Chamber and committees

Murdo Fraser and Alex Rowley are running slightly late and will join us shortly.

The first agenda item is a decision on taking in private item 4, which is consideration of the evidence that we have heard. Do members agree to take item 4 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Under item 2, we will take evidence from stakeholders on vaccination certification. I welcome to the meeting Professor Christopher Dye FRS, professor of epidemiology at the University of Oxford; Professor Stephen Reicher, Bishop Wardlaw professor of social psychology at the University of St Andrews; and Professor John Drury, professor of social psychology at the University of Sussex.

It might be helpful to start by giving a brief recap on the vaccination certification scheme. The Scottish Government announced on 1 September its intention to introduce a vaccination certification scheme, to be in place by tomorrow. The committee intends to listen to the witnesses’ views and to feed them back directly to the Scottish ministers in our regular evidence sessions with them. Any issues that you raise will also inform our scrutiny of any relevant legislation that is introduced to give effect to the scheme. As such, your input is valuable to the committee and we are very pleased to hear from you and to have received your written evidence.

What are the key priorities that should be embedded in the proposed scheme to make it work?

Thank you, Professor Dye.

Professor Reicher, what do you think are the key priorities that should be embedded with the proposed scheme?

We move to questions from Alex Rowley. We have about 10 minutes each.

I am sorry, Mr Fairlie, but we have to move to Alex Cole-Hamilton.

You can have one more.

You have one minute.

Good morning, and welcome to the sixth meeting in 2021 of the COVID-19 Recovery Committee. We are joined by Alex Cole-Hamilton, who is not a committee member but is attending due to his interest in proceedings. I welcome Alex to the meeting and invite him to declare any interests that are relevant to the committee.

Thank you, Professor Reicher. May I ask the same question of Professor Drury, please?

I thank the witnesses for their evidence and for giving us their time this morning. If you would like to offer any further evidence to the committee, you can do so in writing. The clerks will be happy to liaise with you about how to do that.

I suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses and a short comfort break.