The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
Displaying 2238 contributions
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
John Mason
For my last point, I will return to Professor Mitchell. You said that, during Covid, we have seen action. In Glasgow, we got cycle lanes quickly, although there was no consultation with the community. To my mind, that immediately suggests that there has been a trade-off. Consultation will take place on whether the cycle lanes are to be permanent, but it did not happen before they were put in. We also got off the street most people who were sleeping on the street, but that meant that people who were overcrowded in their housing could not get another house. I presume that the answer to that is to provide more housing. Will such trade-offs always exist?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
John Mason
That is possible.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
John Mason
Minister, you told the convener that some funding would be allocated in the spring budget revision. Can you explain why that cannot be done now?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
John Mason
You also said that there was a Barnett guarantee last year. We knew the minimum that we were going to get. What is the worst case scenario? Is it that all of the extra UK funding would be just a reallocation of existing funding and we would not get any consequentials?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
John Mason
So the UK budget and spending review have an impact on 2021-22 as well as on 2022-23.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 9 November 2021
John Mason
The discussion has been very interesting and has covered a lot of ground; I realise that I am the last questioner.
Coming from an accounting background, I want to pin down some numbers, especially with Professor Mitchell. You said that we should be bolder, so I was going to ask whether we should, for example, take 10 per cent off the hospital budget and put it into primary care. However, you then said that we can do things only incrementally. Would it be useful to have some fixed concept over the next few years, whereby we give, say, 1 per cent less than we might have to secondary hospital care and 1 per cent—or the equivalent figure—more to primary care? That might give us something solid that we as a committee could agree on and then put to Parliament. After all, as everyone has pointed out, we have not made the progress that we might have done.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
John Mason
That is helpful. I will move to a slightly different angle. Brian Whittle asked about groups, including ethnic minority groups, with a lower vaccine uptake. I was struck by the geographical spread of uptake. SPICe provided us with some figures. For example, 96.4 per cent of people in East Dunbartonshire have had two doses, whereas the figure for Glasgow, which I happen to represent, is only 78.9 per cent. That seems to be quite a variation. Should I be worried about that?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
John Mason
Our advisers suggested that we look at why people are not getting vaccinated and that we perhaps need to do more work on that. The three words that they used were “complacency”, “confidence” and “convenience”, as the things that are stopping people or that we can encourage. Some people are complacent about getting vaccinated—certification probably helps with that. On the confidence issue, do we just have to accept that there is a core element of the population that will just not be vaccinated no matter what we do, or do we need to do more work in that area?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
John Mason
If we are okay for time, convener, I will aim my next question at Professor Noakes. I want to follow up on what she said to Murdo Fraser. She talked about air-cleaning technologies and high-efficiency particulate filters, which I am trying to get my head round.
I have an issue with ScotRail, our railway operator. This might be slightly different from the situation with buildings, but ScotRail has some trains with locked windows. They could be opened, but they are not. I asked ScotRail whether it would be better to open the windows, but it said that its artificial air-circulation system is just as good as having the windows open. Is that likely to be true?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 4 November 2021
John Mason
That is helpful.
11:15