 I will now move on to the next item of business, and although front benches are potentially changing their positions, I remind members that social distancing measures are in place in the chamber and across the Holyrood campus, I ask that members take care to observe those measures, including when entering and exiting the chamber. Please only use the aisles and walkways to access your seat, and when moving around to the chamber, the next item of business is a debate on motion 446, in the name of John Swinney, on the coronavirus extension and expiry Scotland Bill at stage 1. I would ask members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request to speak buttons now, and I call on John Swinney, cabinet secretary, to speak to and move the motion. Thank you, Presiding Officer. While I wish we were not in the situation where I am required to bring forward legislation to extend the temporary measures to respond to the pandemic, I am pleased to present the coronavirus extension and expiry Scotland Bill and to set out its general principles, and I move the motion that stands in my name this afternoon. Before I turn to the bill's principles, I want to start by setting out the reasons for the timing of the introduction and the passage of the bill. As members will understand, the path of the pandemic has been unpredictable, and in response we have needed to take action to respond to the public health threat that this has created. Part of that response was to bring in temporary measures through the Coronavirus Scotland Act 2020 and the Coronavirus Number 2 Scotland Act 2020. The temporary measures in those acts expire on 30 September 2021. Given the pre-election period and the upcoming summer recess, to ensure that a number of those measures, which we consider to be essential, can continue beyond that date, it is necessary that the bill completes its passage before the recess. I appreciate that that means that there is limited time to consider the content of the bill, but I want to reassure members that the primary purpose of the bill is to extend measures only temporarily. The bill does not introduce any new provisions. It does not modify or amend any of the temporary measures that are already in place. Again, to be crystal clear, the bill does not relate to either international travel or regulations that impose restrictions on our day-to-day activities. Progressing a bill under the emergency procedure is not a decision that the Government ever takes lightly. However, passing the bill this month will not only take account of the time that is needed for it to come into effect, but, crucially, it will give public services and people in Scotland more time to plan for what extension or expiry of those measures will mean for them. It is quite understandably and appropriately for the Presiding Officer to determine the scope of the bill and the admissibility of amendments, but I consider it very unlikely that it will be possible to amend the bill to add new or amended temporary measures. I appreciate that that may be frustrating for members who wish to bring forward new topics, but I do not think that this is the appropriate bill for that purpose. The place for that is in the forthcoming months, when there will be an opportunity to fully consider what further legislative changes may be required. The reason that we are not able to add to the bill is simply because we will not have enough time to debate any additional clauses or amendments or issues that members want to raise and bring to the table. Justly so, if that is the case, we would be sitting here until midnight tomorrow night. Is that the only reason that we are being limited in such a way? No, it is not in any respect the reason. This is about an extension and expiry bill of existing provisions for which the Parliament has already legislated. I have made clear that the Government will be consulting on what we are referring to as a permanence bill that looks at some of the longer-term issues. The Parliament has already looked at all of those questions and has considered how it believes that the statute book should be amended to handle the impact of the pandemic. I am simply making forward a bill that either extends or expires conclusions that the Parliament has already decided upon. There is scope for Parliament and due course to legislate on other issues that it considers to be appropriate, but not in the context of the narrowly-defined bill that I have brought forward. Jackie Baillie. Can I thank the cabinet secretary for taking an intervention? I understand the limitations on the bill and he is absolutely right that it is deeply frustrating, but the permanence bill is some way off. What happens in the intervening period where there is a gap in provision? If Jackie Baillie will be with me for a couple of paragraphs, she might be encouraged with what I have to say, as I know she always is. One particular area that I know some members have expressed concern about relates to evictions, and whether the temporary ban on some evictions that had been in place in areas within levels 3 and 4 should be extended to areas in level 2 and below. Through the extensive range of protections and support that we have already put in place, including the ban on evictions, we have been seeking to encourage landlords and tenants to work together to ensure that sustainable tenancies are secured and evictions are prevented altogether, not just delayed. The Scottish Government has taken action from the outset to support tenants during the pandemic, and I am delighted to announce today that we will go even further by committing to introducing a new £10 million grant fund to support tenants who have fallen into renteriors as a direct result of the pandemic. We will work towards making this grant fund available later in the year and we will work with stakeholders over the coming weeks to develop the details. We will also deliver a new national awareness raising campaign to ensure that all tenants are aware of their rights. Those are crucially important interventions that will help the tenants and landlords to move towards a sustainable, fair recovery from the impact of coronavirus. We have listened to the views of stakeholders since developing the bill. From that engagement, I can confirm that I will be bringing forward a stage 2 amendment to extend, rather than expire, the anti-irritancy measures in respect of commercial leases. It is clear from discussions with the Federation of Small Businesses that extending the measure will assist small businesses who may face short-term cash flow difficulties over the summer into the autumn and beyond. Over the summer, we will consult on proposals to make permanent some of the temporary measures that are put in place in the coronavirus legislation, where that will improve the delivery of public services without any significant detrimental impact. As part of the wider licence that we have learned from the pandemic, we will also be considering whether further legislation is required as we seek to recover and rebuild. I would encourage all parties in the chamber to contribute their thoughts as we go through this process. I am grateful to the First Minister for giving way. In relation to future legislation, in particular the permanent bill that he is talking about, will he give us an assurance that it will not be introduced as an emergency bill, whether we proper parliamentary scrutiny and consultation? I certainly give the assurance that it will not be introduced as an emergency bill. In relation to consultation, the consultation period that I anticipate will be of the order of eight weeks. I know that ordinarily there would be a consultation period normally of 12 weeks, but to enable us to be able to move on to a permanent footing before the temporary legislation, if I can use that terminology, expires, the clock ticks rather fast to enable us to do that and to allow proper time for parliamentary scrutiny in the normal fashion. I can accept and confirm the points that Mr Fraser has made with the exception that I expect the consultation period to last for eight, not 12 weeks in the first instance. I appreciate and welcome the offer of the consultation on the permanency bill. Inclusion Scotland gave us briefings ahead of the debate and highlighted the fact that it felt that disabled people had been excluded from serious decisions that affect their lives over the course of the pandemic. Will you commit to involving disabled people specifically within that consultation period and taking extra steps to ensure that their human rights are adhered to in the permanency bill? I am very happy to give that assurance. Let me say to Pam Duncan Glancy today that, in the discussions that I am taking forward in my wider responsibilities for Covid recovery, I am at all stages including the voices of disabled people as part of that consultation exercise that I am undertaking. I am very happy to give that confirmation in Parliament. I think that Mr Simpson wanted to do that. I will take guidance from the chair about how— It would be helpful if we could have very brief interventions, questions and answers and brief speeches that stick to their time limit because we are very pushed for time today. I believe that the cabinet secretary is calling Graham Simpson. I am very grateful. With regard to the permanency bill, which is the first that I have heard of it today, I apologise, but is it likely to cover things like travel restrictions and the wearing of face coverings? Let me turn to what the bill seeks to achieve. Coronavirus continues to pose a significant threat to public health in Scotland and the continued presence to that threat requires this Parliament to come together to agree necessary actions to ensure that our public services can continue to operate in this context. Although progress has been made in our fight against the pandemic, enabling us to expire some measures by way of this bill, there remains a need for some measures introduced by the Scottish Acts to be extended. The bill expires a range of measures not deemed necessary to continue beyond 30 September and it extends the Scottish Acts initially for up to six months. The bill provides for the acts to be extended once more, should that be needed to respond further to the pandemic, subject to Parliament's approval of the required regulations up until 30 September 2022. I emphasise to members that the bill ensures the safeguards of the first two Scottish Acts are also extended. That means that the Government will continue to report to Parliament on the use and the status of provisions every two months and on the relevant equality and non-discrimination duties. The Government will also be required to keep under continual review whether any provisions are no longer necessary and can be expired early. I believe that this is a strong package of protections that will ensure that Parliament and the public will be informed about the use of the powers and that they will not last longer than it is proportionate or necessary. As I have already made clear, the bill does not add any new temporary measures nor does it seek to amend any of the measures introduced in the Scottish Acts. Let me first cover expiry. The bill expires some of the measures that were brought in to respond to the immediate emergency created by the pandemic on the basis that they are no longer necessary. There are 12 measures that we seek to expire on the face of the bill. I should note that all 12 of the provisions contained in the two Scottish Acts that have already been expired in line with the Government's commitment to remove provisions that are no longer required to respond to the public health emergency. Extension is sought for measures that have been used or, if not, where expiring the measure would have a significant impact if it was needed, for example, in respect of emergency directions in respect of care homes. Extension is also sought where it is necessary due to the direct or indirect impact of the pandemic, for example the backlog in courts and where there is broad support of key stakeholders for extension. The bill seeks to extend parts one of each of the Scottish Acts and so extend the measures in respect of enabling hearings across criminal and civil courts and tribunals to be heard remotely and continue an increased notice period of six months to protect private and social sector tenants from eviction up to the pre-pandemic 28-day notice period. The bill represents one part of a much wider range of measures that the Scottish Government is taking forward to protect the people of Scotland. It includes some very important protections, which I believe are essential for those who most need them, and it is important that they continue to be available after 30 September. I move that the Parliament agrees to the general principles of the coronavirus expiry and extension Scotland Bill. I now call on Murdo Fraser. Can I start by reminding members of my register of interests in that I am a member of the Law Society of Scotland and I also own property from which I derive rental income? The bill before us seeks to extinguish certain measures contained in the coronavirus acts passed by this Parliament in the spring of last year and extend other provisions. Before coming to the detail of the bill and our view on its various provisions, I would just like to set in context the decisions that we are being asked to take today. Covid-19 has been an unprecedented challenge for all of us over the past year and more. I suspect that there is not a single person in this Parliament who has in their lifetimes faced anything as serious, nor have we previously had to make such difficult choices around the provision of health services, the need to support individuals and businesses from the public purse and restrictions on our everyday lives. Last spring, parliaments both here at Holyrood and at Westminster passed emergency legislation with an unprecedented and extraordinary set of powers being given to ministers, allowing them to pass regulations to prevent people leaving their homes, to restrict travel, to force businesses to close and to redirect public services. Those amounted to an enormous imposition on the lives of individuals in a free, liberal and democratic society. Yet we agreed that those restrictions were necessary because of the unprecedented health crisis that Covid presented and the real risk of the NHS being overwhelmed. The original coronavirus legislation was passed giving ministers these exceptional powers for a period of six months, with an option to extend for two further periods of six months. I do not think any of us thought at that time that that 18-month period might be insufficient. Sadly, Covid has provided to be an even greater threat than we originally foresaw. That said, excellent progress has been made. The success of the UK vaccination programme means that there is now substantial protection in place for a majority of the population and certainly the most vulnerable groups. By mid-summer, all those who want to be vaccinated should have had that opportunity. That means that Covid is no longer the serious threat to health that it was this time last year, and it means that the risk to the NHS of being overwhelmed is now substantially reduced if it has not gone away altogether. I am grateful to Mr Fraser for giving way. I want to caution Mr Fraser about the assessment that he has made of the pressure on the national health service, because the First Minister made clear in her statement earlier on today that the national health service is resuming a great deal of operational activity that is creating congestion in the national health service. Therefore, there is not the spare capacity that there was when all that activity was paused. Mr Fraser is a public figure, and I think that people need to be properly informed about the pressures that the national health service could face because of the resumption of routine health service activity, should there be an upsurge in hospitalisation cases from Covid? I am grateful to the Deputy First Minister for that intervention. I think that I was not really the point that I was actually making in my remarks, the one that he is addressing. I would accept his point that there is a massive catch-up to be done within the NHS. Covid recovery is going to involve that. If there was a risk of another spike in cases leading to hospitalisations, that would be a matter of concern, but I do not think that risk is substantial at the present time because of the progress that we are making in relation to vaccination. Covid will still be with us and there will still be cases, and there will still be people who will catch it and will need to be hospitalised, and there will be some people who will die, very sadly. However, as we heard from the First Minister earlier, we are looking at the restrictions being lifted in August because of the progress that we are making. We have confidence. I want to make some progress now, thank you. Because we are making progress, we are able to lift restrictions, and the restrictions would not be lifted if we were not for the fact that we are confident that the NHS could cope. Against that backdrop, it is right to ask the question for how long the extraordinary and unprecedented powers given to ministers should continue. Will there be necessary beyond the end of September, still more than three months away? In fairness, I do not think that that is a question that we can answer at this point. I should acknowledge that most of the powers that restrict our lives derived not from legislation passed here in this Parliament, but from legislation at Westminster. The travel bans, the closure of businesses, requiring people to stay in their houses were all powers that Scottish ministers have as a result of Westminster legislation, not the provisions that we are discussing extending or extinguishing in the bill before us. However, there are significant powers contained in the two Scottish coronavirus acts, and it is fair to discuss the extent to which those powers should continue, given the progress that we are making in tackling Covid, as accepted by the First Minister just a few moments ago. The bill before us is being introduced under emergency powers. It was first published on Friday afternoon. There has been no time for public consultation and very little time for parliamentary scrutiny. No committee of this Parliament has been asked to consider the bill in detail, to take evidence or to produce a report on the provisions. Yet, over the course of the next three days, Parliament will be expected to consider a mend and, if appropriate, pass the bill into law. It is our view that this is insufficient time and parliamentary scrutiny for what are very significant powers being extended beyond the end of September, initially for a sixth month period and then potentially for six months thereafter. The provisions in the bill could mean that the Scottish ministers will have had extraordinary and unprecedented powers for a period of two and a half years from when they were first granted, and that would be truly remarkable. That is not just us who takes this view. In submissions in advance of this debate, groups such as Amnesty International and Inclusion Scotland have also expressed their concern about the lack of consultation that there has been with various groups prior to the bill being introduced. As Pam Duncan-Glancy reminded us a moment ago, Inclusion Scotland makes some very significant points about how it believes that the lack of consultation with disabled people falls foul of the UN Convention on Rights of Disabled People, and I think that we should pay attention to their concerns in that respect. The Scottish Government's claim to this bill has to be passed this week, because the powers run out at the end of September. I simply do not accept that argument. Parliament is sitting for the month of September, and the bill was brought back to us in the first week back. That would at least provide a period for broader consultation and discussion over the summer, as to whether the powers contained are necessary and appropriate. One of the Conservatives' criticism of the Government has been making decisions too late on and not giving enough notice. Does that not give more certainty to everyone? Not if there is not time for scrutiny and not time for consultation. The point that I have made to the chamber—I will repeat it to Mr Mason—is that those powers should not expire until the end of September. The Parliament is sitting the first week in September. It would be possible to consider this bill even as an emergency in the first week of September. That would give us eight or nine weeks over the summer to properly consult. The other point is that by the time we get to September, we will be in a much clearer position to understand where we are with Covid, where the risks are to the health service, what the other risks are to the public services or whether the extent of those powers is necessary. There will be still time for this bill to achieve royal assent by 30 September. The Scottish Government is trying to push the provisions through Parliament in the last few sitting days prior to the summer recess, when there is no necessity for it to be done. I am afraid that that approach is simply not required. We cannot support this rush to legislate particularly when we have external stakeholders telling us as they are. They have not had the opportunity to input into what our very serious discussions are. Turning to the detail of the bill before us, we would welcome a number of the provisions to expire in terms of what was in the previous coronavirus act. Those who were in Parliament at the time would remember a heated debate around the provisions that restricted the opportunity for couples to marry or enter civil partnerships, an issue that my former colleague Adam Tomkins was particularly exercised about. It is welcome that those restrictions are now being removed. Equally welcome are the proposals contained to remove the restrictions on freedom of information. A matter also subject to heated debate last year. The Scottish Government has now accepted that the powers granted were used on a very limited basis and, according to it, it is welcome that they are being expired. In relation to the provisions that are to be extended, there are a number of areas with which we have concerns. My colleague Jamie Greene will say more later in the debate about provisions in the area of justice, where there are a raft of measures being addressed. We certainly have concerns about the extraordinary powers held by Scottish ministers and being extended by potentially up to another 12 months to release prisoners early. At a time when the prison population should be vaccinated against Covid, we would question whether those powers are still necessary, particularly given the fact that they have not been used, as far as I am aware, for the past 15 months. In relation to the question of tenancies, which the Deputy First Minister referred to in his speech, there is a proposal to continue with a sixth-month period protecting a tenant before an application can be made by a landlord to repossess a property for non-payment of rent. We have had representation from landlords groups and from registered social landlords about how the extension of those provisions will impact on them. In the briefing of the debate from the Glasgow and West of Scotland forum of housing associations, they expressed a lot of concern about the impact that measure will have on them. No one wants to see tenants losing their homes. There is no doubt that there are many tenants in financial difficulty due to Covid, but, as the housing associations point out in their briefing, extending the evictions ban is essentially tackling the problem from the wrong end, as all it is doing is postponing an eviction rather than finding a long-term solution. We welcomed the establishment of the tenant's hardship loan scheme by the Scottish Government when it was announced last November. Unfortunately, it has had a very limited impact. Of the £10 million pledged, less than 5 per cent of the total has been paid out, and two thirds of applications made have been rejected. I am certainly aware of tenants who have been refused financial support because of poor credit scoring. Poor credit scoring has only occurred because they were in financial difficulties due to Covid. It is an area that the Scottish Government needs to address, and I welcome what we heard from the Deputy First Minister about a grant scheme, and I look forward to hearing more detail of that in due course. I need to bring my remarks to a close. My colleagues and those benches were suspect in more detail. Our views on the provisions and we will bring forward amendments at stage 2 tomorrow to address our concerns, but our view overall is that this bill is simply not necessary at this time. By September, we will be much clearer as to whether those extensions are required, we will be in a far better position to judge whether those extraordinary powers should be extended potentially for one further year, and there will be time for greater public consultation on the bill, which was published on Friday afternoon. There is no need for this rush to legislate in the last few days of this term, and for those reasons, we will be opposing the bill at decision time today. Thank you very much, Mr Fraser. I call on Jackie Baillie, Ms Baillie, around nine minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Let me say at the outset that Scottish Labour supports the general principles of this bill. We do, however, have concerns about number of areas which I will take the opportunity to set out to the chamber. There is no doubt that we have lived through the most extraordinary 15 months, and, whilst my job is the opposition, is to hold the Government to account, I think that it has acted swiftly in putting emergency legislation in place, building on provisions derived from the UK Government's legislation as well. The context for that emergency legislation was a pandemic, the severity of which we could only then imagine, a time when the country was effectively shut down, schools and businesses closed and Parliament suspended. But much has changed, although we are not back to normal yet. I consider the extension of emergency powers justified in part, but, unfortunately, this bill has been deliberately, in my view, constrained to focus only on extending or expiring existing provisions, not on anything new. There are policy gaps. My first concern, though, is about process. Covid-19 regulations currently define the entirety of social interactions, everything from the number of people that can meet up in households to where businesses can open and under what circumstances. It is not appropriate for ministers to sidestep Parliament when exercising what are really far-ranging powers in acting criminal offences, but avoiding democratic scrutiny and debate. The thing that has changed is that Parliament is sitting. Committees have been established. Members expect to be able to scrutinise decisions of the Scottish Government in the chamber. Let me illustrate the point. Very grateful to Jackie Baillie for taking my intervention. Does she agree with me that, perhaps, if the committees had been established not six or seven weeks after we'd all been elected, we would have had more time for scrutiny? I couldn't agree more and I hope that the Government would, in fact, have conceded the position to every other party in this chamber about the need to set up committees quickly. There you go, forgive me. Let me illustrate the point that I was making. We had regulations on the ban on cruises embarking or disembarking in Scotland. That is not going to be considered by the Parliament until September, but the decision has been made by the Scottish Government at the end of May, beginning of June. There was virtually no debate or scrutiny, no opportunity for ministers to explain the rationale, no meaningful opportunity for members to question or to represent the interests of their constituents. Frankly, the average cruise ship customer is probably over 50. They have been vaccinated twice. They were going to be tested on arrival and return. That is safer than many other recent events that have been allowed to take place, but we couldn't scrutinise it. We can all agree that it is important that laws are clear, that they are consistent, that they are understandable, fair and justified by the data. I genuinely worry that, in recent weeks, the approach of the Scottish Government has undermined those fundamentals. There are different groups in different parts of government making different rules, and there is no sense checking whether it forms a coherent whole. The education recovery group advised on rules for nurseries and said no. Whilst Jason Leitch, the national clinical director, has taken his occasional appearances on off the ball to heart and said yes to different rules for football. I do not begin to underestimate the difficulty, but I offer those comments because I am concerned that, if people do not see the logic of the regulations, compliance will become an issue. The contrast between 6,000 fans a day in a fan zone with alcohol and 12 parents and children socially distanced at a nursery does not make sense. Prohibiting travel to and from Manchester but not done D when case rates are similar does not make sense. We are all learning to live with the virus, but we should seek a better way of shaping our response in the future. Scottish Labour wants to see the bill used to improve the transparency and scrutiny of the Scottish Government's Covid-19 strategy. It is right that Parliament should sense check the regulations. That is why we sought to table a reasoned amendment to the bill at stage 1. It was not accepted, but we will persist, because we do not believe that the powers in this bill should automatically be extended beyond March 2022. However, that is such a decision, if necessary, should require parliamentary legislation. Turning to the substance of the provisions, there is much that we supported in the original emergency acts, and indeed we sought to improve and shape them. The provisions from Monica Lennon to provide a support fund for social care staff to prevent financial hardship if they fell ill with Covid. My own amendments on bankruptcy and debt to make it easier for people who are struggling to get assistance. Additional reporting on domestic abuse proposed by my colleague Pauline McNeill, and Mark Griffin on inclusive information and Neil Findlay on FOI provisions. We will work with the Government where we believe that their measures can be improved. However, it is without doubt that Covid-19 has cost lives and livelihoods. It is still doing so. It has exacerbated inequalities in our society. If you are poor, your chances of survival are statistically worse. You are more likely to lose your job and you struggle to cope. Levels of poverty were not great prior to the pandemic. They are worse now. Whilst restrictions continue and the economy has not fully opened up, the furlough scheme is about to unwind. No one can say with any certainty whether the people on furlough will have their jobs to go back to or whether they will indeed be underemployed. What that potentially adds up to is an enormous jobs and income crisis, the lights of which we have not seen for generations. I sincerely hope that that is not the case, but I am worried that it might be. In that context, it falls to the Government to act to protect the interests of the country. As I said before, the scope of the bill is drawn in such a way that we can really only extend or expire existing provisions of the emergency acts. That is disappointing because there are gaps in the protections afforded to people. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am grateful to Jackie Baillie for giving way. I would want to reassure Jackie Baillie that the legitimate issues that she raises today are not all issues that require legislation. They require policy action and leadership from Government. That is what the Government is focused on and, of course, is actively engaging with members of Parliament across the spectrum on making sure that we have a Covid recovery strategy that addresses the substantial issues that Jackie Baillie raises. I am grateful to that and I look forward to debating that with you over the next couple of days and indeed into the future. However, it does fall to Government to protect the interests of the country. Let me illustrate that point by talking about the eviction ban. It should not come as a surprise to John Swinney that I have consistently raised that as an issue in the Covid recovery steering group. My colleague Mark Griffin has been raising it in the chamber and out with the chamber. The existing ban, which rightly does not apply to evictions for antisocial behavioural criminality, covers tenants in areas that are in level 3 and 4. All of Scotland is now in levels 1 or 2. People are still struggling with their rent. Some lost their jobs at the start of the pandemic. Some are on furlough and have not received 100 per cent of their salary. Some are back at work but are underemployed. Some are still on furlough with no guarantee of work when it ends. The future is uncertain and financially precarious. Already landlords are in court seeking eviction orders. In some cases, that will be because of rent arrears that are due to the pandemic and we should not at this stage be removing the safety net. The Scottish Government brought forward a tenants hardship fund of £10 million, which we heard from Murdo Fraser, offering loans to help people in financial difficulty. However, the criteria was so tight that less than 5 per cent of the fund had been allocated and twice as many applications had been rejected as had been approved. Placing people in more debt and in danger of losing the roof over their heads is entirely wrong at the best of times but should not be happening in a crisis. The Scottish Labour will propose an amendment to extend the eviction ban to levels 1 and 2. We would have lodged amendments to turn the loan fund into a grant fund so that we can offer people protection when it is most needed. I very much welcome the cabinet secretary's announcement today. Can I congratulate him on listening and accepting Labour's suggestion? I hope that he continues to do so in the future. I hope that we will be able to have a debate on the eviction ban at stage 2, as there is no other legislative opportunity to close the gap and people might lose their homes as a consequence. Let me ask the cabinet secretary before I close. The grant fund needs to have flexible eligibility criteria, but will he also convert the loans already awarded by that fund into grants to make it fair across the board? Let me draw my remarks to a close. There is much to welcome in the bill, provisions in the bill that the Government intends to expire on freedom of information, on changes to social security determinations, and all those that we support. Finally, there is a balance between continuing emergency measures and having more scrutiny in the Parliament. Scottish Labour does not believe that that should continue beyond six months and will bring forward amendments to ensure further scrutiny, but we support the general principles of the bill at stage 1. The emergency situation that has been presented by the Covid pandemic has, in some sense, brought out the best of us. We have seen that the Government act quickly and implement practical measures to tackle the pandemic, keep our public sector functioning and protect people who are struggling. I hope that the Government and the members of the chamber remember what an emergency response looks like. It might come up again. The response to an emergency must be swift, practical and dynamic, always prioritising human lives and livelihoods and supporting our public sector. The Scottish Greens agree that we are not at the end of the pandemic yet, and that it is right that the emergency legislation be extended so that it does not lapse and expose gaps in the cover and provisions provided by the legislation. We also agree that the extension and expiry bill should be considered as emergency legislation due to the timings involved. We support the extensions to allow continued operation of the public sector during the pandemic, such as children's hearings and court proceedings. Some of the measures to be extended in the legislation are intended to make the lives of people who are going through hard times easier—for example, people who are struggling with debt. Some of the measures to be extended in the legislation have the effect of making it easier to access public services and functions. I am pleased that those measures are being extended. It makes me think that if we can make life easier for people in struggle during hard times, then surely, surely, we can make life easier for them during good times. Society does not have to be heartless. I hope that we will be able to make some of those measures permanent when the pandemic is over, so that our society becomes that little bit more equal and supportive. The main measures that we are disappointed have not been extended are around the right to housing. Even before the pandemic, the protections that we had in Scotland for tenants were poor compared to the protections that tenants enjoy in the rest of Europe. Evictions have resumed. People are losing the roofs over their heads and being made homeless through no fault of their own because we are still in the middle of a pandemic, as the emergency nature of this bill attests. People are still out of work or struggling to find work. If the UK winds down the furlough scheme as planned, another huge wave of redundancies may be coming over the next few months. Struggling to pay your rent under those circumstances is not a personal failing. People's human rights, their rights to housing, should not be at risk due to economic circumstances beyond their control. The tenants' hardship loan fund was not working. It was a cruel joke to ask people who have lost work or whose jobs are at risk to take on debt just to make sure that their landlord does not realise any risk on the investment that they made. Protecting landlords from the risks of their investments and seeing them rewarded by inflicting further hardship on tenants always with the threat of homelessness hanging over their heads, forcing them to pay up, was poor policy. I am therefore very pleased to hear about the new grant fund for tenants, although I expect that we will burn through £10 million quite quickly, as that may be insufficient given the potential level of redundancies that we may be facing as furlough ends. I would like to see that matter kept under review. The Scottish Greens are largely in agreement with the bill on what measures should be extended and which should expire. We have this opportunity now to think about what aspects should be kept for the longer term. The Scottish Greens were very pleased when this Parliament supported our amendment that business support grants should not be given to companies who use tax havens. It is this kind of conditionality that we should apply to all forms of public funding and support to ensure that we are supporting good business, businesses who pay their fair share of taxes, businesses who pay their workers living wages and have fair working practices, businesses that take their responsibilities to their communities and the planet seriously. The state's role in supporting Covid recovery represents an unprecedented opportunity to reshape the economy along ethical and sustainable lines. It does not have to cost the earth to make the world a better place. We can use mechanisms such as conditionality of support to nudge our economy and society in the direction that we would like it to go. As so much of the Covid legislation has done temporarily, make our society fair, more accessible and a little less heartless. I rise for the Lib Dems to offer guarded support for the provisions of the legislation. Before I continue, I want to put on record my thanks and the thanks of my party to all those on the front line of this emergency. It is much easier to come to this chamber and debate Covid-19 than it is to face it head on every single day of your working life. I also want to echo the discomfort of others at the timetabling of the bill. As a legislature, we are being asked at the end of June to empower the executive for the virus as it will be at the turn of this year. To rush through such an important piece of legislation in the last three days of a parliamentary term is not a welcome precedent to set. Fourteen months ago, when the coronavirus bill was first brought to Parliament, the Liberal Democrats supported it along with all other parties in this chamber. I will say now what I said then that there are virtually no other circumstances in which our party would have supported this bill. The restrictions on personal liberties and freedoms are up against the very fabric of liberalism, but exceptional times require exceptional measures. Today, earlier, I spoke in opposition to the timetabling of this bill because scrutiny matters, Deputy Presiding Officer. Indeed, without the intervention of my party in collaboration with others, the first coronavirus act would have allowed the suspension of trial by jury. That would have interrupted an unbroken tradition in Scottish justice that lasted nearly 800 years and upended with it a cornerstone of our own human rights. Remote jury centres enabled 197 evidence-led trials to proceed in the latter part of 2020. That brought us to a return to pre-pandemic throughput, demonstrating that the cessation of trial by jury proposed in the original act by the Government at the behest of the Lord President was indeed unnecessary. I welcome the continuity of several aspects of the bill, and I associate myself with the remarks of Jackie Baillie and Lorna Slater about why many of those provisions have given comfort and security to people who would otherwise have been made destitute in the teeth of the crisis. We, the Liberal Democrats, have serious concerns that continuing other aspects of the legislation beyond 30 September could still have serious consequences to human rights across our society. For example, in its current form under section 5 in schedule 4, the bill proposes to continue with the suspension of a certain time limits in criminal proceedings, which allow for an increase on the maximum time period that an accused person can be held on remand prior to trial. Of course, people are often held on remand because it is the most practical way of keeping both them safe and the public as well. However, 90 per cent of prisoners are still awaiting trial. Delays caused by the provisions of the First Act have seen the untried remand population rise by 35 per cent, and we need to resource the judiciary and the criminal justice system sufficiently to handle that backlog. Reports from the Law Society paint a very concerning picture that increased periods of time in remand threaten to skew the outcomes of criminal cases. For example, accused persons who might wait 12 or 18 months on remand had they pled not guilty, might instead choose to enter a plea of convenience and plead guilty in the expectation of a discounted sentence rather than face that long wait behind bars for a trial. The continuation of increased time limits allows this drift to happen in the first place. There were backlogs before the pandemic, and the continuation of those measures will only accede to exacerbate that. It poses a threat to the very integrity of our criminal justice system. The very purpose of the bill was to protect Scotland's most vulnerable from a disease that 18 months ago we barely understood. There are provisions in this legislation that I have always spoken out against for the potential harm that they could do to some of those exact same vulnerable citizens. Schedule 9 offers ministers the power to increase emergency detention on mental ill health grounds from 72 hours to 120 hours and suspends the need for a medical practitioner to consult or get the consent of a mental health officer before granting a short-term detention certificate. In short, if activated, the power would make it simpler to secure compulsory treatment orders. That was done at a time when we didn't know what pressures would be before the NHS and what healthcare professionals would be around, but we know now that we can cope with that. That is dangerous. I am sure that that is why the Scottish Government has never chosen to activate those powers, but it begs the question as to why we need to retain them in the first place. As long as section 9 remains in place, it presents a potential assault on the rights of those experiencing a mental health crisis and puts us out of step with our commitments, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. I hope that the Government will work with me to put those powers beyond use. I want to conclude by echoing what others have said here and beyond the chamber about the need for transparency. Transparency is one of the most important tenants of our democracy, and without it we would not have been able to access the information that revealed the true extent of the tragedy in our care homes. However, the Government has repeatedly undermined that transparency and disrespected the supremacy of this Parliament in the way that it often announces dramatic changes to Covid regulations. I am gratified that the Presiding Officer this afternoon challenged the use by the Government of the Government initiated questions for a major policy announcement, in this case on the Manchester travel ban. GIQs are never accompanied by commentary or information to increase public understanding of the decision and afford no opportunity for parliamentary cross-examination. In doing so, it is not just Parliament and its members who the Government undermines, but it is also their staff as well. Caseworkers and researchers are put in a position where they are having to attempt to help constituents or explain things to constituents but without access to information or the chance to put forward concerns before the ban was due to come into place. Whether it is on how the Government announces policy or the unprecedented powers that the bill affords it to control how we live our lives, that is not a free pass for the Government to ignore the democratic mandate of this Parliament. I will close with that. While we in the Liberal Democrats will support this bill as it transits through Parliament, we do so in the hope and expectation for the time when it's provisions can finally fall away. Thank you, Mr Cole-Hamilton. We now move to the open debate. The first speaker will be John Mason to be followed by Annie Wells. Mr Mason, six minutes please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I believe that we do need to legislate at this time. September would be too late. When we passed the previous legislation in spring 2020, I think that most of us had hoped that Covid would be sorted by this time, but sadly that has proven not to be the case. It was also sensible to review the legislation after the election. Perhaps in case the people of Scotland wanted a change of direction, but the people of Scotland said in the election that they did have confidence in Nicola Sturgeon and in the SNP, and so it is right that we continue some of the legislation for at least a few more months. Yes, absolutely. I am very grateful just because John Mason brought in the First Minister, does he agree with the First Minister that in the race against the virus and the vaccine, she is increasingly confident that the vaccines will win? If so, why is this extension necessary? I think that we are all agreed that the vaccines are going to win. We are certainly very much hoping that, but we have not yet caught up with the virus. The question is at what point will we catch up and overtake the virus? That has not happened yet, and we are not sure and we are pretty sure that it is not going to happen by the 30th of September. It is worth reiterating what has been said before that this bill means a reduction in powers for Government ministers and powers that are continuing are not being changed, so it is difficult to see that there should really be much fuss about any of this. I was looking back at the legacy report of the Covid-19 committee, which I appreciated being a member of towards the end. In fact, I think that I am the only member of the previous committee who is to be on the new Covid recovery committee. Some of the points in the legacy report included enhanced scrutiny arrangements have generally worked well, the opportunity to take evidence from Government ministers and public health officials on a weekly basis, the recommendation that this committee or something like it should continue in the early part of the new session with that opportunity to take evidence. In some ways, it is disappointing that committees are only starting this week, as Gillian Martin pointed out. I am still not exactly clear which issues the new Covid committee will be looking after and which will be the health committee, for example, with new variants and vaccination rates. Also in the legacy report is the subject of post-legislative scrutiny. The report suggested a review before new legislation is implemented, and I accept that that is now not going to be possible. However, the point still holds good for the future. For example, the law society queried whether we should be relying more on civil contingencies legislation rather than coronavirus-specific legislation. Throughout the pandemic, the Conservatives have argued for more certainty and for more decisions to be made further ahead, so that businesses and everyone else could have time to plan properly. That is fair enough argument to make, although decisions being made further ahead would probably have meant schools, businesses, pubs and restaurants all being closed for longer periods than they actually were. The Government has always had a difficult balance to strike between trying to make the best decision with the latest available data, even if the decision has had to be made late on, on the one hand, but on the other hand giving longer notice periods and making earlier decisions based on less complete data on the other hand. I do think that the Conservatives actually understand that dilemma, but they seem to have chosen to ignore it for the sake of a simplistic messaging about how bad the SNP Government is. With the bill, we are being offered more certainty because we are dealing with it before summer recess, but the Conservatives still complain that they want more flexibility and leave decisions on legislation until later on. Clearly, human rights are a factor in our reaction to Covid, and I have had many emails from constituents, and I am sure that other members have as well, arguing that children have the right to be at school, visiting family members and care homes is a human right, and meeting friends and relatives is also a right. However, it has been necessary to curtail all of our rights temporarily in order to ensure that, as many of our fellow citizens as possible, and especially our most vulnerable fellow citizens, have their right to life and health better protected. I do not think that any of us wants to be dealing with this bill this week. We all wish that it was not necessary, but it is necessary, and we have a duty to take it forward, albeit perhaps with improvements through the week. While talking about our rights, I want to mention churches and religion in my speech today. We have a long tradition in Scotland of the separation of church and state, unlike England, where the Queen is head of the Church of England. Within the church in Scotland, the Queen is a citizen like anyone else. We all have the right to worship God or not as we choose, and the state does not have the right to stop us doing so. Therefore, the state must be wary of interfering with the churches or with any religion for that matter. Similarly, I accept that the churches and other religious groups should not be seeking to dictate to the elected government. Broadly speaking, churches accept health and safety employment law and similar healthy practical legislation. However, we still have to be careful about the dividing line between religion and the state. I was critical of some of the churches just before lockdown, when many did not meet on Sunday 22 March last year, even though lockdown did not start until Monday 23. I think that that sent out the message that the churches could do whatever they were told, and that was unfortunate. By contrast, some of the churches challenged the government rules that they should be closed earlier this year, and in broad terms they won in court. I did not agree with that particular legal challenge, nor did many of the other churches. Despite that, most are still sticking to other rules and guidelines on maximum numbers, no singing, social distancing and so on, and I think that it is encouraging that those limits are to be relaxed over the next few weeks. Anyway, in conclusion, none of us wants emergencies and none of us wants emergency legislation, but the pandemic is continuing and many countries are only starting their vaccination programmes now, so we may not like having to pass this legislation, but I strongly believe that we have a duty to do so. Thank you very much, Mr Mason. Before I call Annie Wells, I can advise the chamber that we are around 23 minutes or so behind schedule for very understandable reasons. I do not want to truncate the debate or discourage members from making or taking interventions, so I can advise the chamber that business managers are currently consulting with each other on our revision to decision time this evening, and I am sure that the Presiding Officer will keep the chamber informed of that decision. Next, I call Annie Wells, who will be followed by Institute Macmillan. Annie Wells, six minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. At the beginning of the Covid pandemic, when this new crisis threatened to engulf the globe, we on these benches had supported the Government's emergency powers as a necessary and justified response to protect public health. Having said that 16 months later, I am unconvinced by the case put forward by the Cabinet Secretary as to why an urgent extension to these powers beyond September 30 is necessary. I will put the content of the bill to one side for a moment. Let us look at the natures of how this bill has been brought before the Scottish Parliament. In the final week before recess, and this session draws to a close, this bill has been rushed through Parliament at incredibly short notice, with little time allocated for scrutiny or debate. We have only been provided three parliamentary days to debate this bill, which, if passed, could see emergency Covid legislation stay with us possibly until September 2022. It is no wonder that several organisations such as Inclusion Scotland and Amnesty International UK have raised concerns with the Scottish Government, particularly over the lack of formal consultation on the bill. I absolutely share those concerns. As my colleague Murdo Fraser already highlighted, there is ample time during the summer recess for a proper consultation with the relevant stakeholders who will be impacted by this emergency Covid legislation. We could all then work together on a cross-party basis to consider any new legislation in September once Parliament returns after summer recess in August 31. However, as I mentioned, the Government's insistence on rushing this bill through Parliament by the end of the week, thereby extending wide-ranging powers, is alarming. Indeed, this is not the only recent example of where this Government has sought to frustrate the ability of MSPs to properly scrutinise their actions. I am grateful to Annie Wells. Does she agree with me that people who are worried about homelessness and losing their homes would welcome the certainty of knowing that they are protected by this legislation? Yes, they are just now up until the 30th of September. We are saying that this is now not the time to be consulted on this legislation because there is no consultation taking place. As I said, only last week it was revealed by the SNP Government had agreed that Manchester and the Salford travelled ban on the Thursday morning and yet notwithstanding the cabinet secretary's remarks about emails earlier, that was only announced by the First Minister on the following Friday, with the SNP failing to come before Parliament to justify their decision despite it being a sitting day. As parliamentarians elected to represent our constituents, it is our duty to hold the Scottish Government to account by robustly scrutinising their decision-making in this chamber. That is a healthy and essential part of our democracy, and the Scottish Government's conduct in recent weeks with that regard has regrettably fallen far short. Presiding Officer, as I raised in the chamber a fortnight ago, the SNP's case for why those powers must be extended is weak. That remains true today and, as such, the Scottish Conservatives will oppose the extension of the years that managed the powers. I am grateful to Annie Wells for giving way. She has advanced an argument that, in response to my colleague Gillian Martin, is that she would want to see protection in place for tenants to be protected in case they face eviction. However, she has said that this legislation should be delayed until September. If there was not enough time in September to secure the parliamentary passage and royal assent of the legislation by 30 September, how would tenants be protected? There will be time to get the legislation through and to gain royal assent. Yes, it is. Those wide-ranging powers that were introduced as temporary measures should not be in place a minute longer than necessary. With the success of the UK's vaccine programme, Scots have clear reasons to be hopeful that we will soon be released from the clutches of this pandemic. Although the Delta variant has undoubtedly presented itself as a new challenge, as it has led to rising cases and hospital admissions, we also know that adults who are fully vaccinated have significant protection from serious illness. It is the First Minister herself who has repeatedly said that the vaccination programme is Scotland's route out of these restrictions. With the First Minister confirming in her statement today that by the end of the week over 50s carers and those clinically vulnerable will be fully vaccinated, there is reason to be highly optimistic. After all, it is the Scottish Government's own target to have all adults vaccinated by mid-September. By then, the state that we are in with Covid could look considerably different. Despite the substantial progress of the roll-out and the optimism associated with it, the bill will give the SNP Government extensive emergency powers for an additional six months until March 2022 and, as we have heard, possibly even longer. As more people are vaccinated and life in Scotland looks forward to returning to a state that resembles pre-pandemic life, people will rightfully be perplexed at why this Government is in such a hurry to extend these emergency powers. Surely, it makes more sense for the SNP Government to use the time that it has over summer recess to consult with experts, stakeholders and the public to ascertain if such an extension is required. It is for that reason that an extension to these emergency powers is both inappropriate and unnecessary at this stage, and I will be voting against the bill at decision time. First of all, I do not believe that any one of us would want to be standing in this chamber today speaking about the extension of the Covid legislation. The fact that we are, and we must do it again, is a start reminder that we are still living with Covid. I know that, speaking to constituents, they are fed up with how we are living. We are all fed up with how we are living, but we also know that we have to find a way to love with it. We all know that the numbers are on the rise and with a stronger mutation. Who knows what we are going to get in the future? The time for letting down our guard is not now. I believe that the bill is necessary to ensure that our public sector can continue to do what it needs to do once again with the current regulations coming to an end on 30 September. If the regulations were to end on 30 September, the public sector would have a vast job to undertake, to plan, prepare and deliver any changes that would be required thereafter. The facts are clear that we are still in the midst of the global pandemic. We are not yet in a place to relax all restrictions. Some measures are no longer needed, hence the reason that they are not in the bill. That is a good thing, and it maintains the commitment from the Scottish Government that gave that commitment when the legislation was introduced. First and foremost, we need the safest possible route out of the pandemic, because we all want to reopen the country as quickly as we can, however, that must be done safely. Stephen Kerr is grateful to the member for giving way. In the legislation, great play has been made by the Deputy First Minister about the fact that there are things being left out of the legislation. We heard a fairly optimistic prognosis from the First Minister earlier on today. Does Stuart McMillan imagine that we could be in the first week of September and that the measures in the legislation are no longer necessary? If that is the case, if it gets through Parliament this week—which seems likely, does it not? Let's be frank—would he support a repeal of the legislation? I am about to come on to some of those particular points, so I am not going to answer the question directly at the moment, because I am about to come on to it in the rest of my contribution, Mr Kerr. Earlier today, the Parliamentary Business Manager, my colleague George Adam, highlighted the necessity for the emergency legislation to be introduced and debated this week. I note that Mr Adam used the phrase of not leaving anything and a quote to chance if the legislation didn't happen. I am not a member of the Parliamentary Bureau, so I am not privy to any of the discussions that take place there. After listening to Mr Kerr's comments and his reply to the Parliamentary Business Manager, I now understand why Mr Adam said what he said. Stephen Kerr indicated that the double vaccine is, and I quote, providing immunity from all known variants. I am sure that Mr Kerr will correct me if I am wrong in that. However, I suggest to Mr Kerr that this is exactly the point as to why we need this legislation. All known variants are one thing, but those that are still to come are another. Who knows what the variants are going to be like ahead of us? Maybe Mr Kerr does know what they are. If he does know what they are, can he please talk to the Scottish Government scientists? Stephen Kerr, this is an argument for keeping the restrictions in legislation forever. That is not acceptable. We cannot operate on that basis in a free society. What I said was that the vaccines have been proven to be efficacious with all the known variants. However, talking about things that we do not know about, we could be talking about the legislation being with us forever. That is not acceptable. Stuart McMillan. Mr Kerr will look at the official report later on. I am quite sure that he used the word immunity in his comments earlier on. I am afraid that it matters to Mr Kerr. Mr Kerr also suggested that we should be more optimistic, and Annie Wells touched on that a moment ago. In the one hand, we need to be a bit more optimistic about the future. We heard some positive comments from the First Minister in her address to the chamber earlier on. However, the reality of the situation is clear, and we heard that, too, that the numbers are still going up. The virus is not going away. It is increasing and having that impact on what Scotland is doing right now. The bill in front of us does not deal with any of the measures in the UK Covid act, i.e. the lockdown powers, and it does not provide for any extension to public health guidance on restrictions on travel, as those are not legislated for under the Scottish act. The bill continues the existing reporting requirements in the first two Scottish acts and gives the Scottish Parliament the power to extend the Scottish act for a further six months to 30 September 2022, if necessary, in recognition of the far-reaching and unprecedented nature of some of the provisions. The Scottish acts contain a number of safeguards, and they include that the relevant provisions in the act automatically expire less than six months after they come into force, although the period can be extended by the Scottish Parliament for two further periods of six months. That is a very strong safeguard. The Scottish ministers have the power to bring provisions in the act to an end earlier when ministers consider that they are no longer necessary. The fact that we have the bill in front of us today deals with the first of those points. The Parliament sadly must extend any powers. However, the second point is a provision that has been brought to an end earlier when they are no longer needed. It was discussed in the Parliamentary Act and the DPLR Committee. We spoke about the coronavirus Scotland act 2020 earlier, which expired the provisions number two, regulations 2021, 236. We have agreed to draw the instrument to the attention of the Parliament as it did not comply with the ground G and that it had been laid less than 28 days before it came into force in breach of section 22 of the interpretation and legislative reform Scotland Act 2020. In effect, the Scottish Government, and following the safeguards put in place by the Covid legislation, i.e. removing the powers no longer necessary, it will take a small hit under another piece of legislation. I will be supporting the bill today and I hope that the bill passes through the Parliament this week. I begin by stating the obvious that we MSPs have been protected somewhat from financial issues that others face and many of our constituents have not. I always try to state from the Government's point of view in managing the worst crisis of our time, but we must be alive so that we can easily lose touch with the devastation out there. We are MSPs, ministers and even the First Minister. We need to show that we understand that we must, if necessary, meet in the recess where needed and that, as MSPs, we need access to decision makers in the next eight weeks so that we can be working hard on behalf of all those who are concerned about the legislation and the regulations and help to try to bring the country together. The nation is distressed and tired. Losing a lot of trust and decisions, some indeed are cynical, and businesses should feel that they are complied only to find that the Government has changed its position. Rightly so, people are asking harder and harder questions about the inconsistency in the approach that we are taking. The narrowness of the bill does reduce our role as representatives, as Jackie Baillie says, we should not sidestep Parliament. The Deputy First Minister, in a casual way, suggests that we should or we can do this in September to make any additions that we think is necessary. As an elected politician, there is no way that I am going to rubber-stamp any legislation, that is what I am elected to do, and it is important to see what the public think of that. I would welcome, of course, the fund for tenants. I think that it is a really positive announcement. I called for it over a year ago consistently. Today's announcement for the First Minister is at least giving some hope to some sectors about the restrictions being relaxed. This week, on behalf of thousands of musicians, solo artists and bands from various sectors who felt forgotten about their livelihoods lost and their mental health and state decline, they can be hopeful for the 9th of August and for the 19th of July, where live music can be played at level 0 in wedding. That is great news, but I would have still wanted the chance to amend the legislation, which I think is failing. We need clarity on the announcement that there will be no social distancing after the 9th of August, as the First Minister says. Of course, the vaccine roll-out is as planned, so we can have bands at weddings. Have they considered social distancing at level 0? Can pubs and other events have a live band? It sounds like they can, but I would like some further clarification on that. I hope to get that in the coming days. Why are we not able to amend this bill? We will not get so many questions on the regulations. It was Murdo Fraser who said that we are taking away freedoms and liberties in the interests of public health and huge numbers of people who have questions about that approach. The night time industry are arguing. Can they plan for this date? Can they open up? Can they take out the necessary insurance to plan for when restrictions are relaxed on the 9th of August? I now want to concentrate on some concerns that I share with some of the members about the justice extensions on fiscal fines. The nationalists have free up-the-course deal with more serious offending behaviour, not clear what constitutes offending behaviour, and it certainly should not become a permanent change. I would be interested to know if the Government would consider reporting to Parliament on the range of offences that might be used by procreative fiscals. On time limits, I have deeper concerns about that. It just applies certain time limits so that there is a period during which those time limits will not apply in the court in a journey case for such a period, as it considers appropriate. The trammer lawyers encose it that they think that the amendment is unnecessary, as the existing law already provides for the extension of time limits, and the amendment serves only to extend strict time limits within an existing framework with the court's prior approval. My more serious concerns are about the extension of time limits on remand. A topical question today. I said in my supplementary question that I have deep concern that Scotland's figures on remand are also commented on by the hurried re-report entitled the scandal of remand in Scotland. We need to be careful in using those emergency powers to extend the time that people can be held in custody. For reasons that I understand, we need to keep a close monitor on that to make sure that we are compliant with health and safety considerations, so that some of the concerns I hope to raise tomorrow. Last on the question of hearsay evidence. It is probably my biggest concern. It allows evidence by statement where there would be a particular risk to the person's well-being attributable to the coronavirus or a particular risk to transmitting coronavirus to others. That means that a statement cannot be cross-examined by the defence. I want to be clear on that. Are we talking about the complainer or what victims in the process? Are we talking about why we could not use Zoom, for example? I hope to examine those in stage 2 tomorrow of amendments and some aspects of the bill that I do not think are that well-drafted. In conclusion, I regret that there is not more scope to amend this bill on the way that I have outlined in my speech this afternoon. I look forward to stage 2 tomorrow. I want to open by talking about scrutiny and agility. In spring last year, the Parliament responded in a nagile and robust manner to the coronavirus. The coronavirus act was put in place at haste because everything in it demanded that haste. Session 5 Parliament, all parties, rose to that challenge and did important and swift work, work that has carried this country through one of our worst years ever. The Covid Committee was set up to continually scrutinise the Government response and how this legislation and other policies affected our Covid response was working. There was the ability of that committee to convene during the parliamentary suspension for the election period if it was deemed necessary. Thankfully, it was not. The First Minister takes questions on Covid every week in this chamber, often for over an hour, and again is open to parliamentary scrutiny every Thursday at FMQs. She gives almost daily briefings on national television and takes questions from the media on the detail in addition, and party leaders have the opportunities to make comment on that straight afterwards. The First Ministers have appointed a dedicated Covid recovery minister, John Swinney, in addition to the relevant cabinet secretaries who frequently in this chamber to be questioned on all aspects of the impact of Covid. Every detail of this legislation and other policy on Covid response and recovery is up for scrutiny constantly. However, you would not know that was the case if you only listened to the Opposition members today. I gently suggest that, if Boris Johnson had put himself up for the same level of parliamentary and media scrutiny in all things Covid, we might have a better general situation in regard to the impact of decisions taken at UK level, particularly around people entering the UK, stables and horses and the bolting and locking thereof come to mind. John Mason was absolutely right earlier on when he pointed out to Murdo Fraser that getting those changes through now gives more certainty and criticism from the Conservatives that it is often that the Government does not go fast enough, and I believe that that was the thrust of Douglas Ross's questions to the First Minister today. For as long as the legislation is in place, the Scottish Government will continue to meet its commitment to publish reports and give Parliament the opportunity to scrutinise them. The Covid committees reconvened at last. I said in my intervention that certain members had not denied the results of the election and delayed decisions on committees. We might have had a fighting chance of stage 2, at least going through that committee, and the possibility of evidence taken. However, we are where we are in three days of debate await. Now today we move another inch forward to getting more of the freedoms that we once took for granted back. That is the cheering part. It has been a long 18 months felt more keenly by some more than others, but at the same time we must be mindful that the pandemic continues and so keeping the safeguards that we need in place is absolutely essential. The virus continues to fox us with new variants and we must surely acknowledge that the lack of caution and slowness to act in terms of allowing people from spiking parts of the world into the UK has been a real problem. A lesson that does not seem to have been learned by those making border-based decisions, and I really worry about that. I think that it is only right that we maintain the emergency operational measures in respect of children's hearings and child protection to ensure that children's rights have been protected throughout the period. Those who have been hit financially have a safety net. Tenants continue to be protected if they are not to face a potential homelessness crisis further down the road. The grant fund is welcome and it will protect vulnerable people and families who, as Lorna Slater rightly said, are in financial difficulty through no fault of their own. Those in debt will have more protection. An increase in the minimum debt level that an individual must owe before a creditor can make them bankrupt is increased. Safety nets like this actually save society money. Those in desperate debt situations can find it hard to get a foothold again, may suffer extreme mental health complications and we must be preventative wherever we can. We all know the cost to human wellbeing for those who lose their homes. Consequently, the enormous amount of public money can cost us to address the trauma, and often times we can never adequately address it completely, but we can certainly prevent it. We need to be flute-fruit when it comes to this disease. We did it before, and we can do it again. We are affording people's certainty and safety nets. Safety nets that we might never need but, Presiding Officer, isn't that the point of a safety net? You don't need it until you absolutely do. I call Stephen Kerr to be followed by Willie Coffey. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I say to Gillian Martin that we on this side are absolutely in favour of safety nets, but this is not really the substance of what this is all about, because this bill is a cynical, rushed power grab by the SNP. In principle, I support Governments using emergency powers in times of national crisis, but I balance that, however, with a full commitment towards parliamentary democracy, and this Parliament should be able to scrutinise the decisions taken by Government. Someone said a few minutes ago—I will in a second—it is the duty of all members of this Parliament to scrutinise the Executive. That also applies to the members of the Government party. Given that the bill is reducing the powers that the Government has, does it really take a lot of scrutiny? I am not sure whether that is an intervention that the member will be proud of when he looks back on it. The fact is that the bill still consists of considerable powers. The Parliament should take the time to scrutinise the bill and those powers. Are they necessary? That should be the concern of every parliamentarian. The first concern that I have is that three days of a parliamentary debate is not enough time to fully scrutinise this bill as it stands. It is not only me, it is not only my Conservative colleagues who have this concern, to quote Amnesty International. While Amnesty has listened to the arguments that were made by ministers for the extremely short time period allowed for the scrutiny of the bill, we would take the opportunity to highlight the unsatisfactory restrictions that the timescale places on scrutiny and participation in decision making, including the lack of formal consultation. I do not know if the member wants to intervene on me and disagree with the observation from Amnesty International. I would suspect that he does not. I am grateful to the member for giving way. I do not think that anybody thinks that that is satisfactory, or that anything about living in a global pandemic is satisfactory, but it is necessary. If the member wants to call this a power grab, can he point to any power that the Government will have as a result of passing the bill but that it does not currently have? If I may say so, that is the whole point. As we go through this summer, the situation is changing rapidly. There is no need for us to rush the bill through this Parliament in the next three days. The powers that Patrick Harvie mentioned—that we are debating—expand expire on 30 September 2021. Between that date and that date, the Government should be consulting with experts and members of the public about those powers. The weeks of parliamentary time after recess could be used by the Parliament to scrutinise the Government's proposals as they were fit for purpose at that time in detail. We could then consider all our options in terms of legislation given the situation that we find ourselves in. However, that is not what the SNP Government is about, because it is trying to steamroll the bill through the Parliament. Frankly, that is a power grab. When the Government does not need those powers any longer, it should give them up, and we should be reviewing that when we get to the first week of September. 30 September is a long way away, yes, I will. I thank Mr Kerr for taking the intervention, but we do accept that, as the example that I provided to the chamber a short time ago, there is already a situation in which the Government is removing some of the powers that it potentially did have, because it no longer needs to have them, so would Mr Kerr agree that the Scottish Government is doing the right thing? It is following the law that was passed by the Parliament. Stephen Kerr. I welcome the fact that the Government is giving up these extraordinary powers in some areas. I ask Stuart McMillan in his speech whether or not he would support my suggestion that if we got to the first week of September, if the bill gets pushed through the Parliament with this undue haste, would he agree with me that the act that would be there should be repealed there and then? However, he could not answer then, and he is not answering now. The reality is that the powers—yes, please. Stuart McMillan. Thank you. It is Mr Kerr. This is a piece of legislation that hopefully will be passed this week. As the legislation indicates, when the powers are no longer required, certainly within that six-month period, if they are no longer required, then the Government will not use them. The bill, as Mr Kerr already knows, will have to be considered in six months' time again. How does the member know that we will not need those powers in the first week of September? That we will not need those powers in the reformer just in the first week of September? You do not know that the Deputy First Minister once again demonstrated with his hands in that kind of way. That is a serious point. How do you know that you will need those powers in the first week of September? We should be waiting until the first week of September to review the situation. Look at the progress that the First Minister highlighted in her statement and she highlighted the success of the vaccines. There is a vaccine miracle, as I think that we could rightly call it. It was due to the foresight of the procurement of the UK Government, and I would particularly mention Matt Hancock and Nadine Sahawi. We have enough vaccines in this country to deliver the vaccines to every adult and perhaps even youth. We also have to thank our front-line NHS staff and volunteers across the UK who have played such a role in putting those vaccines into people's arms. Through the collective effort of those people and many more, thousands of lives have been saved. I can sense from the Presiding Officer that my time is up, so I would simply go on longer if he would allow me, but I can see that it is a popular policy. The reality is that if we see a successful roll-out of the vaccine in the next few weeks and months, the situation that we come back to after recess could be dramatically different. It is because of that that I asked the Government to postpone the debate around the extension of emergency powers until after recess, and you used the remaining parliamentary time this week to debate the issues that Scotland immediately faces due to the pandemic. Had I had more time, I would have expanded on that. There are serious issues that this problem should be debating this week. We should not be spending this week debating an SNP power grab. Thank you. To avoid curtailing the debate, I am minded to accept a motion without notice to move decision time back to 7pm. I invite George Adam to move a motion to that effect. Regrettably and unfortunately, because of some of the antics in here today, I propose that. I will now put the question. The question is that, under rule 11.2.4, decision time be moved to 7pm. Are we all agreed? Thank you, colleagues. I now call Willie Coffey to be followed by Pam Duncan-Glancy. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I am very happy to be able to speak in the coronavirus extension and expiry bullet stage 1. It is good also to be back in Parliament alongside colleagues old and new from all parties. When the virus first emerged in Scotland early last year, I am fairly sure that none of us thought that we would still be here around 15 months later, debating the extension of the legislation. The reality is that the virus is still here and people are still losing their lives because of it. In the last week alone, Presiding Officer, there have been over 10,000 new positive cases in Scotland. Over 2,000 of them just yesterday. 15 people have died as a direct result of the virus and over 170 are in hospital. The daily positive total yesterday is the highest since 15 January this year and it surely illustrates why this is still a matter of great concern. It is clear that we must agree to extend the provisions in the bill beyond September to continue the fight against the virus and to protect the public as best we can. What other choice do we really have that offers greater protections for the public? When I served in the emergency Covid committee in the last session, week by weeks, colleagues would look at the provisions within the legislation and hope more than anything else that this would not last as long as it has. Performer Cabinet Secretary Mike Russell attended our committee almost on a weekly basis alongside Professor Leitch to explain the proposals and to answer detailed questions from members about the impact of the virus on public health and its impact, of course, on our economy and people's livelihoods. Hard decisions are never popular and this timetable is far from ideal, but the lesson learned then was that we have to act faster than the virus if we are to keep ahead of it and its increasingly more transmissible variants. The bill, as some members have said, is not proposing any new powers and it is good to see a number of the provisions being dropped as we no longer need them. I hope that that pattern will continue as long as we can get the virus numbers down again within our communities. Some protections will be extended if the bill has passed, of course, and one of those is the continued protection for private and social sector tenants from eviction. I was pleased to hear about the £10 million grant fund to be made available to help all those in their years. The exception of antisocial behaviour, criminality and abandonment of a property, tenants will continue to be afforded some protection from eviction during these critical times when the legislation applies. I am grateful to Michael Clancy and the Law Society for their detailed briefing for us and they cover this topic in some depth. We recognise that the pandemic has led to many job losses and the reduction of income for many households in Scotland, with people unable to meet their financial obligations under their tenancy agreements. Although they support the extension of the provision in the bill, they also point out that landlords too need support to allow them to meet or suspend their own liabilities as a result of being denied the income that is not being paid by their tenants. I am hopeful that the cabinet secretary might say something about that in his summing up. Court hearings will also be able to continue to be held remotely if the bill has passed, and the Law Society also supports those measures continuing. There are a number of issues concerning effective participation in courts using digital technology, particularly if data links are not reliable and if evidence is not properly heard. My constituents in Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley, like all other parts of Scotland, have suffered from the virus. From the very youngest to our most senior of citizens, family life is disrupted, education is disrupted, jobs are lost, businesses are lost, and worst of all, loved ones are lost too. There have also been some incredible stories of resilience, exceptional care for our fellow citizens and wonderful ingenuity that gives us hope that, even at this awful time in our history, we can see a better future on the horizon. Our Government is doing its best to lead us there as safely as possible. Hopefully, our people will not have too much longer to wait, but we must pass the bill at stage 1 to make sure that the journey to recovery is as safe as possible and protects citizens to the maximum of our ability to do so. I call Pam Duncan-Glancy to be followed by Siobhan Brown. I would like to put on record my thanks to the NHS staff and social care staff and other key workers across the country for the essential work that they have done in the past year to get us all through the pandemic. I would also like to do something that I think I have been drinking the brave juice to do this before I read the speech that I had prepared, is to respond to a couple of things that we have heard today about the timelines involved. A number of people have raised the issue about the delay to looking at committees and getting them settled and that that has meant that we have had to rush this through. One of the reasons that we had to delay the committee settlement was because of questions around the potential to scrutinise the Government on things like social security. It was incredibly important for us to do that. Scrutiny is what is at stake here. It is not only scrutiny that is what is at stake when we rush things through Parliament. It is also the innovation that we have seen in our country and across our communities in the past year. We seek to possibly miss out on that by not asking them for their input and advice. It is a matter of scrutiny and growing the innovation and harnessing the innovation that we have seen across our citizenship and communities in the last year. That is what I seek to try to cover in the speech that I had prepared today. When the bill first came to Parliament at the beginning of the pandemic, it was emergency legislation. The Parliament acknowledged then that it would not get everything right but united in a very short time to pass the bill in the best interests of the people of Scotland. We had to act fast and save lives and protect people from infection. Fifteen months on, the extent of the damage done is becoming clearer, the effects of the virus and infection are not over and the rebuilding job is huge. Unprecedented poverty and job loss, young people worried about their future, disabled people who have gone without care for a year, families who are at breaking point and hard-won human rights like the right to be involved in decisions about our lives and the rights to essential healthcare and support denied, the first to go in a time of crisis, many fear that these will never return. The bill before us today does little to comfort people with such fears. It did not need to be hurried through this Parliament in a matter of days. Neither did it have to be set out in such a way that allows so little scope for amendment. The unsatisfactory restrictions that the timetable places on scrutiny and participation in decision making, including the lack of formal consultation, is difficult to understand. The emergency coronavirus bill created safety nets, made allowances and aimed to protect people as we headed into an unprecedented situation where none of us knew what lay ahead. That is not where we are now. This time, as we extend the legislation, things are different. The Government and this Parliament have both time and experience that did not exist when we begun this journey. With those luxuries, we should fix the bits that we did not get right, strengthen the protections that safeguard people and crucially harness the innovation of the last year found in every home, workplace and community in small places close to home, by ensuring time to bring the people of Scotland with us on our journey. Indeed, it is not only sensible and necessary to bring that innovation into the chamber and the solutions that we need. Our international human rights obligations require that we do it. Despite the parliamentary timetable this week, we must use any opportunity that we have to harness the innovation that has been necessary this year and build on it so that we rebuild a better Scotland than we had before. That means walking the walk on human rights. As the Government seeks to move forward with a further extension of the legislation, we want to see a commitment that it will expedite the commencement of a public inquiry to give effect to the level of scrutiny that is needed. Scottish Labour and other members across the chamber will move amendments this week and do our very best to strengthen the bill where we can, but I am sure that the Government is well aware that, because of the way that the bill has been laid, there is more to be done than we are able to call for. For example, my colleagues and I would like to have seen the evictions ban not only reinstated but extended to those in lower tier areas, not currently covered by existing provisions. We remain in the grasp of a public health emergency. Social housing rent arrears continue to rise as people struggle with precarious work and businesses are still closed. Protecting basic rights, like the right to a warm, accessible, sustainable and affordable home, should be the utmost priority at this time. Forced evictions violate those rights. We would have sought to introduce new provisions, providing protections to groups who have fallen through the cracks where adequate support has fallen short. For example, by introducing a £5 a week supplement to the Scottish child payment for families with a disabled person in them. We do not know the impact that the coronavirus pandemic has had on the lives of disabled people and we cannot begin to assess the full extent of the support that is required to repair their lives, but we do know that they have struggled to access food, lost essential care and they have been more likely to be on furlough. That is why we believe that we need a Covid payment for disabled people, like we have done for carers, to recognise the hardship that they have faced. We must recognise the importance of not only protecting people from poverty, but also bringing them up to the income that they need to flourish. Scottish Labour would have wanted to take this opportunity to see the uplift to carers allowance supplement remain permanent, doubling the amount of carers that it receives. Jobs and employment are more precarious than before, so we would have also looked to end the full-time study rule and allow carers to earn more from part-time work. We want to see support for people whose incomes have been hit as a result of the restrictions on their workplaces and businesses be stronger. People in the creative industries, for example, who are struggling on precarious means, many have lost their income. It is estimated that over 100,000 self-employed people have been unable to access appropriate support through the various support schemes that exist right now, so we want to see those schemes relentlessly promoted so that where help is available, people know about it and are able to access it. We would also like to see self-isolation grants made available to any individual who needs it. This last year has been the hardest in living memory. It is hard to believe anything good could come from it, but it did show some light in some very dark corners. It has forced us to do things differently, and the bill could have been an example of that. I hope that, despite the timetabling that the Government will commit to going out to communities and responding to the harms and harness the will for change quickly. Often from hardship and pain comes strength and hunger for change. That moment is now, and I ask everyone here today to meet this moment, to do everything in our power to protect, fulfil and promote the human rights of everyone in Scotland. Despite the speed at which we are going through this, we do not lose sight of the desire and need to change and the will and innovation out there to do it. We are all long for the day when the bill will expire in its entirety and our lives will get back on track. I do not think that anybody will ever forget the fear, the uncertainty and the unknown of what was ahead of us back in March 2020, when the world went into lockdown. There was no guidebook on how to handle a pandemic on such a huge global scale, and countries and Governments around the world did their best to steer their countries through one of the most difficult times known to any of us. Thankfully, we have come a long way since March 2020, but coronavirus still continues to pose a significant threat to public health, and that is why it is still so important that the first priority is to lead Scotland out of the pandemic and to reopen the country as quickly and as safely as possible. I am sure that many other elected members receive correspondence about frustration in restrictions, not being lifted quick enough and people keen to get their lives back to normal. We all want our lives back to normal. We want our kids back at school carefree, enjoying their lives the way they should. We want our businesses trading without restrictions. We all want to go on holiday, but the stark reality is that Covid is still with us and it is still a threat. Covid-19 is ageist, sexist, ruthless, dispassionate and opportunistic, as we have seen new variants emerge in recent months. Many of us have lost loved ones to this cruel pandemic and families have been devastated. I recently met a greeting constituent in air whose family had been torn apart by Covid-19. Lee dogs from air aged 32, his wife and his children all contracted coronavirus in March this year. Lee was a fit, healthy, hardworking man who had never been in hospital in his life. Tragically, Lee lost his life on 2 April, leaving behind his wife, 10-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter. The family asked me to remind everyone that they do not think that it will not happen to you. Covid-19 is still a concern, so please stay safe. This bill is welcome and will ensure the provisions to maintain the public and maintain essential public services can continue beyond 30 September on our road to recovery. There is no quick fix for a pandemic, but we have learnt lessons in the past 15 months and this bill will not add any new measures to restrictions but will expire a number of provisions that are no longer necessary, which will progress in the right direction. In what has been a very difficult year for so many, we have also learned about resilience, innovation and the importance of support within the community. Out in my constituency of air in recent weeks talking to local businesses in what we cannot deny has been a very difficult time for them. Many have come up with innovative ways to trade and to work in a positive way with restrictions. There has also been a huge importance for these businesses to keep staff and the general public safe and many choosing to close voluntarily for a period of time if they are at risk of an outbreak. Times continue to be tough, but there is optimism and responsibility and a genuine care to the local community, which is admirable. Although we are on a long road to recovery, I still have concerns for our youth who have suffered greatly during this pandemic. Thankfully, we have some routine back in our lives and the dark days of attempting to home school and even play parks being closed for our young ones are becoming a distant memory, but life to them is not back to normal. With the new variant, schools continue to have outbreaks and many students in recent months have had to isolate up to two and three times for 10 days each time, which of course this absent from school is having a huge detrimental further impact on our children's education. It is not easy days for them and it is not easy days for our teachers who are working to the best of their ability in what are the most challenging circumstances. With South Asia in recent weeks reporting high amount of positive cases, our local schools have had to put in preventative measures in place to contain the spread locally. I understand the frustration of parents as we all wish life could get back to normal, but I have to applaud those who have gone way and beyond to adapt and make all the special occasions such as our kids' nursery graduations as magical and as memorable for our students. My five-year-old leaves nursery this week and unfortunately her induction date to P1 was cancelled due to a local outbreak. Her first ever sports day was videoed by the team of dedicated teachers who captured every moment and sent it to all the parents. It is not everybody's first preference, but the extraordinary efforts being made during these times by teachers cannot and should not be dismissed. Although the pandemic is not over, but with the efforts made by people all over Scotland since last year, the success of the vaccination programme being rolled out has allowed us to be optimistic about our future. Although we have set back from time to time, we have started our journey towards national recovery. Now more than ever, it is important that all political parties across this chamber put the interests of the country first to guide Scotland through the pandemic and into recovery, so I will be supporting this bill today. The Covid-19 pandemic presented a set of challenges that no one in this chamber has ever faced, a global health crisis that has not been seen for more than 100 years. We all accepted that we needed to act swiftly and act collectively. When ministers were suggesting that we could see potentially 100,000 of our fellow Scots lose their lives to this disease and the potential that councils and the military would have to undertake mass burials, as Gillian Martin outlined, I think that we were all shocked and concerned and worked constructively to facilitate the powers that ministers said they needed at the time in the national interest. The variation of some regulations was justified at earlier stages of the pandemic as well. However, today's debate must acknowledge that we have come a long way since the start of the pandemic. The First Minister has admitted that the Scottish ministers got things wrong due to a lack of consultation. It is therefore concerning that ministers have left us today with only three days sitting until recess to consider these measures and the intended and often unintended consequences that they will have. Powers that ministers say that they will be extending for an initial period of just six months and then likely for a longer period. The emergency response that I outlined at the start of the pandemic was appropriate at the time, but what is not appropriate is that we now see ministers trying to keep hold of the powers and the failure to genuinely consult with businesses and individuals whose lives and livelihoods will face the consequences of the further extensions of those powers. The First Minister has today, in principle, committed to the lifting of restrictions due entirely to the success of the United Kingdom's vaccination programme. The question is why it is therefore necessary to consolidate those powers beyond the return of Parliament after the summer recess. Both do not go hand in hand. The full consultation and cross-party input and discussion over the summer would allow for the proper scrutiny and for the negative impacts of those extensions to be fully understood by Government. I agree with my colleague Murdo Fraser that it is simply unnecessary to extend the exceptional powers that the bill provides without that vital scrutiny. In relation to housing, as a few members have touched on, the acts in the first instance provided protections to students and tenants by making reasonable accommodations regarding notice periods and council tax. During the pandemic, it has been important to note—and it has not been mentioned to date—that landlords have actively and responsibly tried to support tenants and indeed small businesses meeting the rent payments and challenges that we know from our constituency mailbags that many people have faced. As has already been highlighted, extending the evictions ban and therefore postponing the work of tribunal proceedings will potentially only deliver more uncertainty and build up new problems for renters rather than finding long-term sustainable solutions that all of us across the parties on the benches want to see. Indeed, the amount of debt owed by tenants being evicted for rent arrears pre-pandemic was on an average of 8.9 months of rent at the point that a tribunal decided to grant an eviction order. For the same period during this pandemic and with those powers in place, that has risen to 13.3 months of rent arrears. I know from discussions that I have had with housing and poverty organisations already since taking over this portfolio that there is a growing concern at the significant increase in unmanagable rent debt. There is no doubt that there are many tenants facing significant financial difficulties due to unemployment and also a reduction in take home pay during the pandemic. The Deputy First Minister is not in the chamber at this moment in time, but, as my colleague Murdo Fraser outlined, we welcomed the establishment of the tenant's hardship loan scheme when it was announced last November. Today, I welcome what the Deputy First Minister has outlined with regard to the £10 million grant fund. The devil will always be in the detail. I look forward to seeing the criteria around that and how we will see that delivered on the ground. As we emerge from the lockdown and as we see those restrictions hopefully lifted, there is concern around the long-term impact on tenants and the sector that poor credit scoring will inevitably have for people seeking rentals, especially here in the capital with a higher private rental market in place. In relation to local government, concerningly, the bill seems to want to give local authorities powers to continue to restrict access to meetings, delay the publication of reports required by statute and the further relaxation of local planning guidelines. I think that that is concerning and, certainly under the debates that we had previously around FOI and access to information, that is something that we need to urgently see looked at to make sure that we can properly scrutinise decisions taken in local government. It is vital, I believe, that we do fully scrutinise decisions and hold local authorities to account, as well as the Scottish Government. To conclude, while it is essential that we move cautiously, it is more important than ever to remember that the decisions that we take impact on people's livelihoods, businesses and the fragile economic recovery that we all want to see. The Parliament should be able to do the important job of properly scrutinising Government decisions. The eight weeks that the Deputy Presiding Officer says that he will have a consultation in the future about an eight-week period ahead of us, when we could have been doing that consultation, and then come back and look at the regulations properly. SNP ministers are preventing the Parliament from actually doing that work. I think that that is regrettable, and I hope that they will think again as we take forward this bill over the coming days. I have six minutes, I believe, but I think that I could say what I need to say in about six sentences. That is that we are in unprecedented times, we are still in the midst of a pandemic, the citizens of Scotland expect and trust this Government to take the necessary action to protect lives and our health service. There is no valid reason to delay this bill, there are no new powers in it. This is not an indefinite extension and the bill will remove powers no longer required, so it is the right thing to do. I have listened carefully to a lot of concerns and a lot of very valid points raised this afternoon around debt, human rights and disabled people, raised by Jackie Baillie, Pam Duncan-Clancy and Miss Slater. Those are very valid points, but I take great comfort from what the Deputy First Minister said. A lot of those issues can be done by policy, direction and co-operation going forward and do not require legislation. I trust that the Scottish Government will be looking into that. It is the nature of the expiry of those rules that is really important. Some of those powers have already been expired in line with the Government commitment to remove provisions that are no longer necessary to support the on-going public health response. That is so important, because that is about powers that are necessary, proportionate and used when required. I see no danger in extending that, although we still do not have a clear pathway completely out of the pandemic. I take everyone's points about how the vaccine programme is positive, but I also listened to the First Minister today. What has not been mentioned, she said, is that from August they are not relaxing the rules about people working from home. We are still in the midst of the pandemic. We have still to have another cohort of university students arrive in the early autumn, and we know what happened the last time and what the problems were. Everyone would love to have been able to look in hindsight and to have prevented some of those problems, but we do not know if they will recur again. We are about to go into a winter period. If we know anything from Covid, the vaccine gives us problems. It puts obstacles in our way at every turn. I think that we remember back to the disappointment to people around the Christmas holiday time, when Covid presented us with a situation that meant that people could not visit and that we were disappointed. Having the provision to be used proportionately and necessarily is definitely the way forward. I want to commend my colleague Stuart McMillan, who talked about the expiry in the technical terms from someone who is now the convener of the DPLR committee and has real experience in those ways. It is absolutely important. The bill would never need to be repealed because it expires, because the powers go when they are no longer needed to be used. The bill does not introduce any new measures. We have lived with those new measures now through two iterations of the bill. We know where they are. We have daily scrutiny from the First Minister and her response to Covid where she takes questions on that. She gives the information that is required for people to know where we are going and how quickly we can move with that. We are all used to those provisions. The Covid committee in this Parliament has a scrutiny that goes on week in, week out in terms of looking at the issues that come forward that we have not been able to come out of left field, which are unintentional consequences of what has happened, and ministers and the Government are held to account through the Covid committee on a weekly basis in this place. I appreciate that people will have concerns, because it is another bit of emergency legislation, but that is not new measures. It also does not cover things such as the travel regulations that are devolved through the public health measures or lockdown measures, which has been said already, are implemented by Scottish ministers in the UK coronavirus act. I am really disappointed to hear that the pragmatic and very consensual approach to the previous bills that was shown in the chamber has not been followed today by the Conservative benches. I think that that is really important, because in delaying the bill, if I look at two measures, for instance, that will be extended for a further six months, that is the ability of hearings across criminal and civil courts and tribunals to be held remotely. I have just spoken about how we are not going back to an ordinary working office environment, so that is really important. The debt issue of the increase in the minimum debt level that an individual must owe before a creditor can beat them bankrupt. As we are coming towards the end of furlough, we do not know what the bigger impacts of that will be, so that is really important. I will conclude by quoting from the previous debate in the second intonation of the bill in May 2020. It was Jamie Greene who said, "...we will lend our support to the Government to give the required powers that it needs to deal with the crisis on the principle of temporality and trust in ministers to use those powers responsibly and proportionately." In turn, the general public trusts us to judge that balance. The Parliament does have its say on that, and it will vote today to decide whether to extend that, and again we will have that opportunity in the future. However, that is a matter of trust, and there is absolutely no doubt that the Scottish people have put their trust in this Government and our First Minister to ensure the safety of the people of Scotland. I will comment briefly on the debate about the debate, if I can put it that way, on timescale and emergency legislation. I recognise what the Conservatives are saying. They are drawing our attention to the fact that the actual deadline is the end of September, not the beginning. Debating a bill here in Parliament is not speaking magic words, it is only part of a process. Let us imagine the alternative timeline. If the Government introduced the bill in, say, the first week of September, we might be debating it in the second week, we might pass it in the third, we might just about get royal assent by the end of the month. All of those measures then need to be implemented. Let us think about the many people around Scotland who have been working so hard to adapt and respond to unprecedented circumstances. We would be leaving them simply guessing what is to be required of them just days before the emergency measures are either extended or allowed to expire. I suggest that colleagues such as Stephen Kerr and Annie Wells, who have been genuinely concerned about this, should be glad that they are not working in such a role in such circumstances, trying to keep our public services running. I am glad that they are not in such a role as well. Business support and housing have been touched on by a number of members. Clearly, there will be a need to continue business support, but, as Lorna Slater said, we also have an unprecedented opportunity to reshape the economy in terms of how we deliver that support, and conditionality is going to be absolutely vital. Indiscriminate support to business owners, regardless of how they treat their workers, their customers, their communities or the wider world, would exacerbate the inequalities and injustices of the pre-Covid economy. We have an opportunity to do so much better. The idea of loans has been widely criticised. The suggestion that people would be willing to take on debt to meet their landlords' interests when they faced the prospect of losing their job over the coming months clearly was not going to work. I am glad that we are moving to grants not loans. I would question how quickly a £10 million fund could be used up if we see the furlough scheme winding up over the coming months. Jackie Baillie made some important points about the whole issue. I think that encouraging good practice, as Mr Swinney put it, simply is not going to be good enough. No doubt, Miles Briggs would probably remind me, given his comments, that there are some landlords who have gone out of their way to support their tenants, but we know that there are also landlords who will take every opportunity to put their own interests ahead of the tenant's right to a home. Simply encouraging good practice is not going to be enough. Some have said that this is the wrong solution, and we should be looking to other solutions. That argument seems to me to have come from those who have a track record of voting against strengthening tenants' rights and who clearly intend to vote against rent controls. Those who are suggesting other solutions fully intend to vote against other solutions. Housing is a human right. Investment income is not. I will be keen to see whatever amendments it is possible to bring forward. Jackie Baillie has something in mind on that. I want to look forward before I close, because, as many members have mentioned, across the chamber, there are aspects of the situation that we have lived through for the past year and a half and the response to it, which has value in the longer term. Covid will be with us for a long time. It might even never disappear, but the emergency that it caused will not. That emergency has prompted us to make changes in our society that we must learn from. It has shown us how quickly we can address a crisis when we treat it like a crisis. Even before Covid, inequality was already a crisis. Job insecurity was already a crisis. Housing was already a crisis. In many ways, the state of our public health was already a crisis. Of course, the whole world faces a climate and ecological emergency, which, at a conservative estimate, is already costing a quarter of a million lives annually and rising. It is an existential threat to human existence and to the living world around us. In that context, we have to look to the changes that we have made in response to Covid and ask ourselves two questions. First, which of those changes should stay because they offer lasting benefits beyond Covid? In relation to secure homes, secure incomes, sustainable transport and travel patterns, public health infrastructure, working online to bring benefits for accessibility, and continuous teacher assessment to offer improvement to our education system in place of high-pressure and high-stakes exams? We should be willing to ask those questions about what changes could bring a permanent benefit. Beyond that, more deeply, we have to ask ourselves as a society how ready are we really for the next crisis, how resilient is our economy, how responsive are our public services and how has our political culture acquitted itself in this crisis, and how ready are we for the next crisis? I hope that those are themes that the Government will return to with the permanent bill. I draw members' attention to my register of interest as an owner of a rental property. Guidance issued by the UN special rapporteur on adequate housing notes that housing has become the front-line defence against the coronavirus. It is a simple statement that is absolutely fundamental to the debate today. A good, safe, warm, accessible home is a basic human right that every person needs to flourish and reach their full potential. However, for the purposes of this debate, it is clear that home is the front-line defence against this disease. If you have Covid-19 symptoms, isolate at home. If you have been in close contact with a positive case, isolate at home. If a member of your household has symptoms, isolate at home. If you have been to anborlyst country, isolate at home. If you have Covid-19, isolate at home. It has been the key medical and public health advice from the outset of the pandemic to stop the spread of the disease, to break the transmission link, isolate at home. That is why the ban on evictions has been a key part of our response to the pandemic. It is a key part of the strategy to contain the spread of coronavirus. How does an individual, how does a family have the certainty to know that they will be able to isolate at home when they have the threat of an eviction hanging over their head? How does someone who has been evicted, the sofa-surfing in multiple properties, isolate at home? Given that isolating at home is such a key part of the public health response, the extension of the eviction ban to level 1 and 2 areas must be included in the legislation. That is the public health argument for extending the evictions ban, but there is clearly a moral argument, too. The Scottish Government has, rightly in my opinion, called for an extension to furlough and an extension to the £20 top-up in universal credit. The Government has made those arguments because we are still living with restrictions because entire sections of the economy are either severely impacted or not functioning at all. The First Minister said, less than three weeks ago, that we have made significant progress on the way out of this pandemic, which has devastated the lives of so many, but we are clearly still in a precarious situation and it is vital to make sure that we support the people who have been most badly affected by the past 14 months. I will be calling on the UK Government to commit to maintaining public spending during the period of recovery and to extend the furlough scheme for as long as it is needed to protect businesses and people who have been required to stop working to protect others. I will emphasise that it is managed sensitively in a way that supports longer-term recovery. I do not agree with any of that quote, but surely the Scottish ministers must accept that the exact same arguments apply to the extension of the eviction ban. Many households have been affected by unemployment, reduced unemployment and reduced earnings. Lots of people have accumulated debts and rent arrears through no fault of their own because of a global pandemic. We should be supporting those people with grant assistance to recover, not piling more debts on top of existing debt just to stay in their family home, and I am glad that the Government has announced that they are moving on that today. Tenants organisations such as Living Rent have warned of a cliff edge of orders to evict an event of the country entering level 2. Stats from the housing regulator show an increase on notice of proceedings being served to social housing tenants, which related to rent arrears of 280 per cent from June last year to March this year. Citizens Advice have also reported that requests for advice about rent arrears with private landlords more than doubled from 2019 to 2020. The Scottish Government's £10 million tenant hardship loan fund was supposed to help people to avoid the risk of losing their homes because of pandemic-related financial pressures, but so far it has been set out by speakers before me. Only £490,000 has been paid out. That is not a viable solution to people's housing debt, to put them more into debt than, again, to welcome the Government's grant fund. I am interested in seeing the new qualifying criteria for that and potentially how the Government set out how to convert almost £0.5 million of loans that have been paid out. Had that then converted into a grant so that those who have already accessed that loan fund are not living with unsustainable debt when it could have been converted into a grant. However, what happens if evictions go ahead in the absence of a ban? Who picks up the pieces for that? We are just left with families pushed into extremely dangerous, vulnerable positions in the middle of a pandemic and for local authorities to deal with a surge in homeless applications. No longer can they rely on that top-level public health and medical advice to isolate at home. They have no home available to them. A revolving door of evictions in homeless applications with all the human and financial costs and public health risk associated with that is not what anyone wants. When this Parliament first debated and passed emergency legislation, we did all three stages of it in one fateful day, April 1, but it was no April Fools. We were just a week into a full-scale national lockdown. Our Prime Minister or First Minister had addressed the nation on TV in what felt like doomsday broadcasts. You must stay at home. Schools, shops, pubs, factories, offices, nurseries, cafes, all shut. Flights, trains, buses, holidays, business trips, all cancelled. We all remember the eerie spookiness of our deserted cities and our high streets. We all remember the emptiness of ScotRail trains. We all remember avoiding people in the pavement in case you got too close. We all remember and still do that abject, constant underlying fear of your loved ones catching this deadly, pernicious disease. It was spreading like wildfire. It was a glimpse, if I may, of what it might feel like to be at war because we were at war, at war with a virus. To the extent that we still are, but what started as a war has now turned into a race, a race between the immense genius of science versus the immense unpredictability of nature itself, a race of time between vaccination and mutation, but we are winning that race, as others have said today. Some 80 per cent of adult Scots have received the first dose of the vaccination, and 60 per cent have received the second dose. All of that in just six months since the first jab was administered. In just a few weeks' time, everyone over the age of 50 and everyone who is clinically vulnerable will have been offered their second dose. That is a tremendous achievement. Today, we are facing emergency legislation. I want to summarise three points that have been made today that are important to this debate. Opposition to this bill is not simplistic belligerence, as has been painted a picture of by some. It is simply us doing our job. The first proposition made today is that the emergency is no longer upon us in the same way that it was when we first introduced or secondly extended those laws. When we passed that first emergency legislation, we were in unprecedented times. We faced a new virus with no vaccine, no cure and, at times, it felt no hope either. There were serious concerns about the NHS and such a fear that our hospitals would fill up so much so that we turned a concert venue into a makeshift feel hospital. The problem is that we are facing none of that today, and I hope that we will never do again, because those 74 million doses of that vaccine have broken the link between catching Covid and dying from it. We are in a much better position to mitigate and manage this virus. I heard what Stuart McMillan said, who said that we might have to learn to live with Covid. Fine, so be it, but we also might have to learn to legislate properly in response to it. That is the second point of contention, raised by many members today. That is that of timetabling, and it is a fair one. They are right to raise these issues, because there is no justifiable reason at all today to treat this latest iteration of emergency powers as emergency legislation. Why? Because we know that when we rush legislation, as we are doing this week, we do not have time to consult with stakeholders, we do not have time to properly scrutinise the measures, as Pam Duncan Glancy eloquently put it to us today. Our lives have been governed by laws that we rushed through in a matter of hours instead of months. None of it was subject to the same proper checks and balances that we normally afford legislation. We did it because we had to, but our argument today is that we do not have to, because we know that mistakes can and will be made. John Mason rightly pointed out the case of Reverend Dr Phillip versus Scottish ministers, an issue that was rightly upheld in the court of session. Back then, the Covid committee was our real only point of defence, because we trusted the members of that committee. We trusted them to reach out and engage and listen with people to whom it mattered. However, today, that committee has not even yet sat for a substantive meeting. Guess what, in three days' time, we all disappear for two months? That same committee consulted with the public back in February of this year. They said that we want to hear your reviews. We want to know what we can learn about using emergency legislation. That consultation was open for just two weeks, and it had 846 responses. How many of those responses—I have not read them all—said that the best way to legislate is the process that we are using this week. I suspect that, starting off with very few, probably none, because it was clear then and it is clear now that there is real value in proper scrutiny. Proper scrutiny is not political commentary, but real scrutiny and real feedback in the real world. The issues that we are talking about—courts, tribunials, alcohol licensing, bankruptcy, child hearings, evictions—might not be headline grabbing restrictions in the way that others are, but they matter to the people that they matter to. We have heard today from two organisations, quoted on multiple occasions, Amnesty International and Inclusion Scotland. They use two words, each of them, inadequate and unsatisfactory. If they are concerned, I think that we should be concerned. The problem is that that manifests my point exactly. It is only those organisations that have been quoted because no one else has had time to properly be consulted or to react. Normally, our inboxes are full—absolutely full to the brim—of briefings and feedback ahead of stage 1 debates. Those organisations who are lucky enough to have public policy teams were able to scramble together something over the weekend, but many of those simply do not. That is my third and final point. I do not think that there is any justification made today, and nothing that I have heard today reiterates the point that those powers in their entirety should be extended in the way that they are being proposed. I am uncomfortable with that. My team right now is sitting in my office, probably will be there until the late hours, scrambling together amendments. Of those already submitted, three of them have been knocked back on the grounds on being inadmissible. What sort of process of stage 2 is that, as members? I think that it is shocking and a shameful way to treat legislation, not just our staff, but the parliamentary staff who are doing their damnence to help us. Cabinet Secretary, why are we doing it this way? I am afraid that there are so many concerns about this bill. There are so many concerns about not just the fact that you are wanting more time with those powers, but what has those powers done, the ones that we introduced in emergency measures? Some of them absolutely we supported at the time and some of them we absolutely still might support today, but we know that those are short-term measures. What you cannot do against the backdrop of an imminent pandemic that we faced is simply to make them normalised without question. That is abundantly clear from the submission that we had from the Law Society. We do not clear court backlogs by watering down people's human rights. We do not keep people in detention indefinitely. That is a point of principle that we have always stood proudly on. We do not release prisoners early simply because we cannot manage health emergencies and we do not deliver justice by simply writing off hundreds of thousands of hours of community orders. We dealt with this pandemic as a Parliament, I think, collaboratively. Collaboration between members, parties, Government, the civil service, its advisers, this feels different and it feels wrong. If the Government needs emergency powers, if or even when we next face an emergency, I say, bring it forward, bring a new bill forward to deal with the new emergency. We will meet that challenge constructively, but this is no way to legislate because the people out there who are affected by the decisions that we make deserve nothing less than our earnest attempts to do exactly what I said in the last debate, that we will do what is needed, when it is needed but only for as long as it is needed and not a day longer. That is what we promised them back then. If we passed this bill in three days, we will have failed them in that promise and shame on us. Thank you. I now call on Cabinet Secretary John Swinney to wind up the debate. Thank you, Presiding Officer. This has been a helpful debate this afternoon, and I am grateful to members for the contributions that they have made. I want to address a number of the points that have been raised, and there are a number of substantive issues that I will cover. First of all, I want to talk about the issues around timing and the timetable, because that has obviously been a substantial part of the debate that members have been raising. The argument has roughly been focused on the fact that consultation could have taken place over the summer, and the bill could have been considered in September. Aside from the fact that I would be very sceptical that Parliament could consider the bill in September and secure royal assent before the end of the month, the implications of the timetable that would be suggested of undertaking this task in September are that we would essentially be having a curtailed process of scrutiny in any circumstance. That is a product of the presence of the election and the presence of the summer recess, those two things. The Government has made a choice—I have made a choice—to bring the legislation to Parliament at this stage, because under whatever scenario we adopt—and I think the reliable scenario of guaranteeing that we can secure royal assent, providing Parliament agrees to the terms of the legislation—is to complete the process now, rather than to take the risk of delaying that to September. John Mason highlighted that he has left a note of uncertainty in the minds of a whole range of organisations as to whether they would be able to operate in the fashion that they are currently having to operate because of Covid in the exercise of their practical functions as organisations. I do not agree with Mr Kerr that this is a power grab for ministers. What this is about is about enabling a range of organisations to undertake a series of practical functions that have been disrupted by the presence of Covid. If we take the courts, for example, nobody can say anything to me other than the fact that the courts have been disrupted by Covid. It has led to delays and we have put in place practical arrangements to try to make it possible for trials to happen, for arrangements to be put in place, which sustain the criminal justice system because of the disruption of Covid. That has not gone away. That is still there and we are wrestling with its implications. I will give way to Mr Greene first. Jamie Greene, I thank the Deputy First Minister, but that is my point. We do not actually know if all the emergency measures that were introduced have had a positive or negative effect on the people that interact with the court system or the judiciary or children's hearings or any of those other factors. The problem is that we do not know because we have not consulted, and that is why we need that extra time. In some circumstances, Mr Greene's point might be valid in relation to children's hearings, where it is not for the fact that we are actually expiring some of the provisions that are in place. They will not be extended by virtue of the bill that I am bringing forward. My simple point that I am making is that there are deeply practical and operational issues here about the running of public services that have been disrupted by Covid and that will not have recovered by 30 September, because of backlogs. I will give way to Mr Greene and then to Mr Cole-Hamilton. We have to make it practical and possible for those services to be operated in the disrupted circumstances that will not have disappeared by 30 September. Stephen Kerr is grateful to the Deputy First Minister for giving way. The point that he is making, though, about timing is important, because, as Jamie Greene pointed out, the emergency measures that were taken that were debated and passed on 1 April last year, the Royal Ascent only took a matter of a few days. Why would it not be possible? Should emergency powers be necessary beyond 30 September, what is stopping us having an emergency bill and getting the Royal Ascent in the same timescale? It seems illogical. It is quite simple. It is our relationship to the point that I made in response to Mr Mason's arguments that we are trying to give some operational certainty to organisations about the arrangements that will be in place potentially in September by the passing of this legislation just now. I will give way to Mr Cole-Hamilton. Alex Cole-Hamilton is grateful to the Deputy First Minister for giving way. He talked about the operational parameters under which certain public services need to function as we continue to emerge from the pandemic. That point comes to the heart of scrutiny, which has featured a loss in this debate. Schedule 6 of the 2020 act amends the local government act so that public can be excluded from any meeting of a local authority should their presence create a substantial risk of infection. I am sure that the Deputy First Minister would agree that that risk is abated. Does he not agree that it is now time to repeal that section of the bill so that we can have greater scrutiny in the corridors of local democracy? There may well be an argument for such a specific point of that nature, but what we cannot be certain about—the First Minister made a statement today, which I accept was more optimistic than it had been for a while. However, there are still caveats in that statement about what the circumstances might well be in August. If we are trying to provide clarity for the delivery of public services, we have to essentially put in place a framework that everybody understands where they stand. Those powers can be readily expired because they can be expired by subordinate legislation without the recourse to primary legislation. Of course, a number of those powers have expired already. That is the argument for proceeding just now. I do notice that the Conservatives have made a lot in this debate about the spoken in some fairly exaggerated language, frankly, in the debate today. Let me quote the Law Society of Scotland, who has stated that, although short in terms of parliamentary time, the provisions are relatively straightforward, the principle of extension has been considered by the Parliament over the past year in the context of the motions to extend to the present day and regular reports by the Scottish ministers. I have given it an assurance that that regular reporting will continue. The bill that is before Parliament provides for the—it is just a moment—the bill provides for the expiry of those provisions. Clare Adamson made that point. Without anybody lifting a finger, if the bill gets passed, the provisions will expire six months after the 30th of September. There is provision for it to be in a further six-month extension, but if that is not enacted, those powers disappear six months after the 30th of September. I will give way to Mr Kerr. Liam Kerr, I am very grateful. Since the cabinet secretary is looking for recourse to the law, the initial legislation was brought in as it was deemed necessary. Necessary has a very particular meaning, according to the ECHR and the Supreme Court. Is it still necessary, within that definition, to bring us forward? If not, what is the legal basis that the cabinet secretary relies on? Cabinet secretary? It is necessary for the arguments that I am setting out that we have a range of public services that have experienced disruption as a consequence of Covid. Some of them would not be able to exercise their functions consistent with existing statute if we had not amended the statute in the fashion that we have already done and which I am arguing with Parliament should be sustained. Without that, some organisations and some public functions would not be able to be exercised. I believe that that would be detrimental to the exercise of the proper functions of public services. That has been the argument from the Conservative Party about why we should not legislate in the fashion that we are legislating. I am grateful to the Labour Party, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats for their support for the principle of legislating in this context. What is emerge from the contributions of a number of colleagues is a number of what I would consider to be absolutely legitimate and substantial issues that relate to how we recover from the Covid emergency, whether it is on the issues of eviction that Mr Griffin raised, or similar issues on eviction that Pam Duncan-Glancy raised, or the points that Mr Harvey raised on those questions. All of those are legitimate questions, and there are some very substantial issues and the points that Mr Harvey raised about the whole way in which we plan and execute our recovery from Covid. Some of that will be about legislative change and about strengthening rights. Some of that will be about policy intentions of government. Of course, Mr Harvey's colleagues and I are engaged in conversations on some of those questions, as we are engaged with all parties in Parliament. There is a big agenda to be taken forward there. I would contend that, given the pressure that we have about the provisions, which I think need to be in place on 1 October 2021, whether we legislate for them now or whether we legislate for them in the first week in September, as the Conservatives seem to want us to do, even that opportunity would not provide us with the scope to address the substantive issues that have been raised about legislating for and acting to take forward the Covid recovery. I am committed to an engagement in that discussion with other parties to make sure that we plan and carry out our recovery from Covid in a way that makes a meaningful impact on the lives of individuals in Scotland and tackles the fundamental inequality that Mr Harvey is correct existed before Covid, but has been emphasised and highlighted by the effect of Covid. The Government is committed to that, and that is what we are taking the proper time to consult about in relation to the permanent bill over the summer and about the other and wider questions that we are looking at in relation to the way in which the Government plans the response that we take forward. Obviously, in the course of the passage of the bill, there will be an opportunity for members of Parliament to submit the points and the propositions that they want to advance in the bill, and the decisions about selecting amendments will be decisions for the Presiding Officer to take. Obviously, the Government will respond to all issues timuously within the structure of the debate. Fundamentally, as we look at those issues, and as we wrestle with the question of whether it is appropriate for us to legislate in this context, we need to draw on the contribution that Siobhan Brown made to the debate in recounting the story of her constituent in air, who lost his life and the impact on his family. Covid has not left us, and although we had a more optimistic statement today from the First Minister, there are still significant implications of Covid in our society that are disrupting the way in which we are able to operate our public services. What the Government is trying to do in the bill is to take an orderly approach to dispensing with the provisions that Parliament has legislated for that we do not believe are necessary. Obviously, members of Parliament are free to challenge us as to whether they believe that judgment is correct, because we may be arguing for certain provisions to be removed, and members of Parliament might think that we have that wrong. Equally, to determine whether or not the proposals in the bill that we believe should be extended have a legitimate justification. I would contend that those provisions are necessary to address the continuing impact of Covid on the way in which we are able to exercise the public functions for which statute has been agreed, but to do that in a way that can be sustainable through the continuing scenario that we face. One of the points in the debate that has been unhelpful has been the conflation of some of the issues that I totally understand they cause concern around the limitation of personal freedoms. Those issues are not the subject of the bill. Those are products of other legislative instruments that constrain the personal liberties and freedoms of individuals. As the First Minister said in the statement this afternoon, many of those provisions we hope to be able to relax either by the 19th of July or by the 9th of August as a whole. However, as Clare Adamson made the point, even after the 9th of August, there will still be an emphasis on the need for caution to be exercised because of the fact that the pandemic still presents a threat to all of us. So what this bill is an attempt to do and I think that this is reflected in some of the contributions that have been made by John Mason and by Jackie Baillie and by Stuart McMillan is to take a proportionate assessment of the situation that we face and take the necessary powers and responsibilities to enable us to continue to properly exercise the public functions that are at stake in this bill. In that respect, if we do this task, it leaves us free to consult on the substantive issues about Covid recovery, which are the subject of extensive engagement that I am taking forward and which I look forward to working with colleagues to take forward. We will consider all the issues in relation to the bill in the course of this week with the support of Parliament this evening. Thank you. That concludes the debate on the coronavirus extension and expiry Scotland Bill at stage 1. The next item of business is consideration of motion 443 on a financial resolution for the coronavirus extension and expiry Scotland Bill. I call on Kate Forbes to move the motion. Thank you. The question on this motion will be put at decision time. The next item of business is consideration of motion 465 in the name of George Adam on behalf of the parliamentary bureau setting out a revised business programme for this week. I call on George Adam on behalf of the Scottish Government to move the motion. Thank you. No member has asked to speak on the motion. The question is that motion 465 be agreed. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed. There are two questions to be put as a result of today's business. We are going to have a short technical break but could I please ask members to refresh their screens? The first question is that motion 446 in the name of John Swinney on the coronavirus extension and expiry Scotland Bill at stage 1 be agreed. Are we all agreed? Parliament is not agreed. Therefore, we will move to a vote. We will suspend briefly.