Contents
- Attendance
- Interests
- Covid-19 Restrictions (Winter)
- Subordinate Legislation
Subordinate Legislation
Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Protection from Eviction) (Scotland) Regulations 2020 [Draft]
Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Amendment (No 7) Regulations 2020 [Draft]
We will now consider agenda item 3. This morning, we will take evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, Europe and External Affairs, Michael Russell MSP, and Professor Jason Leitch, national clinical director, on this week’s review of the restrictions and levels imposed by the Government. The committee will also consider draft regulations arising from this week’s review. We will not vote on the regulations until a later meeting of the committee.
I welcome the cabinet secretary and Professor Leitch to the meeting.
As the committee is aware, on Tuesday, the First Minister set out the outcome of the fifth weekly review of the allocation of levels. Since our levels approach under the strategic framework was introduced at the end of October, we have been seeing a decrease in the number of positive cases being reported each day.? Encouragingly, that suggests that our approach, with the different levels of protective measures, is having the positive impact that it was developed to achieve.
Although prevalence of the virus is still too high, we hope to see further improvements over the coming weeks as the data reflects the impact of the temporary level 4 measures that we introduced. However, we are not complacent. Although the four-nations agreement for a limited relaxation of rules over the festive period will help to combat social isolation and loneliness, it brings with it risks of increased virus transmission.
We have already made it clear that the safest way to spend Christmas is for people to stay within their own existing households, but we acknowledge that there will be demand to see family and friends at this time. The significant risk that that mixing will lead to a rise in the R number and increased cases of Covid-19 is a real one. That is why it has been necessary for this week’s review to continue to take a cautious approach, to manage the risk carefully to ensure that the hard work and sacrifices of people across Scotland are not undermined.
This week’s review sees changes, including confirmation that all 11 local authorities currently in level 4 will move to level 3 from Friday. Those decisions have been made against the need to continue to lower the prevalence of the virus prior to the festive period.? That is key to avoiding the need for more restrictive protective measures in the new year.?
The 11 local authorities have seen prevalence of the virus fall significantly in each area—in some, the number of cases has more than halved.? However, we need to remain cautious. Five other local authorities will see their allocation levels lowered from Friday: two in level 2, Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders, have had consistently low levels for some weeks now and will move to level 1, and three areas in level 3, Angus, Falkirk and Inverclyde, will move down to level 2 as they all now have relatively low rates of transmission.
We also looked carefully at other authorities, including Argyll and Bute and the City of Edinburgh.? Edinburgh is a difficult decision. I am sure that Jason Leitch will have more to say about that. Although it is currently recording cases below the Scottish average, there has been a slight rise in Edinburgh in recent days.
The risks from increased social activity over the festive period are particularly acute in large urban areas such as Edinburgh.? Edinburgh’s good transport links and high concentration of hospitality and retail venues has always attracted—and will continue to attract—a large number of people from a wider area. In the current circumstances, that would increase opportunities for transmission.?That additional risk was a factor for consideration in this week’s review and in our decision not to move Edinburgh at this stage. We have acknowledged the local concerns around that decision and the First Minister has confirmed—and I do so again now—that we will consider the positions of Edinburgh and Midlothian again next week.
As with last week’s review, the trends in case numbers and test positivity in Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire continue to be a source of concern.?We will continue to monitor the situation closely but, in the meantime, both areas will remain at level 2.
In recognition of the need to combat social isolation in some of our more remote communities, especially during the winter months, and taking account of the persistently low infection rates, we have also announced an extension of the level 1 in-home socialising exception to Highland Council’s islands that are not connected by road.
The next scheduled review will be on 15 December.? We reserve the right to bring that forward for any one or more local authorities if the situation requires it.
We have provided the committee with two sets of draft regulations. The draft Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Amendment (No 7) Regulations 2020 make adjustments to the level allocation in 16 areas of Scotland, as I have just set out. The regulations also allow in-home socialising in certain islands, as I just mentioned. They also adjust the travel restrictions in relation to Jersey and the Republic of Ireland. Those regulations will come into force on 11 December.
The second set of regulations is the draft Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Protection from Eviction) (Scotland) Regulations 2020. Previously, we introduced a ban on the enforcement of eviction orders. The draft regulations provide for a ban across the private and social rented sectors for six weeks, from 11 December to 22 January. That reflects the First Minister’s announcement last week and provides support for people who should not be facing the anxiety of eviction during a pandemic and over this period.
I hope that those comments were helpful. Jason Leitch and I stand ready to answer any questions that we can.
Thank you, that was helpful.
You mentioned Edinburgh, cabinet secretary. There has been a huge deal of unhappiness about the position that Edinburgh is in. Even if Edinburgh were to drop a level next week, that would not take effect until next Friday, which is less than a week before Christmas, with all the impact that that will have on the local economy. What is the likelihood of Edinburgh moving down a level? What changes would have to happen for that to occur?
I will let Jason Leitch answer that in detail, but first I will repeat the point that I have just made, because it is very important. No one is unaware of the difficulties that the decision causes, and that has been a major issue in our considerations. As I have pointed out, Edinburgh is in a uniquely difficult position. It will be a draw and is a transport hub, particularly at this time of year. The risk that already exists for the Christmas period would be exacerbated if Edinburgh were to move down a level this week, and therefore the decision was taken that it should not move down. I am not pleased with that decision and I recognise and hear the substantial concerns that have been raised. However, the decision has been made considering all the relevant factors, including those that I have mentioned. That is why it stands at present.
Jason Leitch might want to say something about prevalence and the figures. The figures have seen a small uptick. I have not seen today’s figures, so Jason Leitch may be more up to date than I am on those.
Before I answer, I want to thank you, convener, for considering adjusting the timing of the meeting so that I could do the Scottish Government directors of public health update first thing this morning, as well as answer the committee’s questions. That update is hugely important for the public health advisers, so I appreciate that.
The cabinet secretary is correct. The advice around the marginal decisions is hugely difficult—it is difficult in Argyll and Bute, Dumfries and Galloway and the City of Edinburgh. The public health advice is much more rounded than just the data, although the data is central. As the committee has heard many times, it is not an algorithm into which we feed data and out the other end comes a level. We have to take into account the geography of the area, the advice of the director of public health, the ability for people to travel in and out, the time of year and everything that goes with that. It is not an exact science—it cannot be.
Members will have seen Wales deal with the issue in an entirely different way. Wales decided to take the whole country in and out of a level of restrictions together. That is a policy decision and not a public health one. As a country, we have decided to take a more regionalised approach, which throws up challenges in relation to where a region is in the scale of the data and what the region is.
Yesterday, we learned a number of things from the publication of the genomics data, which we may come on to in a different form in relation to travelling. One of the things that we learned from that data was that it is harder to get rid of the virus in urban areas. It makes perfect sense that it spreads in urban areas more easily than it does in rural areas. Edinburgh has that challenge, and it has stubbornly stable data. Edinburgh’s data is not falling. In the round, the Lothian NHS Board area had 150 new cases yesterday, and 5.1 per cent positivity. Information suggests that today’s data will be about the same when the First Minister announces it, and we publish it at 2 o’clock. The rate per 100,000 is pretty stable; from day to day, you could choose different points to make today a rise or make today a fall, but, in the end, the rate is pretty stable.
We also have to take into account your point that, in the week before Christmas, the shops need to be open. My counterargument would be that, in the week before Christmas, the shops are a real risk. Both those things are true, so it is a challenge for the decision makers to make a decision. We are worried about Christmas and the lead-up to it. From Thanksgiving in Canada and America, we have seen what a holiday period can do if it is not dealt with well.
More generally, people look at the indicators, and they compare local authority areas with one another. A lot of people feel that Edinburgh meets the requirements for level 2. Government and officials have always been clear that the indicators are not conclusive, and that it is a matter of overall judgment. Given that public confidence is so important, are you concerned that people may lose trust or faith in the indicators if they see those anomalies?
Yes, I am worried about that. I think that we were slightly between a rock and a hard place. When we went to a regional approach, of course we wanted to be as transparent as possible about the decisions that were made, but there is no black box with secret data in it. There is not what every sector seeks—the sudden secret of where the transmission is happening. The data is an attempt to both guide the decision making and be transparent with the public.
I absolutely agree with you that too much focus on the indicators—which is our fault, not anybody else’s—could begin to fray some people at the edges and suggest that perhaps these decisions are not as transparent as they are. I assure you that the data is taken into account very deeply by the directors of public health, as is other data that they have about outbreaks in Dumfries or Edinburgh that cannot be put into a spreadsheet or a table. That is the difference between, for example, the decision that we have made about Argyll and Bute, and the decisions that we have made for other areas that have gone up or down. We know that there is a big outbreak in Argyll and Bute, and there is not sustained community transmission. That information is hard to put in an Excel spreadsheet.
As the First Minister said, over the next few weeks—the Christmas and new year period—we will look at the levels, the frequency of the reviews, and the nature of the data that is in them. We do that all the time, but it might be the moment to draw breath and work out what we think January and February will look like, particularly after the Christmas break. As I have said already, I am worried about the Christmas break.
I will address an additional point, which I think is germane. There has been pressure from members across all parties about the publication of data, and I fully appreciate why. We publish almost every bit of data that we have, which runs the risk of people looking at it in a cursory fashion, or perhaps interpreting one bit and not another. However, the data has been asked for, and it is out there.
I am more than willing to talk about the issue of judgment based on that data. It is always an issue of judgment based on the data, but I hope that the confidence comes, in part at least, from the openness about such matters. Nothing is being held back, and nothing is secretive. We are being absolutely open about what the situation is, describing how difficult it is when there are marginal cases and why the decision has fallen the way that it has. We need to go on doing that. As Jason Leitch says, we constantly examine the processes that we are engaged in.
11:00
I thank both of you for those answers.
My final question concerns the period after Christmas. According to what has been said today and elsewhere, there is the risk of a surge following the Christmas period. Is the Government confident that services are prepared for that surge, in terms of both the numbers of people catching Covid and perhaps an increased requirement for testing and so on? Could I have the views of both of you on that?
I will point out a number of things.
The capacity for testing is increasing. A new laboratory opens on Saturday—the First Minister has given details on that.
One of the strong reasons for the actions that we have taken over the past six weeks to two months was to drive down the prevalence and the number of cases, so that if there were difficulties, as there will be, not just from Christmas time but from the normal winter pressures on the health service, we would be in a better position to address that than we would otherwise have been, had the situation continued to grow—exponentially, in some cases. That is the entire purpose.
In addition, there is a series of concurrent winter risks, and we have to be very straight about that. Two days ago, I made a statement in the chamber about the difficulties that will arise from Brexit and which are part of the concurrent risks. Covid is a concurrent risk, as are whatever happens with the winter weather, the pressure on public services and the fact that we are dealing with people on the front line who have been working solidly, certainly since March.
There are risks, and we have said constantly that we are as prepared as we can be. We have stood up the emergency arrangements and are continuing to develop those—my statement indicated how that will happen during this month. The ministerial oversight is there; last night, we had another meeting of the winter pressures group, which is looking at all these things—including the supply of medicines in light of the Brexit situation. We are therefore as confident as we can be and will do everything that we can. The regulations are designed to assist us in that task.
I am confident in the ability of the services, post-Christmas, to deal with Covid. The fundamental answer to the convener’s question is therefore yes. I could stop there, but I think that something else is very important.
Once Covid has to be treated, it is too late for some people, because we have no treatment. Many people will recover. If you catch the disease, you should not be scared, because you will almost certainly do well. However, some people who catch the disease will die, irrespective of how much test and protect we have, how much testing we do, or how many intensive care beds we have.
That is what worries me—not that the services will not cope with that surge. We will absolutely cope with the surge, but we have no treatment for the disease. That is what makes it different from a car accident or from something else that could happen during the winter. That is why the public health community will be so worried, until science and pharmaceuticals get us out the other end of this.
I am very confident that we will manage whatever happens, whether that needs more hospital beds or the ramping up of test and protect or whatever. The important thing is that, once you are infected, services do not get you out of this pandemic.
That has been a helpful beginning. It was welcome to hear Professor Leitch say that there is no secret data. I do not think that anyone believed that there was, but I think that the convener’s point, which many people who speak to me have made, is that people do not fully understand the interpretation of the data and the advice that is presented to ministers.
Professor Leitch is right to say that it is not an exact science, and, ultimately, ministers have to make decisions on a Tuesday morning. With that in mind, will the cabinet secretary say more about what additional information could be made available? I welcome the fact that the Government is actively looking at how this could be made more transparent and easier for the public to understand.
In respect of this week’s decision, there has been some commentary to suggest that public health experts and the incident management team recommended that Edinburgh move to level 2. Can we get some clarification on that? If that was the case, why did the Government not accept that advice?
I will let Jason Leitch talk about public health and the discussions around that. There are always wide-ranging discussions, not just with public health directors, but with councillors, council administrations and all the rest of it.
I will see whether I can talk Monica Lennon through the process. I do not think that there is material that ministers can see but which is not in the public domain. We see the material that is published. Material will come to ministers not just on a Monday or over the weekend, but more regularly.
Some ministers will see more material—it depends on where their central involvement lies. I am involved in regulation, so I may see a bit more; others with different portfolio interests may see things that I do not see. For example, John Swinney would deal with education material that would not be shared with everybody.
A paper will come to Cabinet—it is usually presented by the Deputy First Minister, who is in charge of such matters day to day—and there will be an extensive discussion. As you would expect, the chief medical officer will be a key figure in that discussion. Ministers will look at the paper, discuss it and ask questions. They will draw on some of their own experience and listen to people with experience, and come to a conclusion. The four harms group has looked at the matter, and the people who are looking at the other harms will have commented on it. We will be aware of the local public health views.
All those matters are weighed carefully by the Cabinet, both as individuals and collectively. The discussion is sometimes very detailed. Sometimes it is quite clear what the outcome should be, and sometimes the decision will be—as the First Minister has described it—on a knife edge, and it is difficult to say what the outcome should be.
We will come to a common mind, based on what we believe is needed, in—I have to say this—the most cautious way possible. Caution is not a dirty word in all this—it is essential. If we look at prevalence elsewhere, we can see examples of where regulations may have been taken off, abandoned or weakened too early and problems have arisen.
We are not unique: such decisions are having to be made globally. Many members will have seen Angela Merkel commenting on that yesterday in the German Parliament. She talked about the way in which the fondness that she, and everybody else, has for Christmas markets has to be weighed in the balance against the risk to life. There is a substantial risk to life from what is, as Jason Leitch said, a disease for which there is no cure.
In the end, that is the decision that we have to reach. It is reached cautiously, carefully and thoughtfully, and it is based on data that is published. There is not much more that we can say about that, other than what I have just said. Jason Leitch will tell you what happens on his side of the house, with regard to all the expertise that feeds into the process at the local level, the national level and the four-nations level, because there is consultation on the four nations’ activities. Perhaps he can illustrate some of that.
I fully understand what the cabinet secretary says about the transparency around data, and I accept that, as Professor Leitch said, the data is not being withheld. I am asking about the presentation of the data and how it is interpreted, and the recommendations that are being made through Cabinet.
You said that everyone in Cabinet has full oversight. I think that we would expect everyone in Cabinet to be an equal in the process. I suppose that, given that we are in a national crisis, the public would expect more transparency, because accountability is clearly important. Could the Government do more to be open about what was recommended and, if there are legitimate grounds on which to depart from that advice in any way, to publish the reasons for doing so?
I have just fully explained the process. If we were then to say, “Well, that is what that person said, and that is what another person said”, this being politics, that would create confusion rather than clarity. The data on which the decisions are made is published. There is detailed discussion among people who are genuinely always trying to do their best. There has to be a level of trust in the process, and there has to be a level on which we all trust each other so that we can think and say things and have the conversation, and come out at the end of the process saying, “We have a common mind, and this is why we have reached the decision.” That is really important, and that is what is happening.
We have never resisted the publication of information or data. What you see is what I see. We come to the judgments that we do because we listen to people with vastly more knowledge or expertise than either you or I have in this area and, at the end of the day, we come to a conclusion based on what they have said and what the data shows. Jason Leitch should comment on that.
Before Professor Leitch comments, I want to be clear that I am not doubting the good intentions of ministers or the experts in the field. I asked whether there was any departure from the advice of public health colleagues or the incident management team in making the Edinburgh decision. It was a very direct question.
There will be a range of views about what should happen and whether criteria have been met. They will all come together in the Cabinet discussion and the major views will be balanced. There will be individuals who think that Edinburgh should move to another level and individuals who do not, and that applies to every area. It will be true of Argyll and Bute as well as of Aberdeenshire. At the end of the day, a decision is reached based on the collective wisdom, or otherwise, of all the people who are taking part.
I will add two contextual points before I describe the public health ladder of advice.
First, the Government has published a strategic aim for Covid-19, which is to reduce the prevalence of the virus to as low as possible. That strategic aim guides the decision making, as it should. If our strategic aim was to create a stability of Covid presence at around 100 per 100,000, that would generate a different set of decisions. Our strategic aim, which was outlined by the Cabinet, drives our advice, and that aim is to drive the prevalence of the virus as low as possible, because, globally, the economies of the countries that have done that have recovered faster.
The second contextual point is caution. It is quite difficult to be cautious in my seat, because everybody wants to come down a level. Nobody has written me an email to say “We would like more restrictions”—not a sector, not an MSP, not a local authority leader—not one. Every single piece of advice that I get from those areas is that we should go easier. “Be easier on us.” “Our local authority should come down.” “Our sector isn’t the cause.” Caution is therefore really difficult for public health leaders. I do not want you to feel sorry for me, but in the group of people who are giving public health advice, it is tough to be cautious.
We make decisions with the five-step ladder of advice. Every local authority has a director for public health who works for the health boards but covers multiple local authorities with teams of people. They are level 1. They feed in to the national incident management team, which is chaired by Public Health Scotland; Jim McMenamin, is the clinical lead of that organisation. The IMT’s advice then goes to what we call our senior clinicians: Gregor Smith, Fiona McQueen and me, roughly. There is a broader group of eight clinicians at a senior level in the Scottish Government, but the ones who you would know are Gregor, Fiona and me—the chief medical officer, the chief nursing officer and the national clinical director, respectively.
The senior clinicians’ advice then goes to the four harms group. That is where we join with the chief economist, the chief social researcher and other analysts, who then, in tune with the director general for Covid, go to the Cabinet, which is the final decision-making point. By then, the public health advice has been through a number of iterations to make it as robust as it possibly can be, before it goes into that conversation that Mr Russell has just described.
[Inaudible.]—departure from the public health advice on Edinburgh, or will we just move on from that question?
I am not sure whether it was my computer or yours, but I did not hear that.
I was going back to the point about Edinburgh. Was there any divergence between the advice of public health colleagues and the management team, and the eventual decision? Do you want to make a further comment on that or will we just move on from the Edinburgh question?
I honestly think that that is a matter for the Cabinet and not for me. My job is to give the best advice that I can, along with all of my colleagues. The Cabinet gets to make the choices.
11:15
Thank you for that.
I am conscious of the time, so I will just raise one other matter. The cabinet secretary referred to Angela Merkel, who made a powerful contribution, and my main takeaway from it was her plea for schools to close on 16 December to allow 10 clear days for the Christmas break. We are not doing that in Scotland. I note that there has been a little bit of a change in England, where schools are going to have an earlier in-service training day and close on 18 December.
Cabinet secretary and Professor Leitch, are you keeping that under review? I know that the picture is different across Scotland. I have worries about Lanarkshire, where lots of children and staff are self-isolating. I have heard a lot about the need for caution. Are we being cautious enough on the issue of the school holidays?
I ask for brief answers, please.
Mr Swinney has indicated what he believes the advice has led him to decide, and he has decided what should happen. I am not aware that there will be any reconsideration of that, but I would ask John Swinney to communicate with the committee if the committee wants more detail on why he reached that decision.
Perhaps I could pick up on that point. I am starting to hear about some practical implications stemming from the decision to keep most schools in Scotland open until 3.30 on 23 December.
I have been speaking to a number of headteachers, who are very much engaged with the contact tracing and incident management regimes in their schools, so I am aware of their burdens. One headteacher told me that, to deal with one positive Covid case in a school took between 9.30 in the morning and 4.30 in the afternoon. Obviously, extensive assessment procedures were required to assess whether the child had been in contact with other children and staff members. There was consistent liaison between the health board, the staff and a range of other people. At the end of the process, it was necessary to contact all the parents of the children who had been in contact with the child.
How do you view that working on the 23rd, on Christmas eve and, potentially, on Christmas day? If positive cases come back from testing, do you expect headteachers to phone parents on Christmas day and inform them that they and their families need to self-isolate?
I will let Jason Leitch respond on what is clearly an important issue with regard to advice. The clear advice, on which the Deputy First Minister has operated, is that the right thing to do is to continue with the present arrangements for schools. As I have said at the committee before, we have always regarded the need to ensure that education is not interrupted as an extremely important part of our strategy, and it remains so.
The Deputy First Minister had a long consultation with the various interested groups who are concerned about this matter, and many views were expressed. In the end, the Deputy First Minister went with the public health advice that he believes is most cogent and necessary, as I think he was bound to do.
I am happy to ask him, as a matter of urgency, to outline in further detail what the thinking is and to cover the specific issue about testing. However, there is an absolute need to ensure that, if there is a follow-up, that follow-up takes place, if not necessarily in the way that has been described.
Jason Leitch will have more information about why the decision has been reached. I say again: it is a decision made on a balance of factors, and those factors have all been taken into account. Jason might want to say what those were.
Yes—it was a finely balanced decision, and there was a long conversation at the Covid-19 education recovery group, which included educationists and public health advisers. The advice was that, on balance, schools should stay open.
The particular point that you raise, Mr Ruskell, was part of that consideration. I cannot remember whether it was in his statement or in a letter written post statement, but Mr Swinney has made it clear to local authorities that arrangements will have to be made, in some form, for test and protect to be active during the holiday periods.
The national health service will not be having a day off—you can be assured of that. It never does. Test and protect will be active on Christmas day, whether you are a school pupil or a call centre worker. We, the national health service, will do our absolute best to support anybody who has to deal with contact tracing that day.
There have been particular relationships between public health leaders and school headteachers. I have done two headteacher events over the past few days, involving hundreds of headteachers, to talk through some of these issues and to try and get them in a place where they would be able to use the national contact tracing centre. Their local knowledge is of course crucial for contract tracing, just like it is for a pub owner or a workplace owner. We often need to speak to them about layout—where corridors and bathrooms are, for example.
I cannot guarantee that every headteacher in the country will not have some work to do during this period, but we are hoping to keep that to an absolute minimum.
The point here, though, is that that is not standard contact tracing, where somebody has been in contact with a few people. It is about whole classes having to go into self-isolation because they sat in the same classroom as somebody who has tested positive. Can you see how that creates a problem around Christmas time in those last days of term? Did that not form part of the decision making in England—having at least a couple of days when teachers and headteachers are not contact tracing and can continue with their activities as schools wind down for Christmas?
It is standard contact tracing—that is how contact tracing works. It happens to be a bigger room of individuals—I take your point—but it would be exactly the same for a university class or college class or for a big pub. We need the help of those who know the layout of the rooms and who know the relevant names and addresses according to the registration, whether in a pub or a school.
Schools are not all finishing at 3.30 on 23 December; some finish on the 18th—and some are finishing on the Monday, the Tuesday and the Wednesday. The balanced public health advice that went to Mr Swinney was that they should stay open.
I will move on to a slightly different topic. I was contacted by the League Against Cruel Sports, which monitors hunts. It tells me that there are hunts going out three times a week, with more than 40 people attending those events. The league has been informed by Police Scotland that that is permissible. Effectively, the hunts are applying two separate exemptions: the first is on pest control, whereby six people from two households can meet to carry out that activity, and the second exemption is based on equestrian events, whereby 30 people can gather. Does that reflect your understanding of the regulations? Is it acceptable that groups are effectively stacking exemptions to try and create a super-exemption, allowing them to gather in larger numbers?
There are no super-exemptions. I have not heard that from anybody else—this is the first occasion on which I have heard about it. If you wish to send me the details, including where that is taking place, we will quickly seek to look into it.
I say again: there are no super-exemptions. The regulations do not work like that—I wish to make that clear. The regulations say, “This is what should not happen,” and they then indicate those exemptions that may well be legitimate excuses, although they are not automatically that. Intention is really important. I have not heard about such an event before, and I am sure that you would not be so unreasonable as to expect me to react to it without seeing the evidence, but I am of course willing to look at the evidence and to direct it to whomever it needs to be directed to, should I need to do so.
Okay—thanks. The issue is that the police have accepted the excuse.
Although I am happy to take your word for it, I do not know that, so I need to find out.
Great—thank you.
We started off with questioning about Edinburgh, the data and the various criteria for going into the different levels. I wish now to ask about Clackmannanshire. The area was retained in level 3, primarily because of the prevalence of enhanced data, which we got through asymptomatic testing.
It is great that we got more knowledge about with the prevalence of Covid in Clackmannanshire, to make a more informed judgment, but do you see an issue with the fact that decisions are being made in different local authority areas with different levels of knowledge? Can you understand people in Clackmannanshire feeling that they have been kept at level 3 because they have had all that additional asymptomatic testing, when other areas do not have that data and so decisions are being made without access to that level of information? Does the inconsistency of data across Scotland cause a problem?
I will let Jason Leitch answer that, but I just make the point that I know many places—the place that I represent, for example—where people will feel angry and frustrated that changes that they anticipated have not happened. I understand that fully—I live in that area, and I feel it myself. However, I also have to recognise that there are different prevailing circumstances. As Jason said earlier, that is one of the reasons why we felt that it was right to have a local authority approach, but no approach is perfect. Clackmannanshire is the smallest local authority in Scotland. I represent one of the biggest local authorities in Scotland, and there are people in both places who are frustrated for different reasons.
We are trying to say to people that, with the best intentions, the best will and the best information that we have, we have come to a judgment that does not please us any more than it pleases anybody else, but which we think is the right judgment for this particular period and which will be reviewed within a week. It is, I hope, always undertaken with a genuine concern for the core objective that Jason has outlined. Perhaps he would like to say a word about what has happened in Clackmannanshire, which was also the subject of discussion in Cabinet, of course.
Again, it is a request to think about bringing a local authority down a level and not up a level, just for context. Clackmannanshire—
No, I am not suggesting that. I am suggesting that there needs to be clarity about the basis of the decision making, and, clearly, you had access to—[Inaudible.]—in Clackmannanshire.
That was because we sent asymptomatic testing to a place with a high prevalence of the virus—that is how we chose the areas. We chose the areas for asymptomatic testing because the levels of cases were high, and—[Inaudible.]—we have found positive cases, which is something to be celebrated, because we have protected people from those chains of transmission. Of course, that has led to more positive cases. The alternative would be to not find those and to put people at risk. The prevalence would stay low, and we would reduce the level, even though there were positive cases. In the first phase of asymptomatic testing being available to us, we have chosen, rightly, to pinpoint high-prevalence areas—areas of Pollokshields, Dalmarnock and Clackmannanshire—and, lo and behold, we have found positive asymptomatic cases.
As we learn more about asymptomatic testing—it is not perfect; we have been over that many times—we will deploy it in areas where we are worried about the prevalence of the virus, which, of course, will drive up positive testing, which is what is what I want it to do, and break those chains of transmission.
I have a question about the process for decision making. It is clear that some members are a bit frustrated about what has happened, as I have been in the past. I seek clarification. I assume that the process that has taken place thus far has not changed in any way. Is that correct, cabinet secretary?
It depends what timescale you are talking about. The introduction of the levels has meant that the rhythm of decision making has changed, the focus of the information has changed—because we are now looking at information on a local authority basis—and there has been a refinement of some of the criteria. Therefore, I would say that, rather than being unchanged, the situation has improved progressively over the past months.
Of course, the decisions are now being made on a weekly basis, whereas, previously, we had a three-week cycle—although things could change between those cycles. We have moved to a weekly cycle, with a decision being reached by Cabinet on a Tuesday morning, which is announced to the chamber on a Tuesday afternoon. There is then the opportunity to have this discussion and for draft regulations to be considered.
Therefore, there have been changes and improvements, and I hope that it is a more responsive and a continuously more open process, because there is nothing that people are not seeing and there is absolute frankness in discussions such as this one about how the decisions are reached.
Thank you for that. I wanted to get that clarification, because, a few weeks ago, the figures were really low in my local authority area, and I was disappointed that we did not go down to level 2 from level 3. Within two weeks, we were struggling to stay in level 3 and were potentially moving to level 4.
When I asked the First Minister about that at the committee, she highlighted the strategic framework and the categories, but she also referred to the discussion that takes place with officials and in the Cabinet. I just wanted to get clarification that that particular part of the process has not changed and that, therefore, the decisions for this week will have been based on the same process that happened for my area a number of weeks ago.
11:30
Yes. The decision is taken on the Tuesday morning. A great deal of work goes on over the weekend—a great deal of work goes on all the time, but it goes on over the weekend, too—through Monday and into Tuesday, and a lot of information goes backwards and forwards. Papers are written and changed and thoughts come through, and we get all the information that Jason Leitch talked about from local areas. Broadly, the decision is evidence based. It is based on the data that we have, the four harms and then the view and judgments that are reached in the light of that.
Just for the record, I welcome the decision that was taken this week to put Inverclyde at level 2. I will not lie—I was a bit surprised by that, because the surrounding areas remain at level 3. However, I was genuinely pleased about it, so thank you for that decision.
Professor Leitch, when you answered questions earlier, you highlighted some of the potential challenges in the post-Christmas period and you gave a list of actions that could be taken, one of which was the provision of more beds in hospitals, if that were required. If that happens, would it mean more beds in hospitals that are currently delivering level 3 intensive care unit services, or would it mean more beds in hospitals that have recently lost their level 3 ICU care?
We have contingency plans for every eventuality. I remind the committee that we already have more people in intensive care than we had intensive care beds a year ago. We are still above the pre-pandemic capacity, but we have the ability to double, treble and even quadruple that capacity. We would tend to do that in centralised intensive care, because that is safer and is where we tend to put really sick people. We know from around the world that that approach is better for such individuals. We would then have a cascading set of beds for whichever dependency was required. Therefore, Inverclyde royal hospital would have the level of intensive care that was appropriate for it but, for those people who get particularly sick with Covid, that becomes a more specialist matter. If you will forgive the shorthand, we would tend to batch those very seriously ill people together.
We have contingency, and not only for ICU high dependency. Because we are learning a bit more about how to treat Covid patients, we are now not moving to ventilation quite as quickly as we did in the first wave, which is helping. We are doing other things with dexamethasone and oxygen therapy, which pretty much every hospital in the country can give. Then, if patients have unfortunately deteriorated and need to be ventilated, that means treating them more centrally.
Treating Covid is not all about ICU; it is also about general medical beds—acute receiving beds. We have about 2,000 of those, and they are not all full. We have capacity, but we flex in and out of that. We do not keep 1,000 beds and 1,000 nurses waiting just in case a Covid patient comes in. We model against that, so that we can treat people in the interim period, and then we are ready if we need to treat Covid patients. As you say, the winter is exactly when we might need those beds.
I have a quick question on level 2 ICU care, which you touched on. You referred to the better treatment that has been provided. Do you have any figures on, or has a report been published to indicate, how many level 2 patients have been dealt with to such an extent that they have not needed level 3 care?
That is an excellent question, Mr McMillan. You have clearly been paying attention. The Scottish Intensive Care Society will publish exactly that—information on the demographics of the people who have been admitted, and survival and treatment—but it is not quite ready to do that. I saw a draft about 10 days ago. The information is coming, but not quite yet.
We also have a UK-wide Covid disease-based registry, which I think is called CoMix, although I might have got that wrong. Every person who has had Covid is in a registry so that we know exactly what we did to them and exactly what their outcomes were. That means that we can learn as a whole UK. There is a similar system for Europe.
In time, we will publish that information, and we will get better. We published between wave 1 and wave 2—we publish continuously—and we learned from that. This week, I had a conversation with one of our intensive care leads at Monklands hospital, and he described the clear difference between what we are doing now and what we were doing in wave 1, because the science has moved on.
When the report is published, will you ensure that it is sent to the committee, please?
Of course.
Thank you.
Being a new parent can be a very complicated time, and peer or family support can be a lifeline, especially if people are struggling. This year, for obvious reasons, such support has been severely limited. Following Willie Rennie’s question in the chamber yesterday, what consideration is being given to changing the household criteria policy to allow people with very young children to form a support bubble with an additional family, as has been done in England?
As I indicated to Willie Rennie, I will get him an answer to that. We need an answer urgently. I do not have the answer now, but we need to see whether it is possible for that change to be made. That is the indication that I gave to Willie Rennie less than 24 hours ago. We will try to make some progress on that.
Students might be away from campus for a long time. How will that work for students who need access to a lab or library for their work? For example, what happens if students need to access expensive books? What account has been taken of such students in relation to the staggered return?
The academic requirements are an obligation and concern of the universities themselves. They have been deeply engaged in discussions on how students should leave and come back, and I am sure that they will make the necessary arrangements for individual students who require such access. That is a matter for universities to discuss with individual students, within the context of the overall agreement that universities have reached with Richard Lochhead.
I have a question on the changes to travel restrictions that apply to Scottish people travelling to the Republic of Ireland—if only to get the answer on the record, so that people are more aware of it. I understand that we are lifting the restriction on travel to the Republic of Ireland, except for travel to County Donegal, because we understand that the numbers of cases there are still pretty high. The cabinet secretary will know that a large number of people usually move between County Donegal and Scotland, especially at this time of the year. Will you emphasise that we recommend that people should not travel to County Donegal at this time?
That is the recommendation, but I will go further. We are saying to people, “Please don’t travel.” The fact that travel to a place is permitted is not an encouragement to travel. Likewise, although we understand the social needs of people at Christmas, we are saying that they should, if at all possible, be very restrained in respect of how they take advantage of changes over the Christmas period.
That is my advice to people who are planning to travel to the Republic of Ireland: in fact, that is my advice to anyone who is planning to travel within Scotland. People should think very carefully about whether they need to travel, because we know that travel is a key issue in transmission. There is no doubt about that—it is a fact—so travel restrictions are essential. It is regrettable, but we should ensure that travel restrictions are observed and enforced. We also discourage travel even to places where there are no restrictions.
Jason Leitch might want to say something about the report that was published yesterday, because I think that it is important.
If committee members have not read the report, I commend it to them; we can provide it to the committee. In fact, there are two reports—one about Scotland and one about Wales.
The reports are very informative and provide evidence of three things: that lockdown worked; that travel reseeds the virus; and that urban areas are harder to deal with than rural areas. Those are the three principal lessons. We almost eradicated the virus in the middle of the summer, but we reseeded it with travel. Of course, while the virus came here, we also seeded it in other places, because travel is a two-way process—this is not just about people arriving in Scotland. We took the virus to Wales and Wales gave it to us, as was the case with other countries around the world.
Finally on travel, I emphasise for the record what Mr Russell said: we suggest that people think very carefully about travel, even where it is allowed. I am sorry to have to tell the committee that I have recorded a new television advert to which you will have to listen repeatedly. One of the lines in it is,
“Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”
That piece of advice is the one that we want to get out there. That does not mean that people should not visit others who are socially isolated or that they should not safely visit people whom they have to care for, but that relaxation of the rules is not for socialising and parties.
I understand that one of the main reasons for the continuing high prevalence of the virus in Donegal is that people are able easily to travel across the border between, for example, Letterkenny and Derry. There are few, if any, restrictions on people moving from one jurisdiction to the other. Can you offer our citizens any more advice to try to persuade them of the risks and dangers of such travel at this time, beyond that the regulations say that they should not go there?
I will make a generic travel point. Travel has become a bit iconic for us, but the basic public health advice is completely apolitical. It is not about national boundaries or European boundaries, but about boundaries around prevalence. The example that I used at the First Minister’s briefing yesterday was a school class with measles. It would represent a very small travel restriction, but you would not move that class with measles into the room next door with a class with no measles.
You can make that case about Elgin, the Highlands, Scotland, the UK or Europe—the travel restrictions can be of any size—but the fundamental public health advice, which is apolitical and is not about national boundaries, is to stay local, because the virus will not spread as easily if you do that. That applies to Donegal.
We now have very granular data—country by country, region by region—at which people who come to visit or who live in Scotland should look. The breakdown is as far as units of 4,000 people, so you can find out prevalence in a particular area. That is how we knew where to do the high-prevalence testing, for example. The same is true in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland: people can, in order to help them to make risk-based decisions, find very granular data about prevalence of the virus in the area that they would visit.
I want to make a point about how the situation affects people. There are exemptions that people can utilise—work and other reasons. Even with those, we are asking people whether they really need to travel.
I will be very personal about this, Mr Coffey. One of the great pleasures of my life, as the MSP for Argyll and Bute, is to travel around what I think is—people may disagree—the most beautiful constituency in Scotland, and to meet people whom I have known and worked for for a long time. I feel the lack of that every day. I suppose that I could say that I will go to Mull on Wednesday, because it would be for work. However, I have said to my constituents and to myself that, regrettably, I will have to continue to work in this way and not to travel—possibly for the rest of the time that I am their representative, because I will retire next year. That is not huge, like someone not been able to see their granny, for example, but I feel that lack every single day.
However, I am not travelling. What people need to do is to say to themselves, “Even though I’d like to do that and I want to do it, I’m not going to do it.” That is the advice that I give to people. Whether I was going to Dunollie or to Donegal, the message would be the same.
I appreciate that. It was important to ask the questions and to strengthen the message.
My final question is, again, about international travel and the role of the vaccine programme. During our earlier session, Gordon Dewar told us that he thinks that we will not have a travel industry unless roll-out of the vaccine programme aids people’s ability to book holidays in time for the summer. Will you share with the committee the purpose and priorities of our vaccination programme? The question might give you an opportunity to emphasise them and to remind the public what they are.
11:45
The vaccine programme fits into two phases—although maybe we should not talk about “phases”, because we might confuse that with the phases of roll-out. In general, vaccines do two things. Initially, they protect the individual who gets the vaccine. That makes perfect sense. Then, over time, because the percentage of people who are protected increases, the population becomes protected. That population could be of a country or of the world. We have eradicated smallpox from the world because we have vaccinated the world. We have gone some way towards eradicating measles across the western world—albeit that recently that has become a little more fragile—because we have vaccinated the western world against measles.
Initially, the Covid vaccine will protect only individuals who receive it, because we do not yet know enough about transmission risk; we do not know whether people will still get the disease but will just not feel sick from it. Because of what we know about coronavirus immunity in general, we are hopeful that we will get some protection from transmission. In addition, people will not be coughing and spluttering as much, so transmission will fall.
In the coming months, as we vaccinate more people, our country will become more protected and will be better able to get back to normal. The problem is that that has to be done worldwide. If, for example, we want there to be travel to France or to Indonesia, we need to know what is happening in those countries.
The World Health Organization has a very strong mission to vaccinate not only the countries that can afford the vaccine, but those that cannot. Pfizer and AstraZeneca, for example, have made it very clear that they are going to make vaccine available at cost price to low-income and middle-income countries, and the WHO is taking donor amounts from the UK and other places. An important ethical consideration for us all is that we should think about vaccination as a global mission, rather than just as a national mission.
Gordon Dewar was correct: at some point, that protection will allow us to change our advice about international travel, but it will not happen suddenly. It will not suddenly be the case that people can go all over the world. That will depend on a new version of the air bridge, whatever that might look like.
Thank you both very much.
My first question is for the cabinet secretary. The student union has produced a proposal for the return of students in January 2021. It is a good plan and, obviously, the union has raised it with the authorities and the Scottish Government. Are you aware of it, and is it likely to be implemented by the Scottish Government, on the basis of its main points of gradual return and separation with regard to bathrooms and kitchens and so on?
It will be up to John Swinney and Richard Lochhead to discuss that with that body—is it the National Union of Students?
Yes.
I have not seen that proposal, but I would be absolutely sure that they are discussing it, because students are key stakeholders in the decisions that are being made. I welcome any contributions, but the decision on how that will go forward is for Richard Lochhead, and I am sure that, at some stage, he will communicate with the committee on that.
Will Professor Leitch comment?
I am aware of considerable engagement with the NUS. I have done quite a lot of it myself, in fact. Along with Universities Scotland and other unions, it has been deeply involved in correspondence with Richard Lochhead and Dr Marion Bain, the deputy chief medical officer, who has led the education advice on our behalf, taking into account all the advice that we have been able to give.
I am not aware of that specific version. It sounds as though it fits pretty much with what has been decided about a staggered return, in looking at practical courses such as motor mechanics, dentistry and beauty therapy coming back earlier than courses that do not require quite as much hands-on or face-to-face teaching.
If the NUS advice is particularly about residences, I am very welcoming of it because, as you saw in the other publication that came out yesterday about student positivity in September, it was principally in what we colloquially call halls of residence. Pollock halls and Murano halls are at the top of that list, but it was also in shared accommodation—private and public—so any advice to help protect students in that environment would be welcome. The NUS is crucial to that.
Yes—it concentrated on accommodation and the residential side particularly, which is where we wanted to concentrate.
I have a second question for Professor Leitch about the process of decision making. In the table that you have provided, when you talk about directors of public health in the areas and their input, does that include input from the health and social care partnerships and the integration joint boards and their chairs or chief executives?
I will go back one step, because it gives me an opportunity to recognise those 14 individuals across the nation who, for nine months now, have led public health teams in every health board in the country. It is an astonishing achievement. They are the peak of a pyramid, and multiple staff, consultants and trainees in public health are helping them. I would expect that process to receive information from the integration world, the care home world, the hospital world and to lead up to that director of public health, who is also in charge of care home protection, test and protect and everything else. Therefore, we need a system by which those people can give that advice, which feeds into the national incident management team. A director of public health should be engaged with the chief executives and chairs of the integration joint boards and their chief officers.
Have you done a deep dive into that process with a couple of the directors of public health to find out how they are gathering their information and to ensure that you are happy that there is a robust transfer of information?
Yes, we meet those directors of public health at least once a week. Some of my colleagues meet them every morning; there is a huddle meeting with the directors of public health every day. During a pandemic, we would expect some level of communication on a daily basis. That can raise or lower priorities. Clearly, in the past few days, it has been all about vaccination; sometimes, it is about testing or relationships. I also have personal relationships with those directors of public health, which you would not be surprised about. They can reach out to me and I can reach out to them, if we need to do that. I am confident that those relationships inside the health boards are robust.
Thank you.
The convener will be pleased to hear that I will be brief, because time is marching on.
Perhaps my question is for the cabinet secretary in particular. There was some discussion yesterday in Parliament about whether any travel restrictions that are deemed necessary to ensure the delivery of the strategic framework objectives should be hived off from the regulations as a subsidiary or secondary matter. However, taking into account the genomic study that has been referred to this morning and the impact of travel on transmission, I would have thought that travel restrictions, as a tool, should remain an integral part of the process, to the extent that they are deemed necessary in order to deliver the particular implementation of the strategy. Will the cabinet secretary clarify his position on that?
That question was raised with me by Murdo Fraser and he raised it again during the debate against the regulations that was instituted by Labour; I was surprised by that. The process point is whether travel restrictions should be subject to separate votes. I can see an argument for that, but the argument that you make is very important. The restrictions are a principal tool in ensuring that we meet our objectives and that people’s lives in Scotland are made safer. Therefore, we cannot separate them out in that way. Objections to the detail of travel restrictions—for example, “Should this restriction apply here?” or, “Should that restriction apply there?”—are legitimate matters to discuss, but any view that travel restrictions are in some way unnecessary is very wide of the mark.
As I said in the chamber several times yesterday, I was particularly impressed by the chief medical officer’s explanation at the committee last week of the importance of travel regulations. I would commend that to people. I am sure that Jason Leitch will be and can be equally cogent in expressing his view of how important they are. Without them—if they were to be removed or defeated—it is the people of Scotland who would suffer very greatly, because they would suffer a resurgence of the virus: of that there is no doubt.
I had a substantive question for Professor Leitch, but if he wishes to make a supplementary comment on the issue of travel regulations and their usefulness as a tool, perhaps he could do so now.
I, too, would seek Gregor Smith’s clarity, as he is often more cogent than I am, and I seek his counsel often.
We have probably covered these points in earlier answers. If we needed more evidence—frankly, I am not sure that the public health community did—the genomic studies that were published yesterday provide very strong evidence, in particular of spread from and to other parts of the UK, from and into Scotland in both directions and from and into Europe. There was also spread from further afield, with quite a lot from and to the US, in both directions.
It is exactly as I said: you can draw the line wherever you want to draw it for travel restrictions, but local is better during a pandemic.
I thank Professor Leitch for that clarification.
I want to ask about two issues regarding Covid vaccination. First, we received some robust evidence during our previous evidence session this morning, with one of the four witnesses suggesting that there is no plan. I am paraphrasing, but that is what I took from what he said: it was that there is no plan, that vaccination is not happening quickly enough and so on. I do not know whether Professor Leitch had an opportunity to hear that, but can he provide assurance to the committee that there is indeed a plan? I have listened carefully to the statements that have been made in the Parliament on the vaccination programme, and there is a plan, which has been worked on for months and has involved numerous experts from many disciplines. Judging from that one witness’s view this morning, it is important to provide that information to the public.
I did not hear that. I was with the Scottish Government directors just before I came to the committee. However, I will listen back to that evidence, just in case there is anything that we should correct more formally.
I can absolutely guarantee that there is a plan. We have people working round the clock on that plan, and they have been working on it since long before the science created a vaccine, because we were very hopeful that a vaccine would come.
There are some unknowns in that plan, which might be part of the point. Of course there are unknowns. We are 11 months into a pandemic, and the vaccine has only just arrived in the country. It is vaccine number 1, and it is very difficult to use because of the nature of its storage and the logistics, but there is a plan, and we are confident that, when we get vaccine supply and we get authority to use from the regulators, we will be able to do that.
We are very confident in the ability of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to help us with the priorities and to decide which people should go first and in which order they should then follow. The JCVI has decided that for us. It is helpful to have an independent group of thinkers, comprising clinical leaders who have done that work for years and who can help us. Theirs is exactly the list that we are going to follow.
That is very reassuring. I am not sure whether the one witness who spoke this morning has any public health background at all or has had any involvement in the detail of the planning, so I am not sure on what basis he felt he could make such sweeping statements. It is good to hear clarification from somebody at the centre of the process.
Turning to my other point, I note that the professor mentioned the priority approach that the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has set forth, which I think is being followed across the UK. I have had a query raised with me about one particular category of people: the 5,000 or so folk in Scotland who have received a transplant. It appears to me that they are not part of the immediate priority process, and I wonder whether Professor Leitch has any information as to the thinking of the JCVI on the position of transplant patients.
12:00
Yes. Let me say one thing that I should have said in answer to your earlier question. If the plan has not already been published by SPICe, which is the Scottish Parliament information centre—for those who do not know, that is the parliamentary library; I do not mean that you do not know what it is, but the public might not know what it is—it will be published on the SPICe website at some point, once we have it in a position to be so. It is called a strategic delivery document or some such thing. That is the plan.
I would just counsel against certainty. There is a lot of uncertainty in the vaccine programme, because we simply do not know how many vials we are going to get and which day they are going to arrive. We cannot know that, so people will have to give us a bit of slack around when and who.
The transplant population are in what we used to call the “shielded” group; we now call them “the clinically extremely vulnerable”—the CEV group. That group has changed as we have learned more about the disease. Not every transplant patient will be in it, because lots of transplant patients are actually no more vulnerable than you or I. However, some are more vulnerable. If they are in the clinically extremely vulnerable group, they will be up the priority list. Speaking from memory, I think that they will be with the over-75s, or maybe the over-70s. As we come down through the age groups, we add in two clinical groups. We add the clinically extremely vulnerable to the over-75s group, and at the over-65s we add in “those at higher risk”, by which we mean, roughly, those who get the flu vaccine, not those who were shielding. It is a different group of individuals and—remember—it is a much larger group, which will require a lot more vaccine. There are nine layers in the JCVI’s principal original advice. We add in the clinically extremely vulnerable group, which will include a lot of our transplant patients, and then further down, we add in the flu vaccine group.
Thank you, Professor Leitch. That will be very useful information to the person who has asked that question.
I realise that we are tight for time. I have just one question, which follows on from the session with the previous witnesses. I was a bit concerned about the lack of enforcement on public transport, especially the railways. To get on a bus, you have to go past the driver, and we got the impression that drivers will ask someone to wear a mask if they are not doing so. On the other hand, when you get on a train, you do not need to pay the fare, nobody comes through the train while you are on it and some people are not wearing masks. Do you feel that public transport should be more consistent? In particular, do you feel that the railways should be making a little bit more effort to encourage people to wear masks and so on?
I heard some of that evidence and I very much empathised, for example, with Robbie Drummond, with whom I have discussed that issue in the past with respect to the ferries. It is not the role of ferry staff to be enforcers. If they were required to be so, they would require different skills and would be taken away from their primary activity. In some communities, ferry staff are well known and they know people in the community and can be actively vigilant, and in other communities that will not be the case. We should distinguish between the role of enforcement and the role of those who are working to help us on public transport.
The role of enforcement is part of the four Es, and there are three Es before it. We need to make sure that all those are operating effectively through those whose job it is to enforce them, and that is the police force.
Of course, we all have a role. It is to make it clear that people should, if they can, wear face coverings, and to make sure that people do not travel to places and in ways that they should not be travelling—we should all be vigilant about that too. There is no reason why all of us should not be vigilant. I recognise the difficulties that transport staff have, and trying to change that role would be unfortunate and difficult for them.
Thank you.
Is that all, John?
We are short of time, so I will leave it at that.
I have one final point to raise; it refers to the evidence that we heard from Gordon Dewar this morning. I appreciate that neither the cabinet secretary nor Professor Leitch might have had an opportunity to hear that yet, but I think that it is important to give the Scottish Government an opportunity to respond.
As Annabelle Ewing and Willie Coffey have pointed out, Mr Dewar made quite trenchant criticisms of the vaccination programme. To be fair to him, his comments were not that there was not a vaccine delivery plan but that its design was, in his words, “woefully inadequate”. He also made a point about various comments about not taking summer holidays. He said that that was “campaigning against our industry”. Professor Leitch, last week you said that people should ensure that they have insurance for their summer holidays. I want to give you and the cabinet secretary the opportunity to respond to those comments.
I am sorry, but I missed those comments. What is Mr Dewar’s position?
He is the chief executive of Edinburgh Airport.
I will ask Jason Leitch to talk about the vaccination programme. There is a vaccination programme, which has been approved by the Cabinet and is being published. The health secretary has made a statement on it, and the First Minister has talked about it. The vaccine is being rolled out, so I find those criticisms rather difficult to take in those circumstances. It is simply not accurate at all to say that.
In relation to transportation, it is impossible not to have sympathy and empathy for people whose livelihoods have been severely affected, and we should do everything that we can to support them. The issue of travel will not go away; it is fundamental. We have dealt with it throughout the session. I would love to be able to sit here and say, “Everything will be fine. Come the end of March, everybody will be able to travel anywhere. Go on your holidays—great.” People should look at the documents that were published yesterday that show examples of the virus coming from Spain.
When we are able to do things properly, everybody will be delighted. It is not campaigning against anybody to say that, until we are at that stage, we have to suppress the virus to the lowest possible level. We hope that the programme of vaccination will mean that the virus will, in essence, be eliminated. I do not think that criticisms that there is no plan or that the plan is woeful are accurate; they are plainly wrong. It is absolutely not the case that we are campaigning against Mr Dewar’s industry. I would be delighted to see that industry flourish, and I hope that it will again.
I underline all those points. There is a clear plan. We might be conflating two separate issues. We might be conflating early vaccination, when we have 60,000-odd doses of a vaccine that need to be kept in a fridge at -70°, with mass vaccination in the first and second quarters of next year, once we have hundreds of thousands of doses of the vaccine that do not need to be kept at -70°. That will be an entirely different logistical exercise, for which we are preparing and are prepared, but we do not have those doses yet.
Some of the criticism in the media is that we have not cordoned off all the football stadia in order to vaccinate everybody. There would be no point in doing that in December, when we have 60,000 vials of the vaccine. There might be a point in using conference centres, community centres and airports in the future, when we know that the supply is coming.
Those who know me know that I am a very keen traveller. One of the principal challenges for me, on a personal level, has been the inability to go through Mr Dewar’s airport and his competitors’ airports in order to travel. I look forward to the day when that all returns.
I thank both witnesses for their evidence.
That concludes our business for the meeting. The committee will meet next Thursday, 17 December. The clerks will provide members will further information later in the week.
Meeting closed at 12:08.Previous
Covid-19 Restrictions (Winter)