 Merdeth i ni, i ddaloedd yn y 3 prif sydd y FfGVD 19 ydyn nhw'n cyfleidau views yng Nghymru 2021. Yr unig gennymau unig gyd yn dweud o unig gennymau unig enwyr ond mae'r pergyng Mythwell yn meddygol yn gynllunio ar y blydd. Mae diwethaf i ni? Erdug. Ardug. Grinnaf yn meddylol yn ddweud o unig gennymau unig gennymau unig gyd yn edrych. Ynny'n gyrnodd gennymau unig gennymau unig, mae'r unig gennymau unig yn meddylol o'r Ministerial Statement on Covid-19 and Subordinate Legislation from Michael Matheson, Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport. The Cabinet Secretary is joined by Professor Jason Leitch, National Clinical Director, Penelope Cooper, Director of Covid Coordination and Graham Fisher, Deputy Director Scottish Government, Legal Directorate from the Scottish Government. I would like to welcome our witnesses to the meeting who are joining us remotely. The committee will consider regulations that were laid over the summer, which are listed on the agenda. Cabinet Secretary, would you like to make any opening remarks before we move to questions? I am pleased with the opportunity to appear before the Covid-19 recovery committee for the first time to discuss international travel regulations. I was last at the Health and Sport Committee in March and a lot has changed since then, both in the overall state of the pandemic and in the regulations on international travel, as well as giving evidence to be in relation to the specific instruments that are being considered by the committee. I thought that it might be helpful to briefly say something about the context in which they are made. The restrictions on international travel combine a mixture of devolved and reserved responsibilities and an area where effective four nations working is essential. The regulations that are made under the Health Protection, the Health Protection Powers in the Public Health Scotland Act 2008 and are therefore devolved. However, some elements are reserved, including aspects of immigration and aviation policy and, of course, border force, which is the main enforcement agency for these regulations, is part of the Home Office. There is regular engagement and dialogue at official level on policy and independent analysis and advice on risk of travel from individual countries is provided by the Joint Biosecurity Centre. The methodology that the assessment is endorsed for this process is a process that is endorsed by the four UK chief medical officers. That leads through to a regular four nations ministerial forum, which is the Covid O Committee, where decisions on alignment or divergence can be agreed and managed. The system is designed to limit importation of variants of concern and cases from high-risk countries, while allowing us to reduce restrictions on travel where it is safe to do so. The Scottish Government's first priority remains to limit the risk of importation of high-risk variants of concern from international travel, especially those who, with the potential to undermine the success of our vaccination programme. At the same time, we want to support a safe restart of international travel. That is in recognition of the fact that the restrictions, although we consider them necessary and proportionate to the risk, have a significant impact on people's ability to see their family and love ones overseas or to travel for work, study or for holidays. Members will be aware of the UK Government's global travel task report, which was published in April of this year. The final review milestone in that report is 1 October, and we are in discussions with the UK Government and other devolved Administrations about future policy developments in this area. The nature of the global pandemic means that international travel is not without risk, even if you are fully vaccinated or you are going to a greenless country. Everyone should continue to think very carefully if they need to travel and make sure that they know the rules that apply in the country that they are visiting and on return to Scotland. I hope that this overview is helpful, and I am happy to respond to any questions that committee members may have. I welcome the recent QR code for international travel that has recently been implemented, but I would like to ask what measures are in place for people who do not have access to the internet or a compatible mobile phone or are digitally excluded. Secondly, in recent weeks there have been problems with recognition of vaccinations outwith the Scottish NHS, such as one vaccination in England and one vaccination in Scotland. I have a constituent who has had two vaccinations in America but is not recognised by the NHS Scotland to provide him with a vaccination certificate. What discussions have the Scottish Government had with the UK Government or the EU or other international countries regarding mutual recognition of vaccinations for vaccination passports for international travellers? The issue of vaccine certification has been followed by my colleagues in the health directive in the Scottish Government. The introduction of the QR code that was introduced this year was to help to ensure that we make it easier for people who are travelling internationally, where some countries only recognise QR codes and the provision of QR codes helps to overcome that particular problem. There remains the option of getting a paper copy of your vaccination certificate, which you can request through NHS Scotland, which can be made available to you. For those who do not have access to a mobile device to have a QR code, they can have access to a paper version of their vaccination certificate. My understanding is that that certificate can also hold a QR code on it to be printed off, which an individual can then provide to staff at check-in-ees at the point when they are entering a country if they are looking for their QR codes. That would be the principal way for someone who does not have access to a mobile device. On your second point in terms of recognition of different vaccines, before I bring in Professor Jason Leitch on that particular issue, the approach that we have taken within Scotland and across all of the UK is that the vaccines that are recognised or those that have been approved by the FDC in the United States and also from the European Medicines Agency on the basis that the data that is available relating to those vaccines is available to our own CMOs in the UK and our own regulatory bodies to be able to assess that information. On your specific cases relating to individuals who have had vaccinations that are not recognised in the UK, I do not know what the specific details are, but if you want to provide the specific details, I would be more than happy to ensure that the health officials look into that and provide a detailed response to you on the matter. It may be that Professor Jason Leitch can say a little more about the reasons why certain vaccines that are being used in other parts of the world are not recognised within the existing system, which, as I say, is larger down to my understanding and being able to analyse the data associated with the different vaccines that are available. Good morning, convener, and morning, committee. It's nice to see you all again. Mr Matheson is absolutely correct that the way for the digitally excluded or those who are struggling with the internet to get a pass is to request the pass. You can do that on the hotline or you could get somebody to do it for you through the internet and they could print it off for you, and you can carry it with you for travel. The QR code is the crucial element of that that you can't get any other way. The second question, I'm afraid, is hugely complex and much more complex than it sounds. There are two layers of this problem. One is unrecognised vaccines, and the UK uses traditionally the WHO list of recognised vaccines, and that's because the WHO can analyse the data, we can analyse the data, just as Mr Matheson says, and that list changes all the time, but that's the list of recognised vaccines that we consider across the UK, across the four UK sets of clinicians, to be adequately evidence-based to give immunity. The second problem is recognised or unrecognised the country in which you were vaccinated, and therefore the record of that vaccination and its reliability. If you imagine literally billions of vaccines now given across the world in 200 countries, many of which have no record of your vaccination and don't give you evidence of your vaccination other than your work. That doesn't probably apply to your constituent, so those cases where somebody has come from a country vaccinated by a recognised vaccine and has evidence of that, we're trying to deal with them on a case-by-case basis, so they should contact the hotline. If you write to us, we will try to do that for you. Increasingly, and this is a UK-wide challenge, the UK will have bilateral arrangements with other countries. We already have that for parts of the EU, I think now for Canada and for the US, so there are increasing ways of doing that, but it depends on both countries. It depends on them recognising our evidence and us recognising their evidence. It's a hugely complex global problem, which the WHO are helping us to resolve, but I'm afraid that it's not quick. Thank you, convener. Good morning, cabinet secretary and colleagues. Just before I come into the substance of my questions, I wanted to ask a process question. Cabinet secretary, it looks like you're sitting in your ministerial office, which is a few feet away from our committee room. Is there any particular reason why you're not joining us in the committee room, which I think would be, from our point of view, a better venue and give a more helpful exchange, rather than you sitting in your office and contributing via video link? I'm happy to, in the future, if the committee would prefer me to appear in person. Largely, like most people, I'm trying to minimise the amount of times I'm in different buildings and meeting with different people during the present circumstances, hence the reason why I'm in my office today. I'm more than happy to look at appearing before the committee in person in the future. Okay, thank you, cabinet secretary. I think that that would be helpful, perhaps something that we can discuss with your officials separately. Can I go back to the substance of the issue? I want to ask a couple of follow-ups to the questions that the convener asked. First of all, she asked about the QR code that's now become available. I certainly had constituents who were travelling to France for family reasons and were concerned that this was not going to be available. I understand that it's now been made available as of Friday last week, but perhaps you can just confirm that. To the best of your knowledge, cabinet secretary, is this now something that's working well? Have there been any problems with it that you're aware of, or is it too early to say? The QR codes were available from Friday 3 September, so last Friday, Mr Fraser. As far as I'm aware, it appears to be operating fairly well. I'm not aware of any particular issues with it. Given that any new piece of technology has been used, there's always the potential for hiccups, but I'm not aware of any particular problems that have been identified today. Okay, thank you for that. We do know that those codes were available to residents in England and Wales much earlier. Is there any particular reason why it took Scottish Government so long to introduce them, compared with other parts of the UK? I'm going to ask Professor Leitch to deal with this, because vaccine certification is a matter that health ministers lead on. Professor Leitch would have been involved in some of the discussions around those matters, but I'll ask him to say a bit more about the process in terminally within the Scottish Government in taking forward vaccine certification. It was a technical digital problem, which isn't a particularly helpful answer, Mr Fraser, but I can get you a more technical version of that. However, I think that it was the challenge of connecting the vaccination record with the CHI number, which is the individual identification number for each of the citizens of Scotland registered with the GP. That connection was technically more difficult than I am making it sound, and that therefore took a few weeks. In England, that connection was more straightforward. I actually don't know the underlying technical reason for that difference, but that's what we were waiting for. I should probably put on record that they did it at remarkable pace compared to where they thought that they were going to be able to do it, so they got it faster than they thought able. However, a more technical answer lies underneath that somewhere that's above my pay grade. Perhaps this is to Professor Leitch, because he's the expert on vaccinations. You asked, convener, the question about the issue of those who've been vaccinated overseas, for example, and the problems with that. We have another issue closer to home with those who participated in early vaccination trials who didn't get certification. In fact, my colleague Douglas Lumsden, who is a MSP for North East Scotland, is in that category, and he raised that issue with the First Minister last week in the chamber. Has that question now been resolved, so those who took part in vaccination trials will be able to get certification? It hasn't been entirely resolved. My understanding is that it is in the process of being resolved on an individual basis. There aren't huge numbers, but they were a fantastic resource to us. For lack of a better expression, we owe it to them to resolve it because they helped us to get to where we are. I am 100 per cent behind it now. If you think about the technical difficulty with that, there are layers. The vast majority of the population are in the same system, vaccinated by the same system, and QR codes are available and connected to their GP record. All of that is resolved. We now have a different category that doesn't have that vaccination recorded in that vaccination system, so that's the bit that we need to do. Some of them have now had that resolved, but it's having to be done on an individual basis. There aren't enormous numbers, so I think that's possible administratively. If Mr Lumsden isn't done, we can absolutely look into that, but it's in the process of being resolved. There is a slightly technical challenge with that group in that we'll need to monitor their immunity over time, so there's a clinical challenge with them, which relates to the rest of us, of course, when and if they get booster doses. It was your line of questioning that got me thinking a bit, because we've talked about perhaps people from here going overseas, but what about people coming here for COP26? I'm assuming that some of them will be in these complicated categories that Jason Leitch talked about. They may have had a vaccine, but no certificate coming from, let's say, Russia with the Sputnik, which I believe that we probably haven't approved. So can you say anything about how that's going to work? There have been discussions, obviously, between the Scottish Government and the UK Government on plans for COP26, Mr Mason, and that includes the public health arrangements and the CMOs have been involved in that discussion. We are at the stage where those plans are now fairly advanced in development, and the UK Government is expecting to announce those in more detail publicly next week, setting out the details of what arrangements will be in place for those delegates who are travelling from other countries that, one, haven't been vaccinated, and two, who have been vaccinated, which vaccinations are going to be recognised. So there's been on-going discussion between the UK Government and the UN over this, and the Scottish Government public health officials have been involved in that matter, and we're at the point where there will be the spoke arrangements set out for COP delegates. And my understanding is that the UK Government intends to set that out next week. The other thing that I would add in terms of vaccination is that the UK Government have made an offer to those delegates who intend to attend COP26, who have not had access to vaccinations, to be able to have access to the vaccination programme in their own country. That was an offer that was being facilitated through the SCDO, which I know a number of countries have taken up at that offer. The specific details of who's taken up, I don't have, but the UK Government would have that information, but they have made that an offer to try and help to support those delegates that are looking to attend and to be able to get vaccinated in advance of travelling to COP26. I think that one of my main concerns on that point would be that delegates from poorer countries are not going to be disadvantaged because they're probably the ones who are less likely to have had the vaccine. I would just seek reassurance that every effort will be made to treat every delegate fairly and not just advantage those from richer countries. I don't have direct control over that. It's a UK Government that are leading on that as the host nation. My understanding is that the vaccination offer that was made by the UK Government was specifically to try and help to address the risk of those who are due to travel from poorer nations who don't have access to the vaccination programme to be able to get access to it in advance. That's what it was specifically targeted at, trying to achieve. I don't know the full details of the countries that have taken up that offer because it's a programme that has been run by the UK Government as a host nation. If I may ask a more general question about the vaccines, even within this country we've got three-men vaccines that people are using. Are we clear about whether those vaccines have no impact on transmission of virus, as is being claimed by some, or have some impact or have different impacts between them? Linking to the international side of things, are we clear as to some of the vaccines that people might come in with from overseas? Is that affecting whether or not they can transmit when they come here, even if they've been vaccinated? Before I bring in Professor Leitch specifically on the vaccines, given the clinical nature of that, there are a couple of European countries that have made use of vaccines that are not approved by the European Medicines Agency, as it stands, which I know has caused some issues at a European Union level. Professor Leitch is probably a better place to give you advice on the clinical aspects of the vaccines that are not on the World Health Organization's list, or that have not been approved by the European Medicines Agency or by our own authorities. Thank you, cabinet secretary. Mr Mason, there is a weekly meeting of a broad range of public health advisers specifically about COP, and I and colleagues are on that with fundamentally the aim to make COP as safe as possible from vaccination through to alcohol gel at the SECC and everything in between. All blue zone delegates—that's the inner set of negotiators, which is a huge number of people—will be offered vaccination in their own country before they travel. If they can't do it there, we will do it here for them, but that's not quite as reliable, because it's longer time. A vaccine has arrived in countries. Now, it's very difficult for us to know how that's being distributed and used and what will be happening. That's a matter for the UK Government, but we have done everything we can to vaccinate blue zone delegates. There are then two other zones, of course. There's the green zone outside that, and then there's the world leaders, which is a separate entity with alterages and 100 or more global leaders, all of whom will already be in bubbles and vaccinated, we are certainly hoping. It's an enormously complex endeavour that we are involved in. To your technical question about vaccines, we know that the three vaccines we have reduce transmission even of Delta. It is not true that it doesn't help with transmission. What it doesn't do is help with transmission as much as its predecessors, unfortunately. The original virus now feels easy and alpha a little bit more difficult, but Delta changed the game. It is not as good at stopping transmission of the Delta variant, but if you just use common sense and think of somebody with symptoms, if it reduces those symptoms, you're less likely to cough and splutter in the room that you're in just now, for example, if you had the virus but didn't have serious symptoms. By its very nature, reducing the disease process reduces the nature of the aerosol transmission, but it does not take it to zero. You can still transmit it even vaccinated. We have to be cautious, and 30 per cent of people don't know they've got the virus. Therefore, that's why we still have the other restrictions of keeping people distanced, of washing your hands and surfaces of all those other things in place. The second part of your question is about the unrecognised vaccines, and that's hugely difficult because we just don't have the data. They've been given in countries that don't keep the data like we would have, and that is therefore more risk. It may be there as good, but it's simply invisible to us, so that's the problem. When the regulators look, the exam question is, is this doing this, and they say, well, we simply don't know. It's not a negative, it's a, we don't know. I want to look at the longer-term prospectus, if you like, for international travel and the travel industry. We recognise that tackling Covid is very much a moving feast, and we have to be fairly reactive in how we approach it. Obviously, the travel industry is struggling and is hugely impacted. That whole moving feast and reactive way in which we have to approach Covid unfortunately doesn't work well for businesses who really need an indication of a route map that allows a degree of essential business planning. I think that you would recognise that vague definitions of objectives and indicators are frustrating business planning. Can I ask some very basic questions? What is the definition of a risk-based reopening of international travel? The primary purpose of the restrictions that we have on international travel just now, Mr Whittle, is on the basis of reducing the risk of the importation of variants of concern and the importation of virus. The advice that we receive on that is through the full CMOs across the UK who have, in considering the evidence from the joint bar security centre, assessed the risk of the virus in countries right across the world based upon the data that's available, and tracking variants of concern. They have developed a methodology that provides a risk matrix for different countries on the risk of importing both virus and also importing variants of concern. That was signed off by the four chief medical officers within the UK. That informs the decision making process on the countries that are viewed as being at a higher risk or at lower risk, such as the traffic light system from green and or to red. Those countries are then rag-rated on the basis of the risk assessment that is carried out by the joint bar security centre using the evidence that they have gathered on the basis of the risk of importation of virus and the variants of concern. The principal issue and the risk around variants of concern is the danger that they can escape our vaccination programme. For example, there were particular concerns around the beta variant, which originated in South Africa. The ability of that to escape the immune response and antibody response that we had from our vaccination programme here in the UK and the risk that importation of those variants can have in disrupting the vaccination programme within the UK as a whole. The risk-based approach that we have is one that is informed by the methodology that was developed by the joint bar security centre and was approved by the four CMOs. It then informs the decision making on the rag rating for international travel and traffic light system. What business is very good at and what we have seen over the past 18 months is the ability to adapt and they are desperate to know how they can adapt to meet the safety standards that you have alluded to. I sort of follow-up if you like to that. I would ask in behalf of the industry what does safe international travel look like? Do you mean that what does safe international travel look like without the existing restrictions in place? I put it another way. Businesses are looking for a way in which they can work around the issues that Covid brings. They are looking to the Government to give them an indicator of direction of travel. It is looking long-term where they expect the travel industry to go and where they will be in terms of where the safe travel starts to open up more if they want a better expression. The first thing to say is that nobody wants these international travel restrictions in place for any longer than is necessary. We want to see them brought to an end as soon as it is viewed as being safe to do. The approach that we have just now in terms of an effort-like system that is operating across the whole of the UK was a system that was proposed by some of those in the travel industry that they thought that that would be a more effective means by which we could open up international travel in particular to greenless countries, rather than having a one-size-fits-all approach and saying that we do not have any international travel. The actual system that we have in place at the moment was designed to try to help to open up international travel. To some extent, it has achieved some of that, which possibly would not have happened had we had a more scheme that just said, do not travel internationally in itself. Going forward, what you will see is a greater focus on the importance of vaccination. That is something that is presently being considered as part of the global task force that is being taken forward at a UK level, which we are engaged with, as the other nations in the UK are, in looking at the options for moving forward. That will have a particular focus on the need for individuals to be vaccinated and to be certified for vaccination. It will also consider what changes might be made to the existing traffic light system. There will then be discussions at a four nations level on what is the most appropriate route to be taken forward, based on the clinical advice that we receive and the advice that we receive from the giant mass security centre. The timeline for doing some of that is that the final milestone on the UK global task force report is 1 October. The work that is on-going just now is to help to inform what future changes could look like. What I cannot do is tell you exactly what that will be going forward, because we have not had those detailed discussions and we have not had the outcome of that process. However, be assured that nobody wants to continue to have international travel restrictions in place for any longer than is necessary. However, I do think that the future will have a significant focus on the need for vaccination and back follow-up. I suppose that my last question is probably where I was trying to get to in some of that strangled route to it was that this is a global problem. It is not just a problem for Scotland or even just the UK. I want to ask us where we are interacting with other nations around the world, the interoperability of our approach and the compatibility of our approach and the practical steps that we are taking—the Scottish Government and the UK Government—to work across the world to address that problem. Where are we in that process? The principal process for considering those issues and the options for going forward are through the global task force, which is looking at what is happening in other parts of the world and the approach that they are taking, including within the EU, as to how that will inform what approach we are taking. Different countries will take different approaches to how they want to restrict international travel, based on the advice and information that they receive from their clinical advisers and from those who are assessing risk on international travel. That approach, which the Scottish Government and the UK Government are taking, and the discussions that we are having at the UK level are very much informed by what the clinical advice is and how we can try to address some of the concerns that the sector has and be able to open up, while also trying to make sure that we minimise the risk of importation of variants of concern. I have no doubt that if I appeared before the committee and removed all international travel restrictions, we were finding ourselves struggling as a result of our meet-and-challenges because of importations of variants of concern. We will say, why did you remove those restrictions? We need to make sure that we take that forward in a safe, managed manner so that we do not expose ourselves to variants of concern that could undermine our existing successful vaccination programme. Thank you, convener, and thank you very much to the panel for coming along this morning. Just for people's understanding that they are actually watching, we are talking this morning about international travel. That is what this session today is based on. A lot of the regulations that we are speaking about are retrospective, so I, myself as a new member and the convener, were not here when a lot of those regulations were put in place. My questions are pretty retrospective as well. One of them, in particular, is probably going to be aimed more at Jason Leitch rather than at your cabinet secretary. First of all, I would like to ask where we are in relation to seafarers and oil workers. I am going to ask for those two separately because there seems to be different regulations depending on when they are coming back. I have constituents who are oil workers who are particularly asking the question when they are going to the North Sea, the Norwegian sector and one of the safest environments in the world. They are tested before they go out, when they arrive and before they come back, and yet they were still required to have a 10-day isolation. Is that still the case, and if it is, why? What is the position with seafarers? I understand that, given seafarers could come from multiple parts of the world, that might be slightly more tricky, but could you give us an update as to what that position is? I have another couple of questions after that as well, thank you. Specifically on oil and gas workers working in the North Sea and the Norwegian sector, they need to comply with the rag rating on the basis of whether they have come from a red list country or whether they are travelling from an amber or from a green list country. If they are travelling from Scotland to Norway and they are based here, then it would be the regulations that apply to them in Norway. If they are returning into Scotland directly from Norway, they are based upon where Norway was at that given time on the rag rating as it stands. What we have done is that there are times when individuals who are working in the oil and gas sector may come into Scotland only for a very short period of time in order to go back out into the North Sea. At that point, we used to have a system where they were required to take a test package for a test on day 2 and day 8. That was changed back in August following discussions with the oil and gas sector to ensure that they were carrying out regular testing of their staff. As a result, those who are only in Scotland for a day or two before they return to the North Sea no longer have to purchase a testing package. Those amendments were made specifically to address some of the concerns that the oil and gas sector had. That followed discussions with the industry on providing us with assurance on the testing arrangements that they had for individuals who were working in the oil and gas sector. Similarly for those who are seafarers, if they are returning from a red-list country, they are required to comply with their rag rating. That is that they need to go to managed quarantine facilities. If they are returning from an amber or a green country, the restrictions that we have applied. The approach that has been taken since introduction of the traffic light system has significantly changed some of the early issues that we had for oil and gas workers and seafarers. However, there are restrictions that remain in place for both groups of workers if they are returning from a red-list country for the reasons related to the risk assessment that is carried out by the JBC. My second question relates to exactly, specifically, St Johnston football club travel to Turkey, played their game and came home. I have constituents who have property in Turkey who want to go over to properties in Turkey that they have issues to deal with, but are giving the example that elite sports people can travel, but they cannot. Is there a way for people to travel to Turkey when it is in the red-list and still have there to still do safely? Or can you give us a detail as to why it was okay for St Johnston to do it? Not that I am saying that St Johnston should not have gone. However, the complaints from the constituents are that this is a level of hypocrisy. Can you give us some detail as to why that is the case? It is fair to say that St Johnston put a fine performance in when they went to Turkey, although the end result was not the one that we were all looking for. Before I bring in Professor Jason Leitch on this, because he is involved in a lot of the discussions with elite sports organisations, the principal difference is that clubs or clubs, for example, at Johnston, who are taking part in a UEFA competition, are quite strict controls imposed by UEFA around clubs that are participating in international competitions. Effectively, they create bubbles for the players and those who are supporting the players, and they have a testing regime in place that is associated with that. Part of the ability for us to… Part of the reason why we are able to give them an exemption is because of the bubble that these international bodies specify for the clubs or sports people who are taking part in these particular events. On the basis of that, we are then able to provide them with an exemption, but Jason Leitch spends a considerable amount of time in discussions with international sports bodies around these matters and our own domestic sports body. He can explain a bit more on the type of arrangements that they have in place, but it is around the bubble that they create for those who are participating in the event and the nature of their travel to and from these events, which is very different from an individual who is travelling on their own to go on holiday or just for business and coming back to a country that is on the red list. I will let Jason Leitch say a bit more about what those restrictions are for international events. Mr Matheson's summary is correct. There are elite sporting exemptions that are tested and tried for the golf events, for the Formula One, for some football games. They didn't fly domestic, they didn't leave their bubble or their compound, they flew in, played their game, flew out, so it is entirely different, I'm afraid, from individual travel flying domestically through airports to everything else on the plane in any direction, public transport at either end. It's an entirely different concept. They did, because it was a red country, have to ask permission and we looked at all of the details of it, including the team coming the other way, the Turkish team coming here, no way fans, testing, vaccination if possible, very encouraged to be vaccinated in both directions and private travel in a bubble. Thank you very much. That was pretty much the answer that we gave them, so I'm glad you confirmed it. My final point is for seasonal agricultural workers. What are the current restrictions on seasonal agricultural workers coming into the country and are they adequate? The restrictions that apply to seasonal agricultural workers are, before I bring in, I think it would be Penelope or one of the other officials specifically on this, Graham Fisher, is that they are required to self-isolate and that those who are bringing in the seasonal workers have to provide accommodation for them, which they must self-isolate, so if they are coming in from another list country, they are going to have to self-isolate for the 10 days and also to be tested on day 8 and day 2 and day 8. If they are vaccinated, it's only a test on day 2. The requirement is for those who are bringing them in that there is a requirement for them to provide accommodation for them to be able to self-isolate. What then happens is that local health boards and local public health officials are responsible for managing that with the company that is bringing them in to work on a seasonal basis and to make sure that they are complying with the regulations. That can involve spot checks to make sure that people are self-isolating if that's what they're meant to do. Alongside that, to have a testing regime in place so that if anyone becomes unwell is that they have access to testing and are able to be tested and if necessary to then require further self-isolation for both them and other individuals that they may be residing with. So there are fairly tight restrictions around those coming in. For example, some of those who were coming in in flights, they were specifically on to dedicated transport to take them to their accommodation, so they had to make sure that they were being transferred to their accommodation if they were self-isolating and once they were there making sure that arrangements were in place for them to self-isolate. Again, to minimise the risk of potential importation of the virus and also for that to then be spread to anyone locally. I don't know if officials want to say anything more on that but it was a package that was specifically designed to help to support the sector at a key point during the course of the year and it was agreed with public health advisers as being proportionate and appropriate to help to manage the risk associated with the importation of virus. Thank you. Can I ask Alex Rowley? Thank you. Cabinet Secretary, while minimising the risk and the steps that are being taken correct to do so, we recently spoke to public health experts who said that if a variant emerges anywhere in the world for a country, short of locking down your borders, that variant is almost certainly going to get in. If that is the case, I suppose that my question is about giving a false sense of security and should we, as countries, be demanding to see collective action around the world? What we need to do is stop variants emerging and the way to do that is to vaccinate everyone across the world. What is your view on that? I take that in two parts. The first part is that no system is going to be able to stop all variants or variants of concern from being able to enter into the country. What you can do is minimise the risk of them. The purpose behind having a managed quarantine system is that, when an individual has tested positive, it is prioritised for genomic sequencing, which allows us to quickly identify whether that may be a variant of concern. It acts as a process to try to minimise the risk, but you are right to say that there is no system other than just stopping people from travelling internationally altogether from avoiding all the risk. It is about a proportionate approach to trying to minimise that risk. The system that we have in place, we believe, is a proportionate response to trying to help to minimise that potential risk and to identify variants of concern when they enter the country as quickly as possible. I should also add that the rag rating system, the process that has gone through by the joint minor security centre, involves looking at data in different countries to identify whether variants of concern are circulating and where variants of concern are circulating. There is community transmission of them. The likelihood is that they are going to find themselves higher up the rag rating system and, most likely, in the red category because they then present a potential risk to us as a result. It is a proportionate response to trying to help to minimise that risk, but I accept that unless you stop all forms of international travel, you will not be able to stop variants altogether. Your second point is absolutely right. While the virus continues to circulate in Scotland, the UK or in other parts of the world, the risk of new variants developing remains high. That remains an even greater risk in those countries where vaccination levels or access to vaccination remain very low. From my perspective and from the Scottish Government perspective, the outcome that we want here is to make sure that countries across the world have access—fair access—to vaccines in order to help to reduce the risk to individuals in those countries. However, if we do that, we will also reduce the potential risk of new variants of concern emerging as well. There is no point in looking at that from the perspective of everything is fine so long as we are all right here, Jack. The way to deal with that is, on a global basis, that it is essential that all countries across the world play their part in trying to make sure that countries across the world have access to vaccines and to a vaccination programme in order to make sure that we are minimising the risk to these countries but also to the emergence of new variants of concern. I can ask as well one final question. Brian Whittle talked earlier about opening up international travel, but I wonder in your roles, cabinet secretary, do you balance or is there a balancing act between people wanting back to how it was before and the Government's policy and consideration of the Government's policy on climate? How do you balance that? A lot of people would say, why on earth would we want to go back to how it was pre-Covid? Do you mean in relation to aviation and climate change? The principal restrictions that we have in place just now are based upon public health needs, rather than environmental needs. The restrictions that we have had for international travel were to minimise and reduce the risk of variants of concern, as I have mentioned. In relation to climate change and the role that aviation can play in helping to tackle climate change, that is an important issue. The aviation industry has started to address that issue, but there is still a lot to do in helping to reduce the impact that aviation has on our climate. There is some work that we are doing at the Scottish Government level in supporting the industry in order to try to help to support that, but there is no doubt in my mind that we want to reduce the impact that aviation has on our climate. I do not think that the way to do that is through the public health regulations around international travel, which are specifically there to manage the risk of the pandemic. Will people's behaviour change in the future stay more at home for their holidays as a result? I suppose that the answer to that is unknown. We do not know yet whether there will be significant behaviour change in people's travelling patterns, both at a domestic and international level, where more people choose to make use of trains rather than domestic aviation. Again, there is a lot of uncertainty around that. There has been some research carried out into it, and it is difficult to know whether some of the behaviour changes that we have seen will be sustained. Globally, people's travel behaviours change and there will be less international travel for leisure. It is difficult to say. I think that that is a bit of an unknown to you, Mr Rowley. However, I suspect that there will be some changes, but what is not clear is the scale and nature of that on a permanent basis. In terms of your relationship with the UK Government and working on those issues, is there regular contact? Is both Governments working closely together? Are you satisfied? Are you happy with the relationship that is there? There is close engagement in our officials who are engaged almost on a daily basis in some of those issues. Would I say to you that the relationship across the four nations on dealing with some of those issues is satisfactory? My answer to that would be no. There are times when the UK Government has indicated to us a desire to change things at the very short notice without meaningful dialogue between not just the Scottish Government, but the Northern Irish and the counterparts of Northern Ireland and Wales, which has led us to being in a very difficult situation in trying to address some of the issues and concerns that we have about very sudden changes that they intend to make. Finally, the system works okay, but I would not say that it is a good system. There has been a tendency at times for the UK Government to seek to make changes at very short notice without engagement with the other devolved nations, and that is an issue that has been raised with them on a regular basis. Has that adequately been addressed yet? No, it hasn't. I know that the Deputy First Minister has raised this matter with Michael Gove on a number of occasions. Despite assurances that, for example, ministerial meetings have been called at very short notice, sometimes quite literally with hours of notice that there is a meeting to discuss some issues around international travel. Despite having raised those issues in the past, it still happens. What I try to do is make the system work as best I can. It does sometimes mean dropping things to take part in meetings at quite literally. I now have to use notice in order to engage with UK ministers on changes that they have decided that they are looking to bring forward without giving us forewarning of those. However, I still think that a lot of work needs to be done in order to make sure that it is a relationship that takes into account the distinctive role that the different devolved nations have in those policy areas and to make sure that any planned changes are ones that allow the devolved nations an opportunity to consider those matters in detail and to provide feedback before any final decisions are made on the changes that are being made to the international travel regulations. I am just conscious of time because I know that the cabinet secretary needs to be in the chamber shortly. That concludes our consideration for this agenda item. I thank the cabinet secretary and the officials for their evidence today. I move on to agenda item number 3, subordinate legislation. I now move to the third agenda item, which is consideration of the motions on the made affirmative instruments considered during the previous agenda item. Cabinet secretary, would you like to make any further remarks on the SSIs before we take the motions? No further comment, convener. I move on to item number 3, subordinate legislation. Members have agreed to move the motions on block. I now invite the cabinet secretary to move on block motions S6M-00699, S6M-00697, S6M-00696, S6M-00698, S6M-00727, S6M-00726, S6M-00903, S6M-00833, and S6M-00976. I now put the question on the motions. The question is that motions S6M-00699, S6M-00697, S6M-00696, S6M-00698, S6M-00727, S6M-00726, S6M-00903, S6M-00833, and S6M-00976 be agreed to. The committee will publish a report to the Parliament setting out our decision on the statutory instruments considered at this meeting in due course. That concludes our consideration of this agenda item and our time with the cabinet secretary. I thank the cabinet secretary and his supporting officials for their attendance this morning. The committee's next meeting will be on 16 September, when we will be taking evidence from the Deputy First Minister and the Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery on ministerial statement on Covid-19, the Coronavirus extension and expiry Scotland Act 2021 reports to the Scottish Parliament and subordinate legislation. That concludes the public part of our meeting this morning. I suspend this meeting to allow the witnesses to leave.