Chamber and committees

It might not last.

Well, Mr Fairlie should know me well enough to realise that I am constantly thinking both inside and outside the box. However, let us address a couple of those themes.

The witness that Mr Fairlie cites talked about local taxation. The Scottish Government has legislated to enable local authorities to exercise a workplace parking levy, for example. That has not exactly been universally welcomed by people of all shades of opinion in the Parliament. The concept of a visitor levy is, again, all about giving local communities power to make decisions. We are encouraged to empower local authorities and communities and then we are criticised when we try to do so. Therefore, I do not think that it is a straightforward question.

On the resources that are available to us, we obviously have tax powers that we can exercise. My predecessors have taken decisions on tax rates that have been different from those taken in the rest of the United Kingdom. I support them whole-heartedly and think that the right decisions have been taken. Again, though, they are not universally popular. We have used our tax powers; I cannot do that during a financial year, because the law prevents me from doing so, but such options are available to us. I will have to reflect carefully on last Friday’s fiscal event, and I will consider what it has thrown up in relation to taxes as I determine what the Scottish Government’s position will be.

I do not think so. People might want us to do more on tax than we are prepared to do, but we have to look at all aspects of the fiscal sustainability of individual tax decisions. There is a difference in terms of the composition. If we had used tax powers in the same way that the United Kingdom Government has just done, I could see why such a criticism would be valid. However, we have not done so. We have had a barrowload of criticism for the decisions that we have taken on tax. I consider them to be entirely reasonable and appropriate, but we have had a lot of criticism for making them. I really do not buy the witness’s criticism at all.

I have been an advocate for alternatives to council tax, but there has never been a parliamentary majority for putting any of them into practice. In this parliamentary session, we will undertake work on local taxation in an effort to build wider agreement on what a reform package might look like.

Thank you, convener. I am grateful to the committee for this opportunity to discuss a number of matters relating to our recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and our preparedness for any future waves.

In February 2022, the Scottish Government published a revised strategic framework that set out our long-term approach to managing Covid-19 and its associated harms. The strategic framework was published as we entered a calmer phase of the pandemic. I am pleased that, for the most part, we have remained in that calmer phase for some time.

Covid-19 might not be at the forefront of everyone’s minds in the way that it was last winter, but the Scottish Government remains prepared to respond appropriately and proportionately to any new wave or variant that could emerge. The strategic framework supports the Scottish Government to manage future threats through adaptations to our behaviours and physical environments, as well as through effective vaccination and treatment. Ongoing surveillance of infection levels and potential new variants will also support our management of future threats.

It is important to note that we are progressing well with ongoing booster vaccinations; people in the most vulnerable groups will have been offered an appointment by the start of December.

I am confident that the strategic framework ensures that we have the necessary resilience and preparedness to meet any potential challenges that we might face in the months ahead.

The Scottish Government’s Covid recovery strategy, which was published in October 2021, focuses on addressing systemic inequalities and supporting those who were most disproportionately affected during the pandemic. The Scottish Government has been working closely with local government and other partners to pursue that agenda, and we are progressing pilot projects in Glasgow and Dundee to target support that is aimed at reducing child poverty.

Since the Covid recovery strategy was published, particularly in recent months rising inflation, the worsening cost of living crisis and inaction by the UK Government have made it even more critical that the Scottish Government focus its efforts on supporting those who are most in need.

The fiscal environment that we find ourselves in presents significant pressures; for example, inflation means that the Scottish Government’s budget is now worth around £1.7 billion less than it was worth in December 2021. Despite such real and significant challenges, the Scottish Government is taking action to help, including by extending and increasing the Scottish child payment to £25 in November; by freezing rents and introducing a moratorium on evictions to protect the roofs over people’s heads this winter; by expanding access to free school meals; by widening the warmer homes fuel poverty programme; and by freezing rail fares until at least March 2023. All that is in addition to the almost £3 billion in support that is already budgeted for and the existing £800 million of relief for business in this financial year.

Recent announcements from the UK Government regarding energy prices are welcome, but they do not go far enough; they certainly do not materially change the Scottish budget position in the current year, and we face a challenging period ahead financially.

We are undertaking an emergency budget review to assess any and all opportunities to redirect additional resources to those who are most in need, to reduce the burdens on businesses and to stimulate the Scottish economy. The Scottish Government will publish an emergency budget review in the week commencing 24 October. Any changes to budgets through that or other measures that we have already taken in-year will be formally set out to Parliament in the budget revision process, as is the standard approach.

I am happy to answer questions.

We are at the stage of formulating the budget, but we will consider very carefully the recommendations that have been made by the Standing Committee on Pandemic Preparedness. The work that Professor Morris leads is very significant in making sure that we have the necessary level of external challenge. Obviously, there are other elements of challenge; Parliament and this committee are principal elements of challenge in that respect. That external challenge is to ensure that we have in place the necessary arrangements. We will look very carefully at the standing committee’s recommendations as we make decisions on the approaches that we will take. In this financial year, we have forecast expenditure of around £485 million on all aspects of activity in relation to Covid; we will reflect on the report’s points as we consider the composition of the budget for the next financial year.

I suspect that we all face the same dilemmas, because nobody ever has more money than they require. Prioritisation always has to be undertaken, and I suspect that other countries probably do not find it any easier than we do to stop spending money on one item in order to spend it on another. My statement to Parliament on 7 September was a very clear example of the process that I am going through just now; I am having to exercise a very challenging judgment about prioritisation.

A lot of the thinking that needs to be done has, in fact, been done. It was largely done by the Christie commission all those years ago. I therefore do not think that we have a question to which we do not know the answer; I think that we do know the answer, and the answer revolves around prevention and early intervention.

If I translate that into the questions that Mr Whittle put to me about the role and approach of the health service, it is about an approach that is much more about encouraging people to live a healthier lifestyle and to be active in addressing their weight and how they manage any conditions or experiences that they have. All of that is a crucial role for the health service. We know all that about approach; indeed, that is reflected in our wider public health policies, where we have measures around minimum unit pricing of alcohol, for example, or advice around dietary issues. All those kind of questions are part of our agenda.

Covid has, in essence, given us the opportunity to face up to that. It is almost a turning point moment, where, because of our experience in Covid, we all think that we can and should do things differently. It is almost a prompt or reset moment. The Covid recovery strategy was designed to provide the vehicle for that to happen. Elements of that strategy show that a fundamental part of it is a lesson from Covid that, if we deliver person-centred public services, we will make more impact on individuals and are likely to deliver better outcomes. That was our experience during Covid.

For example, during the pandemic, because of the restrictions, households that faced difficulties were not able to be contacted by the multiple agencies that would normally be knocking on their door to offer them support. What we deduced during that period was that people, in fact, liked that, because they built up a relationship with the one trusted person who was coming to their house. Instead of someone turning up and saying, “I’m from the council and I can offer you this” and another person turning up and saying, “I’m from the health service and I can offer you that”, that one trusted person turned up and had a conversation in which they said to people, “What do you need? How can we sort things out and make things better for you?” That might have been about food or access to particular public services—whatever it was, basically, people had a better experience.

The Covid recovery strategy is designed to get us into that mindset and that mode of delivery. The programme board that I chair along with the president of COSLA involves representation from a range of different public services, and is designed to help us to drive that agenda. The pathfinder approach that we are taking in Dundee and Glasgow is providing very good learning about how that can be done.

I suppose that God loves a trier.

It is clear that we must continue to make provision; we cannot consider provision to have been satisfactorily addressed. There will be continuing commitments to what I describe as the precautionary regime that we have in place. We have an enhanced level of biosecurity and PPE use today, compared with pre-pandemic times, so that will have to be sustained fiscally. We will have to retain sufficient intelligence-gathering capability to give us the confidence to address the issues that the committee addressed with Professor Morris.

I will not be pinned down on particular numbers today because there is a lot of work yet to do, but the committee can expect that there will be continuing provision to support Covid measures that must be of a scale that enables us to be confident that we have in place measures to protect against a resurgence or mutation of the virus.

In that respect, Covid has not become part of the firmament of society yet. Many other viruses and conditions are routinely handled in our public services provision, but Covid is still in a category of its own. Therefore, funding will need to reflect that.

All those things are joined up. Mr Rowley and I have probably talked about this issue as much as we have talked about any other issue over recent years.

The data on Tuesday demonstrates that we have congestion in our A and E departments. That is partly because of the congestion in our hospitals in general. It is not straightforward to get people out of A and E departments into other parts of the hospital, if they need to stay there, or to send them home, because they might need care to support them at home. We have challenges relating to the availability of care packages in our communities. Those challenges are not because of a lack of money, but because of a lack of people. There is low unemployment and there are staff shortages in the care sector.

In partnership with local government, we have just taken the decision to substantially increase pay for low earners in the local government sector, and I know that that issue matters very much to Mr Rowley. That is one of the measures to try to boost the attractiveness of many such occupations so that we can attract more people, expand the number of care packages that we can provide, and provide more care and support to individuals. All of that is interrelated, and some of the work that we are undertaking is designed to improve the attractiveness of those professions so that, as a consequence, we have more people around. That will help to boost morale, with people feeling less tired—exhausted—by the work that they have to do. As a consequence, the system will attract more capacity and will therefore be able to handle more cases more efficiently.

The common theme, though, is that all of that has to be paid for. We are simply trying to use the resources available to us to ensure that the system is well supported financially to enable it to operate efficiently.

A very careful risk judgment must be applied, but it is not the only risk judgment that has got to be applied across a range of different projects within the public services. Given the experience that we have had between 2020 and 2022, nobody would thank us if our level of pandemic preparedness was not adequate for the challenge. Lady Poole is convening a public inquiry into the pandemic, and one of the questions that she will explore is pandemic preparedness. That will involve looking at what Government was doing before Covid struck. A global pandemic was one of the top risks in every annual risk assessment that the Government has ever produced—it was right up there. The question is: to what extent are you prepared for it?

Therefore, my answer to Mr Fraser in the earlier part of the evidence session was designed to say that there are certain things that we will be doing operationally at a routine level that are now stronger than our provision was pre-pandemic. I would say that PPE provision and biosecurity measures are in that category. Some surveillance arrangements will be stronger than they were in the past. If that is all done and we do not have a pandemic, we could be exposed to criticism for spending public money on stuff that was not going to happen. Alternatively, people could say that that is a reasonable assessment of the level of risk that society faces and that the Government is right to prepare on that basis. I would like to see us plan for the type of approach that makes sure that we are prepared, but also that we have the capacity to increase our footprint, should it be necessary.