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I am grateful to hear that Mr Rowley has taken his usual rational and considered approach to the regulatory infrastructure. [Laughter.] I welcome that and look forward to its being shared universally across the committee.

I very much agree with Mr Rowley’s sentiment that there is a danger of people thinking that Covid is all over and done with. It is not. I know that I sound like a broken record with my omicron example, but these things can happen quickly. As international travel takes off again, we do not know how quickly Covid variants might be able to spread across the world. It is absolutely legitimate to make that point.

On the preparedness question, Mr Rowley is correct. We are undertaking further work on future pandemic preparation. That has to be an all-Scotland approach, although that is not to say that the work must be done only at national level. It must be an all-Scotland approach that involves our resilience partnerships in every part of the country. From his long experience in Fife, Mr Rowley will be familiar with the local authority’s role as a key member of the resilience partnership at local level, where it works with the health board, the police, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and various other players. We rely on them—as we have done during the pandemic—to deliver an appropriate response. Indeed, we have relied on them in relation to stormy weather, too.

Those local resilience arrangements must be effective, so we must engage with those partners. I regularly meet the Scottish resilience partnership, which brings together the local resilience partnerships. We reflect on the current threats and challenges that we face, how we should respond to them and what learning we can apply in every part of the country. We undertake that work, and it is all valid because we should be focused on pandemic preparation.

If I was to reflect on the past few years, when we have conducted an annual stocktake of the resilience threats that face Scotland, a pandemic has always been right up there, but we sit there waiting for it to happen. Stormy weather, on the other hand, comes along very frequently, as we know, as do flooding and various other things. It is important that we have that foresight capability.

Mr Rowley went on to raise a fundamental issue that is relevant to the debate about a national care service. He is absolutely correct. He and I will agree that there are variations in the quality of the delivery of care around the country. The question is what we do about that. I would contend that the arrangements that we have in place currently do not provide assurance that every member of the public in every part of the country who needs care services is able to get services of sufficient quality to a sufficient extent. Following the research that was undertaken as part of the Feeley review, the Government’s view is that that would be best addressed by the establishment of a national care service. Parliament will have extensive discussions on that within the foreseeable future.

I emphasise that I acknowledge the importance of every member of the public, regardless of where they live, being able to rely on the ability to get a quality experience from a quality care service.

I think that it would help if I put some comments on the record regarding the regulations. The committee has on its agenda three SSIs and a motion to approve the Health Protection (Coronavirus) Requirements (Scotland) Amendment No 4 Regulations 2022. Those three instruments all put back the date on which the key coronavirus provisions would otherwise expire by default, and thus act to protect our ability to have in place any measures that are considered necessary.

The draft Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Requirements) (Scotland) Amendment (No 4) Regulations 2022 amend the date on which the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Requirements) (Scotland) Regulations 2021 expire, from 28 February 2022 to 24 September 2022. If the expiry date is not changed, the baseline measures will automatically cease on 28 February.

Although we are starting to take steps to remove the baseline measures, regulations that were shared with the committee yesterday will remove the Covid certification scheme from the regulations. It is important that the other baseline measures can remain in place after 28 February to support our review of the baseline measures on the basis of the latest data. We expect that the other legal requirements will be converted to guidance on 21 March, but as the First Minister said on Tuesday, that is subject to there being

“no significant adverse developments in the course of the virus”.—[Official Report, 22 February 2022; c 18.]

The draft Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Directions by Local Authorities) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2022 amend the date on which the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Directions by Local Authorities) (Scotland) Regulations 2020 expire, from 25 March 2022 to 24 September 2022.

The directions regulations will continue to be reviewed every 42 days, as the regulations require. Keeping those regulations in place for a longer period of time will support local outbreak management of coronavirus. Local action to control or close premises or businesses at the centre of an outbreak can, in many cases, be the most effective and proportionate response.

The Coronavirus Act 2020 (Alteration of Expiry Date) (Scotland) Regulations 2022 extend the expiry date of five provisions within the UK Coronavirus Act 2020 for a further six months, until 24 September. Without the regulations, those provisions would otherwise expire automatically on 24 March, alongside the majority of the act’s provisions. The provisions that are being retained for a further six months relate to: the remote registration of deaths and stillbirths; removing the requirement for vaccinations and immunisations to be delivered by or under the direction of a medical practitioner; powers for Scottish ministers to give either boarding or student accommodation directions that restrict access or confine occupants; the power for ministers to give educational continuity directions and to enable education and childcare provision to continue; and powers for ministers to make health protection regulations such as the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Requirements) (Scotland) Regulations 2021, which were mentioned earlier.

All those provisions are in the Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill, which is undergoing scrutiny by this and other relevant committees. The Government thinks that those particular provisions should be legislated for permanently from September 2022, should the Parliament agree to the alteration of expiry date regulations—that is, of course, a matter for separate determination by the Parliament.

The alteration of expiry date regulations have been made under the made affirmative procedure. At the time of laying, our understanding was that that was the only procedure available to us for the regulations. It has since come to our attention, after discussion among lawyers, that we could have used the affirmative procedure. Even with that understanding, however, we are assured that Parliament would have 40 days for scrutiny prior to the regulations coming into force on 24 March 2022.

I move,

That the COVID-19 Recovery Committee recommends that the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Requirements) (Scotland) Amendment (No. 4) Regulations 2022 [draft] be approved.

Yes, that is correct.

Those are the discussions that we are having as part of the formulation of the testing transition plan. It has to be accepted that we cannot sustain the level of testing infrastructure that we have had in place for most of the past two years but we cannot have none in place.

There is a really interesting global point on one of the lessons from the start of the outbreak. Many of the Asian countries have been able to withstand Covid to a greater extent because, due to their experience of the severe acute respiratory syndrome-related viruses in the past, they have always maintained a much greater testing capacity and capability than was ordinarily the case in western countries. We might not go to those levels, but we certainly have to go some way towards them to maintain surveillance, so we have to have a debate on sufficiency.

We believe that a sufficiently credible and capable ONS survey is vital to enabling us to be properly prepared. We must have a level of testing infrastructure that enables us to detect and identify any new strains and we must have capacity to identify any emerging issues within individual populations. For example, Dominic Munro made a point about waste water sampling. It is a good way of determining the parts of the country where there might be, comparatively speaking, more incidence of the virus. The Scottish Government will sustain such sampling on an on-going basis.

There is not a definitive answer to Mr Fairlie’s question today. It is an important and legitimate question. Over the next few months, we will have to find a satisfactory answer to the question of what level of capacity we should retain.

The characterisation that Mr Whittle puts to me is not my understanding of the situation, but I will go away and look at it again. There is accessibility for critical information, though perhaps not all information—I accept that—but I will certainly consider the issues that Mr Whittle raises and encourage the health secretary to do so.

Obviously, we have judgments to make about the nature of the testing programme that we can take forward. That is informed by the decisions that are taken by the United Kingdom Government. Clearly, the financial arrangements that support an expansive testing programme will, if they are curtailed, have an effect on our ability to deliver such a programme.

We have to pursue the detail of the UK Government’s announcement that was made earlier this week. It was pretty obvious that there had been a tense set of discussions within the UK Government—some might call it chaotic—which led to the announcements on Monday. That has not provided us with particular clarity about its intentions. We are now seeking that clarity, and that will inform the testing programme. I assure Mr Mason and the committee that the points that Professor Leitch and I put on the record in our responses to the convener will very much inform the formulation of the plan that the Government puts in place.

Obviously, a process is gone through to verify that payments are appropriate, but all local authorities are now making the payments. The system is active, working and making payments in all parts of the country.

Obviously, individual local authorities will work to their own pace, but we encourage them to move as quickly as possible, given that the resources are available to be distributed. I am certainly keen to encourage all local authorities to resolve any payments as quickly as possible. It is important that businesses receive payment, but it is equally important that it is appropriate for them to receive payment, so the necessary checks must be made to ensure that we are confident about the spending of public money.

There is a significant opportunity. As Mr Whittle has said, this is a moment to reset many of our attitudes in that respect.

In a moment, Professor Leitch will give a much more substantive clinical opinion than the one that I am about to give to the committee—

—given my long-standing clinical and epidemiological background. [Laughter.]

Fundamentally, the pandemic has shown us that the healthier you are, the better your chances are of weathering some form of adversity to your health. Some healthy people have been absolutely felled by Covid, but, in general, keeping yourself in a good state of health is an important prerequisite for handling any situation.

There is an opportunity to reinforce messages about our individual responsibility and opportunity to lead as healthy a life as we can. Those messages have been around for a long time, but they need to be reinforced. I know the importance of ensuring that people are physically healthy, eating well and exercising. Routine, several-times-a-day factors can be significant in the amount of weight that we carry, how we feel and how much energy we have.

If I go for a run before I start my working day, I generally have a better day, because I have looked after myself in the morning. All those things count when taken together. I know that such points will resonate with Mr Whittle—us athletes have to stick together. [Laughter.]

Mr Whittle makes a serious point about the opportunities, which links to what Mr Fairlie said about public awareness. The messaging that we provide about our health and wellbeing has to equip people with the ideas and arguments that will enable them to be as physically capable as possible of withstanding some of the issues that Covid can throw at us.

I invite Professor Leitch to add to that.

I would agree, where we can do that, but I would simply say that, to my knowledge, the Government does not run any leisure facilities in the country. We are hugely dependent on local authorities for the running of leisure facilities. I am not trying to split hairs—it is a very practical point. I encourage local authorities, in deciding their priorities, to create the opportunities for exercise events.

I can think of really good examples that I have seen in my constituency, where health professionals have gone along to lunch clubs for senior citizens and persuaded them to get involved in a wee bit of exercise, sitting in their chairs, before they have their soup and sandwiches. When health professionals have gone along to such events in the community and engaged with people in that way, those interventions have helped to strengthen mobility and to push against the frailty of some of our senior citizens.

There are simple things that can be done, and I assure Mr Whittle that the Government will be engaged in messaging about that activity and on the substance of those interventions, where we are able to do so.