Chamber and committees

That concludes our consideration of the agenda item and I thank the Deputy First Minister and his officials for attending.

Our third agenda item is consideration of the motions on the made affirmative instruments that were considered under the previous agenda item. Deputy First Minister, would you like to make any further remarks on the Scottish statutory instruments that are listed under agenda item 3?

No, I will take them separately. That was my fault; I should have explained that. Do members agree to motion S6M-01399?

Motion agreed to.

I will now put the question on the motion. The question is, that motion S6M-01529, in the name of John Swinney, be agreed to. Are we agreed?

Members: No.

The committee will publish a report in due course setting out our decision on the statutory instruments that were considered at this meeting. That concludes our consideration of the agenda item and our time with the Deputy First Minister. I thank the Deputy First Minister and his supporting officials for their attendance this morning.

I now suspend to allow a changeover of witnesses.

I am sorry—I will bring in Professor Sharpe, who has asked to come in.

You have made some fascinating points. I have a question about businesses, hospitality businesses and others, that are thinking about bringing people back into offices. How easy is it for normal businesses to get carbon dioxide readings for their premises?

I am conscious of the time—we have 10 minutes left.

I will bring in John Mason, because he needs to leave for the chamber shortly.

For transparency, I note that the committee requested in its recent letter that certain information be provided to Parliament alongside the three-weekly review and that that information be provided to the Scottish Parliament information centre. Some of the information that we requested goes beyond the information that is provided in the weekly “Coronavirus (COVID-19): state of the epidemic” report.

Your letter notes that only some of the information that was requested is held by the Scottish Government. Notwithstanding that, it appears that the available information that was requested was not provided to SPICe at the most recent review point on 26 October. Will the Scottish Government commit to providing the information that the committee has requested at the next review point and at all subsequent review points?

Thank you. As I mentioned last week, the COVID-19 Recovery Committee is trialling an online public platform to allow members of the public to ask questions. Helen Goss got in touch this week, and she said:

“There is a distinct lack of protections for children in educational settings. Schools are having to rely on natural ventilation without supplemental ventilation technologies which will pose a problem going into winter … Latest data from the CLoCK study suggests up to 1 in 7 infected children will develop Long Covid. Why isn’t the Scottish Government prepared to protect the younger age groups?”

I will personally add a question to that: do we have any evidence or data on children developing long Covid?