Chamber and committees

That gets to the nub of the challenges that exist around public finances. Mr Whittle will appreciate that I am not being partisan in my comments here, but am simply reflecting reality. If the Scottish Government wants to allocate money to compensate businesses for the implications of Covid restrictions, we have to take that money from somewhere else that it is currently allocated to in the Scottish budget. We have to shift that money around, and we have taken the decision that we will shift about £200 million into the purposes of supporting funding in relation to the restrictions in the forthcoming period.

That will be uncomfortable—believe you me, it is uncomfortable for us to wrestle with that. We do it because we are in a fixed-budget environment now. The UK Government is able to borrow. It can borrow in the money markets, it can expand the money that it has available and it can redeploy that. That is why we are saying to the UK Government, “Look, in an endeavour to meet the challenges of today, let us allocate money that we can pay back over a period a number of years”. The UK Government has responded with a billion pounds of funding, which is not on the scale that I think would be commensurate with the challenges that we face.

We have to take decisions in the short term, to try to support individuals and organisations when they face these challenges. That is what the Scottish Government has opted to do within our fixed budget, and it is what I would urge the United Kingdom Government to do given the flexibilities that are available to it.

I can, convener. In essence, the United Kingdom Government has made three announcements on Covid funding in the recent period. The first announcement was to confirm that the Scottish Government would receive £220 million in consequential funding from the UK Government. That was not a new allocation; it was confirmation of allocations that we expected. It was not complete, because we had expected to receive £265 million. Therefore, the sum of £220 million was confirmed out of an expected £265 million, which left us £45 million short. Last weekend—it must have been last weekend—the UK Government confirmed that it was adding £220 million to that. Therefore, when you deduct the figure of £45 million from that second allocation of £220 million, you end up with £175 million of what I would call unanticipated funding to the Scottish Government for Covid purposes.

We have allocated that to the fund that I have talked about. Then, in two individual tranches, from within our resources, the Scottish Government has identified two blocks of £100 million that we are allocating to business support. We are also allocating £100 million to boost the funding that is available for the self-isolation support grant, given the demand for that grant.

Therefore, there is £375 million available for business support—£200 million from the Scottish Government’s fixed budget and £175 million from the UK Government—and we have added an extra £100 million to the self-isolation support grant.

Do you mean with regard to any change to the self-isolation position?

I will say a few words about it, for the record. Following a four-nations review of the international travel regulations, this instrument removed from the red list at 4 am on Wednesday 15 December the 11 countries that had been added temporarily. The rapid growth of omicron around the world meant that it was appropriate to do so at that point.

In addition, technical amendments were made to allow children travelling to Scotland who are aged 11 and under to leave self-isolation if their accompanying adult’s day 2 test comes back negative. That does not change the position in which the adult’s test is positive; in that case, children must remain in isolation. If one adult in the travelling group or family tests positive and another tests negative, the domestic isolation guidance applies; household contacts of any person who tests positive are asked to isolate for 10 days.

If a child under the age of 11 arrives unaccompanied, they are no longer required to self-isolate.

Motion moved,

That the COVID-19 Recovery Committee recommends that the Public Health (Coronavirus) (International Travel and Operator Liability) (Scotland) Amendment (No. 13) Regulations 2021 (SSI 2021/470) be approved.—[John Swinney]

Motion agreed to.

That is a very important question. We have to proceed with enormous care when considering such issues. Last night, and again on the radio this morning, I listened to Professor Aziz Sheikh, who is the principal author of the University of Edinburgh study. Although Mr Fraser is absolutely correct in saying that the study indicates that, at this early stage, omicron might result in a lower proportion of cases resulting in hospitalisation, Professor Sheikh pressed the point that ministers and other clinicians have made, which is that, even if a lower proportion of cases result in hospitalisation, if that lower proportion is of a much larger number of cases—which is apparent with the omicron variant, because it is spreading like wildfire through the country—that will put serious pressures on the national health service.

When Professor Sheikh was asked what steps we should take in the light of his study, he said that we should roll out the booster vaccination programme and limit our social interaction, and that is precisely what the Scottish Government is doing. We are rolling out the booster vaccination programme, and we are encouraging people—in some cases, we are requiring people—to reduce their social interaction. That appears to me to be the proportionate and prudent approach to take at this stage.

Mr Fraser asked how the studies should affect decision making in due course. The Government will look with care at such studies and consider how they affect, as I have rehearsed with the committee on a number of occasions, the judgment on the proportionate steps that we should take to deal with the significance of omicron. The dilemma that ministers face is that, if we do not take early enough action to suppress the circulation of the virus within our society, we will find that we have a problem that is too big to arrest, that we are too late and that our health service is overwhelmed.

The ministers in the Scottish Government have consistently taken the attitude and view that we need to intervene early to take preventative action and avoid the situation running away from us. Obviously, we have to make a careful judgment about how long the restrictions that we have set out, which come into effect on 26 and 27 December, need to be in place to ensure that we are taking sufficient action to suppress this variant of the virus.

Lastly, ministers are always cognisant of the need to take proportionate decisions in relation to the state of the pandemic, and this study will be one factor to be added into that judgment.

The finance secretary is engaging in dialogue with various sectors on this question and, as I said in my previous answer, she will make announcements in due course. All that I can give you is the candid reflection that we will not be able to support everybody who has been affected by the restrictions that have had to be put in place. We have taken significant steps using our own resources to ensure that we have been able to put some funding in place, and the Government has explicitly said that it would help us enormously if the UK Government would put in place a targeted extension of the furlough scheme, because of the challenges that we face. That has not been forthcoming so far. I welcome the funding support that has come from the UK Government, but we would be in a better position to respond to the situation if we had access to a broader range of options, including furlough. Had that been available, the resources at our disposal—our own resources—could have been deployed to tackle other challenges and priorities. As I have said, the finance secretary will make announcements on this in due course.

The issues are being actively considered just now. The finance secretary will update the Parliament and the wider public at the earliest possible opportunity.

That issue has to be treated with significant care. At the core of the challenge that we face in relation to Covid in general, but especially omicron, is the need to break the chains of transmission. That is critical. It is nothing new—it has been the consistent challenge throughout Covid—and self-isolation is a critical element in that process. It is especially critical in relation to omicron, because of the degree of transmissibility of omicron. That puts added emphasis on ensuring that our self-isolation arrangements are appropriate.

It follows from that that, if we do not apply the right self-isolation approach, we run the risk of enabling people who may still be able to transmit the virus to be released from self-isolation, which defeats its purpose. Therefore, fine judgment has to be applied on that question. There is obviously a lot of anxiety—in the business community, for example—about the availability of key workers. We have exemptions for critical workers in the arrangements that are in place. That process is managed very efficiently and carefully in Government to ensure that, where it can be justified, individuals can be released from self-isolation to make a contribution to the—[Inaudible.]—in our society. The exemption exists, so some of that business anxiety is addressed by measures that we have in place.

The Government is considering the issues that are raised by the change in the policy approach that has been adopted by the UK Government, but we will consider the issues that I raised at the beginning of my answer carefully in that process. Professor Leitch might want to add a clinical perspective.

Those are two very important questions. On the first one, which was about the hesitancy that there is in some communities, a great deal of work has been done to tailor communication with those communities, with trusted voices speaking about the vaccination programme in those communities.

Mr Rowley raised the example of the Polish community. We are very grateful to representatives of the Catholic Church who have been very active in promoting the message on the importance of vaccination. That message has been relayed strongly and powerfully by the Catholic community in Scotland and has reached members of the Polish community. I would be absolutely staggered if there were not members of the Polish community who are actively involved in the vaccination programme, because members of the Polish community are very valued and significant members of the community that I represent, and are very much involved in the delivery of public services in our communities.

Various other steps have been taken to increase take-up in the black and minority ethnic communities, with trusted voices again being involved in that communication.

Having said all that, I have to accept that we must continue to do more to reach the levels of trust and confidence that will enable people to take up vaccination. To go back to the convener’s example of her constituent Angela, the consequences of not so doing can be acute and very dangerous. Therefore, the Government will constantly revisit the importance of ensuring that we get the messages for such communities correct. We are very grateful to the trusted voices in those communities who have worked with us on that messaging, and I give the committee the assurance that we will continue to do that.

On Mr Rowley’s second question—which, again, is a very important one—he is fundamentally correct. We live in a global society. We must remember that, when omicron first reared its head, it did so in a province of South Africa. The travel patterns of the world are such that it did not take long before a case emerged in Hong Kong. Cases then emerged in Scotland and in the rest of the United Kingdom. That is the world that we live in nowadays. A hundred years ago, a major excursion for people in Coupar Angus—which is near where I live—would have been to go to Blairgowrie, which is a grand total of 5 miles away. The world has changed immeasurably since then and, as a consequence, the ability of viruses to spread is colossal, unless we get a comprehensive vaccination solution in place that provides much greater protection for all of us.

The Scottish Government has made such representations to the United Kingdom Government, and we will continue to do so, so that the UK plays an important and influential role in the international discussions about vaccine equity and makes a contribution to that process. Mr Rowley is fundamentally correct—we can have as effective a booster programme as we like, but we remain vulnerable to the development of a new variant, which could undermine the strong efforts that we are making to keep our population safe.

It is absolutely vital. We reiterated that in the First Minister’s statement on Tuesday. We have also reiterated that in the obligations that we are placing on businesses and venues to ensure that the check-in arrangements are visible and complied with, and that businesses “have regard to” the measure. The whole check-in arrangement is absolutely crucial to enabling us to interrupt the transmission of the virus.

It is encouraging news that more lateral flow tests are being used. It is such a straightforward process and it is so crucial in giving people information—I know of numerous cases where people have stumbled across the fact that they are Covid positive by doing regular lateral flow tests. They had absolutely no symptoms whatsoever and then got a positive test result. As a consequence of undertaking that lateral flow test, they were able to change their behaviour and actions. That is a significant strengthening of our ability to resist the challenges that we face.0