Committee
Health and Sport Committee 17 June 2020
17 Jun 2020 · S5 · Health and Sport Committee
Item of business
Covid-19 Scrutiny (Resilience and Emergency Planning)
Thanks, convener. As Professor Leitch was about to say, in planning for an influenza pandemic—and the WHO checklist is for influenza pandemic preparedness planning—the point is precisely that you must have those core elements, which is why I read them out in my opening statement. The core elements are the foundation on which any pandemic planning must rest. The key is then to have the flexibility to adapt that to the particular virus or infection that you are confronting. As Professor Leitch said, compared to influenza, which was previously considered to be the highest risk for a global pandemic, the scale of the Covid-19 pandemic is considerable. Those foundations of pandemic planning are contained in our resilience planning in Scotland—and in the rest of the UK—and they have allowed us to respond as quickly as we have and to adapt to what we face. Undoubtedly, there are lessons for us to learn from that for our future pandemic and resilience planning, and I am happy to indicate what some of those lessons might be in due course. We will have lessons that we need to learn, as will our regional and local resilience partnerships. They will want to feed things into us so that, in our next iteration of pandemic planning, we will have learned from the current situation, which has to be one of the largest-scale pandemic exercises—and one that is real—that we have had to deal with. 09:30
In the same item of business
The Convener (Lewis Macdonald)
Lab
Good morning, and welcome to the 17th meeting in 2020 of the Health and Sport Committee. We have received apologies from Emma Harper, and we are joined by Bo...
The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport (Jeane Freeman)
SNP
Thank you, and good morning, convener and colleagues. I am grateful for the invitation to attend the committee to discuss our resilience and emergency planni...
The Convener
Lab
Thank you, cabinet secretary. I will start by asking about some of the work that has been done over recent years to prepare for an event such as this pandemi...
Jeane Freeman
SNP
As you said, exercise Iris identified 13 action points, which covered guidance, specialist facilities, provision of PPE and contact tracing. The Scottish hea...
The Convener
Lab
I am glad that Dr Smith wrote to local authorities and health and social care partnerships. Looking at the exercises in the round, it strikes me how little i...
Jeane Freeman
SNP
Health and social care partnerships are not designated as first or second responders in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, which governs the overall structure...
The Convener
Lab
I look forward to receiving some of the detail that you mention. One of the Iris report recommendations was in relation to the Scottish Government resilience...
Jeane Freeman
SNP
The role of our resilience unit has strengthened over that time in the sense of its being a core of expertise and knowledge about resilience planning for a n...
The Convener
Lab
Thank you, cabinet secretary.
Alex Cole-Hamilton (Edinburgh Western) (LD)
LD
Good morning, cabinet secretary. In the Silver Swan report, the Scottish Government acknowledged that a global pandemic would represent the single most disru...
Jeane Freeman
SNP
Undoubtedly, the feedback would have been passed to Government, and it would have been factored into how we attempted to manage resource pressures and priori...
Alex Cole-Hamilton
LD
Thank you. I am glad that you mentioned the WHO checklist. I have it in front of me. It is called “A checklist for pandemic influenza risk and impact managem...
Jeane Freeman
SNP
I have the WHO checklist in front of me too, Mr Cole-Hamilton, and I have read the entire document. I do not accept that there was a failure to consider mass...
Alex Cole-Hamilton
LD
Thank you for that answer, cabinet secretary, but I come back to the checklist in front of me. It mentions “testing” 25 times—surveillance testing; test, tra...
Jeane Freeman
SNP
I need to say a few things, and then I will bring in Professor Leitch. First, I did not say that the WHO’s approach means that you can take or leave some of ...
Professor Jason Leitch (Scottish Government)
Thank you, cabinet secretary and Mr Cole-Hamilton. You have covered the fundamentals of why the exercise did what it did. I will add some context for the exe...
The Convener
Lab
Thank you. Please be brief, Alex.
Alex Cole-Hamilton
LD
I appreciate your contribution, Professor Leitch. You said that operation Silver Swan was for influenza—normal common or garden influenza—sweeping the world....
Professor Leitch
It was not because we are bad people, Mr Cole-Hamilton, that is for sure—
Alex Cole-Hamilton
LD
I did not say you were bad—
The Convener
Lab
I call the cabinet secretary. I am sure that you will get another opportunity to speak.
Jeane Freeman
SNP
Thanks, convener. As Professor Leitch was about to say, in planning for an influenza pandemic—and the WHO checklist is for influenza pandemic preparedness pl...
Professor Leitch
I simply add that I would not describe flu as “common or garden”. Flu kills 500,000 people a year globally, including many thousands in the United Kingdom. P...
Brian Whittle (South Scotland) (Con)
Con
Good morning, cabinet secretary, and thank you for giving up your time. It is nice to see Professor Leitch and Mr Connaghan on the call. My question follows...
Jeane Freeman
SNP
I do not think that we should be quite as binary as saying that that should be done by either the UK or the individual nations of the UK. Collectively, all f...
Brian Whittle
Con
Thank you for that answer, cabinet secretary, but I am really looking not so much at how you responded this time as at how we can learn from that and how we ...
Jeane Freeman
SNP
It is important to say that operation Cygnus was about the position in England, not in Scotland. Operation Silver Swan was held the year previously, and the ...
Brian Whittle
Con
As the cabinet secretary knows, I have certainly not been critical of the way in which things were initially instigated around the virus, but we have to lear...
Jeane Freeman
SNP
I will make one point on PPE. I do not accept that there was fragility in the supply. There was a need to improve the distribution network, and that is the b...
Sandra White (Glasgow Kelvin) (SNP)
SNP
Good morning, cabinet secretary, Professor Leitch and Mr Connaghan. It is very nice to see you. My questions will be centred on local government and central ...