Chamber and committees

It is important to look at the matter in two ways. There is the Covid vaccination certification scheme; one of its purposes is to increase take-up of the vaccine. It is, however, not the only tool in the box. Among the other tools in the box we must have very tailored communication and dialogue with the particular sectors of our society in which there is a challenge in relation to vaccine take-up. That is about, for example, trying to ensure that respected figures or voices in a particular community make the case for vaccination. Many people in specific communities have been encouraged to do that and are doing it.

It is also about vaccine availability and making sure that getting the vaccine is practical and conceivable for communities. It is unlikely that somebody who is living in poverty and for whom the vaccine is an expensive public transport journey away will get it, so we have to take the vaccine to those individuals. A lot of work is being done on vaccine buses and other approaches to enable the vaccination programme to be taken right into communities.

I do not want the committee to take the view that the Government views the vaccination certification scheme as the only means of encouraging take-up. There are a variety of other interventions to enable that to do with messaging, practical measures and wider targeting of communications.

I invite the chief medical officer to respond to that question.

I covered a lot of that in my response to Mr Fairlie. I see Covid certification as one part of a two-part strategy. I cannot give Mr Whittle a tangible number of members of the Polish and black and minority ethnic communities who will get vaccinated as a consequence of Covid certification. However, I am confident that, if we have that scheme plus measures to reach those communities in a direct, focused and targeted way, with messaging from within the community and access to vaccination services, we can increase vaccination levels in those communities and in others. In particular, we want to ensure that take-up is maximised among younger people and those who use higher-risk settings.

There are different ways of looking at the question. Fundamentally, it is the duty of the whole of Highland Council to think about those issues, as it is the duty of the Scottish Government to think about the issues and take policy decisions that support the repopulation of those areas.

I am not certain that the composition of the council and the policy decisions that are taken necessarily lead to questions being asked about the availability of public services in particular localities. Given the strategic importance of the repopulation issue, it is for Highland Council, NHS Highland, the Government and various other public bodies to take those decisions in a way that advances such questions, rather than seeing repopulation as being driven by the nature of or the arrangements for electoral representation in a locality. It would reflect pretty badly on any public authority if it was not taking the steps that could be taken to support repopulation, if that was a policy objective.

As I think the committee has heard from Boundaries Scotland, the questions with which Boundaries Scotland has to wrestle are driven by internationally strong practices around the nature and configuration of electoral wards. Boundaries Scotland needs to apply those considerations principally around the question of electoral parity with an understanding of the geographical entity and community that they are addressing and considering.

It is important that, as Boundaries Scotland undertakes that work, it engages substantively with local communities. I am satisfied that Boundaries Scotland has done that to good effect. Its ability to do that with regard to the Highland Council provisions might have been enhanced, had there been greater co-operation with Highland Council. However, in the other local authority areas, as the committee has heard for itself, there has been feedback from communities about the value of the dialogue that was facilitated by the approaches that were taken. It is important that Boundaries Scotland listens carefully to the feedback from island communities and recognises their distinctive characteristics. In the case of a number of proposals, communities are very satisfied with the arrangements that have been proposed.

Island impact assessments are part of the statutory framework, so an organisation must consider whether, in its judgment, the nature of the approach that it takes satisfies the statutory requirement. It is therefore for Boundaries Scotland to come to a conclusion on that question.

The work that Boundaries Scotland undertook on the issue inevitably required it to wrestle with the question of islands impact assessments, as we have heard. In all its undertakings it considered the implications for representation and for engaging and involving members of the community. I am satisfied that Boundaries Scotland was able to pursue that framework in its work. Of course, advice that it would seek from the Government on the question would be given within the context of the statutory framework.

That is quite a difficult matter to resolve, because of the decisions that have been taken. The statute on the composition of Scottish Parliament constituencies has put in place particular arrangements for Na h’ Eileanan an Iar, Orkney and Shetland because of their distinctive island characteristics. That does not apply to any other constituency in the country. There is a place for specific measures of that nature—indeed, the point that Paul McLennan put to me about Arran is an example of how that has been deployed by Boundaries Scotland.

There will be a requirement for electorates to vary in size, because of the locality factor. However, if we were to do that in all circumstances, we would create very varied parliamentary constituencies and local authority wards, which would be unsustainable, given the necessity to ensure that Parliament and local authorities are representative of the areas that they are designed to represent.

Yes. If Parliament approves the propositions we will, essentially, be giving effect to processes that originated in the 2018 act. That was envisaged by the act, which expressly acknowledges, as is right, that we might have different arrangements for different communities. Boundaries Scotland has considered the point; if Parliament approves the propositions to take those steps, it is perfectly within the statutory framework for such arrangements to be put in place for the local authority elections.

For completeness, I should say that I cannot conceive, in the circumstance that Parliament does not approve the regulations, of how alternative propositions could be put in place in advance of the 2022 local authority elections. There is not sufficient time.

There are two aspects to Mr Griffin’s questions. The first is my view of the individual proposals. Mr Griffin will know that I am not a minister who avoids questions, but I will avoid that question because statute expressly takes ministers out of a review role in the process. Parliament has decided that, so it is important that I do not express a view on whether a proposal is right or wrong. Parliament has decided that ministers should be removed from a review role; I should respect that.

The second question was about what would happen if Parliament was to reject any of the statutory instruments. Let me get the sequence correct. If the committee did not recommend approval, I would, obviously, in the light of the committee not being prepared to support an instrument, look at the decision and would likely seek Parliament’s leave to withdraw it. That would be the appropriate step for the Government to take. I would then refer the matter back to Boundaries Scotland.

It is unlikely that Boundaries Scotland could undertake and complete the process, and that Parliament could consider revised proposals from Boundaries Scotland, before the 2022 local authority elections. The Gould principles, which came into force after the challenges that we faced in the 2007 Scottish parliamentary and local authority elections, recommended that there be no change to arrangements within six months of an electoral contest. For elections in early May, that brings us back to November. I hate to remind colleagues how close that is, although they might feel that it is getting closer, given the temperature this morning. There is no way that the work could be done by Boundaries Scotland and completed by Parliament before November, so changes that Parliament did not support would have to be left until after the elections.

On the impact of that on wider boundaries activities, I would have to consider what other issues we are putting to Boundaries Scotland. My recollection is that there is some upcoming work that it is required to do. I ask Maria McCann to give me some assistance on that.

The first point is to recognise that the idea of parity of electorates is not uniquely Scottish. Boundaries Scotland made that point to the committee. It is a well-established international principle in design of electoral areas. Given its international standing, I am not surprised that that principle has been a consistent part of the statutory framework that has supported Boundaries Scotland since its conception in 1973 as the Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland. In essence, the arrangements flow from application of that principle.

However, of course, that principle is not applied in an absolute sense; provision is nowhere near identical in individual wards. There is an attempt to get as close as possible to parity, as I would describe it, but in some circumstances that cannot be achieved, because of geographical factors—for example, population sparsity—or factors that might prevail when we take into account the essential element of connections between communities, which is the other principle under which Boundaries Scotland operates.

Parity is an understandable characteristic of our electoral arrangements, but I do not think that it can be deployed on an absolute basis, because of variation in communities.