Chamber and committees

Not just now.

I know that Mr Harvie was nuanced and understated in that article, but forensic analysis will glean that, on balance, he was not in favour of vaccine passports.

Fast forward six weeks and Mr Harvie has changed his view. I am not sure whether he now thinks that use of threats and coercion to get people vaccinated is acceptable. I am not sure whether he is bothered about public trust, inequality or discrimination any more.

Patrick Harvie rose—

I know Lamara Bell’s family—I am thinking of them today, as I have for many days over the past six years.

For the justice secretary to use this week, of all weeks, to claim that the centralisation of the police is “a success story” is both insulting and offensive, especially as the chief constable has admitted that, for three years, the call centre system was unsafe.

Four months before the tragic deaths of Lamara and John, I warned Nicola Sturgeon about the problems at the Bilston Glen call centre, but the Government did nothing to stop the cavalier closures. Political decisions have consequences. Will the cabinet secretary follow the dignified lead of the chief constable and accept that the Government got the police centralisation programme wrong?

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

Today at First Minister’s question tim, the First Minister quoted Professor Reicher, but her description of his views was not complete. He says that vaccine certificates could “lead to riskier behaviours” and could make some people less likely to get vaccinated. Will the cabinet secretary give a more comprehensive account of Professor Reicher’s views than the selective one that was given at lunch time?

It is amazing how compliant Mr Harvie has become after just a few weeks in office. Six weeks ago, he was against coercion. Now he has joined the SNP and he is in favour of coercion. I have a little bit of advice for Mr Harvie. Some may say that I have a little bit of experience of this. If Mr Harvie does not want to get pushed around for the next five years by his new coalition partners, he needs to stand up now for what he believes, and there is no better opportunity to do that than today. His vote will make the difference in this debate. I say, “Stand up for what you believe, Mr Harvie.”

My opposition to Covid ID cards was first expressed last autumn, when I asked the First Minister about them in this very chamber. She denied that she had any plans to introduce them. I raised the issue again in the spring, and several times in the election campaign. I banged my desk in approval when Patrick Harvie challenged the First Minister about Covid ID cards.

My opposition is simple: as a Liberal, I am always suspicious of Governments that want to accrue for themselves more powers—no matter how apparently innocuous they are—over the freedom of the individual. It is why I opposed the SNP Government’s plans to introduce a super ID database—the precursor to an ID card in this country. It is why I was opposed to the Labour Government’s ID cards, which, I say to Mr Harvie, we scrapped when we got into power. It is a major shift in the power balance between the state and the individual to introduce vaccine ID cards in this country. It would require people to be treated in order to get access to normal services. That is not something that I am prepared to accept. We need to be very careful whenever we consider shifts in the power of the state. Such shifts should not be rushed.

We received the flimsy six-page note from the Government this morning. A few hours are insufficient time to consider the issue. Parliament should not be bounced by the Government, and the issue deserves more than a couple of thousand words of waffle. The note asserts this: Covid ID cards will work. That is about the length of the argument. There is no guidance, no regulations and no agreement with other countries—not even our neighbours in the rest of the UK. The QR code has not been widely tested. The technology has not been shared with venues and they have had no training. All of this is supposed to be in place in 21 days’ time—three weeks.

The IT system cannot cope with the current demand for vaccine passports for foreign travel, so I cannot see how it will cope with a massive increase in demand. I am also unclear as to what the Government thinks vaccine passports will fix. Having the vaccine does not stop people from contracting or spreading the virus, although it does limit it. The danger is—this is Professor Reicher’s argument—that people at big events will ignore all the protections, as if they have had the all-clear from a Government-endorsed ID card. That is an argument that Government ministers have been particularly enthusiastic about over the past 18 months.

I am afraid that the Government has lost its head. It has been captured by the “Something must be done” advocates. We have worked together through the pandemic. I have praised the First Minister for her leadership. We have asked many people to make many great sacrifices, and many have made the ultimate sacrifice. However, we have always sought to unite society to beat the virus together. I fear that the Government is abandoning that approach today. It is overreaching; it is garnering more powers for itself against the individual, and it is doing it with such great haste.

I urge the Government to think again.

I know that the minister engages with business, and he has assisted me with many businesses in my constituency. However, given all the disruption that he has talked about that has in part been caused by Brexit, does that not make him pause to think about the disruption that would inevitably come with independence?

The minister listed many contributors to poor mental health, but I did not hear him mention the fact that we have enormously long lists or the contribution that that fact makes to the worsening of mental health in this country. It is no surprise that mental health does not improve if people have to wait up to two years to get treatment. Will the minister do something about that situation at last?

That is a wonderful contortion—I congratulate Murdo Fraser on that complicated explanation.

That extremes position, in which the Conservatives and the SNP are as bad as each other with their propositions on Brexit and independence, is repeated in the positions of the Greens and the Conservatives on economic growth. It was interesting to hear Liz Smith explore that important area. I rarely say this, but I think that John Mason was right that we should not have absolutist positions on the issue. It is not about having GDP or nothing; it is about having a balance and making sure that we take into account the social and economic impact as well as the environmental impact. Governments in the past—particularly Conservative Governments—have had an almost absolutist commitment to economic growth to the exclusion of all else. The absolutist positions of the Conservatives and the Greens are at the extremes and do not help us to move forward in the debate.

Liz Smith is now free to leave the chamber as she wishes, because I will not refer to her any more.

Coming out of the pandemic was always going to be much more difficult than going into it. We have seen that in the many business failures and the incredibly turbulent position that we are now in.

I happen to think that it is a good thing that workers are getting paid an awful lot more, especially those who were on low wages. Of course it is challenging for businesses, which are finding it difficult to get good workers to open their businesses. Many of them have been operating under restricted hours as a result, and they are not able to meet the pent-up customer demand that we have seen in recent weeks. Of course it is a good thing that workers are being paid more, but the challenge for business is considerable.

There has also been a shortage of materials, partly as a result of manufacturing disruption and, again, the pent-up demand that has come through. Of course, there is Brexit as well. We have not seen the worst of Brexit yet, because the pandemic has partly held the world in suspension. We may see the full consequences of Brexit that are yet to hit when the full release of the pandemic comes. Businesses are also facing pressure—good pressure—on climate change, with increasing demands from government and society to reform their operations.

All of those things are incredible pressures. For me, adding on top of that the challenge of independence would be reckless. I agreed with the First Minister when she said, in the election campaign, that the recovery would come first. I think that the recovery is going to take a very long time to secure. We have seen the turbulence now, and it will take even longer to get on top of it. Even if we take into account the massive challenges that we face in our social care sector, in recruiting workers, through economic pressures and with issues around the NHS, it will take a long time to recover from the pandemic, and I think that it would be reckless to pursue independence in the process.

The Government is good at promises. I give it credit for that. It has endless promises; there are lists of commitments that it has made. However, its delivery is very poor. Just consider its industrial strategy. I reluctantly return, once again, to the subject of the Lochaber smelter. There is no sign at all of the 2,000 promised jobs for the Fort William area. We are barely keeping the company alive. Referring to Ferguson’s, there is no sign of those ferries for the desperate islanders who want reliable ferry services. As for Burntisland Fabrications Ltd, there is just no sign of the company at all: it collapsed, despite significant Government investment. When it comes to delivery on its promises, the Government is not particularly good.

I agree with Liz Smith on that—that is a very sensible proposition.

I will quickly go through some of the key priorities for the coming period. We need to reform the skills and training agenda. We need to ensure that the apprenticeship levy works more effectively—it is a disincentive for training. We need a 12-month Covid recovery visa—that is a UK Government responsibility that it needs to deliver. We need to sort out the driver training programme—that is going to be a real priority. There is also the matter of universities. Some of our most international institutions are under incredible pressure just now. They are major economic drivers, and we need to support them so that they can do more of what they do well.

Liz Smith, who unfortunately is just leaving the chamber, made an interesting slip. She said that independence would be “Brexit times 10”. That is from a member of the Conservative Party, which claimed that Brexit was going to be a good thing for our country. Liz Smith admitted that there is deep uncertainty in the Conservative Party about the reality of Brexit. The point is that Brexit and independence are as bad as each other. The mistakes of Brexit should not be repeated and should be remembered when we enter this next phase, as the SNP tries to move forward on independence. Of course independence would be Brexit times 10, which is why we should not repeat the mistake.