Chamber and committees

I will make some remarks on the Scottish statutory instruments, six of which amended the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Regulations 2020 (SSI 2020/344). The six instruments made various adjustments to the levels rules that were in place at the time and were then removed when we moved beyond level 0 on 9 August. In order to assist the committee, I will run through the changes made by the regulations.

The Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Amendment (No 27) Regulations 2021, which came into force on 11 June, made provision for local authority officers to have a power of entry in relation to restrictions on stadia and events. The regulations also adjusted the physical distancing requirements in place at Hampden stadium and at Glasgow Green during the Union of European Football Associations championship.

The Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Amendment (No 28) Regulations 2021 removed travel restrictions in relation to the Republic of Ireland and Bedford in England, and introduced travel restrictions in relation to travel to and from Manchester and Salford. Those regulations came into force on 18 June.

The Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Amendment (No 29) Regulations 2021 came into force on 26 and 28 June and made a number of changes including adjusting physical distancing requirements at funerals and for an event at Murrayfield, extending hospitality opening hours for the knockout stages of the Euros and adjusting the face covering rules at weddings and civil partnerships.

The Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Amendment (No 30) Regulations 2021 removed all travel restrictions in relation to Bolton, Manchester and Salford on 30 June.

The Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Amendment (No 31) Regulations 2021 adjusted the physical distancing requirements at the Scottish Open golf championship and removed travel restrictions in relation to Blackburn and Darwen. Those regulations came into force on 8 July.

The Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Amendment (No 32) Regulations 2021 came into force on 19 July. The regulations moved all of Scotland into level 0 and made various adjustments to the levels regulations. Physical distancing requirements were reduced to 1m indoors and outdoors. The regulations also removed the requirement for physical distancing between people in a gathering of up to 15 people outdoors. They provided that children under the age of 12 years did not count for the purpose of calculating the number of households permitted for gatherings indoors, and altered hospitality trading times at level 0.

As the committee knows, we were able to move beyond level 0 on 9 August. At that point, baseline measures were put in place in the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Requirements) (Scotland) Regulations 2021, which set out four sets of legal requirements as baseline measures.

First, relevant hospitality and entertainment premises are required to obtain and record customer information for a period of at least 21 days for the purpose of preventing the spread of coronavirus or monitoring the spread of infection and the incidence of coronavirus disease.

Secondly, the regulations require persons responsible for places of worship, carrying on a business or providing a service to have regard to relevant guidance issued by the Scottish ministers and available on the Scottish Government website about measures to minimise risk of exposure to coronavirus.

Thirdly, the regulations also provide that people in specified indoor places and on public transport must wear a face covering unless a specific exemption applies.

Finally, the regulations cap numbers at live events at 5,000 people for events held outdoors and at 2,000 people for events held indoors, subject to local authority approval of higher attendance limits. The Scottish ministers are also provided with powers to call in applications for exemption from capacity.

The new regulations, like the previous levels regulations, provide for enforcement of the requirements. The new regulations also provide that the requirements must be reviewed at least once every 21 days and that the Scottish ministers must revoke any requirement as soon as it is no longer necessary. The first review had to take place by 30 August. The regulations remain in force, but we are keeping the requirements under review.

Finally, I inform the committee that the Scottish Government’s report on the Coronavirus (Extension and Expiry) (Scotland) Act 2021 will be laid before the Parliament tomorrow. That will fulfil the requirement in sections 5 and 7 of the act to lay a one-off report before the Scottish Parliament one month after the act has received royal assent.

I am happy to answer any questions that the committee may have about the regulations.

The committee may well have to consider SSIs on the issue. Obviously, the purpose of a plenary debate is to seek parliamentary approval in principle for the approach that the Government is taking, in recognition of the very different and distinctive character of the decision, but any other requirements for legislative provision or enforcement will require to come to the committee and to the Delegated Powers and Legislative Reform Committee. The Government will fulfil all requirements in that respect.

I cannot answer today as to whether the emergency procedure will be required, but I will answer when we have come to conclusions on that point, and we will advise the committee of that.

It is important that we constantly revisit the messaging on the whole issue of Covid to ensure that it is achieving its purpose. I think that, in general, over the course of the pandemic, Government communications have been very effective and very focused in getting the message across. Particularly for younger people, we must ensure that good, strong evidence is available to them about the dangers to which they are exposed as a consequence of Covid. The committee has discussed and Parliament has extensively discussed long Covid, which could be a very serious factor in younger people’s lives.

The most important thing is that we have to ensure that we properly and fully address the issues and perspectives of young people in identifying how we can most effectively communicate such a message and ensure that young people are persuaded that they are as much at risk from Covid as other members of our society are. It is important that we do not have a message that suggests anything other than that young people face significant risks as a consequence of the virus.

Thank you.

Mr Fairlie’s latter point is an important one that gets to the heart of a point that I made in my opening statement. The Government has changed its approach to the handling of the pandemic. I said earlier that we are no longer seeking to suppress Covid to the lowest possible level and that, now that we have vaccinations, the restrictions required to suppress Covid could not be justified, given that they cause serious harms of their own. We are trying to operate within a context in which vaccination is available to us and, if we maximise the uptake of vaccinations, we will provide the greatest amount of protection against the prevalence of the virus.

The best way to explain that is to go back to the situation that we faced in January. In January, the Government got advice that basically said to us that, unless we applied a further, immediate lockdown, there would be a very serious risk—if not an inevitability—that our health service would be unable to meet its central purpose and commitment to members of the public. We had to follow that advice because such a low level of the population—a tiny proportion—had been vaccinated at that time, and even then, only one dose had been given.

Today, we find ourselves in a very different situation with a very successful vaccination programme for the over-40s and a vaccination programme for the under-40s that still has some way to go. We are trying to take steps, essentially, to enable us to maximise the protection that we can achieve from the vaccination programme. That is the strategy that the Government is pursuing. We are trying to utilise vaccination as the means of resisting the pressure that the virus can put on us and to avoid having to take any further restrictive measures.

We knew from the four harms analysis—on which the previous committee questioned me before the election in May, and which dominated our thinking and planning as we took steps to relax restrictions over the past 12 months or so—that we had to take steps that would adapt and change, given the presence of the vaccination programme in our society and its effectiveness. There has been a change in the way that the Government is handling such issues. It recognises that Covid causes multiple harms that we need to avoid. The best way to do that is by having very high participation rates in the vaccination programme and by following the baseline measures that I discussed earlier with Mr Rowley.

Mr Fairlie asked whether there are any plans to extend the need for certification beyond the very limited number of groupings that we have highlighted. The Government has no plans to do that.

I do not know whether Professor Leitch wants to add to anything that I have said.

The primary purpose of the policy proposal that the First Minister set out yesterday is to strengthen resistance to the virus by maximising compliance with the measures that we know will have the greatest impact in stemming the prevalence of serious illness as a consequence of people contracting it.

We face a very difficult situation just now. Members will be familiar with the fact that the number of cases has risen sharply in recent weeks, since the relaxation of restrictions on 9 August. Earlier in the summer, there was a very sharp rise and then a very sharp fall in the number of infections. At this stage, the Government is concerned that the rise in the number of infections needs to be tackled with measures to try to reduce its significance.

As the First Minister set out to Parliament yesterday, even if 2 to 3 per cent of individuals who test positive for Covid have to be admitted to hospital, 2 to 3 per cent of a very large number is a lot of people, and that equates to the levels of hospitalisation at previous stages in the pandemic, which we wish to avoid. We are trying to take steps within the measures that are available to us, without reintroducing restrictions, to maximise the capacity of the population to resist the spread of coronavirus. The purpose of the move is to maximise resistance within the population and reduce the danger that we will have to impose further restrictions in the future. It is clear that the Government is keen to ensure that that does not happen.

I am certainly happy to provide the committee with the range of measures that we have taken to strengthen the vaccination programme. A pretty established part of the discussion about the suppression of Covid is that vaccination is a critical and absolutely fundamental element of our strategy.

We need only look at where we are today and the current level of cases. If we had had anything approaching a proportion of those cases at a prior stage of the pandemic, we would, as we know, have been applying lockdown measures. We had to do that in January, when case levels were much lower than they are currently, but at that time we did not have the protection of the vaccination programme. Vaccination is absolutely central to the Government’s response to the pandemic. I am very happy to marshal that evidence and to set out to the committee what steps the Government has taken to reach the extraordinarily high levels of vaccination in the country.

That said, we have some challenges with uptake in lower age groups. Although the uptake among the over-40s is extraordinarily high, we still have some way to go in the 18 to 40-year age groups, and we are taking steps to maximise vaccination levels. That is our clear strategy, because with such an approach, we are taking steps to try to avoid applying any further restrictions later.

As I have said, I am happy to marshal that evidence and information for the committee. There will be a parliamentary debate on the wider question of vaccine certification next week, and the Government will make the necessary information available to enable Parliament to make an informed decision on that question.

More than 4 million people have been vaccinated in Scotland, and I am confident that, for the overwhelming majority of those individuals, vaccine records will be strong and robust. Because of what John Mason has just put to me, I have to accept that there are instances where there are issues with the accuracy of the information.

Any suspected errors in a person’s Covid vaccination record should be reported to the national helpline; there is a telephone number available on the NHS Inform website. In general, however, the quality and strength of health records in Scotland are very good, fundamentally because they are anchored in the community health index number that every citizen has. That provides us with a robust footing and foundation for the delivery of information about the vaccination records of individuals. However, I accept that there will be a limited number of cases in which that information may not be entirely complete.

I agree with Mr Whittle’s description of Covid as a moving feast. We are facing a constantly moving challenge. If we are to be realistic about addressing the implications of Covid, the Government has to be prepared to adapt and change our position should we need to do so, and that is precisely the approach that the Government has taken throughout the pandemic. We have not sat and been oblivious to the changing circumstances or prevalence of the virus. If we had done that, we would have had a much more serious situation on our hands than the very serious situation that we have faced. The Government has to adapt to changing circumstances, which is exactly what we have done.

We try to discuss issues with business sectors on an on-going basis. We have a huge amount of dialogue with all sectors of society, and we take on board the practical feedback that we get. Ultimately, however, the Government has to make choices, and sometimes it is difficult to make choices in a way that involves as much open prior dialogue and consultation as we would ordinarily like.

Yesterday, Mr Fraser raised a point of order with the Presiding Officer about the fact that, prior to the First Minister standing up to give a statement, there had been some media commentary about the Covid certification issue. I understand exactly why Mr Fraser said that, but I think that the time difference between the First Minister standing up and that point appearing in the media was maybe 20 to 30 minutes. It is pretty clear that, if the Government had had open consultation with sectors beforehand, that information would have been out before Parliament heard it and Parliament would understandably have been pretty aggrieved about that.

In response to earlier questions, I said that the Government will of course engage with the sectors to ensure that we hear all the issues before Parliament comes to a conclusion on these points, and I give that assurance to Mr Whittle today. It is important to have that dialogue. As I have said, I had a very constructive discussion yesterday with more than 150 sectoral representatives about the importance of applying the baseline measures, and among all those organisations I detected a willingness to be part of that journey with us. If we are all part of that journey, we can reach a good and positive outcome.

Thank you.