Chamber and committees

I accept that the cross-border issue can be challenging, depending on whether someone had their first dose in Scotland and their second dose in England, or their first dose in England and their second dose in Scotland, or whether they were outwith the common travel area and so on. With regard to the certification scheme, people’s proof of being vaccinated—whether it is the English app or a paper copy—will be accepted. People will not be turned away from the football, a late night venue or wherever else.

We have a bit of a challenge with updating records for what are termed orphan records—those who had a dose in England but who do not have an NHS number, which is the equivalent of our community health index number. That issue has to be resolved with NHS England. Once a person has that number, the issue can be resolved. I might bring in Jonathan Cameron to give an update on the portal, which we hope to launch either today or very shortly. The portal will allow people to upload their record, and then the issue can be resolved at the other end.

I assume that it met. Forgive me, but I have not seen the outcome. As the member knows, the First Minister made her statement on Tuesday so, if there were any significant announcements to make, I am sure that she would have made them. My officials might wish to add something, but—

Yes. On the ventilation point in particular, we will be happy to provide updates.

We engage with those experts regularly; indeed, someone like Professor Stephen Reicher carries considerable weight when he speaks. We have, of course, considered what you have highlighted.

The First Minister has said that we are not ruling out having to produce a negative test in future, but we are not introducing that measure with the implementation of this scheme, because a requirement for an unsupervised lateral flow test can be abused and people can gain entry to venues by falsifying the result. We are trying to make the scheme as stringent as possible on implementation.

I am not taking away from what Stephen Reicher or, indeed, Murdo Fraser has said with regard to those who might be vaccine resistant becoming entrenched in their views, and we are keeping a close eye on the matter. We will evaluate the impact of the vaccination certification scheme through a variety of data sources, including information that shows whether we are seeing an uptick in the vaccination rate. When we announced our intention to have a vaccination certification scheme, we saw such a rise, particularly among the younger age groups. We will keep these things under review and, as you would imagine, look at other metrics such as case numbers and hospital bed and intensive care unit occupancy as well as wider societal and economic impacts. All such matters will be regularly considered; indeed, we will review the scheme every three weeks, as Murdo Fraser knows, and we will continue to engage with stakeholders.

That said, we are very aware and conscious of the points that Murdo Fraser and Professor Reicher have made, and we will keep a close eye on them.

I am happy to answer questions about my statement last week. First, when any of our trade unions speak up and speak out, they will be listened to by the Government. I spoke to the trade unions last week about my statement, before I made it, and about additional funding for the Scottish Ambulance Service. I speak to trade unions regularly. You talked about nursing. I spoke to the Royal College of Nursing on, I think, Friday past. We speak and engage regularly with trade unions and take what they say very seriously.

The answer to your question is yes—the Government and I have a grasp of just how serious the situation is across our NHS and social care. It is important to talk not just about the pressure in hospitals; there is also significant pressure across social care. That is why the announcement that I made included the biggest winter pressure funding package ever announced in the history of devolution—which is as it should be, because we will face more pressure this winter than we have in any other winter, not just under devolution but, probably, in the NHS’s 73-year existence. The funding will, I hope, go a long way in making an impact not just on the acute side but in primary care and social care in the community.

On your specific questions, I hope that any concerns about patient safety are flagged up to the local health board initially, but to the Government as well. We have the highest ever level of staffing in the NHS under any Government, and we will continue to recruit. My statement set out significant ambitions for the recruitment of not only nurses but staff in bands 2 to 4.

However, I have to be up front with the member and with the public. The measures will help to mitigate some of the challenges, but we are still in for an incredibly difficult winter. Clinicians tell me that they are concerned not just about Covid pressures—albeit that we hope to make a significant dent in those as we control transmission—but about the flu and other respiratory viruses, because we suspect that our immunity is quite low. Flu had not been circulating as much due to the lockdown and the restrictive measures that we were under, so the concern is that people’s immunity is low.

I promise Alex Rowley, the trade unions and—most important—the public that every penny that we get through additional consequentials on health and social care will be spent on health and social care. We should get more clarity on the level of those consequentials after the UK Government’s spending review, which I think is on 27 October. If additional funds come to health and social care, I promise that we will get those out of the door as soon as possible.

I thank Paul O’Kane for that important question. There has been dialogue at official level for quite a while now, but the fact that we did not get the detail of what was in the bill until, I think, the day before it was introduced was a source of frustration for my officials. Just over two months ago I wrote to Minister Argar to highlight my concerns with regard to areas of devolved competence. I did not receive a response until two months later, which I can understand—I myself am extremely busy with correspondence and have sometimes taken longer to respond than I would have liked to. However, although I understand that these things can take time, what I have found frustrating is the nature rather than the timing of the response.

I am happy and willing to go back to the UK Government to ask for its response to be shared and put in the Scottish Parliament information centre for Parliament’s scrutiny, but even without doing that, I can safely tell the committee that the response that I received did not address the substantial points around devolved competence and the issue of consultation versus consent. In the meeting that I will have tomorrow, I will be fairly robust in that conversation about the fact that my expectations have not been met.

Finally, I should point out that there is not that much disagreement with regard to the policy areas; in fact, I could see us aligning with the policy intent in a lot of areas. However, this is about the principle that, with anything that falls within our devolved competence, we should not be treated simply as consultees. Instead, our consent as a Government should be sought, and the appropriate parliamentary processes should be followed.

The dialogue will continue, and I hope that we can reach some sort of agreement. If so, I will bring forward a supplementary LCM.

They could. It is accepted that food labelling is a devolved subject, and the UK Government is seeking consent in respect of the clause that would give the Scottish ministers an equivalent power to that which the secretary of state would have for England. I do not think that there would be the same impact that would apply in relation to online advertising, but I will take that question away and ensure that the provisions could not, as Ms Harper described it, “bleed into” other policy areas in the bill.

Yes—that is a completely fair comment. The consultation process—or lack thereof, thus far—has been frustrating. We will, no doubt, go into the matter in more detail with members’ questions, but the fundamental point and central concern is the difference between consultation and consent. Where we have, as the UK Government recognises, devolved competence in certain areas—the challenge, of course, is that we have competence in other areas, too—our simply being consulted as a Government is not good enough, particularly when it comes to the scrutiny processes of Parliament. This is about consent.

I should also point out that, from my conversations with the Welsh Government and the Welsh Minister for Health and Social Services, Eluned Morgan, I know that she is very much in the same space. The Welsh Government is frustrated because, in areas of devolved competence, it is being told that it will be consulted instead of its consent being sought. This is a very important issue not only for all of us who believe in the devolution settlement, which I suspect is everybody around the table and online, but for parliamentary scrutiny, as you have rightly pointed out, convener.

As I have come to find out, the regulation of healthcare is an extraordinarily complex landscape. Some of that regulation sits in the reserved space and some it sits in the devolved space, depending on the body that is regulated. The bill’s provisions form part of a much wider programme of reform of professional healthcare, which the UK Government is taking forward with the support of the devolved Administrations.

I know from my conversations that the statutory regulators, who would obviously be most affected by that, are generally supportive of the principles of reform. Therefore, I do not have any particular concerns in that area, but we always keep an eye on those matters as they progress.

Quite frankly, that is a significant concern. That is one of the areas that we think requires consent rather than just consultation. For example, we have robust measures in place when it comes to pseudonymised—depersonalised—patient data. However, at the stroke of a pen and through mere consultation of the Scottish ministers, that depersonalised and anonymised Scottish patient data could be used in a very different way. I have real concerns about that. That is why it is imperative that we are not just consulted and that our consent is sought.