Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government will make the funding for our commitment available, but Willie Rennie cannot gloss over the point that I made. He should be honest about his position. If he wants the Scottish Government to take away from local authorities the responsibility for employment and the terms and conditions of teachers, he should say so—although that would run counter to everything that he has said until now about opposing what he calls the Scottish Government’s centralisation and its taking powers away from local authorities. That is the reality.

Willie Rennie should also listen to what I am clearly saying. Through our budgets, we will make funding available for the commitment that we have made on teachers. Given the need for teachers in support of economic recovery, I expect that we will see permanent posts and jobs. However, if I was to stand here now and mandate that, Willie Rennie would accuse me—perhaps not today, but at another stage, because to do so today would not suit the question that he has asked—of taking powers away from local authorities and centralising things here in the Scottish Government.

We support the efforts of Police Scotland and the Scottish Ambulance Service to protect the safety and welfare of front-line responders and of the general public.

The issue of body-worn cameras for police officers is a policy and operational decision for the chief constable, acting under the oversight of the Scottish Police Authority. However, as part of our budget allocation for policing this year, we have provided one-off funding of £500,000 to support their use by armed officers.

We engage regularly with the Scottish Ambulance Service. If the matter is something that the Ambulance Service wishes to pursue in the future, we will fully engage with it on that.

I understand the desire for that; I share the desire for it. I would simply ask Willie Rennie to accept, as I have done on previous occasions, that there is no minister in the Government who is somehow standing in the way of that for any reason other than that the clinical position is still that we need to be cautious and take precautions. Yes, we will get to a position of issuing new and more permissive guidance as quickly as possible. I have said very clearly—and I repeat it today—that we need to prioritise things like that.

Nobody is trying to hold up moves like that for any reason other than trying to keep the most vulnerable in our society as safe as possible. However, I will make sure that the health ministers look again at the issue, given that it has been raised again, to see whether it is possible to speed up that process—to go more quickly and to have more distinction between the different levels of protection that apply.

That is a really important issue and I give an assurance that we work closely with health boards on it. In line with the JCVI’s latest advice, where vaccine supplies allow, health boards are bringing forward the second dose of vaccine from 12 to eight weeks, and many of us will know people who have had their vaccine accelerated to within that timescale.

However, Bob Doris is right to say that, with a programme of this scale, there will always be small numbers of people who do not get what we want them to get or what we think that they should have got. We are aware that a small percentage of the overall vaccinated population has had to wait longer than 12 weeks for their second dose. For those whose dose of the second vaccine runs beyond the 12-week point, we encourage them to contact their local health board or to attend one of the drop-in clinics that a number of local authorities are running.

There will be a variety of reasons why that small number of people have not had their second dose within 12 weeks. Such people should get in touch with their local health board and check through the NHS Inform website so that the issue can be rectified.

On the final part of Bob Doris’s question, although we want people to be vaccinated within 12 weeks—and now, as far as supplies allow, within the eight-week timescale—it is important to note that receiving a second dose beyond 12 weeks does not pose any clinical risk and that, therefore, if somebody goes beyond the 12 weeks, there is no need to recommence the whole vaccination cycle.

The incident management team is actively managing the situation in Tayside. I am grateful for its hard work. That work includes deployment of a mobile testing unit, targeted engagement through schools and community outreach and, of course, the continued vaccination drive.

As I said last week, there is a massive opportunity to share learning. To support that, the Scottish Government has developed for local authorities and other partners an outbreak management toolkit that was shared last week. The toolkit includes practical material on enhanced testing and accelerated vaccination, and a communications toolkit to support local messaging. It draws on practical material that has been shared by colleagues in Glasgow.

Public Health Scotland continues to support lessons-learned activity, and the national incident management team provides regular opportunities for all 14 health boards to share experiences, too.

I am not sure whether it was Graham Simpson who asked that question a couple of weeks ago, but my answer today is the same. We continue to look at the matter, but we want to make sure that we have assurance—and can give assurance—on the quality of the testing that is in place.

Why is there a difference? In many respects, the UK Government—this is entirely up to it—chooses to outsource more outside the NHS than we in Scotland have decided we will do. We keep such things under review, but making sure that we have assurances around quality is really important. I hope that most people understand and accept that.

Concession stands will not be in operation for the Euro 2020 matches at Hampden because of all the mitigations that have had to be put in place. That is to ensure that physical distancing is possible on concourses when people move to and from their seats on entry and exit, and when they go to the toilet.

However, spectators will be able to bring food with them into the stadium. Discussions are on-going between the Scottish Football Association and UEFA to reach agreement on what will be in place with regard to drinks. UEFA will confirm the situation with all ticket holders, and I will make sure that Stuart McMillan is updated when that has happened.

Before I address the question, I will make a point about international travel. We often talk about it in the context of holidays, and people who have family overseas—and for whom international travel is about family connection—often feel frustrated at that. I recognise that, for many people, the restrictions on international travel are keeping them away from their loved ones, which is why we want to get back to normal there, as in every other aspect of life, as quickly as possible.

For non-essential travel such as holidays, my advice to people continues to be that they should not go overseas if they can avoid doing so. Right now, it is safer for us not to go overseas, as it helps to mitigate against the importation of the virus. If someone is in the position of being able to go on a holiday this year, I ask that they support the local tourism industry. We discuss such matters regularly—I have reasonably regular discussions with the Scottish Tourism Alliance about how we can better support the tourism industry in the immediate term, and also as it recovers in the medium to long term.

A message that we could all helpfully convey to our constituents is that they should support their local tourism industry, the Scottish tourism industry and local businesses generally as much as they are able to.

If I may say so, that is just complete nonsense. By all means, people should rigorously hold me and my Government to account—that is absolutely essential—but I urge everybody to avoid saying that Edinburgh is the new Glasgow, or that Edinburgh is not as deserving of measures as Glasgow. Such attempts to divide and set people against one another, or to suggest that we are not taking the pandemic seriously in every part of the country, do not help anybody.

The local director of public health in Lothian, along with the local incident management team, will be working to decide what measures are appropriate, based on the nature of the outbreak across Lothian. If they consider it necessary and essential, surge testing will be a part of that, as well as door-to-door testing and walk-in vaccination clinics. It might surprise people to hear that I do not mandate to local public health directors exactly what they do in local outbreaks, because it would be wrong for me to do so. They are the ones who understand the nature of outbreaks and, from the range of tools that they have available, what works best in local circumstances.

I ask all members to engage, as I am sure that they already do, with their local health board and director of public health, in order to understand the local measures that are being put in place, which will be bespoke to the particular challenges that are being faced. I ask that we all avoid suggesting that one part of the country is being done down in favour of another part of the country. That is not true. We are all in this together, and we are trying to get through it together.

I would absolutely love to stand here and give that commitment. I know of Katie and I know how important it is to her and her family, and the families of young people like her, to get vaccinated as quickly as possible. I also know that people would agree that it should not be for me, as someone with no clinical qualifications, to decide who gets vaccinated when. That is why expert advice is really important.

There are a couple of issues. First, we have to wait for the JCVI advice. It will advise on whether, in what order and to what extent we should commence the vaccination of children over the age of 12. The other issue that means that I cannot give a commitment right now about vaccinating before the return of schools is that the speed at which we will do it will be dependent on the supply of the vaccine. I hope that that changes towards the upside, but at this stage the MHRA advice relates only to the Pfizer vaccine. Therefore, only that one manufacturer’s vaccine would be available, and supplies are not limitless. We do not yet know exactly what the supplies would be, so we cannot set out exactly how long it would take to vaccinate that section of the population.

It may be—I do not know, because I have to wait and see the advice—that, just as with the adult population, the JCVI recommends an order of priority for children over the age of 12, and that might take account of underlying health conditions and other factors. As soon as we have that advice and we have a clear line of sight about supplies, we will inform Parliament of our expectations and what the timescale for any such extension is likely to be.