 Good morning and welcome to the second meeting of the Covid-19 22. We've received apologies this morning from Alex Rowley MSP and we are joined by Jackie Baillie MSP, who is attending as a committee substitute. I welcome you to the meeting and invite you to declare any relevant interest to Mr Baillie. Y Llywyddyn Amser, rydyn ni wedi ei wneud yn ymwetod at dyn nhw, ond rydyn ni'n ddechrau. Brian Whittle, as a committee member, is running slightly late and he will be joining us later on in the morning. The morning will be taking evidence from the Scottish Government on the latest ministerial statement on Covid-19, the ordinate legislation and other matters I would like to welcome to the meeting John Swinney, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery, Professor Jason Leitch, National Clinical Director, Penelope Cooper, Director of Covid Coordination and Elizabeth Blair, Covid Coordination for the Scottish Government. Thank you for your attendance this morning. Would you like to make any remarks before we move on to questions? Thank you, convener. I am grateful to the committee for the opportunity to discuss a number of matters, including updates to the Parliament on Covid-19 and I will make a brief opening statement. To set out by the First Minister on Tuesday, while Omicron continues to cause high levels of cases and we must maintain proportionate protective measures, the data that we are seeing gives us confidence that we have turned the corner on the Omicron wave. Although cases remain high, we are continuing to see a reduction in cases across most age groups. Admissions to hospital if people with Covid, although still too high, are now falling. The success of our vaccination programme, the willingness of the public to adapt their behaviour and the temporary protective measures introduced in December have all helped to limit the impact of the Omicron wave. That is positive news, but given how infectious Omicron is and the impact that it is having on our society, we must remain careful and cautious as we continue to lift additional protective measures in a phased approach. The First Minister confirmed that, from Monday 24 January, the remaining statutory measures introduced in response to Omicron will be lifted. Those include the requirement for table services, certain hospitality settings and the closure of nightclubs. Non-professional indoor contact sports can also resume from Monday. Although it remains sensible to stay cautious in our social interactions and prioritise who we meet, the First Minister also confirmed the guidance asking people to limit indoor gatherings to three households that will be lifted. Our advice remains to take a lateral flow test and report the result when ever meeting others. Reporting test results, including when negative, will ensure that we are able to make better assessments of the trends in infection. Certification will remain in place for events and venues previously covered by the scheme, and we are asking event organisers to check the certification status of more people attending events. Cabinet agreed this week not to extend the Covid certification scheme, given the improving situation. By the time being, baseline measures such as wearing face coverings in indoor places and working from home wherever possible will remain in place. The requirement for businesses, service providers and places of worship to take reasonable measures to minimise the spread of Covid on their premises will be retained at this stage to help to keep Covid contained as this wave recedes. The vaccination programme continues, and I would encourage anyone who has not yet had their first, second or booster dose to do so as soon as possible. Getting fully vaccinated is the most important thing that we can do just now to protect ourselves and each other. First Minister noted that, on Tuesday, we are entering a calmer phase of the epidemic. That will allow us to consider the adaptations that we might need to make to build our resilience and manage the virus in a less restrictive way in the future as we move into an endemic phase. However, we have not yet reached the endemic phase and we must remain cautious, given the uncertainties that lie ahead. I am very happy to answer any questions that the committee may have. Thank you very much, Deputy First Minister. We are short of time, so I am going to ask questions and answers to be as concise as possible. If I could just ask a question first. With, for example, Omicron is now on the decrease, although we are cautiously aware that in the future there could be new variants. With variants surveillance, how is the integrity of surveillance for new variants being maintained given that the PCR test will not always be required by people getting a positive electoral flow test? Professor Jason Leitch provides some of the epidemiological information in this respect, but there is a huge amount of surveillance data that remains available to the Government. There are still substantial numbers of PCR tests being undertaken. There are wider studies that are undertaken and, of course, there is the exchange of scientific information across a number of jurisdictions to enable us to create a commanding picture of the information that has been available to us. Obviously, the detection of the Omicron wave was made much more practical by the correlation with the S-chain drop-out failure element of assessment, which was undertaken. Of course, there will be a range of scientific interventions that we can make to ensure that there remains the case, but Professor Leitch will provide the details. Good morning, convener. Good morning, everybody else. This is a global problem and not something that Scotland can solve alone. Let's think about how we discovered Omicron. We discovered Omicron because there was a large outbreak in a region of South Africa that looked different from other outbreaks, which seemed to be transmitting very quickly. It then went to Hong Kong, and Hong Kong's genetic sequencing found a variant that looked more transmissible. Back to South Africa, genetic sequencing in South Africa confirmed that pattern and then the WHO announced it to the world. The discovery of variants is not a Scottish problem, it is a WHO problem, and it has a surveillance problem and solution around the whole world. South Africa has some of the best genetic sequencing in the world, so does Scotland, and we will continue to do that on behalf of the world. Finding it is the first challenge, then monitoring it once you know that it exists is your second challenge, and that is what we managed to do with S-chain target failure, and we would do that again. Remember that we still have quite a lot of PCRs. We have PCRs from every hospital case, PCRs from every symptomatic case that turns up, and we have PCRs from the ONS survey. We still have quite a lot of PCR testing that can then proportionately go for genetic sequencing, so I am very comfortable that we can still sequence enough to find what is happening. People, my final point here is that there are thousands of variants, thousands. It changes every day, so what matters is that a variant is causing a new challenge, transmission, serious disease, whatever that might be, and that requires real-time data of monitoring the number of cases you have, the number of hospitalisations you have. That could be in Scotland proportionately and by luck. It is more likely to be in another country, but it could be here, but it is more likely to be somewhere else, so we have to do that globally, not just in Scotland. I am comfortable with our own surveillance system, but I would just put a proviso on that, that we need the whole world to be able to do that. Thanks very much for those others. Just one quick question, as we are encouraged over a lot of isolation, with a new Omicron variant and being encouraged just to do an electrical flow test and not get a CPR and just self-isolate for the time amount. For the people who have been told to self-isolate but not get a PCR test and then try to get the self-isolation grant from the local authority, I have had constituency suite being told that they are not eligible because they need a negative PCR test. The electrical flow test is not enough for them. How are we with the gap between people who are testing positive and then want to need to get a grant just being able to tie up between the electrical flow tests and the PCRs? There should not be an issue there. Individuals who are required to self-isolate will be the case if an individual tests negative in a lateral flow device test. They should be eligible for self-isolation grant support. Obviously, if there is an issue with that, I will look into that carefully with local authorities to make sure that people who require self-isolation grant support are able to obtain that, given the requirement for them to self-isolate in terms of the arrangements that we now have in place. That is great. That is very helpful. Thank you very much. I will move on to the next question. Can I bring in Murdo Fraser, please? Thank you, cabinet secretary and colleagues. I have got two questions. Given that we are short of time, I will just ask them both together if I can. First, cabinet secretary, you said a moment ago that the Scottish Government's view was that Covid had not yet reached endemic status in the Scottish population. Do you have any modelling or projections as to when you think that that will happen? My second question is about the impact of Omicron. We have, as you said, seen a very high number of cases, but we are now seeing hospitalisations tailed off. If we cast our minds back to where we were in December, we were being advised in the committee that Omicron could see thousands of additional deaths. Unfortunately, we have not seen anything like that impact. Given that we are likely to see more variants coming of Covid, is there a risk that, if that happens, the public will say that experts and advisers have been crying wolf over the impact of Omicron and, therefore, will be resistant to measures taken in trying to safeguard the population because the experience of Omicron has been nothing like as serious as was originally being forecast? I will ask Professor Leitch to deal with the question of epidemic and endemic, because there is a very clear scientific basis of judgment that has to be applied in that question. It is appropriate that he provides the committee with that advice. On the second part of Mr Fraser's question, I think that the one point of detail that I would probably part company with Mr Fraser about in his analysis is that, from my recollection, I do not think that the projection or the suggestion was made that Omicron was going to lead to a significantly greater number of deaths. The fear of Omicron was that the huge volume of cases would give rise to a very large volume of hospitalisation, which would place a burden on the national health service, because we recognised that, in the emerging evidence in South Africa, it appeared that Omicron, although generally a milder version by comparison to Delta, would still give rise to a sizable number of cases within the population, which would result in hospitalisation. What I would contend is that the combination of the measures that the Government put in place, the response of members of the public, the change in behaviours that took place in the round to Christmas, essentially enabled us to flatten the Omicron curve. If we look at the numbers, the numbers of cases were of such a magnitude that, in previous variants, would have led to much more acute measures being taken. New levels of cases were much, much higher than the number of cases that resulted in the lockdown on 4 January 2021. However, that position materialised, but the combination of the vaccine strategy, the measures that were put in place by the Government and the change in public behaviour in participation enabled us to flatten the worst effects. We still have huge demands on the national health service as a consequence of Omicron. We have more than 1,500 patients in hospital with Covid just now, which is a very high number. I am putting a new pressure on the national health service. Briefly on question 2, if you will allow me, I will do the endemic one. The advice at the beginning of Omicron was that we simply did not know if the rumors of slightly milder disease were true or not. Nobody knew, but we did know pretty quickly that booster doses of vaccines were crucial. That is why we were able to vaccinate at one point the fastest of any country in the world. Protections, human behaviour and vaccination is why the Omicron wave is not as damaging as it was. With a contribution from the virus, that in the end is milder than the delta version of the virus. Unpicking how much is virus and how much is vaccination will take months, but all of those things together is why we have not seen the absolute worst that we thought Omicron might be. That is a credit to the national health service vaccination teams and to the public who reduced their contacts appropriately, partly because we told them to and partly because it was voluntary. Endemic is a little misunderstood. The disease that everybody suggests is endemic is blue. Endemicity is about predictability. It is defined as a disease that is in an area of the world that is relatively predictable. You know when it is coming and what it is going to do. It does not say anything about severity. Malaria is an endemic disease and kills 600,000 people a year, not here, but in the billions of people who catch it in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Endemicity is not about ease, it is not about making it better, it is about predictability. For now, Covid is unpredictable. We do not know when the next wave is coming, we do not know whether it will be better or worse than the previous wave. The WHO will decide when the disease becomes endemic. Just now, the WHO says that it is a pandemic and the definition of that is that every single person on earth is at risk of it. When they decide that it is more predictable, which I hope will happen in 2022, but nobody knows if it will happen in 2022. Now, how Scotland and other countries choose to deal with the next year of the pandemic is actually the core of your question. What do we do as the disease moves into another year of being a pandemic and how should we react to it? That is what the committee has been asking and the Government has been trying to respond to throughout this whole period, but I am not sure that it is a pandemic versus endemic intellectual conversation. It is about how we manage our pandemic, which, of course, has global implications, just as we have discussed about genetic sequencing, but it also has implications for our strategic framework, which we are refreshing and which the Government will announce in the next two weeks. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the Deputy First Minister and his officials. He will be aware that the Scottish Government stopped fertility treatment for those women who were not fully vaccinated. That was done the day before Christmas Eve, no notice was given, and then I understand that the Scottish Government extended it on the 7 January to include treatments in the private sector. I am sure that you can imagine that the women who were preparing for treatment in early January were, frankly, distraught. The emotional turmoil that they went through was considerable. In some cases, women were indeed vaccinated, but because they caught Covid, they could not get their booster in time and their treatment was cancelled. There was a real feeling that the lack of an individual approach and this blanket ban was not fair on many of the women involved. Other women have since been in touch genuinely confused because the advice from health professionals at the very start of the Covid pandemic was that pregnant women, or indeed those expecting to be pregnant within the next three months, should not be vaccinated. Of course, you and I know that both changed. However, it strikes me that there is genuine confusion, so I have three questions. Can we get clinicians to explain to those women who are undergoing fertility treatment how the guidance has changed and to provide reassurance to them, because currently there is confusion? Two, as cases are starting to decline now, when will the service be resumed and will it be conditional? Thirdly, will women caught up in this and affected by this actually get an extra cycle of IVF to make up for what has been lost? I recognise the significance and the sensitivity of the point that Jackie Baillie raised with me this morning. I will draw an input from Professor Leitch in addition to what I say, but let me try to provide some reassurance here. The advice that emerged from clinicians—I stress that it was clinical advice that led the decisions to pause fertility treatment—was based on overwhelming evidence that indicated that the necessity of vaccination, although pregnant, was critical in those circumstances. I do not have all the detail in front of me, but the research that was undertaken on the proportion of pregnant women who were admitted to critical care as a consequence of Covid and, from my recollection, well over 90 per cent of those cases were amongst women who were unvaccinated. The clinical evidence was overwhelming in that respect, which led to the pause being applied. I quite recognise the distress and upset that that would cause to individuals affected. There should certainly be good explanation of the rationale, because having looked at the material before, as I have done, I have seen very clear and well-expressed clinical opinion and evidence on the subject. That should be shared with individuals in all circumstances. On the second point that Jackie Baillie raised with me, on the resumption of clinical care, the resumption of fertility treatment will happen as soon as we are in a position to do so when the vaccination programme has delivered the degree of protection that we consider necessary in the context of the Omicron wave. I will seek clarification from Jason Leitch, but I think that the Government has made clear that there will be no disadvantage to any woman who may have been going through fertility treatment, that they will anyway lose out on an opportunity to pursue that fertility treatment because of the pause in arrangements that have been put in place. I would be grateful for Professor Leitch's input on that question as well. The third one is the easiest. There will be no disadvantage to couples who have had to have their IVF treatment paused, so there will be an extension of the time and, if necessary, an extension of the cycles, depending on where they were in the cycles when this clinically-based decision was made. Of course, clinical decisions often are because clinical decisions do not know the calendar. It was completely risk-based, so it was about the safety of women and babies. The decision was made not delightfully but very hard because of the nature of the disease and the nature of what it does, in particular to high-risk individuals, and high-risk individuals, I am afraid, include pregnant women, IVF or not. Those individual cases should be having individual conversations with their care teams in the fertility units around the country, whether they are public or private. I have done some of that at a national level, both in the media and in stakeholder groups. However, I cannot have individual conversations with each couple, and it would be inappropriate. Those individual conversations should be being had with their individual case leaders, and they certainly have the information because the advice came from many of those clinicians. The second part of your question is the hardest question about when we should restart. It is not about case rates, it is about the risk of Covid if you are pregnant. That risk of Covid if you are pregnant will remain whatever the case rate is. The way to restart is to get vaccinated. We know that vaccinated pregnant women are much safer than unvaccinated pregnant women. Your point about vaccination at the very beginning of the pandemic, for what was literally a few weeks of advice, was all about the fact that we hadn't vaccinated pregnant women. Therefore, the research could not be done because we couldn't say that this is what you should do if you are pregnant, because we hadn't vaccinated pregnant women in the research trials. It was just a precautionary measure to say that while we are doing the rest of the research in pregnant women and kidney transplant patients, we have to tell you not to have your vaccine yet. However, as soon as the pregnant women trials were done and it was proved safe, we told pregnant women to get their vaccine. I understand why that might be confusing to some, but pregnant women have now been vaccinated in their hundreds of thousands around the world safely, and that is what we have been doing in Scotland for a long time. The way to restart your IVF is to get vaccinated. John Mason, if we have time at the end, I will come back to members for supplementary questions. Thank you very much, convener. In yesterday's Herald newspaper, there was a column by Stuart Patrick, who is a member of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce. He is arguing that this is the time to move, within the four harms, to take direct health, give it less priority and give more priority to other health, social and economic impacts. Obviously, he is particularly interested in the economic side. I wonder how the cabinet secretary would respond to that. The framework that we put in place in the summer of 2020, which is the four harms framework to which Mr Mason refers, has, in my view, been an essential guide to the decision-making that ministers have undertaken. It has enabled there to be a transparent and open conversation with the public, the range of interested parties about the nature of the decisions that have had to be considered. At all times, if I go back to March and April 2020, I would say that direct Covid health harms were exclusively determining the decision-making that was being undertaken, because we were in such an acute moment of crisis. From the summer of 2020 onwards, we have sought to strike a balance across the four harms to try to ensure that—and that is reflected in the strategic purpose of the Government's agenda—to try to manage the Covid pandemic in a way that enables people to appreciate and enjoy as many aspects of normal life as we can possibly do so. That, to me, remains the rational and considered approach that the Government should take. I think that if we disregard direct health harm, then before we know it, the health service will be overwhelmed. That would have been the case in December around normal life. If the Government had just ignored the direct health harm, then the health service would have been overwhelmed. I have no doubt about that at all. The degree of direct health suffering to members of the public would have been much greater. I do not think that there would be many people in society who would have thought that that was a rational approach that the Government would have taken. The strategy that we have adopted has been to take difficult but evidenced and considered decisions on the balance of the four harms to protect public health but to enable people to appreciate and to enjoy as much of normal life as we could hope to achieve in the context of a global pandemic. I have a second area that I wanted to touch on. There was some coverage in the media yesterday about compulsory vaccinations. Specifically, it was about an offshore company—CNR—who are insisting that all their employees are vaccinated before they go offshore. I wonder what the Government's current thinking on that is. Obviously, you have no control over what an oil company might do, but are we relaxed about organisations insisting on vaccination? Up till now, I do not think that the NHS in Scotland is insisting on vaccination. The Government's position is that we will not mandate people to have vaccination if there is a voluntary programme, and that is the Government's position. Obviously, if an individual organisation takes an approach of that nature, it is obviously free to do so, but I would counsel that it needs to engage constructively with its employees on such questions because the issues and approaches of that type will undoubtedly have an effect on whether people will be eligible and available for employment in such a context, and it is up to individual employers to undertake those discussions. If I can have one final question—just a factual one—there has been talk about charging for the test LFT tests. Can you tell us what the cost of an LFT test is? The last cost that I saw was of the order of £3 per test, but I may stand to be corrected by one of my officials on that question. That is my understanding, too. I think that you saw the same briefing as I. It was about £3 a test. That is a calculation from many hundreds of millions of tests divided by the cost, so I am not sure that it is entirely accurate, but it is about £3 a go. That is great. Thanks, convener. Thanks very much. Can I bring in Brian Whittle, please? Thank you, convener, and good morning, cabinet secretary. I will continue with some of the questions that we have discussed before. I was looking at the instances of lung cancer over the piece, and the report back says that half of lung cancer diagnoses are being diagnosed at stage 4. During Covid, there has been a 25 per cent reduction in diagnosis and a 25 per cent reduction in treatment. They were asking that there should be a lung cancer screening programme required specifically for over 50s and smokers. Understanding the balance that you are having to make, cabinet secretary, and the decisions that the Government is having to make, where are we with consideration of those kinds of statistics and gathering those kinds of statistics and making decisions on that basis? The data that is relevant here is clearly available, because Mr Whittle has just recounted that data to me. The collection of data enables us to see comparative levels of referrals for individual cancer treatments and for a variety of other treatments, the number of cases that will have been handled and the period at which they have materialised. There has been a sustained effort that has been put in to maintaining cancer services throughout the challenges of the pandemic. When other services were paused, cancer services were maintained. However, I would have to acknowledge that individuals will have been more reluctant to come forward for wider health treatment during the pandemic and the evidence and the data reinforces that point. What is important is that we reiterate the necessity for individuals to come forward for treatment of this type, where they have concerns about their health and the national health service is open and available to deliver treatment to individuals. It is important that all-stages individuals hear that message and that the health service does all that it can to deliver on that. Obviously, the health service capacity to deliver that respect depends on the degree to which we can suppress the impact of Covid on the health service. Obviously, the Omicron wave has essentially reinvigorated the number of patients in hospital with Covid. We go back to a period just before Omicron. We were down at about 900 patients in hospital with Covid. We are now in excess of 1,500. The necessity of suppressing the prevalence of Covid enables the health service to be able to devote more resources to addressing the type of conditions that Mr Puddle fairly proves to me as being important to the members of the public. I understand the balance of a lot of different factors that the Government has to make. If we look at the number of people who are in hospital or who have tragically lost their life to Covid, it is usually because of the predominance of people with other issues, as well as Covid exacerbates that. I think that, again, because this is the recovery committee, I am trying to look ahead. It is really important that we do not lose sight of that particular fact that those who are in hospital usually have some other issues. It might seem a mute point here, Cabinet Secretary, but one of the other things that I looked at, for example, was that health boards are missing the spoken cessation targets through Covid. How do we balance that? How do we pull that back together? It is almost a chicken and egg situation here. If we could reduce causing significant health impacts by treating other issues, perhaps we could reduce the impact of Covid itself. How does the Government make those decisions and balance those things out? Essentially, that is reconciled through the four harms framework that I discussed in my earlier answers with John Mason. The Government has assessed the relationship between direct health harm from Covid. Although Mr Whittle has correct, some people will have lost their lives to Covid with other conditions, but other people have lost their lives because of Covid directly. There is then non-Covid health harm, economic and social harms. The Government essentially has been trying to enable people to experience as much of normal life as we can hope for whilst we wrestle with a global pandemic. That is a bearing on the extent and the nature of health treatments that are available and can be delivered. On all the preventative health interventions that the Government supports, for example, the smoking cessation programme that Mr Whittle puts to me, those all need to be part and parcel of what we argue and put forward to members of the public as vital elements of the health protection that individuals need to pursue to lead a healthy life. That should be sustained during Covid, and any treatment as a consequence of that needs to be sustained in that context as well. It is important that we focus on additional health harms that are different from Covid, but inevitably—this is the hard reality of all this—the capacity of the national health service to address those issues will be greatly enhanced if we can see a lesser impact on the health service as a consequence of Covid. Deputy First Minister, we are seeing lots of reports in the newspapers this morning that the Scottish Government is now coming under pressure because of something that the English Government has done in removing the requirement for face masks in schools. I find that quite frustrating because England has done it, but Scotland seems to be asking to follow on. Can I ask you what the position of the Scottish Government's position is in terms of face masks in schools? The second question in the interests of time is about medical exemptions. I understand that there are four categories of medical exemptions, but for someone who has an underlying health risk, would anxiety about their underlying health be considered part of an exemption right for them not to be vaccinated? It is not that I am advocating that they do not get the vaccine. That is a specific constituent question. On Mr Fairlie's first point in relation to face Governments, the Scottish Government's position has not changed in the light of the announcements that were made by the Prime Minister yesterday, either in relation to the wearing of face coverings in crowded public places or on public transport or in relation to schools. There is absolutely no change in the Scottish Government's position and the Parliament was advised on Tuesday of the Government's position, and if there was to be any change in that position, the Parliament would be advised. As things stand just now, the Scottish Government is absolutely crystal clear that the requirement to wear face coverings in public spaces, in public transport and in secondary schools remains absolute. I am struck by the comments that were made yesterday by the chair of the British Medical Association Council, Dr Chand Nagpal, who said that it is vital that the UK Government acts according to the data and takes a measured approach. Removing effective infection control measures such as mask wearing on public transport and indoor crowded spaces will inevitably increase transmission and raise the public at greater risk, especially for those who are wrong with them. Those are very significant words of warning and they are words that are taken seriously by the Scottish Government. I invite Professor Leitch to address the fairly second question that relates to my advice. We have enormous sympathy for those who are anxious about vaccination and those who are anxious about their underlying condition making them anxious about vaccination, but neither are an appropriate exemption to not be clinically vaccinated. That is why we have systems in place to help with that. The first thing that I would suggest those individuals do is speak to their care team if they have such a thing, if they have a disease that requires them to have a regular clinical team, they should speak to them and then they should speak to a vaccinator. We have tiered levels of vaccinators, so the first vaccinator that you meet may not be able to answer every question that you have, but in every clinic we have team leaders, trained individuals who can then talk you through. Nobody will force you to be vaccinated, nobody will inject you without your consent, but the best place to have those conversations are inside your clinical team but in the vaccination centre. I will bring in a little bit of time on our hands and bring back Murdo Fraser, who has a constituency question. Thank you, convener. I have one question that has come to me from a constituent, and I wonder if Jason Leitch is best placed to respond to it. The situation in this constituent is that he has been double vaccinated and then caught Covid, so he has not yet had a booster. Of course, under the vaccination certification scheme, he requires to get a booster, but the point that he is making is that having had Covid now, he would have natural immunity, and therefore it is not necessary for him to get a booster. What is the science behind that requirement? I do not know if Jason Leitch can help with that point. I can. It is necessary for him to get his booster just as soon as he possibly can. We have discussed in this group before the nature of immunity. It is not a light switch, it is a dimmer switch, and both natural and vaccine immunity do slightly different things at slightly different times, so the more the better. You should absolutely get his booster just as fast as he can. We leave a gap, principally, to recover from symptoms, just so that people feel well enough to then have the vaccine and to be able to separate side effects if there are any, which are rare and unusual, from the disease itself. The advice to that individual is that they should absolutely get the booster just as soon as they can and it will do them good, not harm. That is very helpful. Thank you very much. That concludes our consideration of this agenda item, and I would like to thank the Deputy First Minister and his officials for their evidence today. Moving on to the second agenda item, which is consideration of the motion on the made affirmative instruments considered during the previous agenda item. Deputy First Minister, would you like to make any further remarks on the SSIs listed under agenda item 2, before we take the motions? In the interests of time, convener, I will not add any further points to the record. Members are content for the motions on the agenda to be moved on block. I am content to move on block. I want to make a point in relation to the SSI 475, because we have been advised that the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee considered that on 11 January, on the grounds that they were dissatisfied with the made affirmative procedure. We should note that, convener, as it happens, that the measures in the instrument are now historic, and, on the basis of the announcements made earlier this week, they will be removed from next week. I do not have any points as to voting against it, but we should note the concerns of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. Members are agreed to move all the motions on block. I now invite the Deputy First Minister to move on block motions S6M-02594, S6M-2602, S6M-02698, S6M-02699, S6M-02760, S6M-02733 and S6M-02799. I move on block, convener. Thank you. Is there any other comments from members? I wish that no member has wished to speak, so I will now put the questions on the motions. The question is that motions S6M-02594, S6M-02602, S6M-02698, S6M-02699, S6M-02760, S6M-02733 and S6M-02799 be agreed? Do members agree? If anybody doesn't agree, please put an in the chat. There is nothing in the chat, so the motions are agreed to. The committee will publish a report to the Parliament setting out our decision on the statutory instruments that are considered at this meeting in due course. That concludes our consideration of this agenda item and our time with the Deputy First Minister. I would like to thank the Deputy First Minister and his supporting officials for their attendance this morning. The committee's next meeting will be on 27 January, when we will consider the coronavirus discretionary compensation for self-isolations Scotland Bill at stage 2. That concludes the public part of our meeting this morning. I suspend the meeting to allow witnesses to leave and for our meeting to move it into the private session. Thank you.