Chamber and committees

As the First Minister advised Parliament on 26 May, the Scottish Government and the Scottish Green Party have committed to exploring opportunities for cooperation and joint working for the common good and to change the dynamic of our politics for the better in line with the founding principles of our Parliament.

Since the First Minister’s announcement last month, the Scottish Government and the Scottish Greens have been engaging in positive discussions about a potential co-operation agreement, and have identified the subjects to be explored as part of this.

Talks are covering the major challenges of this Parliament. This includes Scotland’s recovery from Covid, our response to the Climate Emergency, the constitution, public services, infrastructure, and building a fairer and more equal Scotland.

Talks will continue over the summer and a further report will be provided to Parliament after the recess.

The Public Interest Conditions for this specific project are a matter for the UK Government.

Vaccines Taskforce, BEIS have provided the following commentary that the UK Government’s investments to fund Valneva’s early clinical trials and upgrade and expand Valneva’s Livingston manufacturing facility were made in line with HM Treasury’s Green Book.

Valneva is an important part of the life science eco-system and supports directly high value jobs directly.

Scottish Government can offer support to companies impacted by a change in projected work and if required, a package of mitigation measures can be delivered by Scottish Government and its agencies.

There is no indication Valneva is in this position, Valneva’s coronavirus vaccine candidate is just one range of speciality vaccines developed at the site to combat a number of infectious diseases.

UK Government Department of Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy (BEiS) commented that Valneva's manufacturing facility in Livingston is a unique facility that establishes permanent UK capability to manufacture inactivated viral vaccines – one of the most proven, widely used vaccine formats. It is one of few Biosafety Level 3 (BSL3) containment facilities in Europe and a key part of the UK’s long term pandemic preparedness as it will have the capability to grow rapidly new pandemic viruses which can be inactivated and combined with an adjuvant to create future vaccines. This capability could shorten the time dramatically to developing whole inactivated vaccines against future pandemic viruses.

a) Valneva has not received economic development funding to expand their manufacturing capacity from the Scottish Government, but have received account management support and advice from Scottish Enterprise.

b) The UK Government through the Vaccines Taskforce and (BEiS) has supported Valneva by providing funding for its early clinical trials and has also made a multi-million-pound investment to upgrade and expand Valneva’s Livingston manufacturing facility, as part of its supply agreement for COVID-19 vaccines.

Due to the commercially confidential nature of supply agreements, the UK Government is not able to disclose any further details.

Vaccines Taskforce and BEIS provided the following commentary that the UK Government has secured early access to 100 million doses of Valneva’s COVID-19 vaccine across 2021 and 2022.

The Prime Minister announced at the G7 on 11 June that the UK will donate 100 million surplus COVID-19 vaccine doses within the next year. The UK will donate 5 million doses by the end of September, beginning in the coming weeks, primarily for use in the world’s poorest countries. The Prime Minister has also committed to donating a further 95 million doses within the next year, including 25 million more by the end of 2021. 80% of the 100m doses will go to COVAX and the remainder will be shared bilaterally with countries in need. The vaccines will be drawn from across the UK’s supply of Oxford/AstraZeneca, Pfizer/BioNTech, Janssen, Moderna and others. Decisions on which vaccines will be shared will be based on the continued reliability of supply chains, regulatory restrictions and advice from the JCVI.

Our approach is for people to have access to the support they need for assessment, diagnosis, care and rehabilitation in a setting that is as close to their home as possible.

NHS Boards across Scotland are co-ordinating and providing local pathways from primary, community care and third sector services to ensure a multidisciplinary and person-centred approach in their area.

Whilst long COVID clinics are one model that NHS Boards may explore in doing so, we recognise that no one single approach is likely to fit all areas and circumstances.

The NHS Research Scotland infrastructure funded by the Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office is supporting a number of studies on the longer term effects of COVID-19 infection. These include the UK-wide Post-hospitalisation COVID-19 study (PHOSP-COVID) led by the University of Leicester that is recruiting individuals who were discharged from hospital following COVID-19 to study the short (0-6 months), medium (6-12 months) and long-term (12 months +) effects of the disease PHOSP-COVID Home Page - PHOSP-COVID

On December 22 2020, the Chief Scientist Office announced the outcome of its funding call for Scottish-led research on the long-term effects of COVID-19 infection. Following a competitive independently peer reviewed process 9 Long-covid research projects were funded with a total funding commitment of around £2.5 million. Details of the funded projects are available from the Chief Scientist Office website

Long Covid Call – Chief Scientist Office (scot.nhs.uk)

Decisions on the risk rating for individual countries is made on the basis of assessments by the Joint Biosecurity Centre, using a methodology endorsed by the four UK Chief Medical Officers. This takes into account incidence and test positivity, presence of variants of concern, and capability for genomic surveillance in that country, to reach a red, amber or green rating. The travel regulations are devolved public health measures, but we work with the other nations of the UK to come to a consistent view wherever we can.

For example, the recent decision to move Portugal onto the amber list was not one taken lightly. However it was necessary following evidence of rising incidence and higher test positivity than in Scotland. It also showed a strain of the Delta variant with an additional mutation that could mean vaccine resistance. It is therefore vital that we regularly review this data and take the right decisions for Scotland, in order to limit importation of the virus and not reverse progress with the vaccine rollout.

The previous Minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science was in regular contact with both the Employers’ Association and EIS-FELA in relation to the national dispute regarding instructor/assessor roles in the college sector, which has now been resolved.

The Scottish Government has been clear throughout this dispute that both the employers and trade unions must continue with negotiations in an attempt to resolve this situation, which is absolutely not in the best interests of our learners. EIS-FELA have suspended local industrial action at Forth Valley College to allow the matter to be referred to the National Joint Secretaries for review and I urge both sides to resolve this dispute without the need for further industrial action.

The Scottish Government remains firmly of the view that it is for the college unions and the employers to negotiate pay and terms and conditions voluntarily in the spirit of collaboration and co-operation. We do however continue to work with the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), who work closely with the sector, to ensure any actions taken are compliant with the Scottish Public Finance Manual, the SFC Financial Memorandum and are in line with Fair Work principles.