During Portfolio Questions on Covid Recovery to the Scottish Government, Local MSP for the Linlithgow Constituency, Fiona Hyslop, has raised the importance of maintaining certain measures put in place as a result of the Pandemic, such as digital transactions like registration of births and deaths, in order to allow improvements as part of the Covid recovery strategy.
Fiona also asked how the proposed Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill will provide resilience and readiness for future variants or future pandemics.
Fiona said,
“Will the cabinet secretary confirm that, as every part of society and the economy has had to transform rapidly in the light of Covid, some measures—such as those on new digital legal transactions—may need a permanent statutory footing that will enable such widely welcomed improvements to be maintained as part of the Covid recovery? Ensuring resilience and readiness for any future pandemic, severe variant or emergency will be part of every country’s response in the Covid recovery.”
The Covid Recovery Secretary, John Swinney, replied to Fiona to say,
“The Bill that is before Parliament aims to do two things. It aims to embed necessary and practical steps that have been appropriate to sustain public services in the pandemic and to make them permanent when the case for that is arguable.
The Bill is designed to update the statute book so that we can respond quickly to any development of the pandemic that could be acute and threatening to public health. The bill contains the appropriate safeguards and caveats to ensure that such measures are used only in exceptional circumstances. It is designed to equip Scotland with the necessary legislation to take into account the experience from the pandemic of dealing with an emergency situation and with practical issues and consequences that arose from the implications of our decisions.”
ENDS
Notes
Link to the official report: http://archive2021.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/report.aspx?r=13561&mode=pdf