Seòmar agus comataidhean

We are not saying that we will use vaccination passports in isolation to try to suppress the virus. The messaging is still the same: we are still asking people to wear masks indoors and take all the necessary hygiene precautions. We are still doing everything else that we are currently doing. Vaccination passports are an add-on that are targeted at a specific area where we want there to be a greater uptake of vaccines and to ensure that we suppress the virus’s ability to spread. You said that we reduce transmission by 50 per cent if people get the vaccine. The policy is another layer of our ability to suppress the virus. Do you accept that?

My reason for asking that was to do with proportionality in relation to balancing the rights of the individual against the rights of the community. The care home is a microcosm of our approach. We accept that we are giving people a choice. We say that people can work in a care home but that they must do certain things to protect those who live or work there. As Jonathan Montgomery said, we can make it a condition that they have to be double vaccinated.

In the process of deciding whether we will have Covid vaccination passports, we are also giving a choice. As someone who believes in independence, I do not necessarily agree that we should take our lessons from elsewhere—we should be free thinking ourselves—but Covid vaccination passports are being introduced throughout the world. People have the choice to go to a nightclub or to football. Those are social events. Is it proportionate to say that, because we know that football matches and nightclubs are places where the virus spreads, if people choose to go there, they have an obligation for the greater good of society to try to mitigate the effects of the disease? Do you agree with that principle?

Excellent—my constituents will be delighted.

My second question is more constituency based. We still have constituents who are getting their first jag in England and their second jag in Scotland, but the connection has not yet been made, so they are struggling to get their vaccination certificate. Are we any closer to getting a solution to that?

First, I will ask about the factors that you are considering in relation to COP26, which you briefly outlined. Were any lessons learned from the recent G7 summit, or were there any problems after it? Are some of the systems that you will put in place for COP26 similar to what happened with the G7 summit?

Beatrice Morrice, have you had any response from the UK Government to your request for a one-year Covid visa that would allow us to fill the short-term gap in the workforce across the food and drink sector?

My question is again for Pete Ritchie and Miranda Geelhoed. We have a bit of a problem in that food is not cheap to produce but it has to be cheap enough for people to be able to buy it. How do we square that circle?

Both Rachael Hamilton and the convener talked about the reduction in livestock levels that we are aiming for. However, the cabinet secretary has already made it quite clear that there is no plan to reduce the suckler cow numbers in the country. I want to put that on the record.

A point was made earlier about the policy that we are looking to develop. In Scotland, the conditionality will be 50:50, whereas the UK scheme is all about public funds for public goods. My question is probably for Beatrice Morrice. We see the farming community as being critical to achieving our net zero target, and food production is a critical public good, because we need food. We need a resilient food and drink sector and we need the primary producers. How can we get the farming community to enthusiastically take up the policy? Is the 50:50 ratio is acceptable to the farming community? Farmers want to produce food, but they accept that we need to do things differently. How do you feel the policy will go down with the community?

The question of profitability and resilience in the sector is a very loaded one, because there are so many different sectors, and profitability and resilience will be different across each sector.

I will come to Davy McCracken first, because I want to look at where the profitability and resilience will come from in hill and upland farming. We have already touched on what you called planting trees, rather than forestry—I am glad that you did, because I would like us to get away from the conflict between trees and farming. There has to be a way to integrate them. I can see real opportunities for us to develop a timber industry that farmers could be part of. There are bound to be jobs that can be created out of a timber industry. In addition, rather than having sheds, maybe we could have woodland. I would like to explore some of those issues and how we can tie that in with making sure that we have profitability and resilience in the upland sector.

Can you clarify that? Are you talking about getting support to those farms that are already doing the things that they have been asked to do over the past number of years and continuing to recognise that?