Chamber and committees

There are two aspects to that. The first relates to the UK Government’s intention to remove the requirement for pre-departure testing and the second relates to the requirement for day 2 PCR testing. It is important to understand and recognise the importance of both those tests.

The pre-departure test is intended to certify that a traveller is not positive when they get into an aircraft and that they do not have the potential to infect other people on that aircraft. It is an important element in trying to reduce the risk of infecting other individuals. I understand that contact tracing becomes complex when infection takes place in an aircraft.

The PCR testing at day 2 is an important element in our surveillance programme to identify potential variants of concern. If someone is infected, removing the requirement for a PCR test at day 2 potentially compromises significantly our ability to identify variants of concern that are coming into the country and to have them genome sequenced. If we simply go to a lateral flow test, we do not have the same ability to undertake the genomic sequencing as we have with a PCR test.

Given the UK Government’s decision, we have sought further advice, as the First Minister said in her statement to the Parliament on Tuesday. Officials are still providing that advice, and I expect that the First Minister will set out our approach as early as possible—in the next day or so, I hope—in response to the further advice that we have received from clinicians. I will be open with the committee: the clinical advice is that PCR testing pre-departure and at day 2 should remain in place. It plays an important role.

Mr Fraser will be aware that not only the Scottish Government but other devolved nations have raised significant concerns about the approach that the UK Government is taking to the issue. However, we need to recognise the potential impact of continuing with the existing regime, given the UK Government’s action, because people will simply choose to go to airports in England, and its impact on the aviation sector. We are taking those factors into account alongside the clinical advice on the value of pre-departure tests and day 2 PCR testing.

We have taken that forward through negotiations with the UK Government, the Scottish Government and the UN, to create a pathway for registered delegates to COP26 or the world leaders summit to attend in-person negotiations and meetings. From the regulations, you will be aware that those who are travelling from high-risk countries—which are classed as red-list countries—still have much more stringent restrictions. Those who are unvaccinated will have to go into managed quarantine for 10 days, just as any other individual would have to, and then, as part of that, go through the normal testing regime on days 2 and 8. If those who have travelled from or have been in a red-list country in the past 10 days are vaccinated, they will be able to reduce their managed quarantine period to five days but will be required to have PCR tests over that period.

For those travelling from non-red-list countries, there is still a requirement for pre-departure testing, the completion of a passenger locator form, and day 2 testing, as well as daily lateral flow tests as part of the code of practice that has been put in place by the UN to try to minimise risk. The two Governments and the UN have tried to collaborate on finding a mechanism that manages the high-risk elements as best we can through managed quarantine and testing while also managing the broader risk through pre-departure, day 2 and daily lateral flow testing for delegates attending COP26.

Moreover, those arrangements are restricted to registered COP26 delegates. If you are not a registered delegate or if you have not been invited by the UK Government to attend the conference, the measures will not apply. Where things have been relaxed, it is only for registered delegates or invited participants. We have to try and strike a balance.

It is difficult for me to easily give you information on the balance of risks; all I can say is that we are trying to manage the whole thing in a planned way that helps minimise those risks. We know that, for example, vaccination, regular testing, early identification of positive cases and managed quarantine help to reduce risk, and we have put in place a range of measures to mitigate the risk of people having the virus while reducing the potential importation of the virus.

Last week, some changes were made that extend the number of countries that will qualify for the vaccination programme and for people’s entry into Scotland and the UK. I am aware that there are issues relating to vaccines that are provided in other countries for which there are travel restrictions. However, I suspect that Professor Jason Leitch is better placed to give members a more detailed clinical understanding of why that is the case and what action is being taken to address the issue.

The G7 event was much smaller in scale than COP26, and it involved a much smaller number of individuals. Some aspects of what we have agreed to put in place for COP26, such as the testing regime and restrictions, are there so that we can facilitate an in-person COP to take place—because we recognise the significance of the event—while trying to mitigate some of the risks. I would not say that we have drawn directly on the lessons from the G7, because it was very different in nature and scale, as COP26 is significantly larger. I assure you that we have tried to strike a balance in allowing COP26 to take place in person while mitigating the risks that are associated with such a large number of people coming together over a relatively limited period.

There is close engagement. Our officials are engaged almost daily on some of the issues. Would I say to you that the relationship across the four nations on dealing with some of the issues is satisfactory? My answer to that is no. There have been times when the UK Government has indicated to us a desire to change things at very short notice without meaningful dialogue with not just the Scottish Government but our counterparts in Northern Ireland and Wales. That has led to a difficult situation in trying to address some of the issues and concerns that we have about the very sudden changes that it intends to make.

By and large, the system works okay, but I would not say that it is a good system. There has been a tendency at times for the UK Government to seek to make changes at very short notice, without engagement with the other devolved nations. That issue has been raised with it regularly.

Has that adequately been addressed yet? No, it has not. I know that the Deputy First Minister has raised the matter with Michael Gove on many occasions, but despite assurances, ministerial meetings have continued to be called at extremely short notice—sometimes quite literally with only hours’ notice that there is to be a meeting to discuss, for example, issues around international travel.

I have tried to make the system work, as best I can. Sometimes, that means dropping things, with perhaps only an hour’s notice, to take part in meetings to engage with UK ministers on changes that they have decided to introduce without giving us forewarning. A lot of work needs to be done to ensure that we have a relationship that takes into account the distinctive role that the devolved nations have in those policy areas, and to ensure that any planned changes allow them an opportunity to consider those matters in detail and to provide feedback before final decisions are made on changes to, for example, international travel regulations.

The principal restrictions that we have in place are based on public health needs, rather than on environmental needs. The restrictions on international travel were put in place to minimise the risk of variants of concern, as I mentioned.

The role that aviation can play in helping to tackle climate change is important. The aviation industry has started to address that, but it still has a lot to do in helping to reduce the impact that aviation has on our climate. We are doing some work at Scottish Government level to support the industry in that. There is no doubt in my mind that we want to reduce the impact that aviation has on our climate, but I do not think that the way to do that is through public health regulations, which are specifically to manage risk from the pandemic.

Will people’s behaviour change in the future? Will folk choose to stay at home more for their holidays? I suppose that the answer to that is unknown. We do not know yet whether there will be significant change in people’s domestic and international travel patterns. Will more people choose to make use of trains rather than domestic aviation? Again, there is a lot of uncertainty around that. Research has been carried out into it, but it is difficult to know whether some of the behaviour changes that we have seen will be sustained. Globally, will people’s travel behaviour change so that there is less international travel for leisure? That is a bit of an unknown. I suspect that there will be some changes, but their scale and nature are not yet clear, and it is not known whether they will be permanent.

I will ask Professor Leitch to deal with the question, because the health ministers lead on vaccination certification and he will have been involved in some of those discussions. He will be able to tell you a bit more about the internal process within the Scottish Government in relation to vaccination certification.

I have no further comments to make.

Do you mean in relation to aviation and climate change?

I will answer that in two parts. First, no system will be able to prevent all variants, or variants of concern, from entering the country. What we can do is minimise the risk of that happening. The purpose behind a managed quarantine system is that, when an individual tests positive, the case is prioritised for genomic sequencing, which allows us to identify quickly whether they have a variant of concern. The process acts to minimise the risk.

You are right to say that no system, other than stopping international travel altogether, can avoid all the risk. However, it is about taking a proportionate approach to try to minimise the risk. We believe that the system that we have in place is a proportionate response to try to minimise the potential risk and to identify variants of concern as quickly as possible when they enter the country.

The RAG ratings system—the process that is gone through by the joint biosecurity centre—involves looking at data in different countries to identify where variants of concern may be circulating. Where they are circulating and there is community transmission, the likelihood is that the country will find itself higher up the RAG ratings and in the red category because it presents a potential risk to us. The response is a proportionate one that helps to minimise the risk, but I accept that unless we stop all forms of international travel, we are not going to be able to stop variants completely.

Your second point is absolutely right. While the virus continues to circulate not just here in Scotland and the UK but in other parts of the world, the risk of new variants developing remains high, and it remains even greater in countries where vaccination levels or access to vaccination have remained low. From my and the Scottish Government’s perspective, the outcome that we want is to make sure that countries around the world have fair access to vaccines in order to reduce the risk to individuals in those countries and to reduce the potential risk of new variants of concern emerging.

There is no point in looking at the situation with the perspective of “As long as we’re all right here, Jack, everything’s fine.” The way to deal with it is on a global basis. It is essential that all countries play their part in trying to make sure that countries across the world have access to vaccines and a vaccination programme, in order to make sure that we minimise not only the risk to those countries but the possibility of the emergence of new variants of concern.