Chamber and committees

That concludes our consideration of agenda item 1. I thank the Deputy First Minister and Professor Jason Leitch for their evidence.

We move on to agenda item 2, which is consideration of the motions on the made affirmative instruments that we considered under item 1. Deputy First Minister, do you wish to make any further remarks on the SSIs?

The committee will publish a report to the Parliament in due course, setting out our decision on the statutory instruments that we considered at this meeting.

I again thank the Deputy First Minister and Professor Jason Leitch for their attendance.

Agenda item 3 is consideration of a negative instrument on which the committee took evidence under agenda item 1. No motion to annul has been lodged. Do members agree that we have no recommendations to make on the regulations?

Members indicated agreement.

The committee’s next meeting will be on 10 February, when we will consider our work programme in private. That concludes the public part of our meeting.

That ends stage 2 consideration of the bill. I thank the Deputy First Minister and his supporting officials for their attendance.

The committee’s next meeting will be on 3 February, when we will take evidence from the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery. That concludes the public part of our meeting.

Amendment 1, in the name of the cabinet secretary, is grouped with amendments 2 and 3.

Good morning, and welcome to a very socially distanced third meeting in 2022 of the COVID-19 Recovery Committee.

The first agenda item is consideration of the Coronavirus (Discretionary Compensation for Self-isolation) (Scotland) Bill at stage 2. I welcome to the meeting the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery and his supporting officials: James Wilson, the head of contact tracing and supporting isolation policy; Marie Penman, a solicitor in the Scottish Government’s legal directorate; and Shona White, parliamentary counsel.

Sections 1 to 3 agreed to.

Section 4—Procedure for regulations under section 3

As no members wish to comment, I ask the cabinet secretary to wind up.

With the omicron variant, people are being encouraged just to do a lateral flow test rather than a PCR one and to self-isolate for the required amount of time. Then they try to get a self-isolation support grant from their local authority. This week, I have heard from constituents who have been told that they are not eligible because they need a negative PCR test and a lateral flow test is not enough. For people who test positive and need to get a grant, there is a gap between lateral flow tests and PCRs. How can we tie that up?

We move on to questions from John Mason. If we have enough time at the end, I will come back to members for supplementary questions.