Meeting of the Parliament 19 November 2020
Tomorrow marks eight months to the day since the First Minister told the people of Scotland that we were facing
“the biggest challenge of our lifetimes”.
Ever since then, the people have made enormous sacrifices for the sake of suppressing the virus and in the hope of a return to better days. However, 244 days on, there is evidence of behavioural fatigue. More than that, there is growing frustration because people, including business owners and workers, are struggling to see that their compliance is having an effect. Therefore, my first point is that the Government needs to be better at showing the evidence of the effect.
As I reminded the First Minister in Parliament two days ago, if?the Cabinet’s decision about which tier each local authority area? is to be placed in is a judgment,? as she tells us it is, and if
“judgment must combine with the hard data”,—[Official Report, 10 November 2020; c 20.]
as the First Minister says it must, then the?First Minister?must?explain to? the? people, including those in North and South Lanarkshire, what the?hard data and?evidence is for moving them up a tier when the transmission rate is going down.
If the First Minister says to the people of Edinburgh, as she did last week, that, if the number of cases there keeps going down, they will have restrictions lifted and will move from level 3 to level 2, and then the number of cases falls—as it has—it is not surprising that many people are questioning why they remain at level 3. I accept that there are still valid reasons for maintaining or extending restrictions, even if the number of cases is falling, but the Government’s failure to routinely publish the evidence supporting those decisions not only obstructs scrutiny by Parliament but is dangerous.