Chamber and committees

This has not been an easy message—it has been particularly difficult for the travel industry, which has rightly raised questions—but I have made it clear all along and I will continue to say that, right now, people should not travel overseas for non-essential reasons, because the biggest risk that we face is the importation of new variants. We are living with a new variant, which is what is making things so difficult right now. In the past—I will not go into more detail now—I have spoken about my intense frustration at the lack of more robust controls around the UK border more generally. If I can be very blunt, I think that we are paying a price for that right now.

We need to continue to be careful and cautious. That is tough. International travel is likely to be one of the last things to go back completely to normal. I know that, for many people, going overseas is about family reunion, which many people will see as essential, but if we continue to be cautious about and to limit international travel for non-essential reasons, we will give ourselves the best chance of avoiding new variants and getting the current situation back under control.

I absolutely recognise how important the issue is and I really feel for parents who are not able to mark in the normal way the transitions in young people’s lives. Nobody is underplaying the significance of that in any way, shape or form.

As people would expect, I have been looking at the issue particularly closely over the past week. As I said earlier, I have asked the advisory sub-group on education and children’s issues about the matter, and its advice is that we should still restrict gatherings of that nature. Although it is not the only reason, one reason for that is overall protection of educational establishments in order to try to minimise the potential for whole nurseries or early years establishments having to close.

We look at those things on an on-going basis. I know that it will not be of comfort to everybody, but it is important to say that nursery graduations have not been cancelled. I know that many nurseries are looking at different ways of doing them. In the past two days, I have heard of nurseries filming ceremonies and allowing parents to watch online—which is a poor substitute, I know. Others are taking photographs of the children that are provided to their parents, and some are arranging staggered pick-up times, so that individual parents can see their child get a graduation certificate and take photographs themselves.

A lot of thought and care is being given to the situation. I wish that we could just take away all the restrictions, but I have to be mindful of the advice that is coming from experts and the reasons for it.

We will continue to do all that we can to ensure that that is the case. We liaise regularly with the quarantine hotels in Scotland to ensure that individuals’ dietary needs are met wherever that is reasonably practical. People are asked to notify of any allergies or dietary requirements in advance. The managed quarantine service contract overall is managed by the United Kingdom Government, but we will continue to liaise, as I said, to ensure that all such issues are taken account of.

We have consistently made the case—along with others, it is fair to say—that the furlough scheme should remain in place for as long as it is needed. We have also asked the UK Government to review the rules that will require contributions to the cost of the scheme from July and which currently exclude people who have started a new job since 2 March from being furloughed. What further assistance will be in place to support jobs and necessary labour market transitions in sectors that are most deeply affected by Covid must also be clear to businesses and workers well in advance of the scheme ending.

Given the Prime Minister’s announcement yesterday and the situation that all of us across the UK are dealing with, the case for the need to extend furlough further is really strong, and is getting stronger all the time.

In levels 0 and 1, we ask people who are at the highest level of clinical risk to follow the same advice that we ask the rest of the population to follow—which is, of course, to continue to take care. There is extra advice for people who live at the higher levels of protection, which we continue to review on the basis of up-to-date evidence. We have also prioritised for vaccination adult household members who are on the shielding list, and we have encouraged them to take up the offer of free test devices, for extra reassurance.

Almost 92 per cent of people on the shielding list have now had both doses of the vaccine. I hope that the protection that that offers will, over time, make people feel less anxious about returning to some form of normality. I am acutely aware of the impact that shielding has had on people’s mental health and wellbeing, and we do not intend to ask people to shield in the same highly restrictive way that we saw in March 2020.

I will ease restrictions as quickly as I think is safe and responsible. Nobody has any interest in keeping any restriction in place for any longer than is necessary.

On adults with severe learning disabilities, and vulnerable adults more generally, the guidance that is in place has been in place for some time. It allows local authorities or local partners to open up services as and when they consider it safe to do so. There has been communication between the Government and local partners to encourage opening up of services, so I will ask the relevant minister to write to Willie Rennie with a full update on the work that has been done on getting them back to normal as quickly as possible.

We will also be offering vaccinations to international students who come here this year, which is an important additional protection. Of course, we are working, and will continue to work, with universities and colleges to make sure that the right overall guidance is in place as quickly as possible, to ensure that there is as much protection as we can provide for what will—as we know from our experience last year—be a risk, as we go into the autumn.

We will keep the Parliament updated on all those things, as they develop.

As I said in my statement, the guidance will be published a week from today, to coincide with the statement that I will give next week. The guidance will look at physical distancing more fundamentally so, as I also said in the statement, it will not be exclusively of interest to the arts and culture sector, although I think that it will be of particular interest to it. I acknowledge how difficult it has been, and continues to be, for arts venues, because they are in one of the sectors that has least certainty about what the future looks like.

We had hoped to have published the review of physical distancing by now but, as people will, I hope, understand, we have been trying to develop understanding of the degree to which the delta variant is more infectious and more transmissible, so it did not seem sensible to publish the review while we were still trying to do that. We will publish the review next week. It might not answer every question with 100 per cent certainty, but like the work that we will publish on what life will look like after level zero, it will give more of a sense of what kind of environment businesses and individuals will be operating in as we—I hope—get back to greater normality.

If memory serves me correctly—no doubt I will be corrected if I am getting this wrong—I think that, when the concerns to which the member referred were raised, some people in the industry went public to say that the concerns were unfounded and were the result of a misreading of the guidance. As I recall, it was the Scottish Beer and Pub Association that did that.

We will engage as we go, to try to make sure that not just the arrangements that we ask people to follow are in line with clinical advice but that they take account of the practicalities within which businesses are operating. In a situation as difficult as this, I do not expect any guidance or set of regulations to please everyone, but we continue to work hard to ensure that we take account of the views that people express.

Before I do that, let me say again that I understand why some people are nervous about the fan zone and others think that it should not go ahead, given that we are still living under restrictions. As I said, we know that people will watch the football and we are trying to provide environments in which that can be done as safely as possible. The fan zone is a highly regulated environment: it is a big, big space, outdoors, with lots of mitigations in place.

So far, behaviour and compliance have been very good. The health secretary visited the fan zone over the weekend. The organiser, Glasgow Life, reports a good atmosphere on site, with a mixed demographic that includes families and children. With all the mitigations in place, including the advice that we are giving people on testing, we are confident that it is low risk, based on public health advice. A review team has been set up, at the health secretary’s initiative, to make sure that we can take account of any emerging evidence that might change our approach as we go through the tournament.

Wherever people go to watch football right now, it is really important that they follow public health advice. That is true in the fan zone, but the fan zone is a big, outdoor space. It is particularly true if people are gathering in other people’s houses or in pubs: people should take care to make sure that all the advice is being followed.

I would hope that everybody would agree that the need for fiscal stimulus to support economic recovery is very clear. There is an absolute requirement on the UK Government not to go back to the Tory austerity that we saw in recent years.

Alongside the finance ministers of Wales and Northern Ireland, our finance secretary is writing to the chancellor setting out the Scottish Government’s commitment to building on the constructive discussions that we had at the recent Covid recovery summit to ensure that as far as possible we work together to build a sustainable recovery. That includes discussion of important matters such as clarity about the job retention scheme and the forthcoming UK spending review.

Given where powers over the economy and finances currently lie, if we are to ensure that Scotland and the whole UK recover well from the pandemic and build a sustainable recovery, we need the chancellor to take the appropriate decisions to support that for all of us.