Chamber and committees

First, I need to delve into the figures. The £100 million to support the hospitality sector has come out of existing Scottish Government resources. We have undertaken that reprioritisation, which will cause some discomfort and pain in the remainder of the financial year. The £220 million is not additional money. We had expected to receive £265 million in UK consequentials, which we had factored into our financial planning. The Treasury has confirmed that we are getting £220 million, not £265 million, so we are actually receiving less than we had anticipated and factored into our budget.

Mr Whittle asked me about the nature and scale of the response required. The point that I have been trying to make over the past few days is that we need to be able to protect livelihoods. That has been our strategic approach throughout the pandemic. We take measures to suppress the virus, and we protect livelihoods while we do so. To an extent, we have been able to do that until now, because of the valuable support of the UK Government’s furlough scheme. That has been hugely valuable in underpinning our response until now, but the furlough scheme has, of course, come to an end.

If we were to apply further restrictions on people’s ability to work or run businesses, that would undoubtedly give rise to further financial challenges for those individuals and businesses. Quite simply, we do not have the financial means by which we could compensate them for that or ameliorate the effects. The £100 million from the Scottish Government’s resources will help, but that is all that we have to deploy in this situation. A plea has been made, not just by the Scottish Government but by the Welsh and Northern Irish Governments, for us to have access to financial flexibilities to enable us to act in that way.

As I explained in my answer to Brian Whittle, the Scottish Government expected the United Kingdom Government to allocate to us consequentials from other decisions in the UK to the tune of £265 million. We did not have absolute confirmation of that, but it was our estimate and we factored it into our financial planning for this year and next year. What the United Kingdom Government announced in the past 24 hours or so is that that number will not be £265 million; it will be £220 million. That says two things: first, that we are receiving less money than we expected; and, secondly, that no new money is coming from the UK Government. All that money was expected and has been factored into our planning.

The Government is allocating resources for the delivery of care packages and support for the third sector and has given additional funding for the delivery of social care in Scotland. There have been substantial increases in the money for social care packages. In some circumstances, that money is available for local authorities to use and, in others, the care is delivered by third sector organisations, which will act under contract from local authorities through health and social care partnerships. Therefore, there are opportunities for the third sector to receive financial support through the increase in social care resources that the Scottish Government has put in place.

The challenge is the availability of people to deliver the social care packages. In the Perthshire communities that we represent, Mr Fairlie and I hear from organisations about the challenge of not necessarily the availability of money but the availability of people to deliver such packages. That has a significant bearing on delayed discharge. The last thing that we want is people being in hospital who could be supported at home with a care package, such as Mr Fairlie’s father, but we cannot provide that because we do not have the people to deliver such packages. That situation is related to wider issues, with which we are all familiar, that arise out of the loss of free movement of people and other challenges.

The material change is that, when an individual in a household has tested positive for coronavirus, we require all those in the household to self-isolate for the required period. Previously, if an individual in a household tested positive, others in that household could take a PCR—polymerase chain reaction—test. If they tested negative, they could leave self-isolation. Under the new rules, we have changed that to the position that I have just stated.

We take the view that we are inviting individuals to co-operate and collaborate with us on this agenda. We recognise the importance of self-isolation, but we also recognise the importance of public consent in the work that we take forward. We listen carefully to behavioural scientists in relation to many aspects of the pandemic, and the behavioural analysis that we have undertaken indicates that it is best in that respect to work closely with and invite the collaboration of individuals in our common endeavour to control the spread of the virus.

I appreciate that. All I can say is that the Government is having to respond swiftly to a changing situation, as has been the nature and manner of our experience with Covid. Omicron has advanced at such a frightening level and rate that we have to take measures swiftly, and the guidance is being formulated equally swiftly. We will endeavour to publish the guidance as quickly as we can. Dialogue is on-going but, in the headline messages that we have issued, we have indicated to various organisations, be they in the retail sector, in places of worship or in the hospitality sector, measures with which they will be familiar. We are certainly mindful of the need for clarity in the guidance, and that is what the Government is endeavouring to give.

We must be clear that the 2008 act is fit for the purpose for which it was designed—that is, for isolated examples of self-isolation. It is not fit for the purpose of providing financial support in a pandemic, which is why we must put in place the new legislation. In that sense, Mr Mason’s point is valid. The 2008 act is fit for its purpose, but that purpose does not meet the circumstances of a global pandemic, with the current requirement for self-isolation.

We would dearly love to be able to rule that out, but I cannot in all honesty do that at this stage. Mr Fraser is absolutely right about the severity of the situation that we face, and I welcome his acknowledgement of that point. I also entirely accept his point that the public are responding accordingly to the challenge. We all look at evidence, but we are also all influenced by anecdotes, and I have to say that I have noticed that my journeys into Edinburgh on Tuesday and Thursday this week have both been much easier in terms of traffic volumes than the ones that I made last week, and today’s was significantly easier than Tuesday’s. That suggests to me that more people are working from home and fewer are commuting, in response to the situation.

I hope that we can avoid applying further constraints on the way in which people are able to enjoy Christmas, but the message that the First Minister issued on Tuesday was deliberately phrased to get people to understand that, if we want to be able to carry on with our family plans around Christmas eve, Christmas day, boxing day and so on, the best way to ensure that that happens is by making sure that we are all Covid-free by taking lateral flow tests before we gather in family groupings and by reducing our social interactions before and after that period.

I think that that is the safest way to proceed, but I have to acknowledge that, in light of the rapid pace of the increase in omicron cases and the data that was shared by the Prime Minister and the United Kingdom’s chief medical officer yesterday, which reinforces the points that the First Minister made on Tuesday about the severity of the threat, I cannot rule out that we might have to apply further constraints in the period ahead.

The Cabinet considered whether we should extend vaccination certification to a wider range of settings, but our judgment was that, as the vaccinations that individuals have received need to be boosted by the booster vaccination for them to be effective against omicron, that would not be a justifiable move because it would be difficult to demonstrate that that requirement provided robust protection with the advent of omicron, which is a development of the past two weeks. There might be a moment at which that becomes relevant, but the Cabinet decided that it was not at this stage.

Mr Mason’s point on mask wearing is fundamental and completely justified. Wearing a mask is, frankly, the least that anyone should be perturbed about. I appreciate that some people have health issues that mean that they cannot wear one, but there should be no question about it for everybody else. Global research has demonstrated, as have the policies and advice of the World Health Organization, that mask wearing is a significant deterrent to the circulation of the virus. People wearing face coverings is therefore fundamental.

On the basis of what Mr Mason has said to me, I will certainly take away from this meeting the need to reinforce to transport providers the need to remind people of the necessity of wearing face coverings on public transport. It cannot just be left to the British Transport Police to enforce that; there should be constant messaging to that effect. I will take that issue to the Cabinet, which has reflected on it previously. It believes that face coverings are an important part of the protection that is in place.

The circumstances in which we may have to move at pace are demonstrated by the experience that we have had with omicron. I have rehearsed some of this with the committee previously and in various media interviews. Three weeks past Tuesday, the Cabinet concluded that the coronavirus situation was in what I would describe as a reasonably steady state. Cases were high but stable and the vaccination programme was performing extremely well, so we considered the pandemic to be in a reasonably stable position. Within 48 hours, we were being briefed about the emergence of omicron in South Africa. It is three weeks today since we got that first briefing, so you can see the scale and pace of change that has happened. I use that sequence of events to illustrate why we have to be able to move swiftly with legislative change if required.

Having said that, it is important that we handle any issues about the making of legislation with great care and maximise the availability of scrutiny. The Law Society makes a reasonable proposition in relation to the statement of reasons, and I have asked my officials to explore that point. I suspect that the committee might well reflect on the issue in its stage 1 report. I will read with care what the committee says in the report and respond accordingly. I am asking for the Law Society’s point to be considered. Events are moving quickly in relation to the pandemic and we may have to act swiftly.

I remain available to appear before the committee at literally any moment that the committee would want to take evidence from me on the development of the pandemic. The committee has scheduled meetings on a Thursday morning. If it wishes to meet at any other moment in the week, with reasonable practical notice, I will appear before it for scrutiny. I appreciate the need for scrutiny—I am a parliamentarian—but, equally, I think that the committee appreciates the need for the Government to move quickly. If that requires an urgent meeting of the committee, I will be only too happy to appear before it.

It was chosen basically because the pandemic is still very much with us just now. We are still taking decisions about the handling of it, and we will be doing that well into 2022. We decided on that timescale because we wanted to define a structure for the period. The period of scrutiny cannot be unending; if it was, the inquiry would just never report. Therefore, there must be a defined timeframe, and we did not want to limit that to too great an extent without providing the scope for the inquiry to look at the overall handling of the pandemic.