Seòmar agus comataidhean

Will the member give away?

Presiding Officer, I welcome you to your role, as I welcome the two cabinet secretaries to theirs. I believe that they will bring a breadth of cross-portfolio experience to their new roles and will help to lead us through the recovery from Covid.

In his opening comments, the Deputy First Minister mentioned the need for innovation and collaboration in the Parliament. Given what I have heard during the debate, from all parties, I am quite heartened that we have considerable strengths and that we will be able to rise to that challenge.

In particular, I welcome the contributions from new members. I am not able to mention everybody, but what I have taken from all speeches is that there is an incredible level of lived experience, a connection to communities and a diversity. I highlight the contributions of Sandesh Gulhane, Michael Marra and Gillian Mackay.

I think that we have all reflected on Pam Duncan-Glancy’s first speech in the Parliament. Her words,

“for as long as I am here, none of you is on your own”,

will ring out from the chamber and be heard across Scotland. I congratulate her.

We have diversity, including diversity of political thought. I welcome Maggie Chapman’s challenge to every member of the Parliament to design an economy in which people matter. We need to take on the big issues and think about restructuring our economy.

There are many lessons to learn, which is why the need for an independent public inquiry, as called for by Alex Cole-Hamilton and many other members, is absolutely pressing. The most obvious lesson for all Governments around our islands and in Europe is that we treated the virus not as a severe acute respiratory syndrome—SARS—virus but as a flu virus and that, as a result, major mistakes were made. During the previous session of Parliament, the COVID-19 Committee took evidence on that issue. Professor Mark Woolhouse, from the University of Edinburgh, said:

“we did our homework but, when we were given the exam, it was the wrong test.”—[Official Report, COVID-19 Committee, 25 February 2021; c 24.]

Governments simply got it wrong. They had planned for a flu virus but it was something far more serious.

The committee also took evidence from Professor Michael Baker, who led New Zealand’s response to the virus. He admitted that New Zealand had got it wrong early on as well—that they were caught on the hop and did not have adequate planning. However, they were prepared to learn and did so very quickly from the experience in China and from the evidence that came out of the Taiwanese plan to tackle the SARS virus back in 2003. They effectively applied their flu plan in reverse: they threw everything at Covid at the beginning, whereas we gradually increased the response as the pandemic worsened. We have serious lessons to learn. I think back to March last year, when, unfortunately, our chief medical officer at the time was on TV advising people that it was perfectly safe to go to six nations rugby matches. We need to take a long, hard look at our pandemic preparedness in the months to come.

We must become more prepared for the future. We finally got the testing capacity that will be critical in dealing with the later stages of the pandemic and in preparing for the future. The Greens made the case early on that we needed to ramp that up. We need to ensure that there is proper support for people to do the right thing and self-isolate. No one should have had to choose between going to work to earn a wage and self-isolating. Although there are self-isolation grants—the criteria for which were widened twice as a result of Green pressure in the previous parliamentary session—many people are still being denied those grants and are having to make the choice between going to work and doing the right thing. Figures on BBC TV last night showed that 45 per cent of applications for those grants were rejected in recent months. It should not be a question of entitlement to benefits; those grants should be available instantly at a decent level, and they should be universal alongside a package of wider support to help people to do the right thing whenever there is a pandemic.

We have had a wide-ranging debate this afternoon, and in my remaining time I will touch on education. Murdo Fraser raised an important point on the challenges that young people face in relation to exam-style assessments. Let us go further than that: let us question why we have exams—full stop. Why can we not have continuous assessment? We need to think big in relation to education and closing the attainment gap.

Members have also talked about the huge toll on business. We have all seen that. I have seen it on my high street in Stirling, with shops closing down. The way to have avoided the cycle of lockdowns was to have taken the bold move early on to have a full lockdown that would get the virus under control. The point was made by Anas Sarwar that business needs that certainty.

We need to get back to a regular cycle of announcements from the Scottish Government and parliamentary scrutiny of those. It is important that the machinery of the Parliament gets up and running again and that we have a Covid committee that can go through the data, take expert evidence and assess the restrictions on a week-to-week basis. We have to do that on a cross-party basis—and we will do that.

In relation to the national health service, Gillian Mackay absolutely nailed it: the debate is about fair pay and working conditions, but it is also about moving away from the crisis management that we have seen in relation to mental health and the drugs crisis, which Michael Marra eloquently spoke about. The defining mission that Gillian Mackay spoke about—the establishment of a national care service—has to be at the heart of the Parliament’s work.

I will finish with Paul McLennan’s John Muir quote:

“The power of imagination makes us infinite.”

I thank the member for reminding us of that. We should be aiming for the stars.

In my heart, my allegiance is to the people of Scotland.

The member then made a solemn affirmation.