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We need them for reasons of public health. In certain circumstances, we might need to take decisions that relate to the prevalence of the virus and its presence in certain scenarios.

The Government and local authorities have a whole range of different emergency powers on the statute book. They were given to us by the Parliament to be exercised only when there is a justification for exercising them. This is no different.

We might face a situation in which we have to act to protect public health. We will continue to rub up against the question of the statute book, and it will affect the longer-term legislation that the Parliament considers. With the benefit of our experience of handling the pandemic, do we consider it necessary to have a range of powers at our disposal that would enable us to deal with scenarios that we might face? That is the question that the Parliament must resolve. As I have said to the Parliament on many occasions, things can happen extraordinarily quickly.

I am offering the justification, convener, to the extent that I will end up repeating myself again and again. I have given the justification that I am going to give.

Fundamentally, those are issues for the Parliament, although I recognise that the Government has a significant contribution to make to that discussion. The Government would therefore engage willingly and positively in that discussion.

I have been a parliamentarian for just short of a quarter of a century, and I have always recognised the importance of effective parliamentary scrutiny of all the business of Government, whether that is in questioning or in respect of regulations or legislation. However, our parliamentary system has been tested by a very serious public health threat that required us to move in this fashion.

In the debate last week, comments were made—I am paraphrasing here—about the fact that the made affirmative procedure had hardly been used at all before 2020 and was then used a bit like number 9 buses: there were something like 130 of those instruments at one time. My simple point about that is that we had not had a pandemic before 2020. The Parliament’s procedures were tested by the need to move quickly and sharply.

Having said that, there are a lot of days between zero and 40 days. To put it rather crudely, if there is a way of getting us closer to zero days that gives the Parliament the opportunity to scrutinise legislation and equally allows the Government to get on with the measures that are necessary to protect public health, the Government would be very happy to engage in a discussion about that.

There is space for that to happen, but the procedure is perhaps difficult to pilot because we all need to know the basis on which we are bringing forward regulations. As things stand, we have the made affirmative procedure, the affirmative procedure and negative instruments. If we are going to consider expedited procedures, I would be very happy to engage in that process.

Thank you, convener, and good morning. I welcome the opportunity to address any points that the committee may have on the two sets of regulations on the agenda.

The Coronavirus Act 2020 (Alteration of Expiry Date) (Scotland) Regulations 2022 will amend the date on which five provisions in the United Kingdom Coronavirus Act 2020 would automatically expire, from 24 March 2022 to 24 September 2022. Changing the expiry date of those powers will ensure that ministers have those powers available if—and only if—their use is needed in relation to coronavirus over the coming months.

Similarly, the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Directions by Local Authorities) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2022 will amend the date on which the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Directions by Local Authorities) (Scotland) Regulations 2020 would automatically expire, from 25 March 2022 to 24 September 2022. Again, changing the expiry date of the regulations will ensure that we keep in place important powers for local authorities to be able to make directions to control local outbreaks of coronavirus.

The Coronavirus Act 2020 (Alteration of Expiry Date) (Scotland) Regulations 2022 were made using the made affirmative procedure. I am aware that that is one of the issues that the committee has raised. I have emphasised previously that the made affirmative procedure is an unusual power granted by the Parliament in situations when action may need to be taken more quickly than the normal affirmative procedure allows for. If that procedure were not available, there would be a risk that necessary measures could not be brought in quickly enough. In this instance, the regulations use the made affirmative procedure because, at the time of laying, our understanding was that that was the only procedure available to us. As the committee is aware, it has since come to our attention that it would, in fact, have been possible to use the affirmative procedure. However, I want to be clear that, even though the made affirmative procedure has been used, we have nevertheless ensured that the Parliament has 40 days for scrutiny of the regulations prior to their coming into force on 24 March 2022, as would have been the case under the affirmative procedure.

The regulations to extend the expiry date of the local authority directions regulations, were laid in draft and follow the affirmative procedure, with an expedited timetable.

Both sets of regulations put back the date on which the key coronavirus provisions would have expired by default. Thus, the regulations protect our ability to put in place any measures that might be considered necessary. We cannot let that ability expire by default, because we might still need such measures.

It is our intention and expectation that we will lift the face-covering requirements and the other remaining baseline measures with effect from 21 March. However, that is dependent on the course of the pandemic between now and then. Even after baseline measures are lifted, Covid will not have gone away and it may have further surprises in store for us. As the strategic framework update states, we cannot rule out the possibility that it might be necessary to impose legal measures once more. Therefore, we must be ready and able to respond effectively, and it is essential that we have the powers to enable us to do so.

In conclusion, both sets of regulations are essential to ensure that the right powers are available to manage Covid in this next phase of the pandemic, should that be required.

I am happy to address any points from the committee.

During the course of the pandemic, on what I consider was a regular basis, the powers were certainly used in respect of observing the requirements that we expected to be in place in order to maintain public health in the education community. At times, they were used to specify what could and could not happen in schools. At the height of the pandemic, the education continuity directions were used to specify that, for example, children of key workers could be educated or supported in schools, whereas other children could not be. At times, the powers were also used to specify our expectations about educational provision.

The powers certainly have been used over the course of the pandemic. On the question whether they will need to be used in the foreseeable future, I point out that they can be used only when there is a public health imperative that enables them to be used. Their existence and significance relate to the fact that, in my view, we must have a statute book that enables us to address the circumstances as we face them.

In essence, it would be to provide the capacity to deal with outbreak management. That is the most appropriate way to express it. Back in 2020, during the development of the pandemic, we saw certain outbreaks fuelling the spread of the virus. During that early part, we tried to isolate those outbreaks as much as we possibly could. Some of them were in workplaces, some were in venues and some were in localities. We tried to take measures that would insulate the rest of the country from those outbreaks, to avoid the virus spreading through the community. Local authority powers and actions in the work that we do with environmental health officers, for example, are critical to enabling that.

We will come back repeatedly to the point about whether the statute book should be equipped to help us to manage a situation that we might have to manage. If we take the argument that has been put to me, which is that we should act only on the basis of precedent, we will never change the statute book on Covid, because we have never experienced anything of the magnitude of Covid.

I have to make a lot of judgments on the merits of particular stances. Having heard about the issues that were on the minds of the Information Commissioner’s team, and given the necessity of ensuring that we had in place an accessible Covid certification scheme for members of the public—I remind Mr Hoy that that was important for not just domestic but international certification—I judged that the appropriate course of action was to launch the app when we launched it, as we had indicated would be the case.