 Fflawr Clarity, ond mae Parlymyn yn gweithio yr adeiladau 63 yn y nameu Nicola Sturgeon. The First Minister may now invite Her Majesty to approve the appointment. The next item of business is urgent questions. In order to get in as many people as possible, I would prefer short and succinct questions and answers to match, and I call Sue Webber. I would like to ask the Scottish Government whether it will comment on the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland report, authority to discharge, showing unlawful transfers of adults with incapacity from hospitals to care homes during the early stages of the pandemic. We welcome the Mental Welfare Commission report, and we expect its recommendations to be addressed in full. Any decisions taken with respect to adult's lacking capacity, which are made by health and social care professionals in consultation with the individual or their families and representatives independently of government should put their rights, will and preference first and foremost. The Scottish Government is working with health and social care partnerships to improve the process so that frail older people do not have to spend any longer than necessary in hospital while ensuring that discharges are lawful. We will continue to engage with health and social care partnerships to share good practice. I will write to the health board and local authority chief executives and to the health and social care partnership chief officers about the report today. The report made for some distressing reading. The Mental Welfare Commission found that hundreds of people with conditions such as severe dementia or learning disabilities were moved from hospitals to care homes without due consent at the start of the pandemic amid what it also called endemic poor practice and confusion over the legal rights of adults with incapacity and disregard for those with power of attorney. Most worryingly, the report found that at least 20 of those transfers were unlawful. What assurance can the minister give us that this is being investigated and that it will not happen again? It has been investigated by the Mental Welfare Commission. We will take on board all the recommendations that it has made, ten of which are for health and social care partnerships, and one for the Government around monitoring. We will ensure that monitoring takes place. As I said in my first meeting with the director of mental health and social care this morning, my first meeting as minister was discussed. I intend to write to all HSCPs to make sure that that does not happen again. However, I would point out to the chamber that that took place during a point where we were seeing horrific pictures from Italy of coronavirus going rampant. Clinicians believed that the best possible outcomes for patients at that time was to move them out of hospital settings. That should have been done following legal process. We will look at all that and ensure that that does not happen again. If Ms Webber wants to talk in more detail about the issue, I am more than happy to do so. I will take you up on that offer. This is not an isolated incident when it comes to the failure of this Government to protect some of Scotland's most vulnerable. Last year, a report that was initially delayed stated that more than 100 Covid-positive patients were released into care homes during the pandemic, yet it was only earlier this year that the previous health secretary finally admitted that there was a failure to take the right precautions. The Scottish Conservatives have repeatedly called for an immediate public inquiry into what happened in our care homes. Despite cross-party support in this very Parliament, the Scottish Government has repeatedly refused to carry one out. Will it finally listen to Parliament and conduct an immediate public inquiry so that families of residents can finally get the answers that they deserve? I reiterate the point that, during the course of the pandemic, the priority of the Government was to save lives. Previously, in this chamber by many of my ministerial colleagues, we were facing the unknown in some regards, and we have made some mistakes. The Government has always made it clear that we will have a public inquiry into all of this, and that will happen. All that has gone before us will be looked at and lessons learned. Members have got to understand the particular challenges that we were facing at the very initial stages of the coronavirus pandemic, where clinicians gave their advice and we followed it. I have requests for supplementaries and short and succinct questions and responses. I call Jackie Baillie to be followed by Alex Cole-Hamilton. I welcome the minister to his new post. On 18 April, the First Minister said in relation to care home transfers that, with the benefit of knowledge that we have now, it did not have then, it was a mistake. Is this strictly true? NHS Scotland had classified Covid-19 as a group 3 biological agent in line with health and safety legislation. That was immediate at the start of the pandemic and risk assessments were carried out on NHS employees. Why were no risk assessments carried out on patients who were transferred to care homes without being tested, which by law you are required to do? How many times have health boards broken the law in carrying out the Scottish Government's instructions? Will the minister order an urgent review and ask the Lord Advocate to investigate the breach of the law? As I said in my earlier answer, this matter has been looked at by the Mental Welfare Commission. The Government throughout this period has followed the advice that we have received from the medical and scientific experts. Ms Baillie may sit there shaking her head, but that is the reality that we face. There are a number of things that we need to look at over the course of time in order to learn lessons from a situation that was new to us all. The Government has said time and time again that we will have an inquiry and all of that will be looked into. Of course, the Government will look and consider all recommendations from that inquiry. The UN Committee on the Rights of People with Disabilities has consistently flagged a problem in Scotland where insufficient efforts are made to obtain the views of people with diminished capacity. That was the case in mental health tribunals before, but it is clearly evident here as well. Had we incorporated the UNCRPD into Scots law, that would not have been allowed to happen. So can I ask the minister when his Government will bring forward legislation to that end? As Mr Cole-Hamilton is aware, the Government has said that we will move forward putting human rights at the heart of new legislation. What I would say to Mr Cole-Hamilton is that if we do so, I hope that he will support us if there are any challenges from the UK Government around our responsibilities as we have seen most recently with our attempts to embed children's rights in law here. Can I ask it all seems rather faintly ridiculous that the minister was answering questions from the gallery. Is there anything that your office can do to make sure that when ministers are asked urgent questions in this chamber that they appear in the chamber itself rather than appearing on high like some visitor from another place? Thank you Mr Kerr for your point, which is now on the record. Is the circumstances this week and I can assure you that it will not happen again. I now move on to question number two and call Ariane Burgess. To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to protect private tenants from evictions while the Covid-19 restrictions remain in place. Cabinet Secretary John Swinney Minister, I welcome Ms Burgess to Parliament and the asking of this first question. The Government has been clear from the outset that taking eviction action against a tenant because they have suffered financial hardship due to coronavirus should be an absolute last resort. We have made clear that we expect that during the pandemic landlords are flexible and work with their tenants to prevent evictions taking place where that is possible. However in recognition of the unprecedented circumstances that we face because of the pandemic we took swift action to introduce emergency legislation to protect those who are renting. This gives those facing eviction extra time up to six months in many cases to apply for the financial support that is currently available or to find alternative, more suitable accommodation. Tribunals now have the discretion to take all factors into account when hearing eviction cases and could decide not to grant an eviction order. We also took action to further protect those who are renting in areas with the highest prevalence of the virus by banning the service and enforcement of eviction orders where levels 3 or 4 restrictions apply. All of those protections are in place until at least September of this year. Where an eviction is unavoidable we have strong homelessness legislation in place to support households in the circumstances. This will be an area that we continue to keep under close consideration as we look at our continued navigation off and recovery from Covid. Ariane Burgess I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. I am proud that green MSPs worked with the Government to deliver an evictions ban over the winter months. This has provided a lifeline for many throughout the pandemic. This week we have seen many areas move to level 2, which is welcome, but the impact of the pandemic does not disappear and now struggling families may face eviction. We are still in a public health emergency. Evicting vulnerable people who have been unable to work or earn during the pandemic is deeply unfair. As a minimum, we need to keep the evictions ban in place for as long as restrictions remain. Will the minister agree to that? Ms Burgess is absolutely correct that those provisions came about as a consequence of good cross-party working with members of the green party and with members of other political parties. She is also correct that the impact of the pandemic is still very much with us, which is why I started my answer by talking about the measures that we have in place to ensure that evictions are really an absolute last resort and that we have many other mechanisms in place to avoid that happening. As I indicated earlier on, the protections in level 3 or level 4 areas continue to apply until at least September this year. We will obviously review those matters as we move closer towards that period. As ministers begin to consider, in dialogue with other political parties, the steps that we have to take in relation to Covid recovery—I know that it is an issue that the Cabinet Secretary for Social Protection will be happy to pursue further dialogue about and which I will be happy to discuss as part of the Covid recovery group that we hope we will start meeting next week. Sad reality is that Scotland has decades behind our European neighbours when it comes to tenants' rights and the pandemic has shone a light on many of the challenges faced by renters. The introduction of a winter evictions ban was a great step forward and one that I urge the Government to make permanent. However, we can do so much more, like introducing rent controls and establishing a private rented sector regulator. Will the cabinet secretary commit to working collaboratively to deliver a better deal for renters when we recover from the pandemic? I am very happy to commit the Government to that objective. It is important that individuals who are living in the rented sector are equipped with all the rights that they should have to protect them in those circumstances. If there is practice that we can learn from in other jurisdictions, the Government will be very happy to learn those lessons and to consider those issues and to discuss those priorities with other members of Parliament as we take forward the commitments in our election manifesto to strengthen the provisions that are available for those who are renting within our society. I have requests for supplementaries and I call Pauline McNeill to be followed by Paul Sweeney. Thank you to the cabinet secretary for recognising the cross-party working and protecting renters, but does the cabinet secretary recognise the danger of mass evictions if protections come to a sudden edge called the cliff edge, if you like? We need to extend those provisions to level 2 as well as 3 and 4. Will the Government set up a grant fund, as I have called for, to help tenants facing evictions due to the loss of income due to the pandemic, to make sure that they can protect more people from evictions? Unfortunately, it is going to get a lot bigger at a problem. I recognise and accept the point that Pauline McNeill makes about the fact that there will be on-going financial hardship that will emerge whether it is with us in relation to the pandemic and that it will intensify. Obviously, the work that I will be leading on the Government's behalf in relation to Covid recovery must look at the implications of the disruption to labour markets and to housing markets as a consequence of the pandemic. I am certainly happy to give the commitment that we will look at those questions. As part of a suite of financial measures to support tenants, we launched a tenant hardship loan fund, which had £10 million allocated to it. As at 17 May, 145 loan awards had been made with a total value of just over £472,000, so existing capacity there to support individuals should be required. Of course, that is in addition to the £5 million of extra funding that we have made available to local authorities to provide discretionary housing payments for those who need help with their housing costs. There are a number of existing provisions through discretionary housing fund payments that can support individuals in the circumstances that Pauline McNeill refers to, but I stress that the Government will retain an open mind. Clearly, none of us is certain about the degree of hardship that is likely to emerge, and we have to address that when that presents itself. Scotland's Tenants Union living rent has concluded that 70 per cent of all evictions that happened in the last year have been caused by rent arrears. That suggests that the measures put in place by the Government are simply not sufficient to stem the flow of evictions because of the problem of low income because of the pandemic. Will the Government consider extending the financial support measures that are available to tenants, particularly those who are at risk of eviction because of rent arrears, bearing in mind that the Government does have a legal obligation to prevent homelessness in Scotland? First of all, I welcome Mr Sweeney to Parliament and look forward to his contributions here. He raises a serious issue, and the point that I have just made in answer to Pauline McNeill illustrates that, as things appear to ministers just now, there is capacity within existing funding provisions available to support individuals. We will obviously keep that under constant review because, again, in my answer to Pauline McNeill, we cannot be certain what is going to be the gravity of the challenge that we face. However, what the Government has tried to do throughout the pandemic is to have in place appropriate measures and appropriate support to assist individuals who face difficulties, to help them through those difficulties. I readily give to Mr Sweeney today to indicate the Government's willingness to ensure that we have all provisions in place that are necessary, and we will continue to review the pattern that is emerging in any of those issues to determine whether we have adequate support in place. If there is a need to revisit those provisions, the Government will of course be prepared to consider exactly that. Thank you. That concludes urgent questions.