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 2232 contributions
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 September 2021
John Mason
We have a situation now in which our hospitals are struggling and the Scottish Ambulance Service is swamped. We must take action. From listening to your answers so far, I wonder whether it would be cleaner and neater from a human rights and equalities point of view just to close all the nightclubs, stop all the football matches with attendance over 10,000 and stop all the concerts. That would prevent any human rights issues, would it not? It would just be cleaner. Would that be your preference?
09:30COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 September 2021
John Mason
Perhaps Professor Montgomery will come in. I have been looking at the Ada Lovelace Institute paper from May, in which there was an emphasis on things such as testing behavioural impacts. That is all very well if we have time but, surely, we do not have time to do all that kind of stuff when we have to act quickly.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 September 2021
John Mason
But we have already opened up all those things. It is not a question of opening them with the passports in place; we have opened them up already, and now the hospitals and ambulances are struggling. It might not be fair to ask you this question, but is there some other action that we should take instead of introducing vaccination passports?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 September 2021
John Mason
I want to touch on one other area. The Scottish Human Rights Commission and Ada Lovelace submissions raise questions with regard to permitting the use of certificates. The plan is to insist on them for nightclubs, football and concerts, but some employers such as care homes are looking at insisting that employees have a vaccination certificate. Can the Government do anything about that, or is it entirely up to employers, venue operators or indeed anyone? For example, if a shop wants to insist on someone having a certificate, is that just up to the shop? Can we do something about it? The question is for Ms Robertson.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 23 September 2021
John Mason
Ms Robertson, should we just close everything?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2021
John Mason
So the national performance framework sits in the background, even if it is not always specifically mentioned.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2021
John Mason
You talked about whether we are making enough progress on, for example, climate change or child poverty. That brings us back to the question of whether there should be time-limited targets among all this. The convener mentioned that we do not have those so much now, because it is more about continuous improvement, although in relation to climate change, we have a lot of time-limited targets. Are you happy that the switch from time-limited targets to continuous improvement has been the right one, or do we need to shift the approach?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2021
John Mason
Covid has been mentioned, and I take all the points that have been made on how that has made it more difficult to get the data. However, if something worsens—and my guess is that quite a few indicators will worsen because of Covid—will it be possible to clearly separate how much of that is because of Covid and how much is for other reasons? For example, an indicator might be improving for various reasons, but Covid has dragged it down.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2021
John Mason
We have covered a lot of ground already. I think that it was Daniel Johnson who made the point that ministers do not often come to Parliament to talk about the national performance framework. It can also be argued that the rest of us in Parliament—back benchers and Opposition members—do not often ask questions about the national performance framework.
Should we all be concerned that it does not have the high profile that numbers of nurses, police officers or ambulances have? We all get excited about those numbers. Should we do more to promote the national performance framework, or is it not a problem?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2021
John Mason
The result of that is that a lot of the public do not know what it is.