Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 03 February 2021
The regulations tighten aspects of the lockdown restrictions in a number of ways, in order to help to bring the virus under control. I stress that they are to bring the virus under control.
They regulations adjust restrictions surrounding click-and-collect services, prohibit consumption of alcohol in outdoor public places and disallow customers from physically entering food takeaway outlets.
The regulations tighten the existing stay-at-home requirement to ensure that non-essential activities are not undertaken when leaving the home, and they will restrict work in other people’s homes to essential work only, in level 4 areas. The regulations also require closure of child-contact centres, with the exception of those that are provided by local authorities.
The regulations also provide for a number of positive changes. They prohibit evictions from taking place in level 3 and 4 areas in order to ensure that renters are protected and do not have to form new temporary households with friends and family at this time. They also allow premises that are required to be closed to reopen if that is for the purpose of providing a venue for vaccination.
I understand that Michelle Ballantyne does not agree with lockdown being imposed, but lockdown is in place in all four nations. It is supported by all commissions advising Government and by the medical community as a whole—not just in the four nations, but internationally.
No matter what Ms Ballantyne’s new party believes, including support for the Great Barrington declaration, which the World Health Organization called
“dangerous, unethical and lacking a sound scientific basis”,
all the measures are necessary for limiting social contact and bringing the new strain of the virus under control, thereby preventing our health service from being overwhelmed and, ultimately, reducing infections to the level at which we can consider lifting the restrictions.
As the First Minister has set out in her regular updates to Parliament, there are some encouraging signs that the measures are beginning to have an effect in Scotland. I would like that to continue and not be derailed in the way that Ms Ballantyne is suggesting. We know that it can take a number of weeks for measures to feed through into the numbers of cases and of people in hospital. We need to stay the course and see this through, and not throw away the hard-won progress that we are making by relaxing restrictions too quickly, or for ideological reasons.
For those reasons, I invite Parliament to support the motion.