Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 16 March 2021
First, had I announced three weeks ago everything that I have announced today, I would have been doing so without the confidence I now have that we would have reached a stage of having suppressed the virus and vaccinated enough people to make it safe. What I have tried to do—some people will agree, and some will disagree—from day one of the pandemic, literally every single day, is to take balanced decisions that put the overall safety of the country first. That is what I am going to continue to do each and every day. That is more important than headline grabbing or doing things to make the lives of politicians easier, because my job is to protect, as well as I can, the safety of the population at large.
I repeat that, because of the cautious nature of the approach that we took in coming out of lockdown last year, we kept things open for longer than other parts of the UK—and, of course, we are coming out now from our second national lockdown as other parts of the UK are coming out of their third. It is important to get such decisions right.
Opening up public services that have had to be paused is a priority. It is because we give it that priority—schools being at the top of that list—that we have to be more cautious with opening some parts of our economy. We cannot do everything when headroom to suppress the virus is so limited. We have therefore unapologetically and unashamedly prioritised the return of schools.
Getting the health service back to operating normally is also a real focus. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport and I had a round-table discussion just yesterday with representatives from across the health service and heard directly from them about their priorities and needs. We have just established a new centre for sustainable development in the national health service, which is looking at innovative ways of doing things—for example, at-home smears, although I think that we have to be careful about exactly how we describe certain things. All of that is part of what we are now doing to take forward the sustainable recovery of the national health service while supporting it to treat Covid patients for as long as is necessary.
There has been significant investment in justice. Significant work with the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service has meant that, again, creative and innovative ways were found to keep court hearings and trials going—although there has been an undeniable impact on that—and we will continue to bring those services back as safely as possible.
I hope that gyms will reopen on 26 April for individual exercise. Group exercise outdoors, so that people do not have to face exercising outdoors on their own, is particularly important for women, and particularly so in the current circumstances. We allowed that from last week, recognising its importance for people’s physical and mental health.
None of that is easy. It would do nobody any favours if I rushed to do everything at once, because that would set us back. We are setting out a sustainable and steady path out of lockdown and back to normality. I believe that the vast majority of people across the country will support that.