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The first thing to say is that the pandemic is not over. Each and every one of us must continue to take steps to reduce transmission. I am talking about the basic mitigations: wearing a mask, keeping your distance and not mixing indoors where possible, all of which are important. It is also really important to get your vaccination. A massive vaccination programme is going on, and the level of vaccination that we are managing to achieve in this country is remarkable. As I think that I said, about 9.5 million doses have gone into people’s arms since the start of the programme in December. The requirement for vaccination during the autumn programme this year—the first tranche—was 8 million doses, to cover two doses for the eligible population; now we have to give 7.5 million doses in half the time, because we are combining flu vaccination with Covid boosters. It is a phenomenal task, and getting people vaccinated is a really important step.

You are absolutely right to say that the healthcare system faces the most challenging period in its 73 years, as I have heard the cabinet secretary and others say. We still face a global pandemic. There are about 800 people in hospital with Covid at the moment and many intensive care units have a number of Covid patients. That makes it difficult to restart the NHS, because many people need a period in an intensive care unit after a routine operation. We are in extremely challenging times, with pent-up demand and patients presenting with a level of acuity, because people have not accessed healthcare in the usual way over the past couple of years. All that makes for an exceptionally challenging situation.

A great deal of work is going on to improve the situation. Just last week, you will have seen the announcement about A and E and the use of a multidisciplinary team to ensure that people get the right care at the right time and that A and E sees only the people who need to present and be treated there. Over the past few days, I was briefed about some excellent work that is going on in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to improve flow through hospitals. We recognise how significant that approach could be if it were taken throughout the country. We are very close to the issues and challenges that people on the ground are facing. The situation is very dynamic, but we are finding ways to improve it as we go along.

The period ahead will be difficult—there is absolutely no doubt about that. We anticipate a significantly more severe burden of disease when it comes to flu, given that immunity has dropped because we did not experience a flu season last year. There are massive challenges, to which we must rise, and we are across those challenges in a dynamic way and taking steps to face them over the next few months.

Do you mean through the maternity services?

I might bring in Michael Kellet to speak to this. One of the big challenges that we have in Scotland is that one size never fits all. In my constituency, delivering public services in the far north-west of Sutherland is significantly harder, given its geography, topography, and population sparsity, compared with a city. Inner cities, however, have their own challenges, such as poverty and access to transport and all sorts of things. There is in Scotland a recognition that one size does not fit all. That is important, especially from a patient’s perspective so, as I said, one of the things that we are trying to do with realistic medicine is to offer people person-centred care and flexible services that work for them.

Much of the work on implementing improvements in maternity services had to be paused as we turned to face the pandemic, but we are starting to pick that work up again. What you will see, I hope, is a family-centred service that recognises how important the family unit is to a child’s health. That is one of the reasons for the payments to support families when they are visiting children in hospital. There is plenty of evidence that shows the impact that such payments can have.

The day that I launched that service, I met an amazing woman whose child was in hospital with a long-term condition. She had had to change her job to a much lower-income job to be able to continue to visit her child in hospital. She said that when she arrived at hospital the costs racked up on her credit card almost immediately, so those payments will make a significant difference. We recognise that family are not just visitors; particularly in relation to neonatal care, families are an essential part of a child’s care. That illustrates our most significant strides towards that family-centred approach.

Michael, do you want to add anything?

We have work going on in relation to that issue and, again, I can write to you with more details. I know that there are a couple of pilot schemes in Dundee around ensuring that children have access to the school estate out of school hours for not only sport, but creative and cultural activities. We recognise how important that is and that schools are a public space.

It is interesting that you should ask about sports facilities in schools. I recently took part in a four-nations sports cabinet meeting and found out that the United Kingdom sports minister is working on the issue. At the end of that meeting, I asked for more details from my officials about the situation in Scotland and I will be more than happy to share that with you when I get it.

As I have said repeatedly today, the solutions to some of the challenges that we face in terms of, for example, health inequalities do not all lie within my portfolio and, in order to solve them, we will have to rise to the challenge of breaking down silos to work together across portfolios. We need to ensure that there is a cohesiveness across the piece so that we can deliver our priorities. I will be working hard to ensure that public health priorities are reflected in the bill. One of the basic issues is tackling food insecurity. It is devastating that, in the sixth-richest country in the world, we have people who are food insecure, so we will be focusing on that, as well as on the broader issues of nutrition.

Michael Kellet might want to come in here, because it is not my bill, so my level of detailed understanding of the bill is perhaps not what it would be if it were.

I understand that there are duties on local authorities and that there will be, for example, a requirement to procure locally as well as other measures that will deliver health benefits to the population.

Michael, can you help me out here?

As a rural MSP, I am focusing on that. We must make sure that people in rural areas benefit as much as others. We should not default to centralising public services far away from them.

I will bring in Michael Kellet to give you a bit more information about the cross-Government work that is going on. However, one of the things that we in the Scottish Government have always recognised but which has become even clearer with the pandemic is that siloed working will not serve the citizens of Scotland. As a result, a great deal more cross-Government work is going on than there ever was before, and the Deputy First Minister, in his Covid recovery role, has a cross-portfolio role to ensure that policies join up across Government. There is work going on across Government on such issues.

On the universal basic income, health inequalities are, as I have said, related to wealth inequalities, so the solution to health inequalities lies in ensuring that people have an adequate income. We need to tackle individual disempowerment, and there are undoubtedly people and groups in our communities who are easy to ignore. It is not just a simple matter of tackling poverty, although that would go a long way towards tackling health inequalities.

My party is very sympathetic to the idea of a universal basic income, but we are not convinced that we can introduce it without the full powers of independence. As a result, we are exploring ways of assuring people in Scotland that they can have a dignified level of income, although I realise that that falls short of a universal basic income.

I think that you can see our commitment to such an approach in, for example, our handling of school lunch provision during the pandemic. It was quickly recognised that we should get money into the pockets of parents so that they could feed their children adequately. That was brought in all over Scotland quite quickly, because that is the best thing that can be done to support families and the most effective way of ensuring that children are well fed.

Michael Kellet will say a little more about the cross-Government work that he is involved in.

All over the UK, we found that people who drank heavily drank more during the pandemic, which I think largely explains the alcohol deaths. Twenty-three people a week die as a direct result of alcohol. As part of the national mission to tackle drug deaths, there has been increased investment, which is used by alcohol and drug partnerships all over the country. Those services are not separate on the ground—the alcohol and drug partnerships are the structure that is in place.

The investment to tackle the national drug crisis also supports people with alcohol addiction problems, and additional investment of £100 million to increase the availability of residential rehabilitation will benefit people with problematic alcohol use.

We recognise that more can be done to reduce the harms and increase help with treatment and recovery, but since 2008 we have invested more than £1 billion in tackling problem alcohol and drug use. This year, we are spending £140.7 million on the issue of alcohol and drug use.

The 20-minute neighbourhood is a win-win for public health. If people only have to go 20 minutes away and are easily able to access public services, active travel becomes more possible. If we design public services to be within walking distance of where people live, we are likely to have a more active nation than we would if we designed public services so that folk had to hop in a car and go to a centralised point.

That active nation agenda is vitally important. It ticks every box. The Government’s priorities right now are to tackle inequality and climate change and to improve health. The active nation agenda improves every one of those. If people are more active, we reduce the number of cars on the road and the level of pollution. We will tackle climate change and will have healthier people.

The 20-minute neighbourhood is an important part of what we are trying to achieve. As ever in Scotland, that may be trickier to achieve in my part of the country.