Chamber and committees

Item 3 is evidence on the latest ministerial statement on Covid-19. I welcome John Swinney, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery; Dr Gregor Smith, chief medical officer; and Elizabeth Sadler, deputy director, Covid ready society, Scottish Government. Thank you for your attendance this morning.

Deputy First Minister, would you like to make any remarks before we move to questions?

Thank you, Deputy First Minister. I will ask the first question.

Could you comment on the indicators that the Scottish Government intends to use to monitor the implementation of the vaccination certification scheme?

What key indicators will you be looking at to determine whether the scheme is working as intended? How will businesses, organisations and the public be able to provide feedback on the implementation of the scheme? Will you publish that information as part of the three-week review process?

People have to show identification such as a driving licence when they go to nightclubs. Stewards would usually see that.

Thank you.

That concludes our consideration of that agenda item. I thank the Deputy First Minister and his officials for their evidence. The committee’s next meeting will be on 7 October, when we will take evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care on the vaccination programme and pandemic preparedness.

That concludes the public part of the meeting.

Murdo Fraser has a brief question.

Cabinet secretary, would you like to make some opening remarks before we move to questions?

Next, we will take evidence from a range of stakeholders on vaccination certification. I welcome to the meeting Professor Sir Jonathan Montgomery, from the Ada Lovelace Institute; Rob Gowans, policy and public affairs manager at the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland; and Judith Robertson, chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission.

The Scottish Government announced on 1 September its intention to introduce a vaccination certification scheme, to be in place by 1 October. The purpose of this meeting is to take evidence from stakeholders on the proposed scheme. Some of the scheme’s details are still to be worked out, so we intend to listen to your 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 pleased to hear from you.

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

Vaccination passports are being rolled out across the world at the moment. I think that it would be irresponsible, after the past 18 months, not to learn lessons and not to put measures in place to prevent pressure on the national health service and to prevent further lockdown.

Professor Montgomery, are there examples of other countries in the world that are implementing vaccination passports successfully?

We are running late, so I will simply thank all the witnesses for their time and the evidence that they have given this morning. If you wish to give any further evidence to the committee, please do so in writing. The clerks will be happy to liaise with you on that.

I suspend the meeting for a changeover of witnesses. Members should be advised that the comfort break before the next evidence session will be only a very short one.