From our experience and the discussions that we have had on internal markets and frameworks, it seems that there is a huge appetite from the business community and stakeholders to have advance sight of things—if people are to adapt to change, they are after as much information and as much of a heads-up as possible. That commitment to transparency, even in Government advice, is something that we would be very keen to see.

Lewis Ryder-Jones, you also talked about the importance of the value that comes from our international development funds and how we make the most of that. Can you say a bit more on that?

That takes me to my second question. One thing that has come through from all three witnesses is the importance of a broader approach, a sustainable development approach and a joined-up approach. I would like to hear a little bit more about how we get that change in other Government spending and Government policy that develops on sustainable development and feeds into international development ambitions that we have. I am not talking just the £15 million; rather, I am asking how we can get the rest of the Scottish Government’s money to play a positive part?

Mark Majewsky Anderson, I invite you to answer first. Earlier, you talked about how you deliver things on the ground and I would like you to talk about what sustainable development means for the further and higher education sector in an international development context.

On one level it does. I will follow it up. I was thinking about the publication of advice to different Governments. One of the things that has been apparent in devolution is that the Governments are watching each other. There is what you could call different best practice or different standards. To what extent is there scope for cross-UK sharing of knowledge and information about markets? Are you up for doing that and publishing your advice to different Governments?

Numerous constituents have been in touch with me about issues to do with their vaccination status. I know that my Labour colleagues and other MSPs across the chamber have raised the issue, but boosters are now adding another level of challenge. When will the Scottish Government ensure that boosters show on the app as a booster if someone has received both doses in the European Union or another part of the United Kingdom? They are currently showing as dose 1 or 2, which makes travel to some countries impossible, and constituents have not been able to get help from NHS Inform.

The pandemic has exacerbated the challenges in accessing public transport, particularly for people with sight loss, due to, for example, timetable changes at short notice and service cancellation. Given that lots of transport apps appear to be developed separately, what work is the Scottish Government doing to ensure that information is available to passengers? As we come out of the pandemic, what support, such as access to support on trains and at stations, will be available to enable people with sight loss to access public transport services?

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to ensure that public transport is accessible to disabled people. (S6O-00607)

Colleagues from all parties are rightly raising the real business concerns across Scotland, which have made been made worse not only by Brexit, but by Covid-19.

I thank the Food and Drink Federation Scotland for its helpful briefing for today’s debate, which notes that we have now reached crisis point, with the growth and viability of businesses in danger, and knock-on impacts for consumers, with high food price inflation. The briefing also highlights that, in a survey carried out last August, 97 per cent of businesses said that they would struggle to fill vacancies in the future. That shocking statistic highlights just how dire the situation is.

However, as several colleagues have said today, labour shortages have multiple causes. We cannot blame just Covid or Brexit. Those are key aspects, but they are not the whole story. Many of the factors that are driving failures in the Scottish economy predate the pandemic and have gone unaddressed during the Scottish National Party’s entire time in office. We are also lagging behind the rest of the UK.

As Paul Sweeney eloquently noted, before Covid, Scotland’s economy had been suffering from low investment and productivity, limited local and community ownership and increasing inequalities in our labour market for more than a decade. Scottish Labour has previously called on the Scottish Government to work with the UK Government to create a flexible visa scheme. We are not asking it to reinvent the wheel, but it is time to look at the steps that we took in the past. We should learn from the experience of the fresh talent initiative that was introduced during the regime of Jack McConnell, the former First Minister. However, it is also clear that, although we need flexibility, we cannot rely totally on imported labour. We must also look at the home-grown crisis.

I want to raise the issues of fair work and childcare, in particular. Labour’s amendment highlights the need for an

“industrial strategy that addresses regional inequalities, low pay ... poor conditions, and the skills gaps”

that we have across Scotland.

There has been a steady decline in the number of employees in Scotland receiving job-related training during the past 15 years, and slow wage rises are also reflected in poverty data. The data for 2015 to 2018 show that, after housing costs, 60 per cent of working-age adults living in relative poverty lived in working households. That is the highest percentage on record.

In-work poverty is also a major driver of child poverty, with the proportion of children living in relative poverty also rising. That is before we take into account recent food and fuel cost rises.

Let us look at gender inequalities. In 2018, the gap between employment rates of women and men in the workforce was nearly 8 per cent; between disabled and non-disabled people, it was nearly 36 per cent; and between white people and people from ethnic minority groups, it was nearly 20 per cent, which is the largest gap on record.

We have deep-seated inequalities in our labour market and in our communities that must be addressed with targeted action, not with headline grabbing or empty statements. That means making training available, not cutting skills development budgets. It means making childcare accessible and affordable to parents, particularly for women in the community, so that they can access jobs knowing that they can turn up to work and that they will be paid enough to support their family and pay their bills.

We need to tackle the deep-seated inequalities and provide adjustments and support for disabled people across the workforce. To tackle such inequalities in our communities, we need Government investment in jobs and training at the national or local level. We need to work with businesses and trade unions and, as we recover from Covid, we need to use procurement policies to provide more attractive employment that pays people enough to live on and offers training and career development opportunities. When we bang our desks relentlessly in relation to care, we just need to look at the number of people who are not getting care support because working in care is unattractive and does not pay well—people cannot support their families on the poor wages that are paid.

All those deep-seated inequalities need to be tackled. In coming out of Covid, we need to find a process that gets people into work that they can live on. That must be the priority in tackling our labour inequalities.

First, I thank colleagues for their support in securing tonight’s debate. If the past few months have taught us anything, it is that we are not safe until everyone is safe.

There is massive inequality in access to vaccines across the globe. As of last week, in high-income countries, 66.3 per cent of people had been vaccinated with at least one dose, but in low-income countries only 9 per cent of people had been.

Therefore, with omicron cases rising daily, it has never been more important to debate the need to end pharmaceutical monopolies of Covid-19 vaccines. To address the cost of vaccinating 70 per cent of the population in high-income countries would mean an increase of 0.8 per cent in healthcare spending; in low-income countries, an eye-watering 56.6 per cent increase would be needed. That money is simply not available.

In an excellent briefing, the People’s Vaccine Alliance noted that work has been going on to get a solution. It said that, in October 2020:

“South Africa and India submitted a joint proposal to the TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Council at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), titled ‘Waiver from certain provisions of the TRIPS agreement for the prevention, containment and treatment of COVID-19’. The UK Government rejected the text on the Waiver at the TRIPS Council meeting”—

in October of that year—

“saying that it was not necessary whilst also stating that existing measures to overcome Intellectual Property (IP) barriers would suffice.

The Waiver would allow all WTO members to choose to not grant or not enforce patents and other IP related to COVID-19 drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and other technologies until widespread vaccination is in place globally, and the majority of the world’s population has developed immunity ... The proposed waiver would be applicable only to COVID-19 health technologies.”

In debates and discussions about vaccinations, it is easy to get caught up in the numbers and the percentages. A key job for MSPs is to scrutinise our Government on how it makes vaccines and boosters accessible to our constituents.

However, we know that the greater the delay in rolling out vaccines globally, the more people suffer. Right now, as Oxfam has pointed out in its campaign, the whole world is dependent on just a handful of pharmaceutical corporations, which simply cannot make enough vaccines for everyone.

As a country that, rightly, prides itself on the universality of our national health service, it is morally indefensible that we are not taking every possible action to waive the rules that are creating vaccine monopolies and allowing large pharmaceutical companies to profit off the back of a global pandemic.

In my motion, I note that monopolies are artificially limiting vaccine supply to low-income countries and that that vaccine inequality has resulted from a handful of pharmaceutical companies rationing supply by refusing to share their vaccine recipes and know-how with the rest of the world. That must end now.

As former Prime Minister Gordon Brown highlighted in The Guardian,

“In June, Boris Johnson promised he and the G7 countries would use their surplus vaccines to immunise the whole world. In September, at a summit chaired by President Biden, a December target of 40% vaccination was set for the 92 poorest countries. Two and a half months on, there is little chance of this target being met in at least 82 of them. By Thursday the US, which to its credit has been responsible for half the vaccines donated, had still delivered only 25% of the vaccines that it promised.”

The world is now living with the consequences of those broken promises.

It is not all doom and gloom. I welcome the fantastic work of the People’s Vaccine Alliance. Comprised of organisations that include Oxfam, Christian Aid, and Global Justice Now, the People’s Vaccine Alliance continues to advocate for fairness and an end to the vaccine inequalities.

I lodged a previous motion on this issue, which was similar to the one that we debate today. It gained the support of 55 members of the Scottish Parliament. To the First Minister’s credit, after it was lodged, she wrote to the Prime Minister to urge him to support the waiver.

However, one letter is not enough. I want to hear what work the Scottish Government is doing behind the scenes with United Kingdom Government colleagues and campaigners to ensure that those who are opposed to the waiver are challenged.

To the Conservatives in this Parliament I say, what work are you doing to communicate with colleagues in Westminster to get a different outcome?

In June, the European Parliament supported a temporary Covid-19 vaccine patent waiver. The vote was not unanimous but it reflected a strong agreement that action is urgently needed to produce affordable vaccines that can be distributed across the globe.

Evidence from the Covid-19 response so far and from many other public health issues throughout history, including the AIDS crisis in the 2000s, clearly illustrates that intellectual property rights restrict access. The situation will only get worse, unless Governments intervene.

The issue of high-priced medicines has become a global problem that affects not just low-income but middle and high-income countries. In the UK in the past few years, a breakthrough hepatitis C medicine has been rationed on the NHS, due to its high cost; cancer patients have had to crowd fund and campaign for treatments that have not been available on the NHS; and cystic fibrosis patients have had to wait more than three years to access a new therapy, as the pharmaceutical company priced the drug above the reach of our NHS.

Even though we have vaccines, in Scotland our NHS is under massive pressure from the pandemic. I ask colleagues to imagine what the Covid pressures look like in a low-income country with a small health budget and even fewer resources.

I again thank members for their support in securing this debate. I will continue to campaign on the need for political action and to focus on the concrete steps that we, through the Scottish Parliament and as individual MSPs, can take to bring vaccine equality globally.

We need a life-saving escalation in global vaccine production to ensure that people in low-income countries are kept safe. As I said, we are not safe until everyone is safe.

I was looking for a final thought on how you communicate with stakeholders in Scotland. You have mentioned that Covid has been a challenge, but on another level it has made everybody digitally connected. Can you see opportunities for that communication to be more effective?