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That is an important point, which points to a lesson that was learned in relation to how the bill would be framed, compared with the way in which the emergency legislation—which was considered at great speed, necessarily, and to the best of Parliament’s ability—was framed. As the pandemic moved on, Parliament became concerned about the fact that safeguards were not in place, simply because of the speed with which the Coronavirus (Scotland) Bill went through Parliament and became an act. We have given serious consideration to that, which is why the safeguards are in place in the bill.

As you pointed out, it is right that we look at the whole package, which includes not only individual aspects that could be included in the regulations, but the steps that would have to be taken before we got to the point of having regulations with those specifics in them. It is important to bear in mind the overall package.

We are keen to hear more about the concerns of colleagues from the Educational Institute of Scotland. My door is always open to them to have those discussions.

Education authorities have wide-ranging powers in relation to schools, and it is the education authority that makes any decision to close one of its schools for public health reasons or for any other reason. For example, education authorities closed their schools on 20 March 2020, which is before the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020 came into force. They relied on their own powers to do that in response to public health advice. Ministers did not give a direction under the UK act until mid-May 2020.

Clearly, if a union, local authority or COSLA is concerned and wants further work to be done on clarification, I am more than happy to hear from them. I listened very carefully to what happened yesterday, and we will continue to work with EIS. The fact that the authorities could close the schools so early on in the pandemic shows that they could take a decision if it was required.

Of course, when local authorities take that advice, they are working exceptionally closely with public health authorities. I understand that the committee heard from Diane Stockton of Public Health Scotland, who talked about the local outbreak management process, how it was handled, and the integral relationship between local authorities and local public health officials during that process. I hope that that has given you a bit of a picture of what happened at the start of the pandemic and how decisions were taken.

My answers are based on the fact that we will very much seek consensus, given the importance of public health measures. We will take our time to get this through Parliament. We are determined that the bill will be fit for purpose—it needs to be fit for circumstances that we cannot foresee.

We can look at discussions that have been had. Professor Aileen McHarg has talked about the

“difference between having access to emergency powers and using those powers ... There is a better opportunity now to design an effective control framework than there would be if powers”

were

“to be acquired urgently ... in the context of another health emergency.”

We could discuss a draft bill at this point, but, if we were in the grip of a public health emergency, we could still be rushing a bill through Parliament. If we have learned anything from the early days of the pandemic, it is that we need to be as prepared as possible for when we will need such legislation. The suggestion is that we should have a draft bill that we could then present to Parliament, but that would not allow the Government to take the swift action that was necessary. The next stage, following the enactment of such a bill, would be the making of regulations. By then, we could be quite far into a public health emergency.

I ask colleagues who were here in the previous parliamentary session to remember how difficult it was to get emergency legislation through on that timetable and then to move on to the regulations that followed from it. Doing that necessarily takes time, and time is something that you do not have in a public health emergency.

I think that, with the experience of coronavirus, the right way to do things has been demonstrated. Regulations should not stay in place for one day longer than they should do, and guidance should not be stricter for one day longer than is needed, but, obviously, we do not want things to change for the sake of it. I cannot for the life of me see why, in the middle of a public health pandemic, a Government would make changes if those changes were not based on advice from the chief medical officer.

We should look to the safeguards in the bill, which states clearly that there needs to be advice from the CMO to allow Government to make regulations that are proportionate to what is happening. The safeguards are in the bill when it comes to why we would make regulations; it is all about the seriousness of a public health emergency.

Changes involving the removal of regulations would, of course, be made to ensure that we could get back to as normal a situation as everybody would want us to be in. The bill sets out that changes would be made to speed things up or make things tighter; it also explains why regulations would be taken away.

One of the key areas that the bill covers is the importance of continuity of education rather than a blanket closure approach. That points to the impact that the pandemic had on children, young people and students across the country. They will all have experienced it differently, depending on their individual circumstances, but, in many cases, their experiences have been exceptionally difficult. We have spoken about that when I have been before the committee previously.

The Government needs to rise to the important challenge of ensuring that we have the powers to enable us to deal with public health emergencies and ensure continuity of education. That has a real primacy in our thinking, because we must do everything that we can to protect students as far as we possibly can.

I would caveat that by saying that students’ experience might be variable because of different requirements in different parts of the country. Indeed, that is what we saw with the coronavirus. Different parts of the education system might require different types of regulation, so we are not taking a blanket approach in which the same thing happens from early years all the way up to the universities. Within that, we are endeavouring to protect students as much as possible and to put that absolutely front and centre in our work.

The bill allows the power to make regulations, which would then go through Parliament. In how the bill is framed at this point, we are ensuring that, instead of directional powers being taken, the powers to make regulations would go through Parliament. That would ensure the ability to have far greater scrutiny over ministerial decisions than we have been able to have under the directional powers that we had previously under the coronavirus legislation.

I think that we have all learned, as we have gone through the pandemic, the importance of quick decision making but also that parliamentary scrutiny must absolutely be included in that process. That is why the safeguards in the bill that require parliamentary approval for regulations are very important.

It is good to see that Mr Mundell is rising to the occasion once again on the issue. I am not going to rise to the political points that Mr Mundell makes. We have the opportunity to come together in the committee and as a Parliament to pass a serious piece of legislation that allows us to deal with future public health emergencies. That is the position that we are currently in.

I completely appreciate that Mr Mundell will be critical of the Government on all the aspects that he has raised, that he does not think that the Government has gone far enough, and that he thinks that we have gone too far on many other occasions. We have in front of us today a bill—

I was just trying to bring things to life a little with an example of how we can have differences.

That is an important point, and I would be interested to hear more about that from the committee. I can give a couple of examples of how we are moving forward with that.

The national improvement framework is one example. We are determined to ensure that spending on the education and skills portfolio has a direct impact on the national improvement framework and the work from that. That is all about improving outcomes for children and young people. The latest version of the framework was published in December. That is one example of the work that we do.

I also point to the work on the Scottish attainment challenge. There will be £1 billion of expenditure during this session of Parliament. It is vital that we know that the money is being spent in the most effective fashion. That is why my announcement to Parliament included the work that we will do with local authorities on stretch aims so that we will know what the money is being spent on and what schools and local authorities think that it will deliver. We will work closely with local authorities. Once we have that information, Education Scotland can ensure support for local authorities to deliver those outcomes, and we will be able to see what is being done to achieve them.

Those are two examples. The committee raises a fair point, and I am keen to see where we can do further work.

Teacher recruitment is absolutely integral to partners moving forward with the reduction in class contact time, which is exactly why the Government has invested so heavily in that. We are aware that there are practical challenges in bringing that in, of which timetabling is one, and that schools continue to be under pressure due to dealing with Covid. We know that there is a lot of pressure on the system, but one of the ways in which we can assist—if we can—is through a reduction in class contact time for teachers. Going back to an earlier point that we discussed, that is important for staff welfare.