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 2390 contributions
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 30 September 2021
John Mason
I will leave it at that, just now.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 30 September 2021
John Mason
Professor Reicher mentioned conscientious objection. I am interested in how that might work. Can somebody simply say that they object to vaccination passports and therefore will not get one? If so, should they still be excluded from going to a big football match or a nightclub or that kind of thing, or should they be counted as exempt, just like somebody who is medically exempt?
09:15COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 30 September 2021
John Mason
That leads me to my final question, which I will put to Professor Drury. Although the intention of the Government and the Parliament is that certification would be needed only for nightclubs, big crowds and so on, I presume that employers and other venues could use the system as part of their entry requirements. Would that be a good thing or a bad thing? Are there risks in that?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 30 September 2021
John Mason
One of the experts in today’s previous panel said that, at one point, we thought that a 70 per cent vaccination rate would be enough to give herd immunity to our whole society. We have now realised that that figure was too low. Are there are target figures, both for the whole population and for the minorities who, as Mr Fairlie said, have not got the vaccine yet?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 30 September 2021
John Mason
There is a lot in there. My first question is for Professor Dye. You mentioned people who could not be vaccinated. It has been suggested to us that that is fewer than one in 1,000 people. Is that about right?
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 30 September 2021
John Mason
Other members might have follow-on questions on that point.
France, which has been mentioned a few times as a comparator, seems to have a much wider scheme in the sense that people need to have a certificate for many more services. Does that make a difference? Can we be more relaxed because we are saying that our scheme is for only a very small number of high-risk, luxury items? Is the advantage of France’s wider scheme that it has become more widely accepted? I will put that question to Professor Dye, because he is in France.
COVID-19 Recovery Committee
Meeting date: 30 September 2021
John Mason
Thank you; that was helpful. If we did not have vaccination certificates, what would we need to do? For example, if we were not to have certificates, would we just close all nightclubs at midnight? If the attendance limit for events was 10,000, would we put a limit of 10,000 on all crowds?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 28 September 2021
John Mason
We have spent time before on the links with national outcomes, and we will spend time on that in future, but I will leave that for the moment.
One of your other suggestions, which is in paragraph 26 of the report, is:
“future updates should include better information about planned spending options and how these could affect outcomes.”
What do you mean by that? Local government often has options in its budgeting. A council will say something like, “If we close all the libraries, that will save us £1 million.” The public then get excited and react, the libraries are saved, and that is good news. That is not the way that we have tended to do Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government budgeting. Do you mean that we should throw out options for people to comment on or do you mean something else?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 28 September 2021
John Mason
I want to follow up on what Mr Taylor said to Liz Smith about looking at changes during the year. I get the point that was made by Ross Greer—or whoever made it—that we should maybe have four reviews or that they should happen at fixed times. Will Mr Taylor unpack that a bit more? If we got a bit of extra money from Westminster through Barnett consequentials and the Government announced that it would be put into childcare or something like that, do you think that the Education, Children and Young People Committee or the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, for example, should then do a bit more work on that announcement? Would you suggest that committees might examine such matters more than they have done in the past?
Finance and Public Administration Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 28 September 2021
John Mason
Does that matter, though? Should we be worried about that, or do we just have to accept it?