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Chamber and committees

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 10 July 2025
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Displaying 2881 contributions

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COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Budget Scrutiny 2023-24

Meeting date: 19 January 2023

John Mason

On that point, it was previously suggested that the public sector staff numbers, as a whole, would go back to pre-Covid levels. Has that commitment been affected by the pay increases?

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Budget Scrutiny 2023-24

Meeting date: 19 January 2023

John Mason

You replied on 20 December to the letter that the committee wrote to you. Our first question was about Covid recovery and the cost crisis—specifically, whether inflationary pressures and the cost crisis are negatively impacting on the Covid recovery strategy. We got a page-long answer, but I was still not very clear about the matter having read it. Can I press you on that point? Are inflationary pressures impacting on the Covid recovery strategy?

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Budget Scrutiny 2023-24

Meeting date: 19 January 2023

John Mason

Deputy First Minister, you answered the convener’s question about how vaccinations are going. The figures for the over-65s and older adults in care homes seem very good, but the figures for care workers do not seem quite as strong—I think that you said that the uptake rate was around or below 50 per cent. For specified front-line social care workers, I think that the figure is 39.8 per cent, which seems quite low. Do you have an explanation for that?

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Budget Scrutiny 2023-24

Meeting date: 19 January 2023

John Mason

Absolutely—I completely agree with that. Has anything specific in the Covid recovery strategy suffered because of all that?

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Monitoring Covid-19 Recovery

Meeting date: 19 January 2023

John Mason

Thanks very much.

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Monitoring Covid-19 Recovery

Meeting date: 19 January 2023

John Mason

Across the political parties in Scotland, most of us agree that we should allocate more to prevention and that spend should be less reactive. However, because we already put money into hospitals and prisons, for example, we find it difficult to change that approach.

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Monitoring Covid-19 Recovery

Meeting date: 19 January 2023

John Mason

Thank you. That is helpful.

I will move on to Covid specifically. The Scottish Government’s intention is to bring its Covid strategy to an end this summer. Is that too soon? Should the period of recovery from Covid be longer, or should we put that aside and deal with general problems from now on?

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Budget Scrutiny 2023-24

Meeting date: 19 January 2023

John Mason

Do you think that there is active resistance? Misinformation continues to come to me on social media. Is that having an impact?

Finance and Public Administration Committee

Subordinate legislation

Meeting date: 17 January 2023

John Mason

When I was younger, it was almost assumed that, if a person had a reasonably decent job, they would try to buy a flat and perhaps then a house. That was quite normal. However, I am afraid that that has changed. There are various reasons for that. As Ross Greer said, one is that people from cities who want to be second-home owners can go to rural areas—for example, those from Glasgow can go to Fife—and outbid local workers who are not on a great salary. In cities, the problem is that young people cannot compete with people who are buying to let, so anything that we can do to redress that balance and help younger people who are struggling to get on to the housing ladder has to be positive. This is only a small change—we are talking about 2 per cent, which is not a big deal in many ways.

Finance and Public Administration Committee

Subordinate legislation

Meeting date: 17 January 2023

John Mason

On another angle, we asked where the money should come from otherwise to make up the difference—I think that it was £34 million—and one or two of the people who responded to us broadly said, “That is nothing to do with us.” How do you respond to somebody like that?