Hansard

Covid-19 is a vicious virus that does not care about politics or the constitution. It is a virus that harms and kills regardless of people’s opinions, and it has cost people their lives, their livelihoods and their health. More than 100,000 people in the UK have lost their lives. That is not a milestone; it is a national scandal and a human tragedy.

All along, Scottish Labour has called for swift action and for lessons to be learned. We are being failed by our Governments, which have been too slow on lockdown, too slow on PPE and too slow on testing and tracing. We cannot be too slow on the vaccine roll-out.

The goal of getting Scotland vaccinated should be uniting the Parliament. That is why it is so disappointing that the Scottish Conservatives are using precious parliamentary time to raise constitutional issues. The Parliament should be focusing on scrutinising the SNP Government’s Covid response and improving it. We badly need a plan to eliminate Covid and safely ease restrictions. People in our country want to be brought together. The priority for all of us needs to be getting the vaccine into people’s arms. That is what the people of Scotland want action on.

Let us look at some facts. We are almost in February, but half of Scotland’s over-80s are still waiting on their vaccinations. In comparison, almost 80 per cent of over-80s across the UK as a whole have been vaccinated. Why are we lagging behind, and when will we catch up? At the current rate, we are on track to miss the mid-February target by more than a quarter of a million people.

We know that GPs are experts in vaccinating people, but they continue to raise concerns about complex layers of bureaucracy, so access to vaccines needs to improve. Will the cabinet secretary commit to simplifying the distribution process and let GPs order vaccines directly, as happens elsewhere?

Our country is in the grip of its worst crisis since world war two. This is a time for politicians to come together and work collectively in the national interest. Every week that passes is yet another week of pain for people, communities and businesses. We know that our economy faces a deep crisis. The staff who are involved in the vaccine roll-outs are working extremely hard and they deserve our thanks and support. We have people who are ready and willing to vaccinate, and people who are ready and willing to be vaccinated. We need to pick up the pace so that the vaccine wins the race against the virus.

The amendment in my name calls for 24/7 access to vaccinations as soon as possible. The Scottish Government said that it will pilot a 24/7 vaccination service, but when will it realise that there is an urgent need for speed, not more pilot schemes or task forces? That is why we do not agree with the Tories’ motion. The virus does not sleep, so we just want to remove barriers for access.

My amendment also calls on the Government to publish an exit strategy from lockdown to suppress the virus effectively in the long term. The clear priority should be to vaccinate as many people as possible, but that is not the only thing that the public need to hear or see from the Government right now. All the evidence so far suggests that there is much to be optimistic about, and that the vaccines will reduce transmission as well as the worst effects of the virus, if and when people still contract it. However, it is not enough for the Government to rely solely on the vaccine roll-out as an exit plan. I urge ministers to tell us, therefore, when we will have a comprehensive strategy for how to contain the virus and prevent a return to another devastating lockdown.

At the weekend, as deputy convener of the COVID-19 Committee, I attended the committee’s citizens panel. We heard from people across Scotland who had detailed questions about both the vaccine roll-out and an exit plan for lockdown. People want to hear us addressing those issues in detail, not using precious parliamentary time to rehearse arguments about the constitution.

Alongside speeding up the vaccination programme, we need an expansion of mass testing, more resources for contact tracing and urgent provision of enhanced PPE for front-line workers—especially those who are doing health and care jobs, but also others on the front line—to protect them against emerging variants of the virus. I wrote to Jeane Freeman about this last year and spoke in the chamber about it last week: we need to take a precautionary approach on PPE. Once again, I urge the Scottish Government to heed the concerns of front-line staff.

The motion’s title mentions economic recovery. We need to take action to invest in PPE and test and protect, and roll out the vaccine, so that we can get the economy moving again. We are still not using our full daily testing capacity, so we are missing opportunities to hunt down the virus and keep people safe.

Too many people are still being forced into workplaces and are not being kept safe. Financial support is not reaching people and businesses quickly enough. Life before Covid-19 was hard for too many Scots. Almost a quarter of a million households across Scotland were already struggling at the point when the pandemic started, and life has got even harder as a result of the virus and our response to it. Covid-19 has had a devastating effect on so many lives and livelihoods, and we must take action to get money into people’s pockets and protect jobs through a people’s recovery, because we cannot go back to the unequal Scotland of before. We have the powers to do that, and we will achieve it by getting on with the people’s priorities and vaccinating the population, not by spending more time on the constitution here in Parliament.

The challenge facing us remains great, and the priority must be to get Scotland vaccinated. In order to do that, the Scottish Government needs to work constructively with those on the front line, and with other parties that want to contribute to the national effort. We need an honest assessment of our progress, not an insistence that there are no issues to see here, and we need urgent action to streamline access to the vaccine so that it can get into people’s arms as quickly as possible. That is the mission on which the people of Scotland want us to focus, and I am determined that we should fulfil it.

I move amendment S5M-23958.2, to leave out from “; notes” to end and insert:

“and agrees people should be united in tackling COVID-19 and supporting the economic recovery; maintains that the national priority is getting Scotland vaccinated against COVID-19; agrees that this and not a referendum should be the focus of all the Scottish Government’s efforts, and calls on the Scottish Government to urgently introduce 24/7 access to vaccinations and establish an exit strategy from the current lockdown restrictions to effectively suppress the virus in the long-term while supporting people back into work.”