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Seòmar agus comataidhean

Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

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Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 5 May 2021
  6. Current session: 12 May 2021 to 6 July 2025
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Displaying 2867 contributions

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COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Communication of Public Health Information Inquiry

Meeting date: 30 June 2022

John Mason

To follow the same theme, as you said, Professor Leitch, it is important where we get our information from and Twitter is not the most reliable source. However, there is quite a lot of discussion on Twitter and that 20 million figure has been very useful. I have been quoting it quite a lot myself.

You said that you disagreed with Brian Whittle about the numbers. Can you give us any figures for how many people have a serious reaction to the vaccines or experience side effects? I had a sore arm and I did not feel well for 24 hours, which is pretty common. However, people are quoting this yellow card system and all sorts of things. You said the numbers for blood clots from Covid were “off-the-scale”. Are there definite figures about how many people have either died from the vaccine directly or indirectly or had a serious injury?

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Communication of Public Health Information Inquiry

Meeting date: 30 June 2022

John Mason

I will move on to a slightly different subject. We have taken a bit of evidence about whom people trust for information. This relates particularly to the Polish community and other ethnic minorities being a bit reticent and, in some cases, their having received information from the Government of their home country, be it Poland, Africa, Pakistan or wherever.

I was interested in the paper that Public Health Scotland submitted, which says that the most trusted people are the NHS, Public Health Scotland, health professionals and the Government, which is encouraging. Less trusted sources include social media, community leaders, religious leaders and news media, which struck me as interesting. I think that we had thought that if we could go to community leaders in some ethnic minority groups, they would be more trusted, but Public Health Scotland seems to be saying something different. Do you have any thoughts on who is trusted and who is not?

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Communication of Public Health Information Inquiry

Meeting date: 30 June 2022

John Mason

Thanks very much, minister. We have the message: more scientists—fewer lawyers and accountants.

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Communication of Public Health Information Inquiry

Meeting date: 30 June 2022

John Mason

Looking forward, rather than back, and thinking about working with the MHRA and so on, are there things that we can do in the future? Science is moving on and, as I understand it, we produced the vaccines much quicker than we normally would. That might happen again in the future, but that, in itself, gave people a wee bit of a lack of confidence. Is that just inevitable or do you think that maybe we could do something better in the future?

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Communication of Public Health Information Inquiry

Meeting date: 30 June 2022

John Mason

This is my final question. The Royal Society of Edinburgh was here early on giving us advice. There were a few things that it was quite keen on. It certainly wanted more science education in order to get the whole population thinking more scientifically, and it suggested the idea of an independent fact-checking service. Are you positive about those suggestions?

Finance and Public Administration Committee

Financial Memorandum for the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill (Post-legislative Scrutiny)

Meeting date: 28 June 2022

John Mason

Some of the external providers felt that they had capacity or could produce a little bit more capacity at a lower cost than the council could. There was a general comment that councils have a conflict of interest, because they are both providers—in one sense, they compete with the other sectors—and funders. Is there a conflict of interest?

Finance and Public Administration Committee

Financial Memorandum for the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill (Post-legislative Scrutiny)

Meeting date: 28 June 2022

John Mason

We received data from 31 local authorities; what happened to the other one?

Finance and Public Administration Committee

Financial Memorandum for the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill (Post-legislative Scrutiny)

Meeting date: 28 June 2022

John Mason

Right.

Finance and Public Administration Committee

Financial Memorandum for the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill (Post-legislative Scrutiny)

Meeting date: 28 June 2022

John Mason

The suggestion was that at least some local authorities were almost requiring parents to take up hours in council facilities, if those were available, and to get the extras around the edges.

Finance and Public Administration Committee

Financial Memorandum for the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill (Post-legislative Scrutiny)

Meeting date: 28 June 2022

John Mason

That is great—thank you.

On a wider issue, one of the things that we are trying to look at—this bill provides one example of it—is how financial memorandums work overall. I do not know how many financial memorandums you have been involved in. I think that you said that you came into this area in 2016, so you were not there when the financial memorandum for this act was produced. If you are able to comment, will you tell us how easy it is to produce a financial memorandum? Are we expecting more accuracy than is possible?

You mentioned that the number of eligible kids had dropped by 7.5 per cent but, when we looked at the whole picture, we saw that it had dropped from 225,000 to 206,000 to 184,000. There has been a dramatic drop in what everybody expected, probably, so I do not think that anybody is criticising the original forecast. With that kind of change, is it impossible to get a financial memorandum that is accurate?