Chamber and committees

I am grateful to the committee for the opportunity to discuss the recent developments and updates to Parliament on Covid-19.

As the First Minister set out on Tuesday, recent data continues to give grounds for optimism. The situation that we are now in is much less severe than we had anticipated—although it is important to note that case numbers remain high and that we have seen increases in some age groups.

The significant fall in cases during the first three weeks of January is now reflected in a fall in the number of people who are being admitted to hospital. Thankfully, the number of people with Covid in intensive care has also reduced. Those improving trends are a result of the booster vaccination programme, the proportionate measures that we introduced in December 2021 and the willingness of the public to adapt their behaviour. That has enabled us to remove virtually all the additional protective measures that were introduced in December.

We are continuing our cautious approach to lifting protective measures. This week, we issued guidance for employers on hybrid working, where that can be done safely. From 11 February, fully vaccinated travellers will no longer need to take a test on their arrival into Scotland.

This week, the Cabinet agreed to retain the wider baseline measures, including the Covid certification scheme, the collection of contact details in hospitality settings and the requirement to wear a face covering in many indoor places. We are also asking the public to continue to take lateral flow tests before mixing with people from other households and to ensure that they report their results online. Those measures are important while the national health service remains under acute pressure. The number of people in hospital with Covid is falling, but it is still double what it was just before Christmas.

The advisory sub-group on education and children’s issues met recently, refreshed guidance was published on Tuesday, and we will monitor the advice on face coverings in schools and early years settings. The group will consider the issue again at its meeting on 8 February.

Covid vaccinations have now started for five to 11-year-olds who are at the highest clinical risk and who are household contacts of someone who is immunosuppressed, in line with the most recent advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. Flu vaccinations have now also resumed for higher-risk groups after being paused in December 2021.

As we look ahead to spring, we can continue to be optimistic, and evidence shows that we may be entering a calmer phase of the pandemic. The revised strategic framework will be published after the February recess, setting out in detail our approach to managing Covid more sustainably in future phases of the pandemic in which the virus will—we hope—become endemic.

I am happy to answer questions from the committee.

I would be surprised at that. I do not have the data in front of me but I will explore it and, if there is some that I can share with the committee, I will happily do so. The move to hybrid working is welcome and I know that civil servants will embrace it, as the leadership of the organisation has done in setting out what we expect of staff.

Yes.

Therefore, a range of data is available. I would be surprised if that were not available at a health board level.

It will be available at a health board level, so all that data about who is waiting and for how long is publicly available. Obviously, that data will show that today, in a number of different disciplines, people are waiting longer than they would have done pre-pandemic, but we are working hard to ensure that we address that and as quickly as we can.

It is perhaps not for me to discuss or question the motivations of media coverage. If we do that, we will be here a long time, I suspect.

I go back to the point that I made in answer to Mr Fraser, that individual companies have to assess how they take forward their working environment as a consequence of the pandemic. The substantive point that I was making is that some organisations have probably found that it is possible to undertake a lot more tasks outwith an office or workplace environment than they previously thought was possible. Obviously, that affects their way of working. There will be consequences of adopting that as a more permanent model, which will include some of the issues that Mr Whittle raises in relation to leasing costs of premises. However, individual companies will have to consider whether they can sustain that approach and whether it is the appropriate approach for them to take.

There is a set of events and arrangements that have not yet restarted. To take the example of Mr Whittle’s mother’s exercise class, obviously, we are trying to get all these arrangements back up and running as soon as possible. My father’s exercise class has been going for some time now, and he goes to it and it is great for him. I am delighted that he does that. We are trying to get some of these events back up and running, and we are now in a position where that is plausible, because of the improvement in the Covid situation generally.

There is another set of circumstances—to refer again to Mr Whittle’s question—whereby there are public facilities that stand locked up quite a lot for no good rational reason. We need to maximise the use of those public facilities. Of course, some of that might be tied up in the contractual arrangements that procured those facilities, and I encourage public authorities to stretch those arrangements and ensure that they are not an impediment to their use, because the activities that Mr Whittle talks about are possible in communities if there is access to appropriate facilities.

A third element is about the general messaging that tries to get to the point of principle that Professor Leitch was talking about, which is basically that, the healthier you are, the greater your ability to withstand the health adversities that might come your way. Therefore, encouraging public messaging about exercise and looking after individual health is critical as part of the preventative health interventions that we are able to take forward.

Lastly, there are good examples in the health service of interventions being designed—I say this for simplicity—not by the prescription of drugs but by the prescription of exercise. Increasingly, health professionals are trying to say to people, “Look, you’d be better off joining an exercise class than me prescribing you something.” That is important in winning hearts and minds about how we can individually take steps to strengthen our health and wellbeing.

Children in that age group who are clinically vulnerable or are in households where there is a clinically vulnerable adult are now the subject of the roll-out of the vaccination, and that is under way in different parts of the country.

The Covid recovery strategy sets out an ambitious plan for Scotland’s recovery that is focused on creating a fairer future, particularly for people who have been most affected during the pandemic. Our plan for recovery includes supporting the recovery of our public services to ensure that they meet the needs of people across Scotland. For example, our national health service recovery plan is backed by over £1 billion of investment.

We are also focusing on creating good green jobs and fair work to support our recovery. Regional economic partnerships are central to achieving that. The West Scotland region benefits from a range of regional economic partnerships and deals, including the Glasgow city region deal, the Ayrshire growth deal and the Argyll and Bute rural growth deal. Those will see transformational investment in projects to support long-term, sustainable and inclusive growth as we recover from the pandemic.