Chamber and committees

On wider reform of education including potential reform of the SQA, I note that the Parliament will debate those issues this afternoon, and the education secretary will say more about all of that when that debate happens later.

We will continue to listen to young people, teachers and parents and continue to address concerns as far as we can. This is—I am afraid that this is inescapable—a highly imperfect situation because we are in the midst of a global pandemic that has made exams impossible, so we have to put in place an alternative. As Jim Thewliss, whom I quoted earlier, said, no alternative is going to be perfect, but nobody has suggested a better one than this.

I recognise that we have different education systems, but all the things that Douglas Ross says are fundamentally wrong here are actually, by and large, exactly the same arrangements that are being put in place in England and Wales under Governments of different parties. That reflects the fact that we are all trying to do our best for young people in very difficult circumstances.

We have learned lessons from last year. Teacher judgment has replaced last year’s algorithm approach, which was fundamentally flawed. We have recognised that there must be a much more accessible appeals system, but also that at its heart must be the attainment of pupils.

This approach has not been easy for anybody, and particularly not for young people. Of all the impacts of the pandemic that I wish I could take away, the impact on our young people is very near the top, if not at the top, of the list. We are all doing the best that we can, and we will continue to engage with young people as we seek to do that.

I will. In our use of the Scottish Government’s resources, we are maximising our investment in the actions that are needed to support a green recovery and to transition to net zero. In the previous session of Parliament, we established the Scottish National Investment Bank, which takes that transition as its primary mission. We should continue to be challenged to do everything that we can with the powers, responsibilities and resources that we have.

It is not my choice, but there is no doubt that much of what we can do is determined by the spending decisions of the UK Government. This afternoon, as well as asking for public health to be kept to the fore and for furlough to be extended for as long as necessary, I will also ask for commitments on public spending so that we have certainty and clarity about future public spending and clarity that we will not see austerity cuts imposed by the UK Government. That is important for green recovery, and for many other reasons.

I am glad for Anas Sarwar that he has the time to do timelines. There is nothing that he has just told me that I do not know, and there is nothing that I have sought to shy away from. I lived through that period as the lead decision maker in the Scottish Government. I take responsibility for all the decisions and I have never tried to shy away from that. I will live with the consequences of those decisions for as long as I live, and those decisions will be subject to serious scrutiny. That is right and proper.

We sought, all along, to do the right thing, based on the knowledge and the understanding that we had. In the light of developing knowledge, if we could turn the clock back, we would do some of these things differently. In addition, as I have said all along, we will have made straightforward mistakes, and I will forever regret any mistakes that we made.

I do not know what point Anas Sarwar is seeking to prove. I have taken responsibility and will continue to take responsibility. Every single day of the pandemic, I have done my level best to get the decisions right.

If I could turn the clock back, would we go into lockdown earlier than we did? Yes, I think that we would. We moved on mass gatherings and we announced the position on schools slightly before the UK Government did. When we look at the different pandemic curves, we see that, although we went into lockdown on the same day as the rest of the UK, it was slightly ahead of the pandemic curve for Scotland.

If I could turn the clock back, there are many things that I would love to have the opportunity to do differently. Of course, the irony is that many of the same people who criticised me—perfectly legitimately—for not acting quickly enough or for not being cautious enough at an earlier stage often criticise me now for being too cautious and going too slowly in lifting lockdown restrictions. That is what comes with the responsibilities of this job. I am not complaining about that, but this is not an easy situation for anybody to be in. I will continue, as I have done from day 1, to take the best decisions that I can, and I will never shy away from the responsibility for that.

People can make up their own minds whether what they hear from me is an inability to face up to mistakes or Scottish exceptionalism. What people hear from me is a candid admission that, like many other Governments across the world, we have not got everything right, and they hear a willingness and a desire to face up to that and to learn from it.

I could paper the walls with timelines, but my focus now as First Minister is on delivering the vaccination programme to keep people safe in future and on ensuring that we take the right decisions, although we are criticised by many for being too cautious and too slow, to keep people safe because we could be at the start of a third wave of the virus. That is my responsibility as First Minister. Of course we have lessons to learn—I have never said otherwise. Perhaps Anas Sarwar is saying that, if he had been standing here back then, he would have got everything right. Who knows? Perhaps he would have done, but I suspect that, like everyone else, he would have grappled with those difficult decisions.

I have given a commitment to a judge-led public inquiry. That commitment stands. I want to see the inquiry up and running before the end of this year. The UK Government has announced plans for a public inquiry and has asked for four-nations discussion about its remit and about where there might be overlaps. I usually get encouraged by Labour members to take part in constructive four-nations discussions. We have agreed to do that. The commitment to a public inquiry is there and is firm and strong. I think that I was the first of the UK First Ministers to make that commitment.

I have led the country to the best of my ability—far from perfectly—through the pandemic. I, as much as anyone, want to ensure that we learn the right lessons. It is very easy when you are not the one taking the decisions and when you have the benefit of hindsight—if I was in opposition, I would no doubt do the same—to tell us what we should have done. When you are taking decisions in the moment, you have to act on the basis of the best information and advice that you have. That is what we have done. We will learn lessons. We will be judged. We have just been judged on our leadership of this so far in the election. We will be judged with full scrutiny, but my focus now is on continuing to lead the country as best I can through an on-going pandemic.

We will continue to keep all such matters under review. Earlier in FMQs, we heard perfectly legitimate questioning and criticism of the decisions that we took at an early stage, and suggestions that such decisions might not have been cautious enough. First and foremost, we need to make sure that we are protecting people as much as possible against the spread of the virus. That is particularly important when it comes to international travel, because, right now, the key risk of international travel is the importation of new variants. The issues that Liam Kerr mentioned are difficult for anybody who is having to quarantine in a hotel; however, public safety and public health are paramount here, and I hope that the Tories would accept that.

We are determined to do everything that we can to ensure that schools have the resources that they need, but it is important first to note that the law is clear. Other than in very specific circumstances, class sizes are mandatory and must be adhered to.

On resources, last year, teacher numbers increased for the fifth year in a row, and there are now more teachers than there have been at any time since 2008. The ratio of pupils to teachers is at its lowest since 2010.

Since the start of the pandemic, we have provided more than £200 million to councils to support the recruitment of 1,400 additional teachers and more than 200 support staff. During the first 100 days of the current parliamentary session, we will fund councils to increase teacher numbers by a further 1,000. That is part of our commitment to 3,500 additional teachers and classroom assistants being brought in during the parliamentary session, and it is over and above those who have been recruited during the pandemic so far.

First, I absolutely recognise and understand communities’ frustration at that and other recent disruption and the impact that it has had. In relation to the issue with the MV Hebridean Isles, I understand that all goods were shipped early on Saturday morning on the MV Isle of Lewis. I can also update the chamber that the MV Loch Seaforth returned to service on 31 May and that, as of today, all vessels are back in position. The Minister for Transport has met the constituency member, other MSPs and other stakeholders to hear concerns and he has agreed to continue regular dialogue. We are actively exploring opportunities for chartering additional tonnage. In addition, we have confirmed new investment in ports and vessels to support and improve Scotland’s ferry services over the next five years as part of our infrastructure investment plan.

The member is right to say that travelling between the areas that he has just mentioned would involve moving between level 1 and level 2 areas and back again, but that is because we are not taking a one-size-fits-all approach. If I was to follow the advice that Douglas Ross gave me earlier, there would be many more subdivisions, and people in Inverclyde, perhaps, or in one of the Ayrshire council areas would be going between different levels of restriction within those council areas.

Jamie Greene is, in a sense, illustrating my point: the easiest thing to do is to have a one-size-fits-all model, but that is not the most proportionate thing to do and, in a public health sense, it is not absolutely necessary. We are trying to be as targeted as possible, while also trying to recognise existing travel patterns.

No travel restrictions are in place below levels 3 and 4. That means that people are able to travel freely, but it also means that, as we rightly give people the ability to do more, we must all exercise more responsibility and take care. That is not easy, but that is the nature of having a situation that is not a blanket, one size fits all. It also illustrates the need to work at a sensible level, not in the way that Douglas Ross has been advising me to work.

Those are all perfectly reasonable and legitimate points and I will run through them one by one—more briefly, I hope, than I did in my previous answer, Presiding Officer.

Over the past few days, I have heard people say—again, not surprisingly—in relation to Glasgow, “Why are we not going door to door with testing?”, “Why do we not have drop-in vaccination clinics?” and “Why do we not have surge testing?”. All that was happening in Glasgow and has been happening in Glasgow over the past couple of weeks. We believe that that is why we are seeing the situation in Glasgow not continue with exponential rise but stabilise and now start to decline.

The lessons in Glasgow are important and it is important that they are applied elsewhere. I am going to use a different word, because it is the one that we are using in the Government. A toolkit is being prepared that is taking the lessons and learning from Glasgow and making that available to all other health boards. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care is meeting all health board chief executives tomorrow to talk about the importance of that, as well as the wider issue. I am sure that it is very technical in many respects, but I am certainly more than happy to look at how we can publish something that is available to the public so that they know what should be expected, not when areas become hotspots but when there is any emerging evidence that that is the direction of travel.

There are a couple of things that I know people understand about vaccination. First, we need to ensure that we have the supplies to do everything. Supply continues to be our biggest constraint, but it is even more complicated than that because we have different vaccines and they can be used differently for different age groups. Supply is tighter for the Pfizer vaccine, for example, which is being used for the younger age groups, than it is for the AstraZeneca vaccine, so we have to balance all that.

Secondly, but most importantly, we know that, although getting over-18s their first dose is important—appointments have already started in Glasgow and we will look at having drop-in clinics as supplies allow—the most vital thing that we can do is to get people who have had the first dose to have their second dose, which increases the level of protection from the vaccine substantially. That is why, over the next few weeks, there will deliberately be an emphasis on completing second doses. All of that is important, all of it is work that is under way and we continue, every single day, to do what we can.

Back at the start of the year, I was not the only one who did this, but I used the terminology of a race—the vaccine against the virus. We are going as fast as we can with the vaccine and we have to continue to look for ways to speed up. Unfortunately, though, the virus keeps learning to run faster, and that is the big challenge that we are up against right now. That is what makes the decisions still as difficult as they are.

I can understand people’s nervousness. Many of my constituents also live reasonably close to Glasgow Green. These are difficult decisions. On the one hand, all of us want to be able to see Scotland play in the euros and to see the euros more generally, to have fans in the stadium and to have fans being able to enjoy the tournament more generally. We also want to see events start again and to have the assurance that they can happen safely. On the other hand, however, I know that some people—perhaps those to whom football is not as important as it is to many others—think “Well, if I’m still under restrictions, why do we have large-scale events?”

We are trying to get the balance of all that as right as we can. We are working closely with the event organisers on preparations for the proposed fan zone. The situation with the virus will be continually reviewed in the run-up to the euros, taking into account all the latest evidence and information. However, the action that we are all taking is not about allowing a football tournament to go ahead; it is about allowing us to get everything—or as much as possible—in our society back to normal.

The arrangements for the proposed fan zone have lots of mitigations in place to minimise the risk of transmission. I think that there has been a meeting today—if it is not today, it is tomorrow—around that, and those matters will continue to be kept under review. We want to allow fans to enjoy the euros safely—with “enjoy” hopefully being the operative word—and we will work hard to make sure that that is the case. However, public safety and protecting people against the virus continues, of course, to be our overriding priority.