Chamber and committees

When it comes to individual cases, I do not know all the details and, as Douglas Ross fairly said, they are rightly kept confidential when we debate such things in Parliament. Of course I will look at the details of the case, if they can be passed on to me.

I hope that people will accept that it is not for me—as a politician who has no clinical qualifications or expertise—to decide whether an individual is, to use the term that was used, “appropriate for rehabilitation”. I think that we all accept that not everybody is “appropriate”, although perhaps that is not the best way to put it. Not everybody is deemed to be likely to benefit from residential rehabilitation.

I am very clear that, when the judgment of those who have expertise is that a person should have residential rehabilitation and will benefit from it, that person should get it. That is why we are, for example, significantly increasing investment in residential rehabilitation. The Minister for Drugs Policy has already spoken about that, and it will be part of what she sets out this afternoon.

This might be an unorthodox way of doing politics—people might be expecting me to stand here and defend everything that we have not got right in the past, but I am not going to do that. We have failed in aspects of drugs policy, so I am determined that we will get it right. I will not describe the system as being completely broken, because that would do a disservice to the many people across the country who are delivering services for people who are in need. However, I accept that the Government’s response has not always matched that need, and that we have to get that right.

We must provide the funding and the right approaches; there is absolute determination to achieve that, so many strands of work are under way. It is difficult work and there are no easy solutions—I think that we all accept that. Change will not happen overnight, but we are determined to make the change that is required. That is why Angela Constance, as Minister for Drugs Policy, reports directly to me. The issue is one of the key priorities of the Government over the coming period; we are absolutely determined to make the change that people deserve.

That is a really important issue. When the breast screening programme resumed in August last year, it was done in a way that was in line with expert clinical advice and the recommendations of the Scottish screening committee. Initially, patients who receive non-routine appointments were prioritised; more recently, patients between the ages of 50 and 70 who receive routine appointments have been invited. Liam McArthur is right to say that we need to ensure that the service gets back to normal as quickly as possible, but that has to be done safely and in line with expert recommendations.

Although it does not directly address the problem for over-70s, since the screening programme resumed, more than 120,000 people have attended for breast screening. Over a similar period, in normal times before the pandemic, the number was around 135,000. There is work still to be done, but the service is getting back to normal and we want it to get to complete normality as soon as possible.

Yes, I agree with it, and I thank Michelle Thomson for raising points that are important to businesses across the country. It is vital that furlough is extended for as long as possible, and the VAT reduction and deferral of loan repayments are important, too. Many companies will have taken advantage of the loans that have been made available. I welcome the fact that loans were made available, but consideration needs to be given to how, when and, in some respects, whether those loans should be repaid by businesses that need to get back to normal and a position of sustainability.

I recognise the responsibility that is on the shoulders of the Scottish Government to do as much as we can, but many of the levers lie in the UK Government’s hands, and it is important that it uses them properly to support business.

I want to ensure that every relevant aspect of the handling of this pandemic, whether in general terms or as it affected individuals, is properly and robustly scrutinised. I do not just welcome that scrutiny—I think that it is really important.

With regard to prosecutions, I ask members to cast their minds over the past few months and to think about how often, in completely different contexts, we have heard misguided allegations about how governments have tried to politicise the role of prosecutors. Prosecutors act entirely independently, which is right and proper, and any politician who suggests otherwise should think about that point.

The matters we are discussing are important. Anas Sarwar said today that we should think about those who work hard on the front line of our health service. I agree with that, but there is not a single day that I do not think about them.

Anas Sarwar mentioned care homes. The Audit Scotland report narrated that, before the pandemic, under all Administrations in the lifetime of this Parliament, the Government, through NHS National Services Scotland, did not supply PPE to the care home sector or to primary care. Instead, those sectors used to get it directly from private suppliers. One of the changes that we made was to directly supply the care home sector from the national health service.

There are undoubtedly lessons to learn, but it is not wrong in my view to say that we did not run out and that that was a good thing in the teeth of a global pandemic, when competition for supplies of PPE was so intense. Although I hope that we will not need the same volumes in the future, we now have significantly higher stocks of PPE. The Audit Scotland report and the words of the Auditor General reflect that we have worked hard every step of the way to ensure that our staff had PPE, and we will continue to do that each and every day.

I want to ensure that we are being factually accurate. The figures in this week’s report, which I will address in a second, are for 2019 and pre-date the updated climate change plan, so they take no account of the changes that were in that plan. It is important to be accurate about that.

Scotland is ahead of most other countries in the world, so I do not think that the question is about what we are doing wrong. On climate change, none of us is yet doing enough right to get to the point we need to get to. All of us need to accelerate our progress.

On the question of missed targets, we of course want to hit our targets and we have more to do to get there, but we should not overlook the scale of our progress. This week’s report shows that emissions in Scotland are down by 51.5 per cent—the target was 55 per cent. That means that we are more than halfway to net zero, which is further ahead than the rest of the United Kingdom and further ahead than most other countries across the world. However, there is more to do. We will publish a catch-up to show not only what we are doing through the plan but how we will accelerate to catch up. For example, we see that transport emissions are down year on year but there is more to do there.

All of us across the world have to live up to the challenge. Scotland, like other countries, needs to accelerate progress, but Scotland is already further ahead than most other countries, and I want to make sure that we not only maintain that position but get even further ahead so that we are leading more by example.

We recognise that deviating from our route map impacts on businesses. We have funded additional financial support to businesses in areas in which it has been necessary to retain restrictions for an additional period. We also continue to emphasise to the United Kingdom Government the need for additional funding to be made available for businesses. The situation exemplifies why it is so important that we have the requisite fiscal powers here to respond to the pandemic and, increasingly, to the recovery from it. The furlough scheme also continues to be hugely important to Scottish businesses and workers, and we again call on the UK Government to maintain that support for as long as it is required.

Everybody understands that eating disorders have a devastating impact on individuals and their families. Rapid intervention is essential and must be available. We published the “Scottish Eating Disorder Services Review” in March, and we will announce further steps by the end of June. We will also establish an implementation group to ensure that the review’s recommendations are taken forward quickly. Intensive home treatment is an evidence-based intervention for treating eating disorders, and part of the review group’s work will be to expand such services across Scotland.

In relation to mental health services more generally, as members know, work is on-going to extend the provision of community services, particularly for children and adolescents.

I do not think that I am the only person who will say this, but there is no doubt that the lack of very robust border controls in recent months has been a factor in the situation that we are dealing with right now. That is deeply frustrating, but we are where we are, and we all have to take responsibility for navigating our way through this.

Let us cast our minds back to mid-February. The Scottish Government decided to insist on mandatory managed quarantine for all direct arrivals into Scotland, regardless of which country they came from. That would have included India. At that time, despite our pleading, the UK Government insisted on managed quarantine only for red list countries. It took until the latter part of April to put India on the red list. People have heard me say many times that that left us seriously vulnerable to people coming into English airports and travelling to Scotland, such that they were not caught by our managed quarantine arrangements.

We pleaded with the UK Government to put in place common provisions across the UK and to introduce an arrangement whereby people who were coming into an English airport but were intending to go to Scotland would be made to quarantine at the point of arrival. Back in February, Michael Gove wrote to the transport secretary and refused point blank to do that. The UK Government would not

“legally treat people differently in England based on their final destination within the UK.”

I have a deep frustration about the situation, but we are where we are, and we have to deal with it. However, there is no doubt at all that too lax border controls around the whole UK have played a part in where we are right now.

I thank Jim Fairlie for an important question. Obviously, we feel as if we have been living with Covid for ever, but it has been for only just over a year. It is a relatively new illness, and clinicians and experts are still developing their understanding of it and the effect that it has on people, so that we can ensure that people, including those who have long Covid, get the best possible care and support.

The NHS already delivers services that are tailored as far as possible to the individual needs of people who are experiencing long Covid. In consultation with clinicians and patients, we have developed support for primary care teams to identify, assess and support people who have long Covid. We are also working with Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland to develop its long Covid support service, which complements the work that is being done by the NHS.

We encourage employers to apply fair work principles to support those with long Covid and to make full use of the current furlough scheme. As our understanding of long Covid develops, so too will the services that we are able to put in place to support people. In time, that will include specialist services. The process is one of understanding the impacts and helping people as much as we can as we go along.

We will continue look at all the possible levers that are open to us, and I will write to the member about the provisions of the act to which he referred. The managed quarantine arrangements that are in place, which have been changed along the way since mid-February, have exemptions that are very limited and restrictive. It is important that we do what we can to ensure that any arrangements in Scotland are as robust as possible, and we are open to making further changes.

That will not take away the vulnerability that I spoke about, which relates to people coming into Scotland via other parts of the UK. Even if we apply tighter restrictions here, if there are less tight restrictions elsewhere, the risk remains that that vulnerability remains. Although some people would perhaps think of this as counterintuitive for me, I have been an advocate of four-nations consistency around travel rules as far as possible, and I will continue to make that argument.