Chamber and committees

I am sorry, Professor Leitch, but you seem to be on mute.

Mr Fairlie, I know that you have another question that you want to ask, but we will move on to Alex Rowley and will come back to you at the end, if we have time.

We will hear from Mr Swinney, but we need to be conscious of time—we just have several minutes left.

That would be great. I am sorry, Hilda, but I am conscious of time and I have used up mine, so I am going to have to move to questions from Murdo Fraser.

Sorry, your sound is going. We cannot hear you. Do you want to direct the question to someone else, Murdo?

Agenda item 2 is an evidence-taking session on the vaccination programme. I welcome to the meeting our first panel: Dr Eman Hani, general manager, Central Scotland Regional Equality Council; Parveen Ishaq, office manager, Edinburgh and Lothians Regional Equality Council; Magda Czarnecka—I apologise if I have pronounced that incorrectly—chief executive officer, Feniks: Counselling, Personal Development and Support Services Ltd; María José Pavez Larrea, policy officer and project co-ordinator, Grampian Regional Equality Council; Mohammed Razaq, executive director, West of Scotland Regional Equality Council; and Dr Paulina Trevena, research associate in urban studies, University of Glasgow. Thank you all for giving us your time this morning.

We are the lead committee responsible for scrutinising the roll-out of the vaccination programme, and today’s session is an opportunity to consider why uptake of the available vaccines has been below average in some communities in Scotland. Our first panel will speak to us about the experiences and perspectives of ethnic minority communities.

Each member will have approximately eight minutes to speak to and ask questions of our panel. If any of the witnesses would like to respond to any issue that is being discussed, please type R in the chat box and we will bring you in. We have a large panel, and I am keen to ensure that everyone gets an opportunity to speak, so I apologise in advance if, because things have run on too long, I have to interrupt members or witnesses in the interests of brevity.

We again find ourselves in a challenging situation with a new variant. We know that vaccinations might not stop people catching the virus, but evidence so far shows that they most definitely hinder the severity of symptoms and reduce the need for hospitalisation. As a result, in order to protect not only our communities but our health service, we need people to take up the vaccines.

This morning, we have representation from four of Scotland’s regional equality councils. I know that Eman Hani has to leave early, so I will ask her the first question. What challenges have you faced in trying to get minority communities to take up vaccinations, and what could the Scottish Government be doing to give confidence to those minority groups to get vaccinated?

Thank you very much for those interesting comments. I was going to open it up to Parveen Ishaq, María José Pavez Larrea or Mohammed Razaq from the other regional equality councils and see whether they wanted to comment.

Quite a few members of the panel want to come in and John Mason wants to ask a question.

I will bring in John Mason.

Thank you, Mohammed. I am conscious of the time, because we have to stop by 10.30.