 Mae'r next item of business is a debate on motion 8-9-4-8 in the name of Jenny Minto on celebrating the success of the Covid-19 vaccination programme. I invite members wishing to participate in the debate to press the request-to-speak buttons now or as soon as possible. I call on Jenny Minto to speak to and move the motion. Minister, around 13 minutes please. Presiding Officer, I am delighted to open this afternoon's debate on the Covid-19 vaccination programme. The Covid-19 pandemic brought tragedy and isolation to many individuals and families across Scotland and the rest of the world. Many of us will have lost people we loved and been separated from friends and family. We must never forget that human cost. I am sure that we can all remember the early days, our sense of fear and nervousness having seen the horrific news stories from China, Italy and Spain. Was this going to happen here too? The discovery of an effective vaccination felt very distant at that time. I am sure, too, that many of us will remember that sense of relief when it was announced just seven months after the start of the clinical trials that UK regulators had granted authorisation to the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. Before the end of 2020, the vaccination programme had begun in earnest. The development of that and other Covid-19 vaccines represented a remarkable achievement in scientific innovation and collaboration. The vaccines were developed using innovative approaches and were made possible by unprecedented collaboration between scientists, Governments and the private sector. Their success in reducing the spread of the virus has been remarkable and they have provided a path out of the pandemic, which is key to economic and social recovery. Much of what we are free to do now was impossible to do three years ago, and the principal reason for that is the success of the vaccination programme. However, the discovery of a vaccine was just the start. Getting that vaccine into the arms of those at greatest risk of serious ill health and as early as possible was a herculean task, arguably the most logistically challenging national endeavour since the Second World War. I want to pay tribute to all those who played their part in that, from those who scheduled the appointments to the drivers who delivered the vaccine to vaccination centres right across Scotland to the vaccinators themselves who included volunteers and members of the armed forces. Most of all, I thank all those people who came forward to be vaccinated. It is thanks to you that Scotland has consistently had higher uptake rates than other parts of the UK. More than 15 million vaccines have now been administered in Scotland, a truly staggering number, of course. I am very grateful indeed for the minister for taking my intervention. I share many of her points about the success of the vaccine programme but does she recognise that many of the Scots that she has just paid tribute to were very frustrated in the early days of that programme? While there was so much good will in helping it to get into arms, there were unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles that slowed the vaccine roll out down in Scotland and a problem that it did not have south of the border. I am not sure that I recognise the point that Alec Cole-Hamilton is making. I certainly know from my own communities the strength of feeling and positiveness that the vaccination was being rolled out, as well as the continual information that was coming from the previous First Minister informing people of the whole process of how we were going to recover from Covid-19. No, I would like to make some progress, please. 11 days ago, we got the very welcome news that the same organisation no longer sees—that is the WHO—the Covid-19 pandemic as constituting a public health emergency of international concern. However, while no longer a public health emergency, we still remain in a global pandemic that is a significant threat to health across the world. Vaccination, the tool that has brought us to this much improved position, is one of the most effective ways to ensure its continuing management. However, the road from vaccine discovery to where we are now has not always been smooth. The emergence of the Omicron variant in November 2021 needs to respond to the advice of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to vaccinate everyone over the age of 18 and not just those over the age of 40, as had been previous advice. Literally overnight, health boards had to revise their scheduling plans to include far more people and to provide a vaccination opportunity to everyone before the end of 2021. You might remember the Boosted by the Bells campaign to encourage people to get vaccinated and the reopening of many mass vaccination clinics. In the period of the Omicron outbreak at the end of 2021, an incredible 1.45 million vaccinations were delivered in the space of one month. I acknowledge how difficult that time was for—I would like to make progress—I acknowledge how difficult that time was for health board staff for vaccinators. Much was asked of them, but they responded fantastically as they always do. I would like to thank colleagues right across this chamber for their support for the vaccination effort. I am sure that I was not the only one of us who was photographed getting their injection to publicise the programme. If I can just finish this point, I will give way. There are many subjects on which we disagree, but the need to protect those at greatest risk of serious ill health is not one of them. I give way. I am grateful to the minister for giving way. She has made a very long list, quite rightly, of people who deserve appreciation and praise for their part in this astonishing achievement of the vaccine roll-out. She has not mentioned the very important and strategic part that the United Kingdom Government played in procuring these vaccines in the first place, making bold decisions early on to invest in these research projects, to bring together these collaborations that resulted in these vaccines. Would she now take the opportunity to express all of our appreciation to the United Kingdom Government for making that happen? Minister, I can give you time back for both those interventions. I am going to suspend proceedings. Okay, broadcasting is back on. Minister, I would ask you to resume. There is quite a bit of time in hand, so I can give you the time back for that and the earlier interventions. Thank you, Presiding Officer. If I may turn to the people in the gallery first, I understand the issues that some are experiencing and my sympathy goes out to those that are affected. It is important that health boards take these issues seriously and support patients in their management and recovery of their systems symptoms. With regard to Stephen Kerr, I recognise the importance of the collaboration between scientists, Governments and communities in the opening remarks that I made. The landscape today looks better than it did then, certainly far better than it was in March 2020, when our lives were changed in many fundamental ways. However, there remains a need for those at greatest risk of ill health to continue to take up the offer of vaccination against Covid-19. The spring Covid-19 booster programme began on 27 March, with care home vaccination followed by appointments for those aged 75 and above, beginning on 11 April, and those with a weakened immune system aged 5 and over from April 24. The latest data, as of May 7, shows a national uptake of 85.4 per cent for older adult care home residents and 51.3 per cent for those aged 75 or above. Appointments for the spring booster are available in every health board, and I would encourage those eligible who currently do not have an appointment scheduled to do so before the offer ends at the end of June. If you do not mind, I would like to continue. After 30 June, healthy individuals aged 5 to 49 will no longer be eligible for any Covid-19 vaccination. We therefore would encourage anyone who has not completed their full primary care course that is a first and second dose to come forward to complete their course of vaccination while the opportunity exists, as both the spring booster and primary course offers draw to a close, and the programme reduces in a proportionate and safe response to the move away from public health emergency status. The number of vaccination clinics will reduce as we vaccinate smaller numbers of the population. So, while those eligible for future vaccination will still be invited to attend their nearest clinic, it is very possible that they will be offered different options to those previously. While that may impact on travel options, it is a consequence of the success of the vaccination programme and will allow staff to be deployed in other areas of health support. However, we now have a more sophisticated appointment scheduling system that acknowledges that the closest vaccination centre is the crow flies might not actually be accessible. It might even be on a different island and will schedule accordingly. Earlier this year, the JCVI recommended that children aged 6 months to 4 years who have specific medical conditions, which place them at greater risk from Covid-19, should be offered a Covid-19 vaccine. Those appointments will begin from 29 May. Parents and carers of children in this category will be contacted by NHS Scotland with details and appointment in due course. Looking a little further ahead, we know that there will be a Covid-19 booster programme for the autumn winter 23-24, but to wait further details from the JCVI on which groups will be invited for vaccination. Scenario planning with health boards to operationalise the final advice is already under way and given the success last winter of offering a flu vaccine at the same time as a Covid-19 booster to those eligible for both, I am sure that that option will be being considered again for next winter. While overall vaccine uptake figures have been impressive, we also know that uptake across some groups and communities is lower than we would like it to be. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, my officials have worked with health boards, third sector organisations and community groups to ensure that the Covid-19 vaccine programme reaches every community and to understand practical and attitudinal barriers to vaccination. Generally speaking, the easier it is to access vaccination, the more likely people are to take up the offer of vaccination. We put in place practical solutions such as more accessible venues, provided funding for transport, put information materials into a huge number of accessible formats and languages and provided translator services. We provided quieter spaces and allowed more time for appointments, offered smaller clinics and appropriate staff training to support the needs of people with learning disabilities, autism, sensory impairments and mental health conditions. Health boards across Scotland are still building on the fantastic outreach work that we saw during those first pandemic phases with partnerships across civic society to ensure that everybody is able to access vaccination without any barriers. Clinics held in community venues such as mosques, gurdwaras and churches are, as well as mobile units provided by the Scottish Ambulance Service, help people to get their vaccines in trusted and convenient locations. The success of the vaccination programme has allowed Governments here and elsewhere to ease. I would like to thank the Minister for Giving Way. One of the reasons why vaccinations worked so well in the Highlands was because GPs were allowed to deliver it, which went against the GP contracts. My question is, Minister, will you commend the GPs for delivering vaccinations and will you support them doing so in the future if we ever have to face this pandemic again? I thank the member for his intervention and, given that I live on an island within the Highlands health board, I recognise the point that he is making. However, I think that it is right for local health boards to look at decisions that are being made with them in the round of the contract that health boards have with GP practices. I am most grateful to the minister for that point. GPs and Nairn in my constituency very much want to continue to provide vaccination services. There is a procedure to exempt them from the requirements in the GP's contract that this has taken away from them. Will the minister and the cabinet secretary look again at this, which would be a better solution for patients, for health and also be far cheaper and save millions of pounds to boot? I thank the member for his intervention and note that the majority of GPs preferred the change in the way that the delivery of vaccinations was given. The success of the vaccination programme has allowed Governments here and elsewhere to ease a whole range of restrictions that were introduced to halt the spread of infection and mitigate against its worst effects. International travel has largely resumed and we are now no longer required to wear face coverings in most settings or tests for the virus. We have moved to a steady-state model that can respond to an increased threat, and while it is still possible to access a test in certain circumstances, we do not envisage a return to population-wide testing in our contingency or variant planning. However, that position should not be misrepresented as complacency. The Scottish Government, in common with other Governments across the UK and elsewhere, has always had in place plans to deal with health pandemics. The many lessons we have learned from the experience of the last three years have been applied. We continue to work with partners and key stakeholders, including Public Health Scotland, health boards and across the four nations, to prepare Scotland to identify and respond to future infectious disease and pandemic threats. National preparedness arrangements include stockpiles of clinical consumables, personal protective equipment, medicines, a contract for access to pandemic influenza vaccine and a national pandemic influenza service at the four nation level to distribute antivirals. Meanwhile, the staff who have been responsible for putting needles into arms and protecting us from the virus come from across the health workforce. One of the innovative approaches that was used was the deployment of an extended vaccination workforce to deliver the Covid-19 and flu vaccination programmes. In Scotland, the vaccination workforce includes a significant of level 3 and 4 healthcare support workers who received specialist training to completely combat competently and safely deliver flu and Covid-19 vaccinations. Those workers enabled us to deliver the vaccination programme at a huge scale and provided valuable training and development for healthcare support workers improving their skillset and learning while working. I received my first vaccine on Islay, where there was almost a caly-like atmosphere in the vaccination centre at Bowmore hospital. People who hadn't seen each other for a while, so it wasn't difficult to imagine the hubbub of chat and laughter that filled the centre. With the healthcare staff and volunteers providing the information and reassurance which was so necessary and so appreciated, we believe that retaining the ability to deploy this workforce for vaccinations is not only a sensible use of resources but a significant benefit to the public health protection system. I would like to end with a thank you and a plea. The thank you is to every single person involved in the vaccination effort, including those who came forward to be vaccinated when they were invited. The plea is to those who are invited to a Covid-19 booster in the future to come forward for that vaccination. Each of the vaccines available offer great protection against the virus but that protection fades over time. It is important for that protection to be topped up if you are in any of the groups at greatest risks of serious ill health from the effects of Covid-19. I move the motion in my name. To speak to and move amendment 8, 9, 4, 8.2, around nine minutes. Over 17,000 Scots have died after contracting Covid-19. I wish to have my condolences to all those who have lost a loved one. I hope that our debate today does not stir painful memories. I understand that for many it may bring little comfort when I say that our Covid-19 vaccination programme has been a success but the Scottish Government need to acknowledge that it has not succeeded in ensuring ethnic minorities take up the vaccine. In fact we have areas of terrible uptake but I cannot praise enough all those who have helped to deliver these life-saving vaccines, dedicated health and social care workers, thousands of volunteers who stepped up and of course members of our British Armed Forces deployed to support a national rollout. Faced with a global pandemic, the sure way out of cycles of lockdown restrictions is via a vaccine, not the disastrous and frankly unworkable and highly ignored Scottish Covid passport scheme. That was a waste of time and money. Let us not forget the Scottish Government's advice to cut the bottom of doors off as well. The trouble is that normal process for vaccines take about 10 years. Imagine waiting 10 years, a decade, to get the vaccine. We would be making decisions we absolutely would not want to be making. Unprecedented cooperation, focus and funding led to the development of multiple effective and safe Covid-19 vaccines in less than a year and created a blueprint for future vaccine development. It was extraordinary the success and a brilliant example of what we can achieve together when we work together. The UK Government moved fast and early on in the pandemic supporting research, ordering millions of vaccines. UK Government was also criticised at the time but it was clearly the correct decision. A vaccine task force by the UK Government set in April 2020 and 367 million doses from seven vaccine developments with four different types of vaccines were procured. My Almata Imperial College London, in fact, were helping in the trials of Covid-19 and this was supported by £41 million of UK Government funding. Margaret Keenan, 90-year-old lady, was the first person in the UK to receive the Covid-19 jab. She said she never considered not having the jab but she did suffer one major side effect. She was unable to go home that night because TV crews were set up in front of her door. So he began the UK-wide rollout. In December 2021 more than 10 million vaccine doses were administered in Scotland alone. Edward Mountain and Fergus Ewing were correct in saying that some specific GPs providing vaccines was the only way to reach lots of people. Quite frankly, the minister's response was confusing. Whilst it is okay that central belt and the majority of GPs feel that the rollout and the way it was done was fine, exceptions must be made and GPs must put out the vaccine where appropriate. I'm very grateful for the member giving way. Isn't it right that one solution does not fit all and actually we are at our best when we can use localised decision making, localised delivery system to work for our individual communities? I could not agree more which is why in the highland areas centralisation doesn't work. In the central belt area, of course it does. There is a wealth of talent on these islands and there is a can-do attitude. Scotland was one of the first countries in the world to begin vaccinating its population along with the other three nations—the four nations in total—of the United Kingdom, which benefited from our combined strength. I hope that my friend, Sandesh Gulhani, does not mind me saying to him that while we've proposed an amendment in his name to the motion, we should welcome the fact that the SNP Scottish Government is actually embracing something of scientific value. Would it not be a good idea if their attitude to science was completely overhauled in this respect? Would it not be a good idea if there were less anti-science? Perhaps it could embrace gene editing? Perhaps it could embrace the environmental benefits of clean energy sources like nuclear? Does he agree with me that being pro-science would be a good change of heart for this SNP Scottish Government? I'm not sure the point is relevant to the debate. Sandesh Gulhani, I can give you the time back for the intervention. Thank you. Yes, I do agree. In fact, if we looked at the Scottish Government saying that they wanted to do everything that Europe does, then we would be stuck without getting the vaccines quickly. My first speech here in Parliament on May 27 was when I implored the Scottish Government to act and support people suffering from long Covid, because not everybody in Scotland was fully protected by the vaccine and they still suffer today. People suffering from a complex mix of extreme fatigue, breathlessness, pain, heart failure, brain fog and mental health problems. I explained the bespoke setups in England. I even created a meeting with the bespoke setup with the Scottish Government. We need the Scottish Government to help, to care, to fund such clinics, but they haven't. The SNP Green Government published its long Covid strategy paper at a time in September 21 when 79,000 Scots were suffering from long Covid. Eight months of delay later, in April 22, £3 million was allocated to long Covid projects. By then, the number of long Covid sufferers had doubled. That was a year ago. We still don't have long Covid pathways set up. In fact, I have heard of no Scottish Government commitment to roll out long Covid clinics. Frankly, it is an abject failure. Jim Fairlie. I remember the fact that, when Humza Yousaf was the Minister for Health, he said that he had no objection to any local authority health board setting up a long Covid clinic if that is what they chose to do. We have a total failure of the Scottish Government looking after patients with long Covid. It doesn't matter if you say that there is money available. What matters is what you do. It matters about the implementation. It doesn't matter what the rhetoric is. It matters what you do. You can see that when it looks at other things like the ferries. We need the Scottish Government to actually implement things that work. That is something that the Member can reflect upon. There is reality, with 175,000 people now suffering from long Covid, and it is shameful. There is also a lot of shame when it comes to the stewardship of other things that the Scottish Government have direct responsibility into. The pan-UK Covid vaccine programme has been a success, with Governments working together to get the job done, but in devolved areas such as dental services, the story is very different. Instead of the Scottish Government patting themselves on the back, they should be looking at talking about the things that matter to the people of Scotland, such as dental services. In fact, at the April's local dental association conference in Stirling, David McCall, chair of the Scottish Dental Practitioning Committee, underscored that the current statement of dental remuneration was unfit for purpose. He said that it is a barrier to patient care, and the Scottish Government have done he-ho to address that. Those are the types of issues that we should be discussing. A drill-and-fill model is not something that looks after patients. We also hear the Scottish Government trying to argue about dental remuneration being swings and roundabouts. That is something quite frankly that should be in a playground and not in a clinic. We have had a reduction in dentists that are working and the amount of output that they can do. In fact, Public Health Minister Jenny Minter was at the conference that I mentioned, and she announced to delegates that NHS dentistry is recovering well from the pandemic, and we are seeing sustained recovery. As you may imagine, there was considerable scepticism in the room to put it politely. One dentist, Robert, responded, NHS dentistry is broken, and your party have broken it. I do hope that with current meetings with the dental representatives that there emerges a model where dentists are able to provide preventative healthcare. As a GP, I fully understand the importance of our dental care when it comes to our overall health. To conclude, Presiding Officer, while there is much to applaud regarding the development and delivery of our UK-wide Covid vaccination programme, we must avoid falling into the trap of making self-congratulatory statements while ignoring deeply uncomfortable truths about other key Covid-impacted issues and key devolved issues. With a new Cabinet Secretary for Health in place, we hope on those benches to see a marked improvement on performance compared to his predecessor. I wish to declare my interest as a practising NHS doctor and also move the motion in my name. I do anticipate that the debate will tend to stray into other areas, but I encourage members to stick as broadly as possible to the text of the motion in their contributions. With that, I call Karen Mawchen to speak to you and move amendment 8948.1, around seven minutes. Before I begin, let me put on record my party's gratitude to everyone who played any role at all in the long and on-going fight against Covid. In particular, those front-line health and care workers who risked their lives and the welfare of their families to keep as many of us as safe as possible. That includes those who worked on ending hours, pushing through the vaccination programme that has successfully brought us to a point where we can proudly say today that we can begin to see an end to lives lost from this terrible disease. Those vaccinators and everyone involved in the significant effort that went along with it are modern-day heroes, and we ought them to say so as much as we can. I hope that, in time, Scotland will properly commemorate the thousands of people who risked as much to help us and to take into account that many of them still work in our NHS and social care sector, and that they currently feel that they are underpaid and undervalued by Governments. Let's show true gratitude and address that disparity to over the course of this Parliament. Let me return to the wider fight against Covid-19. No-one can doubt that Governments across the world were wholly unprepared for a pandemic as far-reaching and lethal as Covid-19. However, it is our responsibility to learn from that and best prepare ourselves for the pandemics to come as well as properly manage the continuing damage and potential threat posed by new Covid strains and long Covid. That preparation demands we are honest about the failures that happened to. Many people simply could not get a vaccination appointment anywhere near where they lived. We have heard of children being given the wrong dosage altogether. Of course, the public expects in such an unprecedented event that there will be errors, but it is clear that many of those things were avoidable with better planning, and it is important that the Government reflects on those matters. I am glad, Minister, that, since that time, there seems to have been some effort to rectify some of the issues and look at some of the problems. Despite that, we are currently seeing a concerning number of over 75s failing to get their spring booster jab and a general lack of understanding among the population about where the vaccination programme will go next. Indeed, throughout the vaccination process, there were particular groups that had a much lower uptake of the vaccine than others. Properly understanding the economic, social and cultural reasons behind that is key to ensuring that we get it right immediately in the future. However, I must press the point that, in order to address those issues for good, they have to be recognised as failings first, not swept under the carpet. We need to be honest about what happened and what is happening. I am very grateful to the member for giving wine. Does she agree with me that one of the deep sadnesses about the situation is that there does not appear to have been enough retrospective view of what happened during those early days of Covid, the early days of the vaccination, to drive what we do going forward? That is a lost opportunity. I thank my colleague for that intervention. Of course, that is absolutely part of the point that I am making. We must not sweep things under the carpet and we must be honest. Perhaps larger than all of that, however, is the continuing failure to properly address the situation facing those suffering from long Covid. We believe that there are as many as 172,000 people across Scotland suffering from this debilitating condition, with a significant number simply unable to work because of it. Many of those people continue to report that they are victims of a postcode lottery for treatment and medication, a completely unacceptable situation for anyone in a country as wealthy as our own. We also know that this Government has not matched support provided in England and Wales to those suffering from the condition, a fact that I find incredible and one that should be more widely known and spoken about. To avoid such errors, we must properly process and understand the findings of the Covid inquiry when they arrive and not cower away when the necessary action is required to be taken. We must address it. We must prepare for a future in which that could plausibly happen again. In order to do that, my party is calling on the Scottish Government to meet those suffering from long Covid and experts in the field to discuss the long-term funding needed to treat the condition and ensure the most vulnerable in society can access antiviral medications and prophylaxis. Long-term, our Government must work cohesively with scientists, researchers, stakeholders and governments across the world to utilise the most up-to-date and cutting-edge discoveries in immunology, epidemiology and wider healthcare. Scotland should be at the forefront of that charge. With its world-leading academic institutions and pharmaceutical research, it can play that role decisively. We should not shy away to celebrate the success of industry and workers across the UK and Scotland when doing so. Investment, after all, is key to all of that. As we know, co-operation across the United Kingdom was exemplary during the pandemic and acts as a fine testament to what can be achieved when Governments work together sensibly in the best interests of the many. I think that for many people across Scotland there was a great sense of solidarity and collective fortitude as the pandemic rolled out. Knowing that families in Aberdeen and Southampton alike were going through this awful situation and, sadly, having first-hand experience of losing loved ones while fighting it together on a shared footing. I know that that gave me strength during the pandemic and, if it ever happens again, I feel confident that, as United Kingdom, we are ready to tackle that once more, thinking of others across the nation. In conclusion, the development and delivery of vaccines were dual in the crown of Scotland's efforts to fight Covid. We can only be thankful that so many hard-working and committed individuals took up the fight without fear and got the job done. I dread to think where we would have been without them. I move the amendment in my name. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I thank Jenny Rintow for bringing it to the chamber. I welcome her to her place. I am not sure that we have had an exchange like that before, but the Covid pandemic, as we have heard several times this afternoon, was quite clearly the biggest challenge that we in this chamber have faced collectively, but it is also for those making decisions around the world. Overnight, the inconceivable became the everyday. In the face of an unknown and deadly disease, we were separated from our loved ones and confined to our homes. Virus claimed the lives of thousands of people in Scotland alone. They were our friends, family and loved ones. Most of us in this chamber will never begin to know how difficult it was to be on the very front line of this national emergency. It was our healthcare workers who provided the life-saving services that held our country together. We owe them a debt that we will never fully repay. It is right that we highlight and indeed celebrate the fact that the thousands of deaths may have been prevented thanks to the availability of Covid vaccines. However, while we mark that achievement, we must recognise that there were serious issues with the roll-out in Scotland, not for political reasons, but for lessons learned should we face in the likely event that either we in this chamber or generations to follow us will face another pandemic. Those administering the vaccine were all too often let down by a lack of clarity coming from the Government. Let us not forget that we had the slowest vaccine roll-out of the four UK nations and that the Scottish Government was often so amchaotic its approach to their dissemination, which led to delays in getting vaccines to those who needed them the most, which may have cost lives. I intervened on the minister to ask about the frustration felt by healthcare professionals. I remember the GP in my constituency. While he lives in my constituency, he is a GP in five-minute busy practice, in a flu season, he can shift 90 vaccines a day into arms of their patients in any given flu season. However, imagine their frustration there. When they were told by the organisers hub that they had a maximum of nine per day that they were allowed to administer the Covid-19 vaccine, there was no real reason for that. We had the stockpiles. In England, they trusted their GPs knowing that they deal with flu seasons every year to book halls and get those jabs into arms. There was a severe lack of transparency, with little clarity about how many vaccines had been ordered when they would be delivered and who would be vaccinated first. The Government did not do enough to make vaccines accessible to those who were unable to get them through traditional channels, nor did they provide the necessary information to give the public full confidence of their safety. Turning instead to the counterproductive and illiberal shambles of the vaccine passports, which we need a Liberal Democrat opposition to help to see the back-up. While we celebrate the breakthrough that the vaccines are represented, and we should recognise the huge part that they played in saving lives and getting us out of the crisis, we found ourselves in. Let's not pat ourselves on the back. Let's learn those lessons for the pandemic to come. You would be forgiven for thinking that the Scottish ministers were the ones who discovered these drugs. The credit belongs to the scientists who work day in and day out to deliver those treatments in record-breaking time. Part of the reason that the UK made such great strides with our AstraZeneca programme was because of our world-class universities, the labs that they host and the expertise that they nurture, which highlights the danger of this Government's £20 million cuts to their budgets this year and the warnings from the sector of a managed decline. Instead of hamstringing our universities, we should reward them with everything that they need to carry out the necessary research to get ahead of the next pandemic. Scottish universities have to play a vital part in that. As an internationalist, I believe that our efforts with vaccine research should benefit not just those on the shores but people around the world. What happened to the promises of the richer countries helping to vaccinate the rest of the world? That was all too often lacking at the height of that pandemic. Going forward, our strategy must be to include those in need around the world, particularly in developing countries. We have the capacity to do so if only we can find the will. Presiding officers, Sandesh Kilhani and others have mentioned that it is acknowledged that Covid has not gone away. No one knows that more keenly than the 175,000 people in Scotland currently battling long Covid, many of whom are children. Scottish Liberal Democrats, with others, have consistently pressed for the Scottish Government to deliver some desperately needed support to those who are suffering from what is an often debilitating and life-changing condition. During his leadership bid, Humzaeus said that he would look to increase the spending for long Covid. Those who are suffering are watching and they are waiting. That threat, which is still posed by long Covid, is one reason we need to ensure that people, anyone who wants a vaccine, can get one as soon as they need it and wherever they are. Those who are eligible are able to access a booster jab. Over the past few months, I have been contacted by many elderly constituents who are distressed because they are being asked to travel across the city to receive the dose that they are eligible for. One constituent, who is both physically and mentally fragile, was asked to travel 10 miles rather than receive her dose at home, which she would usually do with the flu vaccine. While those caring for or living with vulnerable relatives are unable to get the vaccine when they ask for one because they do not fit the age profile, that is why Liberal Democrats want to see booster jabs available at accessible places such as pharmacies, as with the flu jab. We also want to see Government learn from the experience of the pandemic and ensure that there is a dedicated vaccine working force in place to help with future vaccination campaigns. We saw during the pandemic that the clinical staff were taken away from other parts of the service to administer a vaccine, which had a knock-on effect on waiting times and other services. A dedicated workforce such as that would help to ensure that we can respond quickly and effectively to future emergency vaccination programmes. Finally, as uncomfortable as it may be, it is vital that we acknowledge that we fell well short during the pandemic and that we listened to those who are feeling that down today. Those who failed to learn from their past are doomed to repeat it. We now move to the open debate. I call first Jim Fairlie to be followed by Brian Whittle around six minutes. I am speaking today from my personal capacity rather than that of the Covid-19 recovery committee. I welcome Jenny Minter to her new role as the minister and thank her for this debate in which the Parliament acknowledges so many people and organisations in Scotland that have contributed to the incredible effort in rolling out the Covid vaccination programme, as mentioned by the minister in her opening remarks. We have all got personal memories of that time and unfortunately for me, the event that sticks out was the passing of my mother. Instead of a normal funeral, we were restricted to very few who could attend the ceremony and then we went home. We all recognise that that lack of human opportunity to grieve together in the normal way and to share the most difficult human experiences and the prolonged effects that such a loss has, and those moments are seared in all of our minds. However, we must also remember why we accepted those sacrifices. It was the responsible decisions that we collectively took in the difficult times to help the NHS, the Scottish Government, the armed forces personnel, local authority colleagues and the third sector partners to mobilise and roll out the vaccine. Furthermore, my constituency, A Persia, South England and Russia, fantastic groups like Letham for All, showed us the best by ensuring that the day-to-day support of people that were in need of any manner of supply and support was received by the efforts that they put in. I give huge credit to those community heroes who did not do it for profit and were motivated by making a difference to helping people when they needed it most. I am sure that I have colleagues right across the chamber who can think of similar examples in their constituencies. Now, our ability to get back to close as normal as possible is undoubtedly because the vaccine is saving lives and helping those infected to be less affected. Studies by Edinburgh University show us that the vaccines have reduced the likelihood of serious illness and death by 90 per cent and compared with the unvaccinated population. Nevertheless, we still face challenges, not least of all, by the comments made by people in the gallery today. There is perhaps a question to be asked of how we ensure that vaccine fatigue does not happen for those who still need them. Conversely, how can people access a vaccine if they are unable to purchase one and are not in the eligible categories? People might want a booster for issues like travel or for their own peace of mind, and it must be available to them. We must ensure that we maintain vaccine uptake and access to those who may require it. My mind heart is back to when I was growing up and hearing the famous quote of the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, whose brutal assessment was that there is no such thing as society. If we have not just witnessed the very best of society, I do not know what it is that we have just seen. It is correct that we thank the long hours and effort from the Scottish Government who has steered us through the worst of the crisis. I do not think that anyone would have envied the brutal round-the-clock burden that the former First Minister, Boh, with such determination to do the absolute best to deliver a calm, reassuring message that the Scottish Government was doing everything it could to guide us through this crisis. She was there at a time when people needed to hear a reassuring message, and she did it in a way that reflected the mood and the moment. I think that we will forever deserve huge credit for doing so. Conversely, the behaviour of Boris Johnson and certain members of his Government helped to give rise and was subsequently proven to be the continuing source of the public feeling, which is one rule for them and another for us. It is with immense disappointment that I note the Tory amendment, somehow implying that, in Scotland, we are uniquely the only country in the world who would not be able to navigate our way through a genuine international crisis without the guiding hand and paternity of a Westminster Government who I will give credit to for buying the vaccine up, but then whose behaviour undermined the messaging that was needed to hold the UK's collective responsibility together. What Scotland did not need and does not need is a UK Government to manage this for us. That is what a normal independent country did right across the globe, and I there say that we will continue to tackle this and other challenges in a way that reflects the needs of the people of Scotland. I will give it up. Alex Cole-Hamilton I am very grateful to Jim Fairlie for giving way. He just told the chamber that we do not need the UK Government to manage this for us. Were GPs in my community did not need the Scottish Government to manage their vaccine rollout either, but instead they got on the way and they slowed it down? What does he have to say to that? Jim Fairlie. What I say is that there are a lot of lessons to be learned right across the country, but to tell people that Scotland should be an independent country on the basis that we needed a vaccine is ridiculous. The Labour amendment, however, has various issues in it, some of which I agree with, particularly the comments on the messaging around reaching those living in the minority ethnic groups in the most deprived areas, younger people and pregnant women. That should be an on-going task of the Scottish Government to make sure that this vaccine and any vaccine is properly taken up. I thank the member for taking that intervention, and I am asking, does he agree with my colleague, Dr Gwaghani, who said that we have far more to do with coming to attack and to approach those areas with the minority communities to make sure that we get the same vaccine uptake as we saw in the wider parts of Scotland? We are all aware that tens of thousands of Scots are still suffering the effects of what is known as long Covid. Obviously, that is a new phenomenon, so the research to get to the bottom of it is on-going. I was a member of the long Covid committee when we launched the inquiry into long Covid, and I now convene that committee, so I will share with the chamber what we have included in our inquiry and reported to the Scottish Government. The report focused on three key themes, awareness and recognition, therapy and rehabilitation and study and research. We heard many harrowing things during our inquiry and learned about the complex nature of symptoms from those living with long Covid and from a range of health professionals and academics. The report makes several clear and considered recommendations, and I look forward to the response from the Scottish Government on that point. I appreciate the opportunity to speak in this debate at a time when the World Health Organization has just downgraded the Covid-19 virus. Covid has dominated our lives over the past few years. It is difficult to recognise what life was before the pandemic. I also find it extraordinary to think about the lens that the public were prepared to go to to comply with Covid restrictions. At one point, we were only allowed out of our house for one hour a day to take some exercise. I still cannot quite get my head round that. The only person I saw in a day was my youngest daughter when I picked her up and went to do a little bit of running in the park for an hour. In fact, during Covid, my youngest grandson was born and he only lives 40 minutes from me, and I didn't see him for the first six months of his life. I also smile when I think through those dark times how resilient we humans can be and how we always find a way. My old athletics buddies formed a Friday evening virtual pub night, where we all got together online for an hour for a beer and a chat, and I always thought it was very interesting how the more we chatted the better we used to be. The UK Government produced a package of financial support that was unheard of that kept businesses afloat, so we had an economy to return to, and this place for once came together when called upon to support government's decisions. The four devolved nations put aside any constitutional differences, for a while at least, recognising that a joint and unified approach in tackling Covid-19 would give us the best chance of protecting citizens across the United Kingdom. All the while, we listened to the talk of developing a vaccine. That was the only way out of this global emergency. We hoped and we prayed for that kind of end to this nightmare, and I'll be honest to the Deputy Presiding Officer, I was sceptical that we would be able to develop a vaccine in the timescales being quoted. That was before we even looked at how we would produce it in the numbers required to distribute and administer it. I was not honest to preparing to either dig in for a while longer or even have to step back into some kind of normality with Covid, still the major threat it was, because of the lack of economic activity that just could not be supported by the country any longer. Yet, as my colleague Dr Sandesh Gulhane so eloquently detailed, it took less than a year to develop and produce a safe and effective vaccine that was procured in the UK and distributed across the four nations at a pace that has never been seen before. Set that against the usual 10-year timescale that is the norm to develop, test and deploy a vaccine and the scale of the achievement comes into sharp focus. The previous speaker, Mr Fairlie, characterised the amendment in the name of Sandesh Gulhane as a somewhat strange perception he had that it was saying that Scotland couldn't manage without the UK. In fact, it says exactly what he's saying. He's saying that it's because these two Governments worked together, the UK Government did what it did in the Scottish Government and the Scottish people did what they did, that we had a successful roll-out. Does he agree that really Jim Fairlie lets himself down repeatedly by seeing every single issue that comes before this chamber as being a matter of constitutional politics when it clearly isn't? I thank my colleague for intervention. I think he's right that it was the ability of our four devolved nations to pull our resources to work collaboratively together, set aside the differences that enabled Scotland, along with the rest of the United Kingdom, to have one of the most rapid and comprehensive vaccine programmes in the world. It did save thousands of lives across our small island and allowed our normality back into our lives much quicker than we could possibly have imagined. If there was ever an example where the union is so important and unique to all countries in the UK, it must be the way in which we were able to tackle such a disaster together, and that I'll give way to my colleague. I'm very grateful to Brian Whittle to give way, and I echo his sentiments about the four nations of the union. Is it also perhaps to tread in slightly more dangerous grounds a very good example of why politicians should perhaps listen to scientists in their input, particularly in matters that they are the experts in and listen to the advice that's being given? I do think that we should listen to scientists, but it was quite interesting during the Covid. I think that we were evolving the sciences as we went along. I think that what politicians then did was retrospectively go back to what some scientists have said before and some of the actions that politicians took before and took big sticks and beat each other with it, when we didn't recognise what we were living in unprecedented times and science was evolving on a day-to-day basis. However, Covid has not gone away as we live with it daily. What is left is with or another set of issues, and I would like to touch on a couple of them in the time that I have remaining. I met with the chief executive of Ayrshire and Aran NHS again last Friday, and the issues that we discussed have stuck with me, and I wanted to raise a couple of them in the chamber today, firstly. The way in which we discuss our healthcare professionals is having an impact on retention and recruitment. We always and quite rightly hold them in such a high regard and recognise the incredible efforts that they made during Covid. They were on the front line day in and day out under the most extreme pressures, keeping us safe. However, we then always seem to go on to talk about them as being underpaid and undervalued and burning out. It is little wonder that we have a retention and recruitment issue. About a decade ago, my daughter applied for a midwifery place at university. There were 44 places and over 400 applicants. Universities had a choice, and perhaps this would be a good time to be presenting with us to declare that interest in that my daughter does work in the neonatal unit in the Scottish NHS. The chief executive of Ayrshire and Aran NHS highlighted to me that, for the first time, it has had to go through the UCAS clearance process to fill places. On top of that, the drop-out rate in those courses is appallingly high, as much as 60 per cent in some cases. If something is going very wrong with the Scottish Government retention and recruitment process, that will need to be addressed. Perhaps speaking about them in terms of being part of a caring solution instead of the massively negative way in which we seem to describe their role would be a start. That place has a responsibility, and thousands of places remain unfilled. Finally, through my time in the Health and Sport Committee and last term in our work in the Covid recovery committee, there has always been a call for healthcare professionals to be trained up in that condition, such as ME or Lyme disease or Hunting disease. Most recently it has been recognised along Covid. However, Covid robbed the medical professionals of CPD opportunities, which is yet to recover. That is crucial for the benefit of public health, but also for the training and retention of our healthcare professionals, who for so long have had to focus on a single issue. We must work to reintroduce that crucial element of their role. As the Scottish Government is so fond of saying, there is still work to be done, Deputy Presiding Officer. Thank you, Mr Whittle. I now call Christine Grahame to be followed by Martin Whitfield around six minutes, Ms Grahame. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. First, let me, too, add my condolences to those who lost family, friends and neighbours and recognise those still suffering from long Covid. For all of you, none of this is over. Indeed, Covid is still very much with us, and a colleague whom I met at the weekend has just come down with it. I myself have aided Covid until late last year. I also put on record my thanks to all in the delivery of health services and in caring settings. We may not be clapping and rattling potlids at 8 pm any more, but I have not and never will forget the debt we as a society owe to you and to Governments across the globe for joint efforts to combat this virus. I also put on record the enormous commitment of the former First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, whose daily updates were valued by many whether you supported her Government or not. However, Presiding Officer, I must take Sandesh Gulhani and others to task over what he presents as the purer-than-pure role of the UK Government during Covid. What about Randox laboratories, for example? Owned Patterson MP, former Cabinet Minister, received £500,000 to advise Randox, which was strangely awarded a £137 million contract for Covid-19 testing without competition. That was later renewed, despite having to recall 750,000 Covid tests because of Covid concerns. What of contracts issued for PPE to Tory pals and the VIP fast track list who had no experience of PPE and some £4 billion of unusable PPE bought in the first year which had to be incinerated? Who can forget that Michel Mone then elevated to the House of Lords the scandal and the £100 million PPE contract that even shocked Rishi Sunak? Let us put some context into the way that the UK acted during Covid. Turning now to the vaccines that have been our saviours, we were told that vaccines took at the very least, as others have said, a decade to develop and test for application. That indeed was the case. It took a global pandemic for Governments together with the scientific community for Covid vaccines to be developed in that highly accelerated fashion. That shows that it can be run and perhaps could be done in other areas of medicine when there is a will that is away. It also underlined perhaps, as others have said, how much we should thank our scientific communities and that is not breaking news that they do collaborate in research. My son is a research scientist, they are not in this field and he collaborates internationally, so my gratitude to them. Now being in the over 75 age group, I am the beneficiary of the vaccine programme having received my sixth Covid vaccination just yesterday. I would add that this time I also had the pneumococcal vaccine. My previous vaccines were accompanied with shingles and flu vaccines, so I have arms like a colander. Only with the first vaccine did I have a reaction and that was to shiver violently for some hours, but that was then a nonsense. I say to others, especially in my age group and others who are not in it who are frightened of the vaccine, please get vaccinated and, like me, if suitable for you, take the other vaccines on offer. Delivery 2 has much improved. In the early days, I found myself in a long queue with a two-hour delay in being taken. I left and came back on another date. Those days have changed and yesterday I went straight through. I grieved the minister that there is now more adaptability in what is a convenient place for a vaccination. However, I should say yesterday's vaccination was at Ocean Terminal, where signage was poor and there was quite a long walk to the vaccination facility, which was fine for me, but for some with mobility issues it proved a challenge. It became for me and others a bit of a mystery tour to locate the site, so perhaps the NHS could ensure that the authorities review signage and accessibility. To the future, I note that the World Health Organization has downgraded Covid so that it is no longer a global emergency, but I believe that some nations are working on an international protocol to prepare for perhaps an outbreak, let's hope not, but an outbreak in autumn and winter. Can I ask the minister, given that health is a devolved issue, if the Scottish Government has been engaging with the UK Government along with the other UK nations regarding this protocol? Finally, for 12 weeks when I was isolated at home, I wrote a Covid diary, partly as therapy, but also to remind me of what it was like for myself and for others, and we are grateful that somehow we collectively worked our way through it, which we did. One day, perhaps, my grandchildren might just find it interesting. I welcome the minister to her place. It is a pleasure to follow Christine Grahame, even with her slight colander arms from the vaccinations that she has received, but I think her message about reaching out to people to have the vaccination, to have the other vaccinations that are available at this time, is a very important one, and I think it's a responsibility both of Government, of individuals here across this chamber, but indeed a commitment that our community should give to support those people to have the vaccinations on going. Of course, the Covid-19 vaccine was a game changer and it has allowed us to return to a certain normality and to learn to live with this virus, and I, as others have done, thank all of those who were involved. Far too many to single out, but every single one of them is a hero. That army of vaccinators deserve our utmost thanks for getting the vaccine into millions of arms, and indeed the manufacture, procurement and roll-outs of the Covid-19 vaccination is one of the great successes of our four nations working together. But let us be under no illusion. The roll-out was far from perfect, from the countless stories of people having to travel miles for a vaccine appointment to the children who were given the wrong dosages. Lessons must be learned, and I do echo my intervention earlier that it is a shame that the lessons that should have been learned don't appear to have been done so going forward. I talk in particular of the dynamic response that allowed our GPs to be involved, the fact that we should look to our pharmacies, and indeed we should perhaps look and be encouraged to trust areas to solve problems that work for their area rather than trying to seek. I'm very grateful for the member taking intervention. I wonder if he'd agree with me that it is absolutely crucial that when we look back at how we responded to Covid and that investigation, that we are open and honest as we can possibly be and make sure that there is no retribution there, so that we can have that honesty. I'm very grateful for that intervention, and Brian Whittle is right, because when the inquiry does start, and I urge it to start as soon as possible, when we look back, it cannot be an inquiry about retribution, it has to be an inquiry about learning. It has to be an inquiry that is a fitting tribute to those who sadly died during the Covid pandemic, to those who are still living with long Covid, and indeed those who are still feeling trapped in their houses because they're unable to come out because of their own immunosuppressant position that they find themselves in. But it is also right to say that we don't have to wait until that inquiry is complete to learn and implement some of the problems that we found. That includes reaching out to those groups who were low on the vaccination rates, who struggled to accept the vaccine, and that can happen now. Would you accept that however many lessons we learn and however much we prepare, if you're going to vaccinate something like 5 million people several times, mistakes will happen, people will have to queue, letters will go to the wrong address? Martin Whitfield, I'm going to give you the time back from this interview. I'm very grateful to you, Presiding Officer. Yes, there is a reality of the roll-out of anything that there will be errors, there will be mistakes. However, we must learn from those so that they're not repeated time and time and time again. And I can think of a particular case very close to my own heart where a young person attended for a vaccination and was told he couldn't have the vaccination because he was supposed to have it at school, and that was contrary to the advice that he'd been given. Now I think with the empowerment that I talk about in how the vaccination is delivered, and indeed the empowerment of health professionals in an area that actually that could have been overcome with relative ease. If the individuals who were making those decisions had confidence that they would be supported in them because it was medically the right decision to make. I'll give way to Edward Mountain. Edward Mountain, thank you for giving way. One of the issues that came up in the Highlands, for example, is that none of the services were included in the initial vaccination programme, so they were completely excluded. Does the Member believe that the actual contact of local GPs with the patients that hadn't gone to vaccination centres achieved the 98% that we did get on the first vaccination pass and never managed to achieve again? I'm very grateful for that, and I think the Member is both right and also understands my position that it's about empowering solutions that are community-based, community-focused to get the greatest success. I think not just with Covid, but on so many matters, the concept that a single solution can solve all of the problems everywhere has proved time and time again to be incorrect, and it is about empowering our communities, trusting our communities and to go back to the previous, to trust those people who are taking the medical decisions for right. I do want to... Stephen Kerr. I feel to Martin Whitfield for being so generous with his time, but does he agree that the upshot of our experiences of the last couple of years should be that we move quickly to upgrade our health service from an analogue to a digital-based system, where all parts of the NHS are working together, speaking to each other, sharing information systems? I'll be equally generous, Mr Whitfield. You can have all that time back. I'm very thankful to you, Deputy Presiding Officer, but I'm also thankful to the intervention, because it talks about what the future needs. It talks about the sort of NHS that we need to have to support our communities and our people, and part of that has to be the digitalisation, the ability to transfer information. But, as I was saying, I do want to just highlight some of the high-risk groups, because while life has returned to a new normal, this is not the case for the in-new uncompromised or the 180,000 people who are still on the shielding list. There are still far too many patients who are living in fear and being deprived of transformative antiviral medication by this SNP Government, and only a tiny fraction of those shielding are eligible for antiviral medication. Even then, getting access to the drugs is both a time and sometimes cost a real challenge. I talk, of course, of EVO shell, the pre-exposure prophylaxis treatment, meaning that it can be taken to prevent Covid-19 before the risk of acquiring infection. I would like to hear from the Minister about what the Government's intentions are with regard to those people who still find themselves trapped at home, and who are desperate to find a way of returning to the normality that some of us have referenced today, but one that they still cannot share with. It would also be right to mention long Covid, which a number of speakers have done already in the estimated 172,000 Scots that are living with long Covid. Concerns have been raised that this group has been forgotten, and we have heard that today. We have heard it in questions, in debates and statements, and it is the responsibility of the Scottish Government to look to the 172,000 Scots and to start to offer them a map out of this. It is right that we celebrate the vaccine. All too often, medical science can feel like something that we know goes on behind the scenes, and we do not fully understand it or, dare I suggest, value it, but the Covid vaccine has changed that, and we need to remember that change of view. Science needs to be part of our thinking, part of our Government. The role of our universities is crucially informed, but the last thing that we want to do today suggests that Covid is over, because it is not, far from it. Health inequalities continue to persist across Scotland, and what we need to do is redouble our efforts to drive them down. I am very grateful, Deputy Presiding Officer. John Mason, to be followed by Ben Macpherson in around six minutes. I am very happy to take part in today's debate, having been on the Covid Committee before the 2021 elections and the Covid Recovery Committee since then. In fact, the previous committee was kept in place during the election period in case something new arose and needed to be dealt with urgently. When the Covid pandemic got going, many of us assumed that it would take a very long time to develop vaccines, so we owe a huge debt, as others have said, to the medics, the scientists and others who work together so incredibly effectively to produce the vaccine so quickly. Just the other week at committee, as we considered preparedness for a future pandemic, we heard how the hope is that, in future, vaccines could be produced in 100 days, obviously with testing time on top of that. The last figure that I heard was that more than 20 million lives had been saved worldwide by the vaccines, and I am sure that it will be much higher by now. On top of that, many others were protected from serious illness. It is hard to have this debate without considering some of the misinformation and disinformation that has been around both during the pandemic and continuing today. One such issue was around transmission and whether the vaccines would or would not prevent it. However, I well remember Jason Leitch speaking to the committee on that subject and making the very simple and straightforward point that, if fewer people actually had Covid, then logically fewer people would be passing it on and fewer other people would be catching it, so it was true that vaccination reduced transmission. There are always things that we can look back on and might do differently if we had the chance again. However, I think that we should remember that both Government and Health Services were having to make multiple decisions every single day. On the whole, I think that the vaccination programme went well, but at the same time we had constituents who were sent too far away to get their jag, or did not get notification of it, or there were lengthy queues when they did turn up. One thing that we did spend a fair bit of time on at committee was uptake of vaccines among different age groups and communities. Generally speaking, uptake among older people was very high, but reduced as we moved into the younger age groups, and it was lower in poor areas. As of 2 April, 90 per cent of older adults in care homes had had their winter booster, whereas the figure for front-line health and social care workers was only 48 per cent. Again, there are geographical differences. With NHS Orkney reporting, 80 per cent have received their booster, while in greater Glasgow and Clyde it is only 69 per cent. Amongst ethnic minority communities, fewer people took the jags, and there have been various explanations given for this. For example, distrust of the Government and the country of their background from where some people would be getting their health information. I know that attempts were made to tackle that reticence, and both faith and other minority ethnic leaders came out strongly and encouraged their communities to go ahead and get their jags. Bemis also worked with ethnic minorities to promote uptake, and I do think that having one of the Glasgow centres as the central mosque was a good move and sent out a strong signal. Personally, I had one of my jags there. However, more negatively, there has been a lot of misinformation and disinformation spread on social media and elsewhere. Some of that was that Covid never existed at all, and others have exaggerated the level of vaccine injuries. I continue to see a fair amount of that, especially on Twitter. Sadly, some people do have a serious reaction to the vaccines, perhaps because of underlying health conditions, and we must do all that we can to support them. However, the vast majority of people have a sore arm and perhaps flu-like symptoms for 24 hours and are completely fine after that. Just a couple of examples would be anaphylaxis after vaccination, which is rare at approximately five cases per one million doses, while myocarditis seems to have been highest after two doses, with between 52 and 106 cases per million amongst younger males. However, of course, those cases vary in how serious they are. One of my own staff was taken to hospital by ambulance, but has been right as rain ever since. Going forward, we want to encourage all those who are eligible to continue to take up the chance of boosters, possibly annually. Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS are currently promoting the spring booster, which I understand is for those over 75 or with a weakened immune system. Teachers and other front-line workers had at one stage wanted to get the vaccines earlier because they were in contact with so many people every day, but the decision was made to focus very much on age, with the addition of particularly vulnerable groups. Obesity has long been considered a risk factor too, and I was interested to see Friday's Herald reporting in a study involving Assy's Shake of Edinburgh University on this topic. It seems that vaccines are less effective on overweight patients, for example people with a BMI over 40, i.e. morbidly obese, who were 76 per cent more likely to get severe symptoms. Another issue going forward is JCVI and its advice, which was given to all the nations of the UK, and we all tended to follow it faithfully. That had the advantage of consistency, including for the media, but it may be worth looking at next time round. For example, could you support obese people more to get the vaccines if that is desirable? Making vaccines available all around the world is another issue. I think that there were some successes in this regard, and I know that, both among leading politicians and professionals like Jason Leitch, there was a strong commitment to international fairness. However, I think that the sense did persist that the richer countries were grabbing what they needed first, while developing nations were allowed the leftovers. However, overall, the vaccination programme went better than many of us had expected, and once again we should give our grateful thanks to those who developed, produced and distributed those marvellous jags. I also welcome today's important debate, and we want to start as colleagues have also by expressing my condolences to all those who lost their lives and the loved ones left behind from the pandemic. I think that this debate is important for a number of reasons, but initially to give us that opportunity to remember those who were affected and also to recognise those affected by along Covid who continue to suffer and to reflect collectively on what more we can continue to do to support them. I know that colleagues through different avenues in this Parliament are looking at those issues. My first experience of a pandemic was in 2003, during the SARS pandemic, teaching conversational English in China. I had hoped that it was my last. When the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020, in the early months of the year, there was a sense of fear and anxiety about what this could become, but little did we know at the early stages and in the early weeks how quickly this situation would move. Of course, within a number of days apart, things were moving so quickly and suddenly we were in a lockdown scenario. At that point, I remember commentary from politicians and others of, would there be a vaccine? That was unclear. In a combination of global collaboration, science and government administration, we got to a place by the end of 2020 where the first shots of this remarkable discovery were being undertaken and we began to fight back against this awful disease. Here in Edinburgh, the way that NHS Lothian, of course, working with central government, UK government, local government, the way that the administration of the vaccine was rolled out was imperfect but also remarkable. I want to pay tribute not just to all the volunteers and all the front-line staff that others have made reference to, but to the administrative staff that sometimes perhaps do not get as much praise and attention, but the organisation, the way that those blue envelopes were cascaded out and fell through our letter boxes as a symbol of hope was such an important contribution to the national mission and the national achievement of administering these vaccines. As others have also expressed, I want to say thank you to those who took it and continue to urge those eligible to take their vaccine and to have their vaccine. We do also, as Martin Whitfield made reference to, to bear in mind those who have had the vaccine but still feel vulnerable, and there are some important considerations and campaigns that are being undertaken at the moment to remind us of that and to think carefully about how we support those individuals. To those who did not take the vaccine, I think John Mason rightly pointed out the challenges with regard to misinformation and social media, but I will also be interested in the Government's view of how it is listening to those who did not take the vaccine and as to why. The reasoning is often irrational to many of us who did, but I think that we will do better to persuade them in future scenarios if we understand sometimes the considerations that people gave and to try and work through to encourage them to take a position where they do take the vaccine because it was that collective acceptance of the vaccine and enthusiasm for the vaccine that gained us the freedom from the virus that we are enjoying now. Of course, it is still around and that is why we need to continue to encourage people to take it, but of course the scenario that we are in now compared with 2020 and 2021 is almost night and day. One of the reasons that people sometimes struggle to take the vaccine has been expressed by others around geography. For example, here in Edinburgh, in the initial phases, it was the western Edinburgh where people had to go to the Royal Highland Centre to get their vaccines. I had two there, but in time NHS Lothian managed to gain other venues. A very important one for my constituents, the NHS Lothian and the Health and Social Care Partnership, was Ocean Terminal. I take the fair criticism from another member that the signage might need some improving, but I can tell you that the creation of a vaccination centre in Ocean Terminal makes a massive difference from my constituents in Edinburgh, Northern and Leith, accessible by bus route and a tram route that is about to open there. I want to take this opportunity to ask the minister to consider that. That location has been excellent as a vaccination centre. My constituency is experiencing some of the most rapid population growth in the whole of the country. The NRAC formula that funds NHS spending is not getting ahead of the population growth in Edinburgh. Ocean Terminal would be an excellent GP practice if we could obtain the capital and the resourcing for it to try to get ahead of the population growth in Edinburgh, Northern and Leith. At the moment, I welcome it as a vaccination centre. I want to see it continue to deliver well for those who are getting their vaccines and encourage people to get their vaccines and to get them there if they are one of my constituents and that is where they are allocated to. After that, I urge the Government to seriously consider creating a GP practice in Ocean Terminal, because it would make an important difference for my constituents and more widely as we continue to provide healthcare for people in the times ahead. I am pleased to have the chance to speak in this debate this afternoon to handle the fantastic work that the UK Government did to make the Covid-19 vaccination programme such a success. Thanks to the UK Government, we were one of the first nations in the world to be vaccinating people and millions of Scots were vaccinated, protecting all of us from coronavirus. Meanwhile, Sturgeon was overseeing a stagnant and stuttering vaccine roll-out until the UK Government intervened and sent the British Army and other military forces to assist the Scottish Government in vaccinating Scots. The Covid-19 vaccine programme was an unmitigated success in the end and a perfect example of what can be achieved when we work together. The success of the vaccination programme not only saved lives but also contributed to the gradual reopening of the economy, resumption of educational activities and the restoration of very much needed social interactions. That truly was the triple helix model of innovation in action as the vaccine task force compromising academia, universities and industry. Let's not forget industry's involvement in this and government. All work together to pace up and scale up our successful Covid vaccines and the vaccines that were identified by, at that point, Oxford University and Imperial College London. Yes, I will, Mr Kerr. I am thankful to Sue Webber for giving way. She's right, isn't she, about what she says about the fact that when we all work together and pool our resources, we get things done. Could we not also learn lessons then from the Covid experience in terms of how we tackle a persistent long-standing issue such as malaria, where up to half a million children die every year? Surely we could do something together to resolve that problem on the basis of the lessons learned from the Covid vaccine development that she's described by? I am wondering if she's read my speech. I might just hold on a little second and I will come to that very precise point. The Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing task force was key in supporting efforts to access UK supply chains 2 and to get ready for the max vaccination effort that would be needed upon the identification of a suitable vaccine. Just to reinforce how successful this approach was and it has been stated by others in the chamber today, the development of a vaccine takes 10 years on average from being discovered to being accessed by patients. However, although the UK Government had success, we cannot ignore the mistakes of the SNP during Covid, which included that the SNP wanted to join the EU's vaccine scheme, which failed. The SNP U turned on their vaccine passports and the launch of the vaccine passport scheme was a disaster. John Swinney was reported to the UK Statistics Authority for sharing a false Covid graphic on his Twitter account. The accelerated vaccination programmes from AstraZeneca and Oxford had a positive impact on delivering life-saving vaccines for other diseases to Mr Kerr. For example, the new world changer malaria vaccine, which was invented at the Jenner Institute in the University of Oxford, marks a culmination of 30 years of malaria vaccine research at Oxford, with the design and provision of a high-efficacy vaccine that can be supplied at adequate scale to the countries that we need it most. Ganar has recently taken on this vaccine and is delivering it to its young children. Although we fully appreciate the value of the vaccine and the positive knock-on effects that it has had, there are several issues within the health service that we would rather see the SNP Government focus on—the issues that matter now, that cause distress and anxiety across the country now. Scots across the country are waiting far too long for mental health treatment—adults and children. Are children and young people, many of whom who suffered significantly from the unintended consequences of the response to the pandemic, are still being failed by the SNP? Child and adolescent mental health services CAMHS are the main route to assessment and treatment for children and young people seeking help with their mental health. Yet, to this day, the SNP's CAMHS target has never been met. In the first half of 2022, over 4,500 children were refused mental health treatment. Between January and June this year, 4,640 referrals to CAMHS were rejected. What support is there for those people? Social Work Scotland has said that the long delays in accessing treatment can lead to more entrenched difficulties by the time a young child or person is able to access the service. Drug deaths are another issue that we want to see the SNP Government focus on. Under the SNP, drug-related deaths have spiralled out of control. Scotland still has the highest drug death rate in Europe, and it is 3.7 times higher than the UK. The SNP's current strategies to help those with struggling addiction have failed and are still failing. MAT standards are still not embedded. The target of April 22 has passed, and those seeking treatment are still waiting. Ann Marie from Favour says, you keep talking, we keep dying. This scandal is Scotland's national shame. Lives are being lost, families torn apart. The SNP Government has finally started listening to those front-line experts and back our right to recovery bill. After 16 years in government, the SNP seems quite out of ideas when it comes to tackling those issues head-on. We need a fresh approach that incorporates modern, efficient and local solutions into healthcare. On 5 May, the World Health Organization declared an end to Covid as a global health emergency. Although that news was welcomed, I must stress that the WHO still considers Covid to be an ongoing global health issue. Nevertheless, it is the first time that Covid status has been downgraded since January 30, 2020, which I think we all agree seems like a distant memory. Aside from members of our community who live through the 40s, it is probably fair to say that it is collectively the biggest challenge many of us have faced in our lifetimes. In the global response to that was unparalleled, and for many countries, including here in Scotland, the approaches taken to the active virus had never been seen before. The WHO reported over 750 million cases and just under 7 million deaths due to Covid. Our thoughts and condolences are with all those who have lost a loved one and indeed anyone who has been adversely affected by any aspect of the pandemic. Since those uncertain and frankly frightening times in early 2020, we have all seen the roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccine, which has been the largest mass vaccination programme ever undertaken. Like so many times throughout humanity's history, great hardship has brought great scientific and technological advances. That debate is marked as celebrating the success of the Covid vaccination programme and how good it was. In looking up the uptake, over 4 million people living in Scotland have now received a first, second and booster dose of the vaccine as recommended. Even today, more than 85 per cent of older care home residents in Scotland have received a spring 2023 booster, and that number grows week by week. On that very point, this successful vaccination programme means that many people previously considered that highest risk in Scotland are now far less likely to become seriously ill from Covid-19, as we have heard. Throughout the pandemic, decisions to prioritise different cohorts for vaccinations was done in order to protect those who are most at risk of serious illness or worse. Decisions to prioritise one population group over another for the vaccination were not taken lightly nor are they straightforward, and many in the chamber will remember the debate that we had about police officers. That is why the Scottish Government prioritisation decisions have been and will continue to be guided by the independent expert advice provided by the JCVI and senior clinicians. As with previous campaigns, vaccinations were offered and will continue to be offered first to front-line health and social care workers and those most vulnerable to the effects of the virus itself. We can celebrate the success of the vaccination programme while acknowledging areas in which we can improve. Other colleagues have spoken well about that. As it is the correct thing to do, an independent Scottish Covid-19 public inquiry was established to provide scrutiny of the handling of the whole pandemic and to learn lessons, and we must learn lessons in a whole range of areas. That includes, Presiding Officer, as others have talked about in its way, we heard earlier from a demonstration from the public gallery. Those who remain sceptical about vaccinations, I think we need to do more. I heard the minister's response to those who were in the gallery, which I think was very balanced and in the right tone. I will develop that point and then I will let you in. We need to do more to work with and to appreciate and understand these concerns, understand and they all be rare but recorded adverse effects, which I think people in the gallery were talking about. There are impacts in various groups, including those who have previously had a reaction. I am pregnant women, for example, because I think that sometimes in here and likely within the scientific community we might feel the evidence and advice is clear, but that may not always be the case out there. If you take it maybe in our population group, for example, children, have we got an understanding of what the benefits against the risk where of children? There are a lot of concerns about that. Why were so many adults willing to go and roll up their sleeves at the first opportunity, but when it came to their children there was a lot more talk about it saying, well, shouldn't I? I think we need to understand that because if there is to be another pandemic or if there is to be another variant of Covid, I think we need to have a fine understanding of where people are about with these questions and also very big thing on the misinformation that you find on the internet. John Mason talked about it. We need to find a real way to challenge that because people are getting sucked in and there is no doubt about it. We do agree with me that there is not so much vaccine scepticism that we need to look at. It is probably those few of that minority who have had a bad reaction to the inoculation and the vaccine that we need to pay attention to and we need to understand why it is that section of society rather than the sceptics that we need to look at. I think that Brian Whittle has got a point there. I think that MSPs will all have people come to our surgeries who have felt that they have had adverse effects from a vaccine. We need people that are medically qualified to understand what is going on there and perhaps help to identify those people so that they can be protected. I think that others have made that case. It is about bringing groups that are represented in the gallery today on-board, I think, as John Fairlie and others have said, and talking to them and trying to understand where we go moving forward. Although the World Health Organization is declared an end to the global health emergency, we are still faced with a number of post-pandemic challenges, backlogs in numerous industries, economic fallout and the like. I want to speak, as others have, about the effects of long Covid. The chamber has often discussed the effects of long Covid, and I welcome any measures that we can bring forward to support people suffering from it. National statistics have noted that just over 3 per cent of people across the UK in Scotland are self-reporting long Covid symptoms, including one of my constituents, Jonathan McMillan, who his mum has contacted me several times to explain her son's debilitating symptoms. I had more to say on that, but others have covered it, so I can see him running out of time. I just want to say that anything that we can do to support people long Covid, I fully support. I really ask the minister to take it seriously, because this country and the world has shown how we can find a vaccine for Covid so quickly, an effective vaccine that has saved millions of lives, potentially surely now we can come together and find treatments or solutions for long Covid as well, and on that point I am happy to leave it there. We now move to winding up speeches, and I call on Michael Marra. Thank you on behalf of the Labour Party and in the spirit of the motion brought by the Government to the volunteers, the healthcare workers, the armed forces and all of those involved in the roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccines. It was a collective endeavour of community in this country, I think, that is unknown certainly in my lifetime and in many of our lifetimes. But it is not just about a reaction about what happened in those weeks and months as this approach was rolled out. We have had the long-term extraordinary benefit of our university and pharmaceutical research communities in this country, without whom we would never have had the vaccines in the first place. That feat of what I would say is urgent and quiet ingenuity, while I believe in time come to be compared to the cracking of enigma in the Second World War and the scale of the scientific achievement that it represents. The long-term routes of that achievement of MRNA technology are in open collaboration between scientists across the world and many of our most advanced economies and communities. That was then scaled up by industry to a huge and unprecedented level. Would the member also accept that, during that time, it was absolutely unique that access to data, clinical papers and we are all given free so that the medical community across the world could share the information very, very quickly? I think that the member makes a very good point. There is much that we can learn about the advances in scientific research practice that took place over those months in terms of open access to data, the turbocharging of collaboration and the way that the scientific testing and proving of those vaccines were accelerated. There have been calls, I think, from across the chamber in terms of replicating those forms of approaches to rapid development of new vaccines for other conditions. That is at the point that all those scientific careers come back to outstanding public education and true discovery science that is beyond the risk of private enterprise. To celebrate that science, to treasure it and to really champion it means that you have to fund it. In recent days, the head of University of Scotland has described this Government's approach to universities as one of managed decline. That should worry every single one of us when we talk about the subject that we are talking about today. In future years, will we genuinely be able to play our part? Will we? Not if we continue on the route of managed decline that has been condemning in this Government. We should not forget that lockdowns bought time for our scientists to bail out our Government. I am afraid that I do not recognise part of Ben Macpherson's characterisation of the early days of the pandemic. I would say that the approach of this Scottish Government and the UK Government was out of step with international best practice and the evidence that was put in front of them, but they were in lock step together. It was only when communities came together in a spirit of collective self-sacrifice that they would be managed to contain the virus and give us time to turn the situation around. People have met huge personal costs as a result of that, not just the loss of loved ones and their own health, but the wide-ranging impact in our communities, our economy and our public services about the way in which people live our lives. Brian Whittle touched on one of those issues. He was correct to identify the problem of recruitment of nursing students across the UK. There is also a problem in the recruitment of teaching students across the UK, because people's attitudes to the kind of work that they do, the strains and the stresses that come with it, have changed as a result of the pandemic. I think that an examination of those workforce problems would be a good use of Government time both in this chamber and elsewhere, because it is a societal problem that is going to challenge us all in the coming months and years. The Labour amendment that has been discussed by various members is the vaccine uptake being lower for certain groups. I think that everyone has touched on the need to make sure that we continue to learn the lessons of why that is. We also need to explore and invest in prevention, and this Government has still done almost nothing on ventilation in schools. Almost nothing. It is like the Labour Party raising it time and again now for the past two years. The record in that area for the long term is very poor. Uptake among NHS and social care staff in winter 2022 was, in the published data, very low, with only 39 per cent and 20 per cent respectively taking the winter booster. The minister is right to highlight those issues and try to talk of the importance of dealing with that. I think that the issues of transparency, Presiding Officer, Alex Cole-Hamilton, were right to highlight the issue of transparency when he was talking about vaccine hesitancy. We have to build confidence in our public institutions. It is part of the daily work of politics. People have touched on what Christine Graham did at some length, identifying the litany of corruption that ran through the UK Conservative Government from top to bottom, from the VIP lane to the ministerial lobbying scandals, and they have laid low the reputation of Government and politics in this country. Frankly, it will only recover when that Government is kicked out of office. But when will we learn the substantive lessons of the pandemic? Stephen Kerr made a very clear point on that, about the UK Government making the right bet on procurement of vaccines. Correct in that regard. Many mistakes were made, but, on that occasion, the UK Government did get it right and we were lucky that they did. On long Covid issues, Carl Mawkin talked about and called on the Government to meet the sufferers and to recognise their plight. I listened to the debate between Sandesh Gilhani and Jim Fairlie, but we have to recognise in the middle of that debate that the care is not taking place. People still are suffering. Whatever the reason for that and where the lack of planning and money sits, people are suffering as a result. I do not have the time, I am afraid, to indicate as such. When will the inquiry start? When will it start? How slow does Government move when the threats of other pandemics are present? When they could come at the kind of speed that Ben Macpherson talked about, it can turn in a few months and we find ourselves back in those situations. Would the best tribute to the people that we have all thanked today not to be to announce the date for that, who will lead the inquiry? When will we begin to formally learn those lessons and change the way we prepare so that we can make sure that we do not have to deal with such grievous consequences again? That has been an opportunity to celebrate the success of the Covid-19 vaccination programme. As we have heard during the debate, it was a considerable success. Scotland as part of the United Kingdom was a world leader in delivering the Covid-19 vaccine, protecting the population and reducing the incidence of Covid. There is no doubt that lives were saved as a result. Everybody in the debate this afternoon has agreed with that basic point about the success of the programme. In that context, I find it curious, as I think Sandish Kilharney said at the very start of the debate, that we are spending the best part of two hours this afternoon debating the subject. This has not really been a debate, there has not been any points of disagreement between members here to any greater extent. There are many other serious issues in the NHS that we could have spent this afternoon debating. The crisis in primary care, with a lack of GPs and surgeries closing across the country, the growing waiting times for cancer and other vital treatments, the crisis in child and adolescent mental health services, the crisis in NHS dentistry, which the Covid recovery committee will shortly be inquiring into, the long waits at A and E ambulance response times and the list goes on. I rather think that our time would be better spent on those issues, rather than patting ourselves on the back and looking at something in the past, which, welcome as it was, is not now going to change as a result of this debate. I would like to address some of the issues that came up during the debate that were raised by different members. Sue Webber, in her contribution, made an important point about the UK's decision to go alone and not join the EU vaccination programme. Sue Webber reminded us that, at the time the SNP was calling upon us to do just that. Jim Fairlie, in his contribution, seemed to have forgotten that very important point. The former constitution secretary, Michael Russell, said that it was idiotic to not join the EU programme. He actually went further than that. He said that lives would be lost as a result. The then social care minister, Kevin Stewart, said that it was a direct quote, a lunacy and, again, a quote, irresponsible to do that. Michael Russell was no longer here, but Kevin Stewart is still in ministerial office and we have yet to hear any apology from him for that ridiculous scaremongering that came from a Government minister. The reality is that the UK vaccination programme was a huge success and we were amongst world leaders in delivering it. We saw the development of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, 100 million doses of which were ordered by the UK Government. We quickly saw mass vaccination centres open. An enormous logistical exercise had to be put into place really quickly and it worked extremely well. Yes, I agree with John Mason. There were on occasion errors, and I am sure that we heard those from our constituents, but that should not take away from the overall picture of a great success. I agree with Ben Macpherson's comment that we should pay tribute to those behind the scenes who were working very hard to minister this, but we also had many in the front line. We had thousands of volunteers who came forward, who were prepared to staff up the vaccination centres and gave up their free time to help others, and we should also acknowledge the input of the UK armed forces, stepping into assist the NHS and providing vaccination support in locations across the country. There were issues that came up. Sandra Schalhani mentioned the question of GPs being allowed to deliver the vaccine, unlike Alex Cole-Hamilton. I think that there were a number of areas of the country where if GPs had been allowed to deliver the vaccine, that would have avoided some of the difficulties that people had, particularly in rural areas of having to travel large distances. We saw the problem as Carol Muckin referenced of long Covid. Lots of promises have been made about helping long Covid sufferers, but, as the Covid recovery committee heard during our recent inquiry, too many of them still feel badly let down. One of the saddest things we heard as a committee from long Covid sufferers was about the difficulty they had when they went to their GPs. Their GPs were not well informed in too many cases of the symptoms of long Covid, and in some cases those individuals had no alternative but to pay privately to see a GP with some expertise, and that is an area where I think that the Scottish Government needs to do much more. The vaccination programme continues. I myself was vaccinated back in autumn, now being in the group of over 50s, and I know the take-up of that offer was high. We need to consider in future whether vaccinations will be offered for the coming winter season, perhaps in combination with the flu vaccine. It is encouraging that people still recognise the value of the vaccination and are willing to participate. However, there are still issues, but ethnic minority groups are not picking up the vaccination as a number of members referred to in the debate. Particular groups in the Afro-Caribbean community and the Polish community seem to have a particular issue with access to vaccinations, and I think that a lot of work that the Government needs to do to reinforce to different groups the absolute essential necessity of having the vaccination. I certainly do not think that we should pay much attention to the anti-vax brigade, but we should recognise that people have legitimate concerns about the side effects of some of the vaccines, and Brian Whittle made this point earlier. I do think that this is an area where there needs to be a proper investigation. I hope that the Covid-19 inquiry when it gets going properly will spend some time hearing evidence from individuals who have been affected by vaccines and side effects when they look into the whole question. There has been some evidence, and it is well recorded that the AstraZeneca vaccine may have caused blood clotting in a tiny minority of individuals. It is important to retain confidence in the vaccination programme, but where individuals have concerns about a particular vaccine, they are offered an alternative. It is an issue that I raised recently on behalf of a constituent with NHS Fife, and I hope that NHS boards across Scotland will be prepared to be flexible so that people have legitimate concerns about the potential side effects of a vaccine. They will be given an alternative vaccine instead of the one that they have concerns about. I want to close with the small minority of patients demonstrating side effects, the reality is that the overall benefits of the vaccination programme far outwead the risks. The vaccination programme allowed the country to get back on its feet much quicker than might otherwise have been in the case. It has been a real success story, both for Scotland and the whole United Kingdom, and we should congratulate all those who were involved in delivering the vaccine. When we have a Scottish success story, it is only appropriate to acknowledge those in this chamber. I am grateful to everybody who has taken part. Yes, there are always lessons that can be learned, but one of the reasons that our vaccination programme has been successful is because it has learned lessons at every stage and adapted accordingly. The programme was built from scratch three years ago, and nobody should underestimate the size of that achievement and that Scotland has consistently the highest uptake in the UK. I also think that it is worth reflecting on the digital response, the success of our vaccination programme was as much to do with our investment in digital capabilities as it was to do with our people. It would not have been possible for us to achieve what we did without robust digital planning. Thanks to our national vaccine scheduling system, we offered for the first time at national scale true choice and flexibility for people in deciding where and when they were vaccinated. I note Christine Grahame's point about signage. It is an example of a service built around people, as Fulton MacGregor has said. However, in relation to Alex Cole-Hamilton's point, I am extremely sorry to hear what your constituent experienced. If I can be of any help, please provide me with the details. For the first time, we offered the people in Scotland access to their Covid vaccination record through the Covid status certification, and we are committed to extending the service for health records more broadly, as Stephen Kerr intervened on. As others have said, the success of the programme is measured first and foremost by the lives saved, but also by the freedoms, social and economic return to us when restrictions were eased as the effectiveness of the vaccination took hold. This week, I was home on Islay and I passed by the co-op. During lockdown, I shopped for a number of people and, as a result, I knew what was on every shelf and my shopping lists were done in the sequence of the very clear one-way system. As lockdown began to be lifted, one of the ladies—I should say eased—I shopped for, asked if I would take her to the co-op and we had our masks on. We made our way around the shop following the one-way route and, keeping two metres apart, I could sense she was apprehensive, which touches on the point that Martin Quickfield was making, but all the protocols that were in place helped her. I know that she enjoyed the freedom of choosing her meals based on what was on the shelves and what was on her list that she gave to me. It is the small things that we took for granted prior to Covid that we cherish even now. However, as Jim Fairlie and Brian Whittle referenced, the important family times and the impact of the lockdown really impacted on. The ability not to come together as family and friends at these family times, I think that we need to acknowledge that as well. In my opening remarks, with regard to the uptake of the vaccination, while impressively high overall and consistently above uptake rates in the other UK nations, it was not uniform all across all groups. That has been highlighted by the vast majority of speakers today. Over the course of the programme, relationships with key community leaders representing different groups have been fostered, developed and strengthened, meaning that information about vaccines is presented in a way that is more likely to encourage them to take up the offer of vaccination and offer to them in an environment in which they feel comfortable. It is always helpful to hear individual experiences of the vaccination programme. I am sure that I am not the only one who attended their very first Covid vaccination with a mixture of trepidation but also excitement. Knowing the prize on offer, a return to something resembling normal life meant that there was never any question of me not turning up to be vaccinated then and for every subsequent jag. However, I am aware that for a number of reasons some people choose not to come forward and that for some people who did come forward, the experience was not as smooth as they and I would have wanted. While such experiences were not the norm, I know that such individual experiences led to improvements at every stage of the process from invitation to vaccination and to the vaccination itself. I would reference again the remarks that I made in my opening speech with regard to people who have been perhaps impacted negatively by the vaccination and I think that there is a need to listen there. I am very grateful to the minister for giving away. I wonder in relation to the point that I made a moment ago around individuals who have perhaps had negative side effects from a particular vaccine and do not want to repeat that, would you agree with me that NHS boards should be offering an alternative vaccine to people in those circumstances? I thank Margell Fraser for that intervention. I do not feel clinically aware enough to be able to answer that question but I think that there is a requirement to really look at the impacts that people have received from vaccinations. In conclusion, I would like to repeat my heartfelt thanks to all those involved in the vaccination effort at every stage. I wonder if the minister would care to join me in recognising the work of Scotland's very strong life science sector and the dozens of Scottish companies that contributed to the vaccine, manufacture, supply chain and test supply chain, not just here, but contributing to the fight against Covid globally. I agree with my colleague Ivan McKee with regard to the importance of the Scottish supply chain and life sciences industries and the support that Scottish companies gave with regard to PPE, which is also very important. In conclusion, I would like to repeat my heartfelt thanks to all those involved in the vaccination effort at every stage of the process. In many ways, the flu vaccine Covid vaccination programme was an example of how vital but hugely complex projects should be run. It was no accident that it won the best programme award at last year's Holyrood public sector awards. However, the work is not done. As Carol Mocken said in her speech, spring booster vaccinations are available until the end of June, as is the initial offer of Covid-19 vaccination. Once again, I would encourage those eligible who have yet to come forward to do so to maintain their level of protection against Covid-19 infection. It is also worth recognising the range of other vaccinations that are offered to us in Scotland throughout our lifetime by our wonderful NHS. It is important that people receive their immunisations at the right age to ensure maximum protection from first immunisation appointments scheduled at two months of age, continuing through the teenage years and throughout adulthood in pregnancy to protect both mothers and their babies. I thank Fulton MacGregor for his considered thoughts on this. Diseases can be particularly serious in young babies, and it is important to ensure that they are protected as early as possible to prevent them from contracting potentially dangerous illnesses such as measles, which can have very serious consequences. Although we have not talked about those other vaccinations as much as we have with Covid-19 in the past few years, it is just important that, when you are called for your shingles or your pneumococcal or HPV vaccines, you attend and get yourself protected. We are pleased to be applying our learning from the pandemic to those wider vaccination programmes to improve everyone's experience no matter which health intervention you are accessing. I thank Christine Grahame for emphasising that. We are currently supporting the transition of operational responsibility for flu and Covid-19 vaccine programmes to Public Health Scotland, which will take place after spring. That will allow a public health-driven approach and build on our world-class vaccination service. Alongside that, we are working in collaboration with a range of partners, including the other three UK nations of the UK, to consolidate and improve all of our vaccination programmes with a focus on high-uptake good systems and reduction in health inequalities. A number of members have touched on long Covid. The Scottish Government recognises the significant impact that long Covid can have on the health and wellbeing of those most severely affected across Scotland. We are making available £3 million from our £10 million long Covid support fund over this financial year to support NHS boards to increase the capacity of existing services, supporting those with the condition. We are considering the recommendations of the Covid Recovery Committee report. The Covid-19 vaccination programme in Scotland was a success story and quite literally saved tens of thousands of lives. I urge MSPs across the chamber to acknowledge that success achieved in partnership across this Parliament and across the country by rejecting the Opposition's amendments and by supporting the Governments. That concludes the debate on celebrating the success of the Covid-19 vaccination programme. It is now time to move on to the next item of business, which is an announcement by the Net Zero Energy and Transport Committee on report on the Scottish Government's Air Quality Improvement Plan and wider air quality issues. I call on Edward Mountain, convener of the committee, to make the announcement up to five minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I'm pleased to be able to speak today as convener of the Net Zero Energy and Transport Committee to share our assessment of the Scottish Government's Air Quality Improvement Plan. As a committee, we agreed that requesting an announcement was important because it sets a strong precedent that Improvement Plan should be looked at differently to a typical affirmative instrument. To give a bit of context, the plan is the first to be considered under the new post-Brexit arrangements for environmental law in Scotland and follows an improvement report issued by Scotland's new environmental watchdog, Environmental Standard Scotland. The focus of ESS's investigation was on how nitrogen dioxide levels were being managed by local authorities within the current system of local air quality management and how they were being monitored. They recommended a number of steps that the Scottish Government should take to speed up the tackling of air quality at a local level. The Improvement Plan has looked to address ESS's recommendations through making guidance to councils and SEPA more robust. We are broadly satisfied that these actions represent a step forward and hope that that provides local authorities with the clarity they need in undertaking their stewardship of air quality. However, we do have a number of concerns. Firstly, if we expect local authorities to deliver the necessary improvements to air quality, then the Scottish Government must ensure that they are funded accordingly. A lack of resources means councils may continue to struggle, which risks hindering the realisation of the Improvement Plan's aims. Councils also face unprecedented staffing challenges. Without enough planning or environmental health officers, the Scottish Government will not be able to achieve its own ambitions on air quality. Our report calls on the Scottish Government to set out how it will increase uptake of these professions. We are also not convinced that updated policy guidance will ensure that SEPA delivers the desired approach to monitoring and the enforcement of local air quality standards. We are also unclear whether the agency has the relevant powers and resources to undertake its additional oversight role to full effect. The committee also chooses to take this opportunity to consider wider air quality issues. I would briefly like to set out a few of our key findings. Firstly, we assess the effectiveness of the Scottish Government's cleaner air for Scotland, too. We found that, whilst this strategy has ambition, there has been a lack of progress in implementing some of the key promises to mainstream air quality across policy agendas and to deliver a modal shift towards sustainable forms of transport. We also looked at low-emission zones. We found that LAZs were significant developments in tackling air pollution in our urban spaces, but they were not a silver bullet on their own. Instead, a wider package of interventions must be looked at to combat air pollution, particularly in more rural areas where LAZs were unlikely to provide a solution. Finally, we looked at best practice on tackling air quality. We were encouraged by the idea of establishing a programme of continuous improvement to make incremental progress towards achieving the challenging 2021 WHO guidelines. Our report calls on the Scottish Government to set out these pathways as part of their upcoming review of the cleaner air for Scotland, too. In conclusion, Presiding Officer, the air that we breathe is absolutely essential to our wellbeing. By tackling air pollution, Scottish people can enjoy a better quality of life with reduced health risk. We hope that the implementation of the Scottish Government's improvement plan will help to achieve that aim. It is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. Therefore, Presiding Officer, we recommend that it is approved by the Scottish Parliament. Thank you. Thank you. It is now time to move on to the next item of business, and there are three questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first is the amendment 8.948.2, in the name of Sandesh Gulhani, which seeks to amend motion 8.948, in the name of Jenny Minto, on celebrating the success of the Covid-19 vaccination programme, be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. Therefore, we will move to vote, and there will be a short suspension to allow members to access the digital voting system.