Chamber and committees

We recognise that this remains an exceptionally challenging time for many families, including those with young children, and we are working across the public and third sector to ensure that support is there for anyone who needs it. For households with caring responsibilities (for a person of any age) there are exemptions to restrictions on household visiting and travel to provide care or support to a vulnerable person. Informal childcare rules also apply, where there is an essential childcare need. Further guidance on this is on the ParentClub website.

In terms of support bubbles, currently two households can form an extended household if one of the adults lives alone, or lives alone with children under 18 years old; or if two adults are in a relationship and they do not live together. For social support up to two people from two separate households can meet outdoors for social interaction. Children under the age of twelve from these households do not count towards the total number of people permitted to gather outdoors, so a parent can still meet another parent with their babies and any other children under 12. The Scottish Government does not intend to revise the extended household rules to include all parents with a child under the age of 1 at this time, due to the ongoing prevalence of the COVID-19 virus.

There are, however, measures in place to ensure that families, particularly new parents, continue to get access to the support that they need. This includes access to universal services, such as maternity services and health visiting, to further aid access to any local community supports. The new national Family Support Directory , available on ParentClub, also provides access to further sources of information for parents and direct support on a broad range of issues, such as support on childcare, mental health and wellbeing and family relationships.

In recognising the particular needs of babies and young children, the Coronavirus (COVID-19): organised activities for children supplementary guidance was updated on 5 January 2021 for the safe running of organised activities for children and young people during lockdown. The guidance sets out the maximum number of adults who can attend parent/baby or toddler groups (under 5s) and associated organised activities at any one time, to provide more flexibility in this age group.

As outlined to Parliament on 25 November, lateral flow devices will be used to offer testing to designated care home visitors on the day of their visit. This will be rolled out to 14 early adopter care homes across five Local Authorities by 7 th of December, learning from this will be used to inform wider rollout. Testing kits will start to be delivered to care homes across Scotland from 14 December. It is possible that not all homes will be able to start lateral flow testing before Christmas, therefore PCR testing will also be available over the festive period.

Twice weekly testing using lateral flow devices will be rolled out to healthcare professionals who visit care homes from the beginning of December, as part of a wider extension of routine testing including all patient-facing NHS Staff in hospitals, in the Scottish Ambulance Service and in COVID assessment centres. From 11 January this will be extended to non-NHS staff including independent contractors or statutory body staff who attend care homes or provide care at home at least twice per week and have to be within 1 metre of residents, clients or patients.

Testing is only one measure of protection against COVID-19, alongside a strong emphasis on robust infection prevention and control measures, including the use of PPE, the extended use of face masks, physical distancing and good hygiene.

Dame Elish’s very significant and substantial report contains a wealth of evidence and recommendations, covering many aspects of complaints, investigations and misconduct issues. It is right that we now take time to digest this carefully and engage with the partner organisations involved. A Scottish Government response to Dame Elish’s report will be published in the new year and will indicate the way forward in terms of implementing recommendations.

As detailed in the PQ you highlight here, all the academic institutions represented at the academics roundtable on 1 October, together with a summary note of the discussions can be found on this webpage: https://www.gov.scot/policies/international-development/2020-covid-19-review/ .

A more expansive list of academics from a wider range of institutions were invited to the event and key criteria for inviting them were their academic credentials on the subject of international development; and those with ID, social and economic expertise working in academic institutions in our partner countries. To encourage a frank and honest conversation on the direction of international development and the impacts of Covid-19, I conducted the meeting under Chatham House Rule, which also extends to those who were invited but did not attend. As you will be aware, this means when a meeting, or part thereof, is held under Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but not the identity of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed. However in support of transparency and openness for this review, as previously stated, the list of academic institutions represented together with a summary note of the discussions are fully available on our website.

As I outlined in the PQ you reference in your question, we are not running a formal written consultation in the way that we did in 2016, where at that time we were aiming to arrive at a new Scottish Government international development policy. Within this 2020 review, our partner countries are not changing. What we are looking at and reviewing instead is our approach to our work: to ensure that going forward we are re-focusing our work on areas where we can make the biggest contribution and difference in our partner countries against the backdrop of the new reality of COVID-19; and with a resulting refresh of our Strategy in mind.

I believe that events are the best way to hear people’s views and the full list of events which I have held or have attended as Minister for Europe and International Development, some of which are still to take place, is available on the Scottish Government website. A number of these events have been targeted at getting views for both our oversee partner countries and Scottish stakeholders and have been open access. For example to get views on the principles guiding the ID Review, I ran two such events online to ensure the maximum amount of people could attend and I am pleased to say over 115 Scottish and partner-counties’ stakeholders, from over 85 organisations, attended.

I am pleased to confirm that the Inquiry will formally begin its work on 30 November 2020. The Inquiry setting up date marks the point at which I hand over full responsibility of the Inquiry to Lord Bracadale and the work of the Inquiry will commence.

One of the key elements to be completed was the appointment of assessors to support Lord Bracadale in his work. I am also pleased to announce today the appointment of two highly experienced individuals – Raju Bhatt and Michael Fuller. Both bring a wealth of knowledge to the role and I am confident they will bring diversity, balance and vital experience to support Lord Bracadale during the Inquiry.

We have no plans to update the experimental analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on Fuel Poverty Rates, which we published in September. The report provided estimates of the likely effects on fuel poverty rates under a wide range of scenarios. These considered the impact of varying levels of unemployment, while also taking account of the rate of furlough and modelled assumptions about the likely effects of factors such as the increased prevalence of home working on household heating and energy costs. The scenarios presented in the report are still considered to be valid and we believe they continue to cover comprehensively the range of possible impacts on fuel poverty rates arising from the COVID-19 outbreak.