Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 18 June 2020
We have said that non-essential offices should remain closed but that other indoor workplaces can start to reopen. Lots of organisations have been doing a lot of work online and virtually to support people who are working at home, and it is important that we continue to support that way of working.
However, increasingly and progressively over the next few weeks, we want more businesses to be able to return to something that is closer to normal. For public and quasi-public services in particular, that will be essential in getting other things moving. Getting registration offices open, even for essential business, will be important in allowing limited weddings and civil partnerships to take place.
This is a complicated puzzle for us all, and we have to get all those bits working together as best we can. I remind people that every single Government in the United Kingdom and across the world is grappling with the same issues. We look to learn from other countries, where they are doing things differently. However, there is no straightforward, simple way through this. We are dealing with a deadly virus for which there is no cure and not many treatments, although we had some positive news on that front this week.
That is the situation that we face. Anyone—for whatever purpose or motivation—pretending to people that there are simple solutions that we are just not bothering to find is doing them a disservice, given the severity of the crisis that we face. I know that Clare Adamson is not doing that, but, in some of the comments made today, it sounded a bit like other members were.