covid. Officials continue to engage with third sector organisations and patient groups to further inform the approach to long Covid to ensure that people receive the best possible care in the right settings and that that is supported by the right specialist approach.

As I indicated earlier, a focus on ventilation and better ventilation in places such as schools but across the public and private sectors is really important as we return to greater normality. We need a much greater focus on that, as I have set out today in relation to schools. We have issued guidance emphasising the need to ensure good ventilation across all indoor settings. That guidance includes reference to the possibility of using air-cleaning or air-filtration devices. We are considering what further steps we can take to support good practice on ventilation across all settings, regardless of location, and I can confirm that that includes consideration of the role of air-cleaning and air-filtration technology.

In point of fact, that is not what our “First Steps” document said. It said that we would take steps and do the initial work with a view to setting up a public inquiry. It did not say that the public inquiry would be established within the first 100 days. It remains my commitment to have a public inquiry up and running within this calendar year, and we are considering the steps that we need to take to do that. We will fulfil the terms of our 100 days commitment, and we will set out as soon as possible exactly how we intend to take forward the commitment to holding a public inquiry.

We are, of course, talking to the UK Government—I have been completely open about that and I would be criticised if I were not doing that—about the potential remit of the public inquiry that it has committed to holding, so that we understand what issues it will look at and, therefore, what issues a separate Scottish public inquiry would look at and how all that would interact. We will set out more of our considerations on that shortly.

Engagement with the UK Government on all those issues is, as the member would expect, on-going. I will ensure that further information about the detail of that and when we last engaged on particular issues to do with tourism and aviation is provided to Jackie Dunbar. We have always been frank that the impact on aviation and by extension on tourism, certainly international tourism into Scotland, will be the longest-lasting impact. It is therefore important that we continue to do what we can to support those sectors and encourage the UK Government to do likewise.

I am sure that the cabinet secretary will be happy to meet anyone who wants to discuss those issues. I understand that he has recently met one of our Conservative MSP colleagues to discuss those issues.

We are committing significant sums of money to understanding long Covid, so that we can ensure, as quickly as possible, that the right resources are in place. I will come on to specialist clinics in a moment, but we should not lose sight of the fact that many people suffering from long Covid will first want to have access to generalist services—general practices and other services. We want people to be treated for any health conditions as accessibly and as close to home as possible.

Jackie Baillie said that the UK Government has dedicated £34 million to long Covid specialist clinics. I do not knock any money that is spent on these things, and the Scottish Government will certainly dedicate resource to appropriate specialist clinics in the coming period. I simply ask people to take a step back and analyse that. I point out that £34 million in an English context is about £3 million for Scotland. We will not get many clinics for that amount of money.

I would question the extent to which some of the headlines that we hear are matched by the reality of provision. It is important to ensure that we have the right specialist provision in place, and that we build it on the basis of the best understanding. Our understanding will obviously develop as our research develops, but we should build from an evidential base, and we should do it properly, rather than me saying, “Here’s £3 million,” knowing that it will not deliver many specialist clinics. We need proper investment and proper development of understanding to ensure that specialist provision does what we require it to do.

I think it is right that my health secretary takes the time to consult not only officials in the Scottish Government health department, but people across the health service, to make sure that we get our NHS recovery plan right—it will not be for the next weeks or months, but probably for the duration of this parliamentary session—and that we do the proper work to ensure that it is the solid, deliverable and ambitious plan that the health service needs. It will be published within 100 days, as we committed to do, and the Parliament can scrutinise it when that happens.

Of course, we continue to give additional support to the NHS now. The NHS is not simply doing nothing while waiting for the plan; it is already in a process of recovery, supported by additional resource and other support from the Scottish Government, which will continue to be the case. Although I wish that that could be more, because the NHS deserves as much as we could ever give it, we have also given our hardworking NHS staff the best pay rise anywhere in the UK, because we recognise that, without our staff, the NHS cannot do what it does.

We will continue to support the NHS in the best way that we possibly can as it continues to cater for those with Covid—there are still many Covid patients in our hospitals—and, increasingly, gets the health service back to being the service that deals with people regardless of their conditions, as quickly as possible, and to the high standards that all of us know that we can expect from our national health service.