 Good morning and welcome to the fifth meeting of the Covid-19 Recovery Committee in 2021. We are joined this morning by Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP, who is not a member of the committee but he is attending due to his interest in the proceedings. I welcome Alex to the meeting and invite you to declare any interest relevant to the committee's remit. I am grateful to be here but I have no interest to declare. Thank you. The third agenda item this morning is the decision to take item 7 on the consideration of evidence heard in private. Are members of the committee agreed? Yes, they agreed. Thank you. We are agreed to take agenda item 7 in private. I now move on to agenda item number 4. This morning we will be taking evidence from a range of stakeholders on vaccination certification. I would like to welcome to the meeting Professor Sir Jonathan Montgomery, Ada Lovelace Institute, Rob Gowins, Policy and Public Affairs Manager, Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland and Judith Robertson, Chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission. The Scottish Government announced its intention to introduce a vaccination certification system on 1 September. The Scottish Government's intention is for the scheme to be in place by 1 October. The purpose of today's meeting is to take evidence from the stakeholders on the proposed scheme. Some of the details of the scheme are still to be worked out, so we intend to listen to your views and feed them back to the Scottish ministers directly in our regular evidence sessions with them. Any issues that you raise today will also inform our scrutiny of any relevant legislation that is brought forward to give effect to the scheme. As such, your input is very valuable to this committee, and we are very pleased to hear from you. I wonder if I could start by asking the witnesses what are the key priorities that you think should be embedded within the proposed scheme to make it work. Can we start please with Professor Sir Jonathan Montgomery? Thank you very much, Chair. I am a Professor of Healthcare Law at University College London and my day job. I have been working with the Ada Lovelace Institute on their projects since April 2020 around the use and governance of vaccine passports. The key points that we would make is that there needs to be clarity around how it is thought that the vaccine certification will help society recover from Covid. There are two main ways in which it might do that. It might be a protection measure to try and reduce the spread. If that was the case, you might expect not just vaccine certification but also the use of negative test status and previous infection as an indication of whether or not it is likely that an individual will pass on the virus. We know that, even if those things are put together, that does not make things entirely safe. We know from the Cornish Festival board masters that, even with vaccine passports and testing, around 10 per cent of attendees—that is about 5,000 people—court the virus. We need to be clear that, if that is about protecting, there is an effective way of protecting the community from spread. Why is that the particular areas that are focused on in the proposed scheme seem to be more dangerous and more amenable to increased safety? That is the first way in which it might be useful to use passports. The second way is that they could operate as an incentive to increase vaccination rates, as the committee will know. The vaccination programme in Scotland has been very successful. If you look at the whole population, vaccination rates are very high. There is an argument that, in the 1829 groups, where most of the proposed areas seem to be popular, vaccination rates are lower. First doses in that group are 76 per cent and only 62 per cent for the vaccinated group, but that group has not yet had as much time to get vaccinated as others. It might be that a vaccination certificate could incentivise that group to get vaccinated, but it is also possible that it might increase distrust of the vaccination programme. Understanding why people are hesitant to be vaccinated is really important. Is it possible that it could give a false sense of security if it is thought that vaccination produces the need for people to take other protective measures such as hand-washing, social distance and mask wearing? There are key things that came out of the Age of Lovelace Institute work around whether or not vaccine passbooks were effective in those two main arguments in their favour, but there are also a number of concerns that we identified in terms of segregation, stigma, social exclusion, particularly of groups who already suffer other forms of exclusion. I am sure that other witnesses this morning will say a little bit more about that. The final thing that I would say, from the point of view of the Age of Lovelace work, is the importance of being very careful about the proportionality test that we need to apply. We cannot really talk about vaccine passports in the abstract very sensibly. We can talk about their use in particular contexts and at particular times. The Scots scheme has focused on particular areas. It is also proposing a sunset clause, which Age of Lovelace supports so that we do not allow passports to merge into some long-term infrastructure and a regular review process. Perhaps the committee might also need to think about whether or not there are relevant factors around the background community infection, the replication rate. Scotland is seeing a reduction in cases and that might reduce the need for introducing vaccine certification. That seems to be an important calculation in terms of the work that the Government needs to have a look at. I think that those chair would be my preliminary remarks. Thank you very much. Thank you, convener. I think that there are a number of points that we would seek for greater clarity on, particularly around the scope, purpose and length of the scheme, what data protection and privacy measures will be taken, what controls will be put in place to prevent discriminatory impact on specific population groups and what the grounds for exemption are. To our view, it is important that the scheme should take an intersectional equalities and human rights-based approach, not to perpetuate or exacerbate existing inequalities or infringing on people's rights. There are a number of important considerations around inclusive communications, communication around the scheme, which should be inclusive and accessible. A digital choice approach should be implemented rather than being entirely a digital system. It finally leads up to issues around vaccine hesitancy that should be recognised, understood and considered sensitively and compassionately. I think that it is important to say from a human rights perspective that the Scottish Government has a duty to take reasonable steps to minimise the risk to life posed by the virus and to protect health. However, the measures taken to do so must comply with the UK and, in turn, with Scotland's human rights obligations. There are a number of human rights engaged by the use of Covid-19 data certificates in Scotland, including the rights to family and private life culture and freedom of thought, conscious and religion. Interference with those rights is permitted only in exceptional circumstances. You might hear quite a lot of repetition and the honest this morning in different ways from our panellists, having heard better Montgomery and Rob. I think that you will hear the same things coming through. That interference with the rights engaged and with the use of certification is permitted only in exceptional circumstances, where it can clearly show that the measure is necessary to achieve our pressing social need and that it is proportionate, as has already been mentioned, to take into account the degree to which people's human rights would be impacted. Within that, the availability of alternative measures would have a less severe impact on their rights. The Government's obligation is to ensure that those rights are appropriately balanced and that the impact on individuals by the introduction of those schemes is understood, explored and reduced to the greatest extent. On that basis, as the implementation of a certification scheme would interfere with people's human rights, before proceeding with such a scheme, the Government must demonstrate that, first, it is necessary to achieve the legitimate aims of protecting life and promoting health, and secondly, that the interference with people's human rights is proportionate, going no further than is necessary to achieve the aim. Those are the two very important tests that the Government must engage with when proposing to interfere with people's human rights explicitly as a result of Government policy. As Professor Montgomery has outlined, reference has been made in the process to both the aims of the scheme and the reducing transmission of Covid-19 and encouraging uptake of the vaccine, particularly among young people. The Government should therefore be specific in setting out each aim and the evidence that it lied upon in concluding that mandating vaccine certifications in those settings is necessary to achieve those aims. As we go through the evidence session, I will explore a bit further what the implications of the tests are and how that can be played out by Government, but run out by Government. If I may just ask one other question, we are seeing vaccination passports being rolled out throughout the world at the moment. In my personal view, after the past 18 months, it would be irresponsible not to learn lessons and put measures in place to prevent pressures on our NHS and further lockdown. If I could ask Professor Jonathan Montgomery, where around the world are doing other examples of countries that are implementing that successfully? One of the challenges in answering that question is that everybody's version of a vaccine passport is slightly different. The Eight Loves Institute has collected together a wide number of examples. In our print submission, you will see links to that. Perhaps the one that has been discussed most—or at least, as we had our expert deliberation—was the Israeli experience, in which Israel moved quite early in order to introduce what they called a green pass. They had antibody tests, the natural immunity, current testing and the vaccine status in place. They had the green pass in place for a period. As it seemed to be not just the effect of the green pass but the effect of general response, reducing the transmissions, they withdrew it, and then they are talking about introducing it again. The key question there is understanding what contribution the vaccine passport made to the response to Covid. It is quite difficult just to simply translate to the Scots position. It is clear that, all across the world, people are looking at the ability to know what vaccination status people have, but the use that they give to that information varies quite a lot. It would be important to identify those related with a similar context. Israel moved early to get good vaccine coverage, used the green passport in order to get people back into more normal life, then talked to withdraw it again, but then, when they saw the increase of Covid was coming, they were toying with it. That is similar to the questions that you are addressing. At what point would it be appropriate to deploy those certificates? However, I do not think that you can look abroad and say that they are a success or a failure. You can see them as part of a package of measures that are aimed to enable normal life to resume. Thank you. I move on to questions from members. Murdo Fraser. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. Can I follow on from the questions that were posed by the convener? The comments that you made about evidence—maybe I could direct this first to Professor Montgomery and then any others—could come in. Just to put the whole debate into context, there are people who are ideologically opposed to vaccination passports in all circumstances. I think that most people are not in that category. Listening to the replies that we have had this morning, it is clear that there is an issue of balance here. There are human rights considerations around the introduction of vaccine certification, but those human rights have to be balanced against the public health objectives of such a scheme. You have all talked to one degree and another about evidence. My question is, to you, Professor Montgomery, in the first instance, do you believe that the evidence base is solid and that a compelling case has been made so far by the Scottish Government to introduce vaccine passports here within the very short timescale that is being proposed for doing that? Does that evidence outweigh the human rights concerns that people have at this particular point? Thank you. I think that there are some different segments of the evidence that we need to think about. There is the evidence that relates to how robust the scientific basis is for certifying status. When Ada started doing its work, we were not very confident about that. If you just focus on vaccination status, we can be pretty confident now that we can record the status of people, but the impact of being vaccinated in the face of the Delta variant is not nearly as strong as perhaps people think about in terms of the vaccine certificate. It cannot really be described as a safe pass that, if you are being vaccinated and certified as such, you are in a different category to everybody else. You are less likely to catch the disease, but if you do catch it, you do not seem to be much less likely in passing it on. The set of evidence issues about the science that makes us more cautious than we thought we might be about whether or not certification will identify people who are not presenting others at risk. The second bit of evidence is around the areas that the Government has chosen to focus on in terms of vaccination certificate. I have not seen that, but I have not had very long to look for the detail about why those categories are thought to present higher risks of transmission than others. You would want to see evidence that there is a significant difference in relation to the transmission rates in those areas than in other areas if you are going to introduce that certification in those particular contexts. You would also want to understand the alternatives. If those are venues and events that would be banned or closed for public safety reasons without certification and certification made it possible to open them, that is a very different situation than if they are thought to just be made a little bit more safe than they would be otherwise. It would be arguable that it is disproportionate to introduce certification if there is not also a case for closing those events unless only the certificated people went there. I have not seen that evidence, but I have not had a lot of chance and you may have other people on this evidence session who are more clearly placed on that. The final bit is that we do not really have very good evidence about how people respond to certification requirements. The logic of the incentivisation argument is that they will respond to that by saying, well, this tips the balance in favour of getting vaccinated, but they may respond to it by choosing to avoid those areas, in which case we are no better off in terms of reopening them. They may respond by increasing distrust of the vaccine programme and government advice because they feel that they have been coerced. They may also find that we increase the social inclusion without any net benefits. We do not have particularly good evidence on the actual effect of that, but we have good reason to think that it is a concern. However, other people giving evidence are probably better placed to address those questions. Professor Montgomery, just before I bring in Judith Robertson and ask her to comment on that, to try to draw together what you have said. I do not want to put words in your mouth, but if I were to sum up what you are saying, the case has not yet been made in your view for the introduction of vaccine certification in Scotland. You are on mute. I would say that the case has not been articulated in the way that I have looked for. I would be nervous to say that it could not be articulated, but I have not seen that set out as yet. Obviously, there is a short period in which there has been an opportunity to set that out and it could be pulled together, but I have not yet seen it. From our perspective, that case has not been made at the moment. If it has, it is not in the public domain. That is one of the key aspects in relation to those human rights considerations that the evidence on which decisions are being made is placed into the public domain, so that not only the Government's basis on which decisions are being made is clear, but that can be interrogated by a wider element of the population. At the moment, those questions that Professor Montgomery has extremely ably laid out have not been articulated by the Government. There is not clarity around what evidence is being used to base the decisions at the moment. The final thing that I would say, in addition to what Professor Montgomery said, is that what we have not seen is any evidence that there has been any engagement with the people most likely to be impacted on by that decision. In the age groups that are being impacted, those people that are most likely to not have taken up the offer of a vaccine for whatever reason, whether that be through conscience, whether that be through inaccessibility or general lack of faith in the system, we know that often those people are the ones that are most vulnerable to the impact of Covid itself. For us, we are taking a broad human rights-based approach to making decisions in the sphere that engagement with the people most affected by the potential impacts of that decision is absolutely crucial to better understand the impact and to therefore either mitigate it or decide it on balance. That is not a decision that we want to move forward on. Our experience and the experience of many others that we had before and alongside us is that some of the lack of evidence that might be seen to be underpinning a decision on whether or not certification increases people's resistance to taking the vaccine could be mitigated by that engagement with those most affected. If that was a very clear discussion that had happened, there was a feedback from those most affected from those most impacted by saying that, from our perspective, it is a positive move that it will incite. That in itself has good evidence that the Government can use to support its decision. As far as we are aware, that does not mean that it has not happened, it is just that at the moment we are not aware of it. All of that comes under that description of necessity. Is that a necessary intervention and a necessary interference with people's rights to justify on a public health basis? We are really looking to see that evidence published so that that interrogation and that understanding can be better made in the public. I can maybe ask the same question to Rob Gowins, but I read in the written submission that you put in from the Health and Social Care Alliance that you are asking for a thorough and robust equality impact assessment and human rights impact assessment on the impact of introducing vaccine passports. You are also asking that any scheme is co-produced with disabled people, people with living with long-term conditions and unpaid carers. To your knowledge, have either of those things been done prior to the introduction of this scheme? We have not seen those produced yet, and that is certainly something that we would want to see from the Scottish Government as part of introducing the scheme, as things are carried out and published. We are certainly not aware of the scheme being co-produced or in particular consultation with disabled people, people with long-term conditions and unpaid carers, and other groups such as people who are digitally excluded or in such different age groups. That is really important in building the evidence base and allowing us to understand what impact the scheme would have on people's rights and the aims of the scheme to outweigh those. Co-production of consultation is that some of the issues can be ironed out by working with the people who are most likely to be affected by them. Certainly, at this stage, that is something that we would want to see done and published, and that might be something that the committee wishes to pick up with the Scottish Government. I wonder if I can ask you one follow-up question. We were discussing a few moments ago the situation in other countries. I am aware that, for example, in France, people are given the opportunity to provide a negative test as an alternative to vaccine certification. If the Scottish Government were to go down that route, would that alleviate the concerns that you have around the human rights issues that we are discussing this morning? I do not know if Judith Robertson wants to start on that one. Certainly, providing choice or broadening the scope and the way that the scheme is undertaken has the impact of potentially mitigating that, but that has to be checked and understood as the impact on people for whom testing is an additional burden. There are a range of issues at play there. In short, we think that that provision could be helpful. I suppose that we do not know why that additional measure has not been brought in. Again, the evidence is not there to say one way or another whether or not that has been considered, and if it has been considered, why it has not been included and on what basis it has not been included. The short answer is yes, that provides an alternative, which I think is positive, but we do not know why that has not been included at the moment. It certainly mitigates some of the risks. Evidence from public deliberation as well as looking at other countries is that it is very important to understand the infrastructure around the provision of certification. If it is easy to get tested and easy to get vaccinated, then you have choices and those choices are easy to implement. If those things are hard, then it does not make so much difference. People need to be persuaded that what is on offer to them is a realistic choice and not one that is very close to coercion. That depends not just on accessibility to testing and what gets on to your certificate. It also depends on which areas of your life the certification is related to. Those things are all part of a sort of matrix of questions that basically add up to whether or not it is proportionate to force people to make choices that they may wish they did not have to make, but it would certainly be an improvement if there were alternatives to just vaccination status in terms of that proportionality balance. I think that it would be a sort of a positive or I think certainly that there is kind of alternative measures set out. I think that at the moment one of the issues that we have with the current scheme is that there is not a great deal of information available about the evidence and particularly around exemptions and who would be included and not included. Potentially, the sort of alternative measures may be helpful with that. Thank you. We have the situation just now where our hospitals are struggling and the ambulance service is swamped, so we have to take some action. Listening to your answers so far, it would be cleaner and neater from a human rights point of view and an equality point of view just to close all the night clubs, stop all the football matches over 10,000, stop all the concerts. That would save any human rights issues, would not it? That would just be cleaner. Would that be your preference? I do not mind who you ask, Mr Gowans perhaps? I think that there is the point around evidence and clarity around the scheme of where the risks of doing so and the risks of public health would outweigh the human rights considerations and how that would compare to the relative safety of opening venues with and without the certification. It comes down to the evidence and clarity around the scheme. Ms Robertson, should we just close everything? That is a test for the Government to assess. That is not what we are saying. We are saying that in order to assess whether or not the impact of interference in people's rights is proportionate, is reasonable and is evidence-based and therefore can be justified on the basis of balancing that up against the economic harms that are not both the economic harms and the social harms that come into play. I think that we have frozen in there. We have lost, Mr Robertson, at the moment, maybe Mr McGurray. It is a necessity of the proportionate nature of it and it is a valid contribution to make. That is the basis on which the human rights analysis really has to be understood. If the wider social harms can be of far greater significance than the impact on a relatively small number of individuals, that is a justifiable decision. Or can the impact on those individuals be mitigated by various actions that we are discussing this morning, for example by producing a negative test? Some thought has been, for example, mitigating the digital nature of what is being proposed by producing paper evidence of people's vaccine status. Some measures have been thought of, which will reduce the impact on people's rights. From our perspective, it is not clear whether or not how those things have been weighed up. That is what we are saying from a human rights perspective that needs to be put into the public domain. Is it not a yes or no at that point? Have we got the information to make that decision and has the Government got that information to make that decision across the board? Mr Robertson, on that point, if we have had restrictions for the last year and a half, most of which have been brought in at two or three days notice, this one is the slowest that we have ever done. It has had the most consultation, the most discussion of any of the restrictions that we have had up till now. Do you have the same criticism of all the other restrictions that we have had, such as closing the schools, for example? Have all of those failed from a human rights perspective? I would not say that they have failed from a human rights perspective. That is an extremely important argument. I would say that they have not fully taken into account all the human rights implications. We also totally respect that a lot of decisions were made quickly. Also, when the human rights implications of some of those decisions played out in the public sphere, they were reviewed and new decisions were made. In this instance, we have had time, so we commissioned a briefing on that in April. That has been discussed over a long period of months. We, indeed, have had conversations with the Government on some of the measures that we are describing to enhance the process or to make the process more rights compliant. There has been time. At this point in the process, we are concerned—we have listened to the minister to say that we are concerned that the decision was made quickly in this way because there has been time to actually do those deliberations. Professor Montgomery could come in. I was looking at the Ada Lovelace paper from May, and you had quite an emphasis on things such as testing, behavioural impact, which is all very well if we have time, but surely we do not have time to do all that kind of stuff when we have to act quickly. It is obviously very important that we can reopen all areas of our social and economic life. I think that the question that I have not seen the answer to is how different is the reopening of these events without vaccine passports, from the reopening of them with vaccine passports? That is only when you can think that through that, first of all, you can work out whether you need the vaccine passports, whether we have got to a stage in the pandemic where it has become safe to reopen. Secondly, you cannot undertake the regular review process, which is a very good idea that is built into the proposals. If you do not understand what your metrics are for working out what is the need for vaccine passports with these events, you will not be able to tell whether or not it is time to lift the restrictions. It seems to me that you would need to think through the background community infection rates. You should not be opening certain events when infection rates are high in the community and rising if they are going to fuel that rise. If, on the other hand, you are in the situation where infection rates in the background community are reducing, you just want to make sure that opening events are not going to slow that. That is the question about opening reopening. The sorts of things that we have been concerned about in relation to the human rights dimensions is that reopening of society is differential, so it enables some groups to get access to those things earlier than others. That is a measured and planned process. What we are saying to those people who cannot get immediate access is that it will come, but you cannot have it just yet because it is either not safe for you or not safe for the community. If you can articulate the plan and work out what will tell you whether the plan is working or not, you have a very good framework in which to assess the impact of the vaccine passports. However, until those things are articulated, it is hard to know what is success and failure. I hope that that at least goes partly to answering your question. I suppose that my point on that would be that we have already opened all of those things. It is not a question of whether we might open them with the passport, but we have opened them and the hospitals are struggling and the ambulances are struggling. It is not a fair question to ask you, but do you think that there is some other action that we should take instead of the vaccine passports? I could perhaps make an observation. I cannot talk about the situation in Scotland. I share the Oxford University Hospitals Foundation Trust in England. Our hospital is under a lot of pressure, but it is not under a lot of pressure primarily because of Covid infection. It is under a lot of pressure because of the pent-up demand that we are now dealing with that has been suppressed by Covid and because we have particular challenges in getting people out of hospital into social care, partly because of elements in social care workforce, and thirdly because of the difficulties in access to primary care with Covid restrictions in place. If your pattern is similar, I think that the vaccine passport is going to make a very small contribution to solving that problem. If you think that it is safe enough to keep those venues open, you need to ask how much safer it makes it if we introduce passports and whether that extra degree of safety justifies the fact that the burden of that safety is falling on a smaller group of the Scottish population, i.e. those people who do not have access to being certificated. I think that it would be wrong to see this as a golden bullet. That is one of the things that we were concerned about with the Ada Lovelace work is that people thought that somehow the vaccine passports were the thing that would solve the problem, and they are likely to play only a small part in that. Both in the Human Rights Commission and in the Ada Lovelace submissions, there were questions around permitting the use of certificates. We are only insisting—or the plan is to insist on them—for nightclubs and football and concerts, but some employers, for example, I think that care homes are insisting on the employees having vaccines and a certificate. Is that something that the Government can do anything about, or is that just entirely up to employers, venue operators or anyone if a shop wants to insist on a certificate? Is that just up to them, or can we do something about that? I suppose that that is another potential danger of putting in place an infrastructure that supports certification. The use of that infrastructure can be abused. Having made that decision, the Government has an obligation to ensure that there is a framework for other private and non-state actors to use that infrastructure in a way that potentially has far more impact on people's rights. I think that that needs to be looked at. It needs to be well understood. The implications of bringing in that infrastructure are potentially far-reaching. At the moment, the Government's process is relatively limited, and that is a positive thing. However, the Government has also talked about expanding the use of the schemes. The issue applies not just in relation to non-state actors, but also in relation to the Government. Is that when we bring that in without a legislative basis on which to do that, that in and of itself has the potential to create problems that we have to then deal with after the fact? Okay, thanks very much. I do not know whether the other two want to come in on that point. If not, thank you, convener. Can I perhaps ask this question in a different way? Does the Government have a responsibility to do its best to protect the majority of people who have taken up the vaccine? I do not know, Professor. I think that the Government has an obligation to protect every citizen and every resident in Scotland. It goes back to what we were saying earlier about the importance of understanding how it is that it is thought that vaccine passports contribute to that process. If the issue is around incentivising people to get the vaccine, the argument has to be that the whole community is better off with high vaccine coverage and that it is not just a matter for individuals about whether they choose to be vaccinated or not in their own interests, but also as a member of a community. I worry that the vaccine passports undermine the type of arguments that are likely to persuade people to get vaccinated, which are usually around questions about safety, questions about whether or not their particular faith communities support or do not support the use of vaccines and issues around solidarity and what people like them are doing. Each of those can be addressed, but rolling them up into—the Government is saying that you must have this in order to access an event—may actually bat fire, because it just pushes those questions away for a short period. Experience, for example, in Oxfordshire, where I work in the NHS, is that working with faith communities through their own leaders, giving them access to the materials that they need to advise their members, was pretty effective in getting the rates of vaccination up. Your vaccination rates in Scotland are really very high across the board at the older age groups. I worry that it would undermine the case for improving that solidarity and therefore undermine the protection for the whole community. It is understanding why vaccination contributes to that. Vaccination may reduce the risk of you getting infected in a particular case, but if you are vaccinated, you protect yourself against serious illness. That is primarily about protecting red through the community. Therefore, the people who are protecting them are the vulnerable, who are either chosen not to be vaccinated or are not able or eligible for vaccination, or particularly vulnerable, even if they are vaccinated because of background conditions. I am not sure that I see that this is a step that protects those who are vaccinated, but it is to be assessed that it protects every individual in the community. The Government works in obligation to protect people and to comply with equalities and human rights standards. It is the question of balancing it up against those. It comes back to the evidence that tells us about the relative risks of people at live events, nightclubs and balancing up against some of the issues that have been highlighted around potential issues around vulnerable groups. Particularly around vaccine hesitancy, it is important that some of those are recognised, understood and considered with sensitivity and compassion. If people are not vaccinated as a result of a protected characteristic that they are medically unable to, or for a range of other reasons, are members of the voluntary health Scotland who produced an excellent report on the various issues that are affecting different, protected characteristics and why, it may be more likely to experience vaccine hesitancy more than other groups. We know from previous that the people expecting severe mental illness are less likely to get vaccinated. There is a range of issues to be considered, but it is down to some of the clarity and evidence around the scheme. I do not have much to add to what has been said earlier. The obligation on government is to protect all citizens, but to do that in a way that respects the rights of all citizens, particularly those who are most vulnerable to the impact of any measure that they take, for example, catching Covid-19. We know that vaccine hesitancy or vaccine take-up rates in areas that are the lowest among those who are most vulnerable. That whole understanding of policy around that area, from my perspective, needs to be built strongly on engagement with those communities. Reaching out into those communities, as Rolf has said, is to understand what hesitancy is based on to work with community leaders around how that can be mitigated and alleviated and really put resources into that. I am not saying that that is not me saying that, therefore, we should not use the scheme but that those measures might well be in place. They might well be considered and might have been resourced. I have heard Jonathan Lee many times talking about engagement with faith leaders to engage people who have got that vaccine hesitancy. However, the point from a human rights perspective is whether we have the evidence base to ensure that this measure, which absolutely impacts on people's rights, is allowed in and of itself, but it has to meet certain criteria. It has to have that evidence base in place. It has to meet that test of necessity and proportionality and to ensure that it is non-discriminatory. That is really what we are looking for, the evidence of here. Those measures can be justified, the evidence base is solid and the balance of harms that the Government has consistently talked about responsibly throughout the whole process is really laid out. I suppose that the other question that I would ask—my role here is to answer them—is why this feels like a move away from the process that has happened up to now, which has very much been about encouraging people in relation to vaccines and putting in place that encouraging mechanism and recognising that that in and of itself is a very effective means of supporting people to take it up and enabling that choice. A certification scheme has much more of the feel of coercion and really walks into that territory. It is not clear to me why the Government has taken a shift away from its very publicly declared stance on encouragement into something that has a very different feel to it. That would be part for me of that proportionality and necessity test. Laying that out and understanding that is really important. I think that the Government has not brought forward clear evidence to suggest that they would be able to achieve their objective here. The main objective seems to be to take up of the vaccine. I did see a report that the Human Rights Commission did a few weeks ago to us, which highlighted that the areas that people face are lower socioeconomic backgrounds and other specific groups. I am not sure that there is evidence to show that. That said, what has been proposed is fairly limited compared to what I see in other countries around the world. I suppose that one question here is, is there a danger that we simply accept this and start to roll it out further? On the question of human rights, what I have found is that—Murdo talked about people being ideologically opposed to this—what I have found is that there is, particularly through social media, a grown misinformation being put out there for anti-vaxxers. Do you agree that the Government needs to tackle that? Secondly, I saw that there was a poll in the Courier newspaper this week that showed that two thirds of people believe that those working in the care sector should be sacked if they do not have the vaccine? What I have found anecdotally, if we are speaking to people and asking people about the vaccine passport, is that they raise the question when it comes to human rights. What about my human rights? I have been vaccinated. Do I not have a right to be able to go to big venues and feel that there is some kind of protection in place? Or do those who ideologically oppose vaccination believe that it is all a conspiracy theory to seek rights outstrip the rights of the majority who have been vaccinated? That is the question that I find that people raise. I do not know what you think about that, Judith. I think that that whole analysis around the balance of rights is what is in play here. It is whether people's economic rights are right to cultural life, their right to private and family life, their right to privacy in relation to health data, their right to not be discriminated against in terms of engaging with cultural events within the community. Those are all aspects of people's rights. The unpacking of that and the exploring of that and the articulation of that is what we are talking about here. It is that test of how we have looked at all of that and taken all of that into account in this process. I am not seeking to give you a definitive answer to one way or the other, but simply to help to explore or partly to increase understanding of the obligations on Government when taking a rights-based approach, a human rights-based approach, that those are the areas that they have to consider and make public their consideration and make that consideration, put that into the public domain and potentially stand by it, so that there are answers to some of those questions in relation to people's different views on the matter. Professor Montgomery has voted for this scheme to go ahead. Although I say that it is limited, it will have a major impact on businesses that are involved and on the costs. However, it seems like it is going to go ahead. For the committee's perspective, what should we be looking at in terms of that it is to be reviewed every three weeks? What should we be looking for? I accept that there has been a lack of evidence in making the case for that, but what evidence should we be looking at for as a committee in terms of reviewing it and continuing to have a view on whether that should continue, whether it should roll out further or whether it should cease? I think that that is absolutely the right question to be asked at this stage, so I think that you need to ask for evidence of whether the introduction of passporting has any identical impact on the transmission of the virus in those areas. You should be asking about displacement, so you have some defined areas where it will apply. Does that move people out of those areas into events that are alternative, and how does that change the spread of the virus on the experience of exclusion? Our concerns are all based on the expectation that vulnerable groups society will find themselves excluded from social and cultural activities and economic activities that they want to do. Is there any evidence that that is happening? Those will be things that will tell you whether or not the vaccine passport, as any discernible difference on the reopening of the economy and what those differences might be. If you discover that there does not appear to be any impact on the reduction of transmission, then that would suggest that the impact on people being excluded are not justifiable. If, on the other hand, you discover that the impact on transmission is noticeable and that those excluded have alternatives where they can express themselves, you are saying that that is a proportionate response for the period when it is needed as part of a gradual reopening of everything to everybody. Those are the sorts of questions that I would be asking for data on if I were in your position. I start by reiterating the concern that there is a lack of meaningful consultation prior to the decision to implement and what you have said this morning about the case has yet to be demonstrated in the public domain. My concern, of course, is that the evidence does not exist, but looking through some of the papers that we have to read and note that one of the biggest disparities in vaccination uptake is related to ethnicity and that those in the BAME community have a significantly less vaccine uptake than some of the majority of our population. Do you think that that has been taken into consideration? Do you think that the vaccine passport will tackle the ethnicity vaccine concern? My view is that what we are likely to do in terms of the Government's plan to increase vaccine uptake will incentivise those who frequent the likes of nightclubs and football stadiums and will continue to drive this inequality in our society? I wonder if I could ask Professor Amogomony to start with that question. Thank you very much. I think that the public engagement work that Ada Lovelace carried out identified trust as a key element of both the use of things like Covid passports and to Government initiatives generally. My worry about vaccine passporting is that it does not really address the reasons why people are hesitant. There will be some people who have specific reasons around the vaccines for not wanting any vaccinations that they may believe that they are not unconvinced about safety and may be taken in by some of the anti-vax rhetoric. There are some who come from communities who are worried about the origins of the vaccine and the research. Others have concerns about particular elements that faith leaders can address, but I think that there is an understandable distrust amongst those communities who feel that they are neglected by society, who experience more heavy-handed policing, greater surveillance amongst their communities. If you move to a passporting system, in a sense, you may be reinforcing their sense of not being taken, not being respected and having their needs taken seriously. We have certainly seen in the NHS in England that I am dealing with delay people from Ben communities picking up the vaccine because, while we felt that they should be encouraged to have it early because they were more vulnerable, they wanted more reassurance that the vaccine was safe. We had this amongst our own staff in the hospital. They did not want to be in the first wave of vaccination but they have been happy to be vaccinated later on because they are just a bit more cautious about what is being said to them. I think that what you worry about with vaccine passports is that, instead of seeking to address the reasons for distrust and concern, you aim to up the stakes for people and say that, if you want to enter these things, you have to be vaccinated. That may exacerbate distrust and come back to haunt us. I also think that the point that you are making about the areas that are suggested for passporting may not be the areas that are likely to be taken up by the people that we are most worried about. That may be because they are the sorts of events that their communities do not use. It may be because they do not have the finances to attend those sorts of events. I think that it would be a displacement of attention if this was thought to be the solution to vaccine hesitancy. I think that you would want to be alongside this initiative, other ways of focusing the attention on how to enable people to take up the opportunity to protect themselves through vaccines. I think that the comprehensive programme of evidence-based programme and of understanding vaccine hesitancy and how that is impacting on different groups where take-up rates are low—whether it is vaccine hesitancy and what is the issue at stake—could there be language barriers and all sorts of barriers to people engaging with the vaccines. I am not seeing that in the round. If the reason is uptake—I know that that is one of the reasons that the certification scheme has been brought forward—we would need to see a comprehensive analysis of those groups for whom uptake is low, the reasons in relation to that and what additional measures are being put in place to ensure that those groups are being reached. Neither am I saying that some of those measures are not being undertaken. However, that full laying out of the measures would really assist in seeing whether the certification scheme is having impact in other areas and whether it is increasing uptake as Professor Montgomery is outlining. I also wanted to raise just to come back on the point about review. Initially, we understood that the process would be subject to review by the Scottish Parliament every three weeks, but we know that that has since been changed to refer to ministerial review every three weeks. We would seek to clarify that, but also to ensure that that review is done transparently and publicly and is testing the necessity and proportionality of the measures, as has been discussed just now. We very much welcome that being put back to a review by the Scottish Parliament if it has indeed moved to ministerial review. I do not know what I will give Rob Gowan the opportunity to answer that or add to that if he wants. I think that the other witnesses have covered a lot of the points that I would have better made, but it needs to be part of a basket of measures. For instance, in particular, groups are providing clear information in different languages, in different formats, providing reassurance around things like side effects and potential vaccine and assertive outreach with community leaders and people who people trust. One of the areas that we would like to clarify is the scope of the scheme. There is discussion about the ambitions of the scheme to encourage more people to get vaccinated and to a public health measure, but I suppose that the measure is proportionate to what the aims are and where the evidence is for how effective it is thought to be for targeting particular groups and why particular has been chosen. I think that there is a number of areas around there that have greater clarity as needed. I think that a reasonably similar vein of the introduction of vaccine passports, as the Scottish Government has told us, is in essence to try to drive behaviour towards being vaccinated. In driving that in behavioural drivers, the hospitality sector has indicated that there is an inequality here because venues that offer similar services have a different designation. Their concern is that that will drive public behaviour away from those places that require a vaccine passport and towards those places who do not. I will start with Mr Govans, since you were the last to answer this. I think that there are interventions there. It is potentially one of the things that has been seen. I noticed that the committee heard in quite a lot of detail from the Canterbury Licence Trade Association last week about some of the measures. For us, it is around the evidence and it is an area where co-production of the scheme with different groups would have been helpful in understanding how it is likely to affect those behaviour, whether it is that they would be more likely to get the vaccine so that they can access laptops and venues or whether they would go elsewhere or would not. At a point around clarity and evidence, I think that we would welcome that. I agree with what Robison said about the evidence base. It parts back to the comment that Professor Montgomery made about displacement and seeing whether or not the existence of the scheme displaces activity away from the places where the scheme applies to those places where it does not apply and does that in and of itself increase harm or does it possibly make very little difference because it is not certification that it is going to make the difference. It is whether other behaviours are enabled and allowed in those spaces. From my perspective, that level of detail is something that would have to be assessed, considered and put into the frame in terms of the analysis and the measures and the tests that the Government is doing to decide which venues it is going to apply the scheme to and which it is not, but it is having that test, making that test explicit and then being able to measure against it, which is going to give you a decent evidence base on which to make decisions going forward. First of all, that might be a public health benefit to displace people from the specified areas and events into others. If the evidence shows that nightclubs, sunset indoor events etc. are more risky places, you would like people to live their lives in places that are less risky. That could be a benefit if the evidence is clear. My only other comment would be that, if we are trying to incentivise and take up vaccinations, we need to ask ourselves how we reduce the barriers to that being as low as possible. If we have opportunities, because those are areas that people want to go and they are in a group where vaccination rates are lower, the obvious question to be asking ourselves at that point is, can you alongside the introduction of the certification requirement make it really easy to get vaccinated? Pop-up vaccination clinics at places that young people go to may be the key thing to overcoming hesitancy, because it may be as much to do with it being difficult to access vaccines for them if you can't travel. If you want to go here and get your tickets, you can't come until you're vaccinated, but why don't you get the vaccination now? You may have an impact on it, but that is all about understanding how it is thought that certification will have an impact on people's thinking around vaccination hesitancy. That's where I think it would just be really helpful to understand more clearly the rationale for introducing passports at this point for those sorts of venues and how it will overcome hesitancy. I know that, in the Ada Lovelace submission, it suggests that the Scottish Government has a responsibility to protect against errors, harms and discrimination. We all recognise that introduction of new technology does need a lead time going live to protect against those issues and protect against data breaches. There is a distinct lack of time and preparation here. Is that an issue that should concern us, I will ask Professor Montgomery, since it was his submission? That's definitely a question that should be in your mind. Should you separate out those elements of data security risk, which are particular to vaccine passports and those that have already been addressed in relation to other questions? That is not something that is coming out of nowhere with no similar app-based approaches. You have contact tracing apps, you have a way of accessing health records. I don't think that this is a standing start. What you should ask is whether or not the way in which the vaccination certificate takes place is privacy-protecting, in that it does not give too much information about individuals other than what is necessary for the proof of vaccination. The key arcade approach is designed to reveal as little as possible about people. You should be concerned to be reassured that the appropriate security in terms of deleting data after its purpose is finished, although standard data protection approaches are in place. I think that it would be wrong to say that this is suddenly creating a set of issues that are not already known about, but checking that the same security protocols are in place and protections would obviously be an element of oversight of the scheme. Thank you very much, convener. I should just say that when the idea of a vaccine passport was introduced, it did slightly concern me, but I go back to the very beginning. We all accept that coronavirus kills people. We accept that we cannot really know for any certainty how the virus is going to change what other variants are going to come forward. We also accept that the vaccine has had a huge impact in controlling our ability or helping us to get our ability back to have the freedoms that we currently have. That was my starting point. I am pretty sure that everyone in the committee here today would agree that that is where we should be looking at, given the fact that there is a world pandemic. However, there was something that was touched on earlier on that Alec Hear mentioned about care homes. I know that there are care homes, so I will go to the extreme end of how we deal with that. We either shut down society or we go to the next extreme end. There are care homes. There is a care home company based in England. I cannot remember the name of it, but they are based in England. I think that they have a care home in my constituency and they are currently sacking people who have not agreed to get vaccinated. They are sacking them on the basis that they cannot be guaranteed to protect the people who they are employed to protect. They are balancing the human rights of the person who does not want to be vaccinated against the right of the person who requires to be protected. How do you, as a panel, feel about that position? I say what you say, Mr Montgomery. That is obviously a slightly different issue from the passporting issue. It is a very live issue south of the border, where we are looking at mandatory vaccination for care home staff and also consulting around self-working on the front line in the NHS. I think that, earlier on in the pandemic, we were hopeful that your vaccination status would not only reflect your vulnerability to the disease but also your risk of catching and passing it on to others. We now know with the Delta variant that your risk of catching the disease if you are vaccinated is roughly half what it would have been if you weren't. Once you catch it, you are just as much of risk as passing on to others than if you were not vaccinated. I believe that that is the upstate information, but if you need to know, you would probably need to look to epidemiologists to pick it up. In that context, the mandatory vaccination process makes us less safe than we thought it might. The key thing about vaccination is that it keeps you safe from serious disease and it keeps the system protected from being overwhelmed, because if people do not get as ill with Covid, the pressure on our health system is much less great. The worry about mandatory vaccination of care home staff is that it may lead us to be unable to look after the recipients of care in that system if the workforce chooses to leave rather than get vaccinated. We are seeing some providers in England who are saying that that is the impact of mandatory vaccination, but by no means all. I think that I would go back to the points that we were making earlier on in the discussion about understanding the rationale for hesitancy. If people have not been vaccinated because it is difficult to access vaccinations, they cannot take enough time off work because of their work patterns to get to the clinics, then the answer is to give them the option to be vaccinated at work. If the issues are concerns about safety, then it makes sense to try to address those concerns head on. If the issues are more ideological about the belief that irrespective of safety or otherwise, you have the right not to be vaccinated, then I think that it is very reasonable for us as a society to say, well, you do have that right. What you do not have the right to do is to exercise it in a way that puts other people at risk. You would be saying to those people that you can work elsewhere, you do not have to work in the care system, but if you want to work in the care system, you have to take steps to protect the people that you are looking after. I think that it is a strong case for requiring people to take care of the general people that they are responsible for. I am doubtful whether or not passporting and mandatory vaccination really addresses the concerns. I would be hopeful that we could address them more directly by looking at exactly why people are hesitant, but I think that that is a matter of judgment and it would be reasonable to see the judgment balancing on the other side. It is clearly a very live issue in a context where care homes themselves are fundamental to supporting the whole health system, both delivered against Covid and everything else that is going on. It is a live issue in the context of our withdrawal from the EU, where staffing issues within care homes are also difficult. To be honest, I would go back to the first principles of looking at the balance of people's rights within the process. I think that Professor Montgomery has done an excellent job of laying out some of the considerations in that. I would reiterate the points that I made earlier about engaging with those individuals for whom the take-up rates are low within the care home setting and with providers. They are also very much part of that dynamic and with the people under the receiving end of care. There are a lot of stakeholders in there whose views and whose rights are at stake in this discussion. I think that undertaking a balanced analysis of all those rights and dialogue with those stakeholders in different ways could lead to very different outcomes than going for a mandatory vaccine process. Basically, for many of the reasons that Professor Montgomery has outlined, there may be many more for engaging with all the stakeholders at stake in that discussion. For me, the fundamental of a rights-based approach is to undertake that analysis, undertake what is at stake and look at the evidence around that to see what supports what. Some of those decisions are already being made about that in different settings and some of those I suspect will be tested in the courts because of the balance of rights and how sensitive it is. We will see some of that play out. The Scottish Government itself does not have the power over employment rights, but it could potentially look at providing some kind of framework for decision making for employers in relation to the issue of unpacking the rights that are at stake, providing the space to have pilot conversations in a human rights-respecting way with the different stakeholders and seeing what measures can be put in place to increase take-up, but also ensuring that people's rights across those issues are respected and balanced. There is a lot that could be done that could happen before an ultimate decision is made to mandate vaccines. From my perspective, it is back to first principles in relation to obligations of government around people's balancing and testing of people's rights and taking a rights-based approach within that. I welcome the fact that the vaccine passports would only be used in very specific settings and they do not include key public services. I also note that workers in the venues that will require a vaccine passport would be exempt from the scheme. There are issues when it comes to employment in that vaccination itself is optional but complying with the law around discrimination at work is mandatory. If people are sacked or if employers are to require people to be double-vaccinated as part of the conditioned employment, the back-of-round rise to potential discrimination, particularly if someone had a long-term condition or was disabled, that has the effect of increasing the disability employment gap. As far as I am aware, the latest version of the ACAS guidelines has advised employers to support their staff to have the vaccine but not to insist on it. It is for those reasons that it may give rise to potential discrimination claims. On disability, sex, religion and belief, where there are potentially reasons related to a protected characteristic that people may not take out the vaccine, we would be concerned about any expansion of the scheme to cover people's employment. I think that it would be concerned about employers requiring it. I will go back to what Mr Montgomery said at the start. The reason I asked that was proportionality as opposed to the rights of the individual as opposed to the rights of the community, as it were. The care home is like a microcosm in my thinking about how we are doing this. We accept the fact that we are giving people the choice. You can work in this care home, but you must do certain things in order to protect the people who are living here and working here and in this care home. As Jonathan said, you can put the conditionality that they have to have the double vaccine. We are also giving the choice in the process that we are going through at the moment in deciding whether we are going to have a Covid vaccine passport. If somebody believes in independence, I do not necessarily agree that we should be taking our lessons from the road. We should be free-thinking ourselves. However, there are Covid passport vaccines happening all across the world. People have the choice whether they go to a nightclub or to football. Those are social events, so they have the choice of whether or not they want to do it. Is it proportionate to say that, for the greater good of society, you have the choice whether you want to go to a football match or go to a nightclub? We know that those are areas where the spread happens. Therefore, if you choose to go there, you have a societal obligation to help us to try and mitigate the effects of this disease. I think that that is a very reasonable way to approach it. It depends on looking at the range of choices that are available to people and whether that range of choices is broadly consistent with the lives that they want to lead. We at Adelaug life are really clear that you need a very strong justification for use passporting in elements of everyday life such as shopping and going to work. If you identify a small group of events where people have alternatives that they can choose, it is very reasonable to expect them to take precautions when they go to those events to keep other members of the audiences safe. That does not undermine the point that we began with, which is understanding why it is that it is thought that those categories are ones of a particular risk. It does not undermine the concerns that vaccine passporting may actually have a counterproductive risk. It may make people think that they do not need to take other precautions. I would be against thinking that answering that question is identical to answering the question about vaccine passporting, because we should expect people to respect the rights and freedoms of others and take some responsibility for their own impact on that. It is not clear to me that recognising that principle leads to precisely the proposal that we have been talking about and understanding why it is thought that it seems to be key. I will come back to you on that point. It does not mean that we are not saying that this is in isolation the method or the methodology that we are going to try and suppress the vaccine. The messaging is still the same. We are still asking people to wear masks indoors. We are still asking people to take all the hygiene precautions. We are still doing everything else that we are currently doing. That is something that has been added on to a very targeted area where we want to see a greater uptake and we want to make sure that we suppress the virus as an ability. You said yourself that we would reduce it by about 50 per cent if people get the vaccine. It is another layer of our ability to suppress the vaccine. Would you accept that? I think that that depends on what the behavioural science tells us. If we only have vaccinated people and their chance of catching is reduced by 50 per cent but then they stop wearing their face masks and they abandon social distancing and they are less cautious, the net effect might not be the one that we are after. That is why it is important to understand the evidence. The general perception, when I talk to people about vaccine passports, is that they are seen as a message that if you have been vaccinated it is safe for you to do these things. I do not think that that is the case with the Delta virus. It is still not entirely safe. It is safer. I think that brings us back to the question how much safer are these events if passported are not safe? The majority of people have been vaccinated who are going there. Excluding the 10 per cent or 15 per cent who are not may not make a big impact on the overall safety of someone going in. That is what we need to know and that is what we should monitor. That is what I think is a review process to be able to pick up. However, I do think that that argument is completely separate from the incentivisation argument. I think that the question is whether people, if faced with this choice, take up the vaccine more. The French evidence suggests that they would do that. The French evidence suggests that introducing the vaccine passports for a much broader area of social life than Scotland is proposing, it increased uptake, but they started from a much lower base than Scotland has. Whether it would have a proportionate impact in Scotland is unclear. I think that those are all the questions, but it does not seem obvious to me without seeing the articulation of the evidence why that leads us to take this step at this stage. I am not saying that it is not yet clear. I am sorry, Mr Fairlie, that we have run out of time. We were doing well for time and I would like to bring Alex Cole-Hamilton briefly. My questions are very brief. I am grateful for you bringing back in, convener. Just yes or no questions on this, just of an interest of time. Professor Montgomery, you said in your opening remarks that you told us about a festival in Cornwall. I think that it was called Cornmasters at which it required a vaccine passport for entry, but 5,000 people got sick. Was there also a requirement to bring a lateral flow, evidence of a negative lateral flow result for that festival as well? Yes, I understand that it was both vaccine passports and testing. Okay, that is very helpful to know. Whilst everyone knew that everyone was double jabbed and people were still presenting lateral flow tests, 5,000 people still got sick. It is not a foolproof device. We are very clear that state governments can only set aside their duty to act compatibly with things like the right to family life, right to privacy, right to freedom of thought, if—and I wrote it down—it was necessary to address a pressing social need. Can you tell us what happens if the Government is not acting compatibly and is not presenting evidence that it is necessary to address that social need? Is there a sanction? Good question. There is no immediate sanction. The sanction would ultimately happen in the court, I suspect. If it was identified that somebody took the—decided to take the Government to court on the introduction of the scheme and aspects of these areas were not established by the Government, then that could be brought into bearing in a court discussion about the efficacy of the scheme, the human rights compliance of the scheme and a decision would be made thereof. So there is no immediate sanction other than this conversation and other dialogue with Government in relation to their obligations, except through a final court judgment where it would be deemed that it was an infringement of the right to family life, the right to cultural life, and that decision would be made and would have to be upheld by the Government. From everything you have told us today, you are not satisfied that you have seen sufficient evidence, as yet from this Government, that this measure proves the necessity to drive down this pressing social need. As we have heard of the example of the Corn Masters Festival, there is evidence to the contrary that it does not drive down this pressing social need. What kind of evidence would you like to see to satisfy that requirement to set aside those very important human rights? We would like to see the evidence that the Government is basing its decision on. The Government will have evidence, and we trust that the Government has made its decision on the basis of evidence. Simply that is what we are looking for the evidence of. What is the basis of the evidence? There may be evidence there that the Government is using that is not currently in the public domain, which absolutely justifies the decision to be made in this way. The professional numbering has outlined many areas of that evidence, but we would like to see that evidence. The final question is obviously a very controversial issue. We see a legal challenge being mounted by the Nighttime Industries Association. Are you surprised, then, Judith, that if the Government is sitting on compelling empirical evidence to suggest that this is an effective means of driving down this very pressing social need, that it is still sitting on it? If I was in government and I had that evidence, I would rush it to the floor. Are you surprised by that? We are concerned that that evidence has not been made available publicly. We have expressed that concern as of yesterday to the cabinet secretary, because we believe that there is a commitment to take a rights-based approach. We very much see that evidence-based need to be shared publicly, so that that can be fully interrogated. We are also using it as a real test case on how we consider people's rights. That is a controversial issue. There is proportionality attached to it already. It is not a blanket use of Covid certification. It is a very limited area of public of life that is being applied to, just in response to the previous question. There have been key considerations that have been made along the way to make the scheme to adapt the scheme, to modify the scheme to make it, potentially, more rights-respecting. However, there is almost certainly more that could be done. For me, crucial engagement with people who are actually potentially directly affected by this in all the multiple natures of that seems to be missing. If it is not missing, again, we would like to see what that resulted in, what those dialogues and conversations resulted in. That meaningful participation in people in the development of the scheme. So there is some further work to do. Thank you very much. Thank you, convener. Thank you. Apologies. We are running late of time now. So I would like to thank all the witnesses for their evidence and giving us their time this morning. If witnesses would like to raise any further evidence with the committee, they can do so in writing and the clerks will be happy to liaise with you about how to do that. I will now suspend to allow a change over of witnesses. Witnesses and members are advised that there is a very short comfort break before the next session. Thank you. Apologies for the delay in starting this session. We shall now move on to the evidence on the latest ministerial statement on Covid-19 and subordinate legislation. I welcome Michael Matheson, Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport, Professor Jason Leitch, National Clinical Director, Angus McLeod, Deputy Director of Community Surveillance Division and Graham Fisher, Deputy Director of the Scottish Government Legal Directive. Thank you for your attendance this morning. Cabinet Secretary, would you like to make any remarks before we open up to questions? Good morning, convener, and to the committee. I'll briefly address the instruments being considered by the committee today in order. The Scottish international travel regulations had provided that following arrival into Scotland day 2 and day 8 Covid-19 tests must be carried out by public providers, that is by the NHS in Scotland. The number 17 amendment allows those tests also to be supplied by private sector test providers, provided they are on the UK Government published list of test providers. To get on to the list, the providers must self-declare compliance with relevant regulations and the Department of Health and Social Care guidance. All providers must work towards and create full UK accreditation service accreditation. Those who fail to follow the necessary stages of accreditation, achieve the required turnaround times for test results, are not clear in their pricing or who act unethically, are being removed from the list by the DHSC. The amendment provided for a small but significant number of seasonal agricultural workers unable to isolate on a named farm due to insufficient accommodation. It allows them to isolate to the same standards as any other ample list arrival on off-farm accommodation that is organised by their employers. The number 18 amendment relates to COP26. As I am sure that members are aware, COP26 will bring together countries to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris agreement and the UN framework convention on climate change in order to address climate change at an international level. COP26 and the World Leaders' Summit are being held in person because of the complex nature of negotiations and the need for secure discussions. That requires exemptions to travel restrictions. The amendments provide for arrangements and exemptions from self-isolation, managed quarantine, day 2 and day 8 testing requirements and for completion of the passenger locator forms for persons attending or facilitating COP26 and the COP26 World Leaders' Summit, with the exemptions varying for different categories of attendees. More limited exemptions apply for those attending or facilitating COP26, who have not been invited to attend both COP26 and the World Leaders' Summit by the UK Government, or are not granted privileges and immunities in connection with COP26. Those who have been in a country or territory on the ample list in the 10 days before arrival in Scotland will not be required to self-isolate. Fully vaccinated persons who have been in a red list country or territory in the 10 days before arrival in Scotland will be required to undertake five days of managed quarantine rather than 10 days, and if not vaccinated, must quarantine for 10 days. For the delegates who must stay in managed isolation, the definition of authorised vaccine is extended to include any vaccine authorised for use in the country in which it was administered. There is no exemption to the pre-arrival testing requirement to possess a negative result from a qualifying test. In order for the exemptions for COP26 and the World Leaders' Summit to apply, individuals will be required to provide written confirmation that they will comply with the UNFCCC code of conduct, which sets out rigorous measures for the event. The code will mitigate the additional public health risks arising from holding in-person events in the UK and the exemptions to travel restrictions. The number 19 amendment to the regulations provides for an exemption from the requirement to enter managed self-isolation for participation in European professional football club fixtures in Scotland. They were made urgently due to players arriving into Glasgow from redlist countries for a fixture taking place on Thursday 16 September. That was due to a risk that home fixtures could be moved abroad to a neutral venue to allow European club players who played internationals in redlist countries in the previous 10 days to participate. That would have caused significant disruption to Scottish clubs and home fans and generated a far higher risk of Covid transmission than a very small number of players travelling to Scotland. I hope that this is a helpful overview of the regulations that the committee is considering and, of course, I am happy to respond to any questions that the committee may have. Thank you, cabinet secretary. I am conscious that we only have 35 minutes for this session now, so I would ask that questions and answers please be restricted to about four to five minutes each. If I may begin by asking the first question. The recently updated travel advice from the Scottish Government, including the removal of the amber and green traffic light system, seems like great news for Scottish people hoping to be able to go abroad on holiday and return back to Scotland if they have been fully vaccinated. However, a remaining challenge, as I have been reminded by one of my constituents, is that Scottish people that are working abroad who are fully vaccinated are only able to return to Scotland for a holiday to see their families if they have been vaccinated in a limited amount of countries such as the EU, the US and a very small handful of other countries. For those Scots who are living and working outside of the US and the EU and are looking back to reconnect and see their families, even if they are fully vaccinated with the visor or the AstraZeneca, they are not currently being considered vaccinated under the new guidelines. The issue seems to be one of where they are vaccinated, not with what vaccine. Can you tell me, are you aware of those challenges and when do you anticipate that the qualifying countries will be expanded so fully vaccinated Scots can return home for a holiday without the 10-day quarantine? There were some changes made last week which extend the number of countries that will qualify for the vaccination programme and for entry into Scotland and the UK as a whole. I am aware that there are some issues around vaccines being provided in other countries, which are still restricted to travel restrictions. However, I suspect that Professor Jason Leitch might be in a better place to give you a more detailed clinical understanding as to why that is the case and what action has been taken to try to address the issue. There were 17 countries that added to the vaccine list that means that the UK as a whole recognises vaccination given in those countries. There are two problems. One is the type of vaccine and the other is certification of vaccine. Does that country provide a piece of paper, an app and electronic version that allows it to be checked? For example, Zimbabwe gives no evidence of vaccination. It may well vaccinate its citizens, but the citizens have no evidence of vaccination. That is a challenge. We added 17 new countries UK-wide, including a whole host of areas from around the world, that are now recognised. That list will be kept under review. Ministers will get advice when new countries should be added to it. I wanted to ask about the issue of PCR tests for international travellers. First of all, I very much welcome the instrument before us that is opening up to private sector providers for those who are travelling. I certainly had a number of constituents raising complaints with me about the cost of doing the PCR test through the one previously designated provider. That is a very welcome change. However, there is an outstanding issue that you will be very aware of, which is that the UK Government has announced its intention to remove the requirement for international travellers who have been double jabbed to have a PCR test in addition to travelling. The First Minister indicated on Tuesday that the Scottish Government was considering what steps it would take in that respect. The travel industry has been very vocal on that. As I am sure that you are aware, it is concerned that there will be people looking to perhaps book last-minute travel for the October break, who, as Scottish residents, will now look to fly from an English airport because they will therefore avoid that requirement for PCR tests, and that will be to the detriment of the Scottish travel industry and Scottish airports. Every day that goes by, it potentially costs the Scottish travel industry because people are making those bookings right now. When will we get a decision from the Scottish Government on that issue? There are two aspects to that. The first is in relation to pre-departure testing and the requirement for pre-departure testing and removing that requirement, which the UK Government set out that they intend to take forward. The second is in relation to the day two testing, PCR testing, which is required. It is important to understand and recognise the importance of both of those tests. The first in terms of pre-departure testing is to certify that the person is not positive at that particular time when they are getting into an aircraft and potentially then infecting other people on the aircraft. It plays an important element in trying to reduce the risk of infecting other individuals, which I understand from a contact tracing point of view becomes very complex when an infection takes place on an aircraft. The second is in relation to the PCR testing at day two. This plays an important element in our surveillance programme to identify potential variants of concern. Removing the requirement for a PCR test at day two potentially compromises that significantly. Our ability to identify variants of concern coming into the country should someone be infected and for that to be genome sequenced is significantly impacted if we remove that at day two PCR test. If you simply go to a lateral flow test, you do not have the same ability to undertake the genomic sequencing as you can with a PCR test. Given the decision by the UK Government, we have sought further advice, as the First Minister stated in her statement to Parliament, on Tuesday and officials are still providing that advice. I would expect that the First Minister will be looking to set that out as early as possible and hopefully in the next day or two in response to the further advice that will receive from clinicians. It should be—and I will be quite open with the committee here—that the clinical advice is that PCR testing for both pre-departure testing and at day two should remain in place. It plays an important role. You will be aware, Mr Fraser, that it is not just the Scottish Government that has raised significant concerns about that, but it is also other devolved nations that have raised significant concerns about the approach that the UK Government is taking on that issue. However, we also need to recognise the potential benefits that we will get from continuing with our existing regime, given the action that the UK Government is taking, because people will simply choose to go to airports in England and also the impact that it also has on the aviation sector. Those are factors that we are taking into account alongside the clinical advice around the value of both pre-departure tests and day two PCR testing. Can I move to Jim Felly? Yes, thank you, convener. You caught me out there. First, I will go to the cabinet secretary and ask about the COP26, the factors that you are considering there. I know that you briefly outlined them. Was there any lessons learned from the recent G7? Were there any problems after the G7 that you know about? Are some of the systems that you are going to put in place for the COP26 similar to what happened with the G7? I appreciate that the G7 scale event is much smaller than it is for COP26, so the number of individuals is of a much smaller scale compared to COP26. Some of the aspects of what we have sought to put in place or agreed to put in place for COP26 is to try to reach a level where we can facilitate in-person COP to take place, because it is so important and we recognise the significance of this particular event while trying to mitigate against some of the risks, which is why we have some of the testing regime and the restrictions in place. I would not say that we have drawn directly on the lessons from the G7 because of the nature and scale of its very different with COP26 being significantly larger, but I assure you that we have tried to strike a balance here of trying to allow COP26 to take place in-person while also trying to mitigate against some of the risks associated with such a large number of people coming together over a relatively limited period of time. My second question is more of a constituency-based one. We still have constituents who are getting the first jag in England, second jag in Scotland and the connection has not been made yet and they are struggling to get their vaccine certificate. Can you possibly tell us, are we any closer to getting a solution to that? I think that Mr Felian is probably best to hand over to Professor Jason Leitch because she is involved in trying to look at resolutions specifically to this matter. Thanks, Mr Felian. Yes, we do have a solution. There is just a backlog to fix that, so they should phone the helpline and the helpline will fix it, but it will not fix it instantly. It can be quite complex with identification numbers in both the countries, but we have solutions, but there is just quite a lot of them, so the helpline and those behind the helpline doing the tech solutions are working their way through them. We have fixed a lot, but, if there are some remaining, there is a form on NHS inform and or the helpline, and they will get to it as quickly as they possibly can. Excellent. My constituents have been delighted, thank you. Thank you, cabinet secretary, and to the panel. If I could move on from my colleague Mr Fairlie's questions about COP. One of the things that we did learn from the European Championships is the balance that has to be struck. Bringing together people from across different countries will increase significantly the infection rate. We recognise that. COP is obviously going to be an even more of a significant risk given the number of countries that it involves, so there is a balance to be had between risk and benefit. I wonder whether Mr Matheson will perhaps comment on that and the evidence, and is it the Government's intention to publish the evidence around that sort of safety against benefit risk? The way in which we have taken this forward is through negotiations with the UK Government, the Scottish Government and the UN to try to create a pathway for those attending as registered delegates to COP or the World Leaders Summit to facilitate in-person negotiations and meetings. You will be aware from the regulations that those who are travelling from high-risk countries, which would be classes red list countries, is that there are still much more stringent restrictions around them. If they are unvaccinated, they will have to manage quarantine for 10 days in the same way that any other individual will, and they will have to go through the normal testing regime as part of that in day 2 and day 8. For those who are vaccinated, they will be able to reduce or manage quarantine period to five days if they are travelling from or have been in a red list country in the last 10 days. At the same time, they will have to have PCR tests during the course of their quarantine. For those who are travelling from non-red list countries, there is still the requirement for pre-departure testing, passenger locator form, day 2 testing. There will also be a requirement for them to carry out daily lateral flow tests as part of the code of practice that has been put in place by the UN to try again to minimise the risk. We have tried to collaborate across the two Governments and the UN to try to find a mechanism that tries to manage the high-risk elements as best we can through managed quarantine and testing, while also trying to manage the broader risk through having pre-departure testing, day 2 testing and daily lateral flow testing for delegates while they are attending COP and also restricting arrangements to those who are registered delegates for COP26. If you are not entitled to be a registered delegate or not invited by the UK Government to attend COP26, those measures will not apply to you. Where we have relaxed them, it is only specifically for those who are registered delegates or invited participants in it. We have tried to balance that. I think that it is very difficult to say that I can easily give you information saying that this is the balance of risks other than trying to manage it in a planned way that helps to try to minimise the risks and things like we know that vaccines reduce risk, regular testing reduce risks or ill-identification of positive cases. Managed quarantine helps to reduce risk, so we have put in place a whole range of measures both to try to mitigate against the risk of people having the virus while also reducing the risk of the potential importation of the virus as well. I have a quick follow-up to that. A key element of COP will be the fringe events that delegates will potentially interact with those who are not delegates and therefore have not gone through that stringent testing. What consideration is the Government giving in terms of putting some safety protocols in place? Keep in mind that even fringe events are taking place and that overly of testing arrangements are put in place for COP delegates specifically, the overly of restrictions that operate here in Scotland continue to apply to any fringe event, so ensuring that there is appropriate social distancing, that people are wearing masks, that folk are also using good hand hygiene, etc. All those measures will continue to apply in any venue and the numbers in venues will be limited on the basis of the need to maintain social distancing. It is important to recognise that the layer of restrictions that we have in place at the present moment in Scotland will apply to fringe events for COP26, which means that venues that would normally be able to hold large numbers of people will not be able to do so because of the need in order to make sure that they manage numbers in a way that helps to support social distancing and mask wearing, etc. Thank you. Can I ask Alex Rowley? You don't have any questions? John Mason? No questions? Okay, great. We can move on to agenda item number six. I move on to the six agenda item, which is consideration of the motions on the made affirmative instruments considered during the previous agenda item. Cabinet Secretary, would you like to make any further remarks on the SSIs before we take the motions? No further comment, convener. Thank you. Thank you, cabinet secretary. Are members content for the motions on the agenda to be moved on block? Thank you. The members are agreed to move the motions on block. I now invite the cabinet secretary to move on block motions S6M-01079, S6M-01186 and S6M-01261. Can I ask if any members would like to make any comments? I know that no members have indicated that they wish to speak, so I will now put the question on the motions. The question is that motions S6M-01079, S6M-01186 and S6M-01261 be agreed. Do members agree? Thank you. The motions are agreed. The committee will publish a report to the Parliament setting out a decision on the statutory instruments considered at this meeting in due course. That concludes our consideration of this agenda item and our time with the cabinet secretary. I thank the cabinet secretary and the supporting officials for their attendance this morning. The committee's next meeting will be on 30 September when we will continue to take evidence on vaccination certification and will take evidence from the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery on the ministerial statement of Covid-19 and the subordinate legislation. That concludes the public part of our meeting this morning and I suspend the meeting to allow the witnesses to leave.