Chamber and committees

Those are perfectly reasonable questions, and I have a lot of sympathy for what Patrick Harvie is saying. He is right to say that, although vaccines are hugely effective and the vaccination programme has been hugely successful, they do not eliminate all risk and harm from the virus. We have never said that they do. However, we now have lots of evidence that vaccines significantly weaken the link between somebody getting Covid and their becoming seriously ill from Covid. Vaccines do not eliminate the link, particularly if a person has underlying health conditions, but they have weakened it. That can be seen in the much lower—albeit still concerning—levels of hospital cases in this wave compared with the levels that we had in previous waves.

There is less certainty about the impact of the vaccines on transmission of the virus, but we hope that they have a positive effect in that regard. I do not think that we can overstate the vaccines’ importance to where we are now and how we hope to continue in the future. However, just as we must be realistic and frank about all such matters, we have to recognise the limitations of the vaccines as we celebrate their enormous success.

Patrick Harvie said that I put a lot of emphasis on Covid status certification. If that is how it sounded, I will try to redress that. I was not seeking to emphasise it or to pull it out as the next big thing that we will definitely do, but I wanted to be frank with Parliament that we are keeping our options open. Although we are not immediately planning to use it, in the app that we are developing there will be functionality that we could use in the future if we decided to have domestic certification, because the principal objective of the app is to make access to certificates easier for international travel. However, that does not mean that we have taken any decisions.

I am highly cautious about Covid passports—to use the colloquial term—for all the reasons that Patrick Harvie set out. I would be passionately and fundamentally opposed to their use for access to public services or anything else that it is essential that people can access. I agree that passports are not a replacement for sensible mitigations, but I think that there is a debate to be had about whether, for venues at which people’s attendance is optional and where we know that there is a higher risk of transmission, Covid passports could play a part in making those settings safer than they might otherwise be. There would have to be agreed exemptions in place, because there are people who cannot get vaccinated.

I am not ruling out Covid certification, as it would not be responsible to do so, but I think that people can hear—if they did not hear it in my original statement—that I am far from convinced that it is a road that we should go down. However, I do not want to close off Parliament’s options, the Government’s options or the country’s options.

I give an undertaking that we will continue not only to update Parliament but to consult and involve it if our thinking on the matter develops to a point at which we are proposing to introduce Covid certification for any particular setting.

I will be corrected if I am mixing this up with something else. There is guidance. I will look to see whether it can be published if that has not happened, but there is guidance on a phased return to offices. We will continue to work on that with businesses and sectors.

Although not everyone is desperate to get back to the office, many people are. Employers and, indeed, some workers will be keen to get back to the office, but we must ensure that we do that at the right pace. If we do not, we run the risk of setting back our progress and taking everything in the wrong direction. That is not responsible. My biggest responsibility here is to take the decisions that I think are necessary, regardless of how unpopular they are or of how unpopular they might make me. If I do not do that, I will not be doing a service to the country. We will continue to try to get that right.

I have had conversations with some businesses, and I know that most businesses are not planning a wholesale return to the office. Most businesses are thinking about a new normal. They would like to see more of their workers back in the office, but they recognise that the position might not be exactly as it was before Covid. That approach is to be encouraged. The Scottish Government is looking at a more hybrid model of home and office working, and it is not doing so only for the purpose of controlling Covid—there are issues of wellbeing and environmental issues that inform those debates.

At an earlier stage of the pandemic, we all talked about coming out the other end of the pandemic and not necessarily going back exactly to normal. Working in the office is one of those areas where it is appropriate to have a bit of a pause for thought and consideration of the best way of working in the future. There are other reasons to want to have people back in offices, such as the benefits that it brings to city centre economies. We cannot dismiss any of those reasons, but this is a moment to think seriously about the balance that we want to strike in the future.

The detail that I can give at the moment is the detail that is laid out in the interim advice from the JCVI, which we are using as part of our planning process. That recommends that, if the final recommendation is to have a booster programme, that should begin in early September, so that we maximise protection in those who are most vulnerable ahead of the winter months.

It is recommended that any booster programme would be offered in two stages. First, it would be offered to those who were prioritised by the JCVI as part of the vaccination roll-out, notably those with suppressed immune systems, those in care homes, the clinically vulnerable, front-line health and care workers and the over-70s. The second phase would involve it being offered to those over 50, those aged 16 to 49 and clinically vulnerable, unpaid carers, other adult carers and those who live in households with someone who has a suppressed immune system.

Planning work for the operationalising of that is under way, and, just as we have done with the initial vaccination programme, we would want to get any booster programme done as quickly as possible but also as accessibly as possible, so we will look carefully at the appropriate settings for jags to be offered and more detail on that will be set out in due course.

I will certainly consider that. I cannot, before I have considered it, give a guarantee that we will do it, but I take the point that fewer people will be required to self-isolate for 10 days, which may therefore enable us to look to extend the eligibility for that support. I certainly undertake to look at that.

Obviously, the number of people in the youngest age group—the 18 to 29-year-olds—who are double dosed will be rising daily. The low figure in that group is indicative not of low uptake but of the fact that their first doses came later; the eight-week interval for second doses means that not all young people are yet eligible for their second dose. That is obviously a moving picture with every day that passes. However, Gillian Mackay makes a reasonable suggestion, and I undertake to explore it further.

We continue to support expanded staffing across the national health service, and we look to support our NHS workers in various ways. I will not repeat everything that I have said about the work that we are doing on long Covid, but that work is important, and no doubt we will talk more about it in the weeks and months to come.

When people talk about long Covid, there is often a contradiction. In one breath, they talk about the risks of long Covid, as Alexander Stewart has just done, but in the next, as some of his colleagues have done, they call on us to be less cautious in our approach to the virus. We have to make sure that the services for long Covid are there, and that GPs and others are supported to deal with what they have to deal with, but we also need to continue to show caution in order to minimise the number of people who get Covid and, therefore, the number of people who will suffer from long Covid. Those aspects all hang together, and they are in the interests of GPs as well as everyone else.

I absolutely understand the importance of the issue, but I do not want to go much further on it just now. As I said, we are expecting JCVI advice, but I have to wait to see what the advice is. If the advice is that we should go beyond the current groups of young people in terms of vaccination, I will need to see what order the JCVI proposes. For the reasons that we understand, I hope that there will be priority for 16 and 17-year-olds, but the JCVI might recommend a different approach. Before getting into commitments on dates, we need to see what the advice is. However, I can say that we will move to operationalise and implement any new recommendations as quickly as we can.

In encouraging the JCVI to look at the matter again, and to do so as quickly as possible, we have been mindful of the fact that we have an earlier return-to-school date than other parts of the UK do and that the return of colleges and universities is looming for us all.

We must continue to support compliance, which has a number of different strands, in all ways. As we ease restrictions in some areas, it is all the more important that there is high compliance with the restrictions that we still think are required. I know very well how difficult it can be for people to be compliant with all the measures 100 per cent of the time. That is not easy for anybody, but it is really important that we all comply.

We will continue to communicate clearly with the public about why we are asking for certain things to be done, including the wearing of face coverings. We will also continue to engage with businesses, including ScotRail, to support them with enforcement and to encourage people to do the things that we consider to be necessary. We all have a part to play in that through our own compliance, through encouraging compliance on the part of others and by ensuring that we communicate widely on the need for compliance.

My final point is that, as we lift restrictions, people should understand that, if we are still mandating things in law, there must be a good reason for that. That is the case with face coverings. If you wear one, you protect others, and if others wear one, they protect you. That is one of the remaining things that we can all do to protect one another, and I encourage everybody—no matter who they are—to ensure that they do that.

We do not want any suspension or delay to be any longer than is necessary. I absolutely share the view that we should not have people in unsuitable accommodation. Although Covid has caused unavoidable disruption and difficulties for local authorities, we need to ensure that they do not last any longer than is necessary. I know that the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government has been looking closely at that issue, and I will ask her to write to Miles Briggs with an update on the current situation as soon as possible.

Veterans issues are always extremely important to the Government. Given the impact of Covid on many veterans in particular, we recognise the responsibility to take forward those recommendations as fully and quickly as possible. I cannot outline the conclusion of that today, but I know that those matters are under active consideration by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans, Keith Brown, who is, of course, a veteran himself. I will ask him to write to the member with an update as quickly as he is able to do so, having given the issues the proper consideration that they merit.

Vaccine uptake is high in every part of Scotland. I said earlier that I think that our coverage of the population for first and second doses is higher than England’s. There are regional variations, just as there are variations between age groups. Every health board, including NHS Grampian, is working hard—here and now, probably even as we speak—to try to get vaccines to the remainder of the people in eligible groups who have not yet come forward. No stone will be left unturned in doing that.

Let us remember that vaccine uptake is high. I have said this before but it is worth repeating: if, at the start of this year, as we embarked on the programme, my advisers had told me that we would reach the percentage uptake that we have reached, even in younger age groups, I would have struggled to believe that that was possible. The programme is an outstanding success; the job now is to make sure that we do not let up until we have got the vaccine to everybody who is eligible—or as close to that as is possible.