Lothian MSP Miles Briggs has selected the winner of his annual Christmas card competition, which he has been running since his election to the Scottish Parliament in 2016.
This year’s Christmas Card theme was NHS Scotland, to honour frontline workers who have worked incredibly hard throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
The competition was open to all primary schools in Edinburgh and the Lothians, and Elsie Adams age 8, from P4 at St Peter’s Primary School in Morningside, was chosen as the winner.
Elsie won £50 Amazon voucher (sponsored by Morrison Construction), afternoon tea at the Caledonian (sponsored by Waldorf Astoria) and a family day out at Conifox Adventure Park (sponsored by Conifox).
Miles was unable to present Elsie with her prize in person due to Covid-19 restrictions.
Lothian MSP, Miles Briggs, said:“There were some very creative Christmas cards this year and pupils in Edinburgh and the Lothian’s once again showed their artistic talent.
“The competition was very close with hundreds of Christmas card entries from primary schools across the region, with inventive designs from hand sanitiser to the distinctive NHS rainbow.
“What was clear from the entries was that primary school pupils are aware of the tremendous effort that NHS staff have made throughout this year.
“Congratulations to the winner Elsie, whose bright card and fun design stood out as the winner of my 2020 Christmas card competition.”
GUIDANCE FOR PEOPLE IN EDINBURGH SELF-ISOLATING UPDATED FROM MONDAY
MSP for Edinburgh Pentlands, Gordon MacDonald, has welcomed the announcement that the Scottish Government’s self-isolation payment will not be impacted, following an update that anyone required to self-isolate will need to do so for 10 days, rather than 14 days.
The £500 grant – which will not be reduced as a result of the updated clinical guidance – is for those who will face financial hardship due to being asked to self-isolate and will be targeted at people who are in receipt of Universal Credit or legacy benefits.
The four chief medical officers of the UK announced on Friday that close contacts of a positive case and those returning from countries without a travel corridor will be able to self-isolate for 10 days instead of the current 14 days from Monday.
SNP MSP Gordon MacDonald said: “Self-isolation, both for contacts identified by Test and Protect and through the foreign travel quarantine requirements, is critical to protecting people and reducing the spread of COVID-19.
“While self-isolation may now be for a shorter period, it remains vital that everyone who is required to do so remains at their home or other named address for this time. Only by doing this can we break the chain of transmission of the virus, protect the NHS and save lives.
“To ensure people do not experience financial hardship as a result of doing the right thing, the SNP Government has ensured that the £500 grant for people on low incomes who have been asked to self-isolate will not change.
“I’d urge everyone in Edinburgh who is facing a loss of income due to self-isolating to apply for this payment.”
The Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee has indicated it will support the general principles of the Hate Crime Bill on condition it is amended in line with recommendations the Committee is unanimously making. The committee’s recommendations build on, but go further than, the commitments already made by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice to make changes to the Bill.
The Justice Committee has concluded that further changes should be made to the Bill to ensure that those making comments which others find offensive are not criminalised, while still robustly tackling those perpetrating hate crimes.
The Committee has unanimously concluded as follows:
For behaviour to be considered “abusive” under the Bill, prosecutors must be required to show that a ‘reasonable person’ would consider the behaviour to be abusive, setting a higher bar for prosecution;
The Bill’s provisions safeguarding free speech must be deepened and strengthened;
The ‘reasonableness’ defence available to a person charged with a stirring-up offence must be clarified.
The Committee also agreed that while there should not be an absolute defence against prosecution for acts in private homes, people should be allowed to express their own, perhaps offensive, views within their own home or other private space without fear of investigation or prosecution.
It has therefore called on the Scottish Government to find a way to amend the Bill that better reflects its view around ‘stirring up’ offences having a public element to them.
The Committee welcomed the appointment of Baroness Helena Kennedy QC to chair a working group on misogynistic harassment, and has called on the working group to report within a year to avoid further significant delay. However, any legislative change that is recommended by this group should be subject to the fullest possible parliamentary scrutiny.
Speaking as the report was published, Committee Convener, Adam Tomkins MSP, said:“Balancing freedom of expression and legislating to ensure hateful actions can be prosecuted is a difficult task.
“The Committee is grateful for the wealth and variety of evidence we heard, and hope we have reflected, in our report. We also welcome the Cabinet Secretary taking the unusual step of accepting that his Bill required amendment before we began our scrutiny.
“We believe that, if amended in line with our unanimous recommendations, this Bill should be fit to protect the communities it affords extra protections to, without encroaching on the ability of citizens to have robust debates, hold views others find unpalatable, and express themselves freely.
“It is a testament to the open-mindedness of all Members to have found such consensus on what has undoubtedly been a contentious piece of legislation.”
The Committee’s call for views received an unprecedented response, with almost 2,000 submissions. A release about this and the Bill timetable is set out in this release.
The Committee heard oral evidence from almost 40 stakeholder organisations.
The Government should use the Job Retention Scheme (JRS) to encourage more workers to self-isolate at home – a key part of the strategy to fight Covid-19 that the current sick pay regime is failing to support – according to new research published by the Resolution Foundation.
The report – Time Out – explores the eligibility, generosity and efficacy of the UK’s statutory sick pay regime and Test and Trace payments during the Covid-19 crisis, and considers the case for reform.
It concludes that with self-isolating continuing to play a crucial role in fighting Covid-19 throughout 2021 as the vaccine is rolled-out, and with the Head of Test and Trace Dido Harding admitting that financial difficulty means some people are refusing to self-isolate, the current system needs to be replaced with a more effective regime.
The report notes that the main support available for employees asked to self-isolate at home is Statutory Sick Pay (SSP). But at just £96 a week, SSP offers the lowest level of Government support provided across any advanced economy during the pandemic. SSP replaces less than a quarter of a typical employee’s previous earnings, compared to an OECD average replacement rate of 60 per cent.
Furthermore, two million employees earning less than £120 a week are not eligible for SSP – a barrier that excludes one-in-four part-time workers, and one-in-seven workers in retail, hospitality and leisure – leaving them with no income at all if they self-isolate at home.
The UK Government has implicitly acknowledged the limitations of SSP by introducing £500 Test and Trace Support Payments (TTSP) for individuals entitled to benefits.
However, the report finds that these more generous payments are not reaching enough people, with only one-in-eight workers entitled to them. For example, data supplied by local authorities across West Yorkshire – an area which has had one of the highest infection rates in the UK over recent months – showed that just 1,783 payments have been made between 12 October and 25 November.
With financial support for self-isolating at home playing a critical role in helping to bring Covid infections down, the report calls for a more effective, generous and easy to deliver support regime to be put in place – using the JRS, Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).
The Foundation proposes the following support:
Employees to be paid via the JRS. Extending the JRS to include self-isolation payments would ensure workers retained 80 per cent of their previous earnings. The Foundation estimates this would cost £426 million a month (up from around £112 million which is spent on SSP) if 643,000 employees used the scheme.
Self-employed workers to be paid pro-rata via the SEISS. Grants of up £830 should be awarded to self-employed workers who need to self-isolate for ten days, if they haven’t already claimed.
Self-employed workers not entitled to SEISS to be paid via enhanced ESA. The many self-employed workers not eligible for the SEISS are entitled to ESA. This payment should be uprated by £20 to £96 a week – in line with the uprating of Universal Credit – while people are asked to self-isolate.
The Foundation adds that while the following package of measures would help to get Covid infections down, the failure of the UK’s sick pay regime should not be forgotten once the pandemic has passed. Permanent reforms to both its eligibility, generosity and operation will be needed, it says.
Maja Gustafsson, Researcher at the Resolution Foundation, said:“Getting people to self-isolate at home is one of the important tools we have in combatting Covid-19. But asking workers to do that often involves a major financial sacrifice – and the UK’s sick pay regime has been woefully inadequate in providing the necessary support. Many more Covid infections will have taken place as a result.
“Coronavirus vaccines will take many months to roll out, so more workers will need to self-isolate at home to contain the spread of the virus next year. Given the failure of the current sick pay regime, the Government must turn now to the far more successful job support schemes to provide workers and firms with the financial support they need to do the right thing.”
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady commented: “The lack of decent sick pay has been a gaping hole in the government’s Covid strategy. Asking workers to self-isolate on £96 a week is not viable – especially when many don’t have savings to fall back on.”
She warned: “This problem needs fixing urgently. Until people are given sick pay they can survive on they will be forced to choose between following the health advice and paying their bills. Nobody should be plunged into financial hardship for doing the right thing.
“Sick pay should be raised to at least the rate of the real living wage and everyone should be entitled to it. It’s not right that two million workers are excluded from it because they do not earn enough.”
TUC polling published in September revealed that more than 4 in 10 workers would be plunged into financial hardship if forced to self-isolate for two weeks on SSP.
There has been much posturing, many false dawns and plenty manufactured fury over the last many months concerning the negotiation of a deal (or not) to govern the UK’s trade with the world’s biggest and most integrated market which just happens to be on our doorstep, the EU.
But whether it’s a Deal or No Deal, future trading with what is easily our biggest trading partner will become much more difficult following the end of Transition on 31 January. Even the Bank of England, not known for expressing extreme opinions, has said that the hit to the UK economy over the medium term will be worse than that caused by the Covid pandemic.
The damage has already been done. For some, that is a price worth paying but not for the majority of Scots, and not, if the polls are to be believed, for the majority across the UK either now.
But regardless, the damage is done. That is the real point. The UK is out of the EU. Relationships have been damaged in the process, and not just trading relationships. The locks on the doors are about to be changed. The weather is growing colder while the UK is outside and is no longer trusted by those who might once have given shelter.
So where do we go from here? How do we rebuild? Well a reasonable place to start might be to better understand what others think about us after all the recent sound and fury. Plenty of uninformed opinion is thrown about every night on TV by “spokesmen” who see mainly an opportunity to further their particular agendas.
Is it time to hear from some non-politicians? Real people who live in European cities and who know what is going on in their respective countries?
The European Movement in Scotland certainly thinks so and is organising a webinar on 14th December with experts from Rome, Berlin, Brussels and Edinburgh to explore how Europeans now think about the UK and Scotland.
Deputy First Minister John Swinney has written to Council Leader Adam McVey to explain Tuesday’s controversial decision to keep Edinburgh in Level 3 of coronavirus restrictions.
The letter comes after Council Leaders reacted with ‘anger and dismay‘ to the news that the Capital would not be moving to Level 2, contrary to what had been anticipated and it follows a meeting between Mr Swinney and Cllr McVey on Tueday evening.
Fiirst Minister Nicola Sturgeon and National Clinical Director Jason Leitch also explained the rationale behind the decision during questions following yesterday’s daily media briefing.
In his letter, Mr Swinney says: ‘A move to Level 2 in Edinburgh would mean opening up significantly more services in our second biggest city in the two weeks before Christmas. So we wanted to have as much confidence as possible that the situation is as stable as possible before we make that move.
‘In that context, the recent rise in cases, while relatively slight, was a cause for concern when seen against the backdrop of a much slower reduction in cases and test positivity for Edinburgh over the last two weeks than for Scotland as a whole.
‘By the same token, while Scotland as a whole has seen declining test positivity, the test positivity for Edinburgh is rising. So, weighing the data in the wider context, we decided it was prudent to keep Edinburgh in Level 3 this week, monitor the position closely, and to review the level again next week.
Council Leader Adam McVey and Depute Leader Cammy Day had been pressing the case for Edinburgh’s restrictions to be eased, in recognition of the city’s relatively low COVID case numbers and the care taken by residents and businesses keeping to the rules.
Responding to the First Minister’s announcement on Tuesday, Council Leader Adam McVey said: I’m extremely disappointed. Our numbers are stable and have now been consistently within the rates of level two for some time.
“We know what a dire situation local businesses continue to face and the latest news will be yet another blow in the lead-up to the Christmas period – which should be their busiest time of the year. I’ve been strongly pressing for Edinburgh’s case to move to a lower level of restrictions when safe to do so. The data suggest that time should have been now.
“It’s thanks to everyone following the guidance that our numbers have fallen and it’s why the Capital’s expectation was rightly that we would be moving to level two. I’ve asked to meet the Government as a matter of urgency to ensure they give a full explanation to the people of Edinburgh of the public health advice that they have based their decision on. I’ll also be pressing the case for additional financial support for our businesses who will need additional help following this decision.
“Despite this situation we need to continue to do everything we can over the coming week to continue to make progress – that means following the guidance, maintaining social distancing and washing hands and using sanitiser regularly.”
Depute Leader Cammy Day said: “This is an outrage and slap in the face for the many businesses, individuals and families who have so carefully stuck to restrictions over the winter so far, suffering significant losses and missing out on seeing one another over the festive period.
“It’s down to them that our cases per 100,000 are lower than many areas around the country, including some already in level two, so we completely understand those who are questioning today’s decision to retain the current restrictions in Edinburgh.
“We will continue to do everything in our power to ensure this is recognised by the Scottish Government, and will be calling for them to reconsider and reverse their decision.”
Councillors will debate an Emergency Motion by the ‘Capital Coalition’ at today’s Full Council meeting, calling on Council to agree to continue to lobby the Scottish Government and “insist the government follow scientific evidence and advice” that indicate that Edinburgh has been consistently in Level 2.
It’s expected that Edinburgh will move to Level 2 when restrictions are reviewed next week.
MSPs are to forgo a pay increase next year, it has been announced.
In a message to MSPs Presiding Officer Ken Macintosh MSP said that, in the midst of a public health crisis with such devastating economic consequences and hardship for so many, now more than ever was the time for political leadership on Members’ pay.
The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body (SPCB), chaired by the Presiding Officer, agreed unanimously (on 3 December) that no uplift will be presented in the SPCB’s budget bid for next year with regard to Members and Ministerial salaries.
The full text of the Presiding Officer’s message to all MSPs is as follows:
Dear Colleagues
MSP pay: financial year 2021/22
Later this month, the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body will present its budget bid for 2021/22 to the Finance and Constitution Committee for its scrutiny.
As ever, it is the duty of the SPCB to make provision for the resources and services that Parliament needs to function. Within its annual budget bid, the SPCB is required to make provision for the salaries of all Members and Ministers.
You will no doubt recall that in the previous session of Parliament, Members voted to break the pay link between MPs and MSPs salaries. Instead of receiving 87.5% of MPs’ salaries, we voted to link our future pay increases to those of public sectors workers in Scotland, using the ASHE index.
Last year, the ASHE index applied to our salaries stood at 1.4%. This year the corresponding rate is 5.1%.
In the midst of a public health crisis with such devastating economic consequences and hardship for so many households, the SPCB unanimously agreed yesterday, that it would be wholly inappropriate for the ASHE index to be applied to MSP and Ministerial salaries next year.
Instead, the SPCB agreed that Members, Ministers and Presiding Officers will forgo a pay rise and that our budget bid to the Finance and Constitution Committee will freeze the current salary rates for Members.
These are exceptional circumstances and no other decision would have been appropriate or welcome at this time – either inside or outwith Parliament. Now more than ever is a time for political leadership where our own salaries are concerned.
I am grateful to each of the members of the SPCB for their collaboration on this matter and in agreeing the budget bid that will be made to the Finance and Constitution Committee later this month.
Lothian MSP Miles Briggs, who is Co-convenor of the Cancer Cross Party Group at the Scottish Parliament, has submitted a motion at the Parliament calling on the Scottish Government to consider prioritising people receiving palliative care and their immediate families in the forthcoming rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.
The motion acknowledged the immense strain that the COVID-19 pandemic and the necessary public health response have placed on many people with pre-existing medical conditions, especially people diagnosed with a terminal illness and who are receiving palliative care.
Prioritising people who have a terminal illness for a Covid-19 vaccine would allow them to live life as fully as possible with family and friends in the limited time they have left.
The motion also urged the Scottish Government to consider allowing clinicians discretion to fast-track individual patients and their immediate family members whose need for vaccination is deemed to be most urgent where it is clinically safe and appropriate to do so.
Lothian MSP, Miles Briggs, said:“The arrival of a vaccine for Covid-19 is what we have all been waiting for and means that Scotland can start recovering from this cruel virus.
“With the rollout out of the vaccine to start next week, the Scottish Government is now facing the difficult decisions of who should get the vaccine first.
“My motion at the Scottish Parliament, has called on Ministers to allows clinicians discretion to fast-track individual patients and their immediate family members, so that the people diagnosed with a terminal illness can see their families and loved ones in the limited time they have left.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave this statement at last night’s coronavirus conference from Downing Street:
It is almost a year since humanity has been tormented by COVID. Across the world, economic output has plummeted and a million and a half people have died.
And all the time we have waiting and hoping for the day when the searchlights of science would pick out our invisible enemy and give us the power to stop that enemy from making us ill – and now the scientists have done it.
And they have used the virus itself to perform a kind of biological jiu-jitsu, to turn the virus on itself in the form of a vaccine from an idea that was pioneered in this country by Edward Jenner in 1796.
And today we can announce that the government has accepted the recommendation from the independent Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for distribution across the United Kingdom.
After months of clinical trials, involving thousands of people to ensure that the vaccine meets the strictest, internationally recognised, standards of safety, quality and effectiveness.
Thanks to the fantastic work of Kate Bingham and the Vaccines Task Force, we purchased more than 350 million doses of seven different vaccine candidates, and the UK was the first country in the world to pre-order supplies of this Pfizer vaccine securing 40 million doses.
Through our Winter Plan, the NHS has been preparing for the biggest programme of mass vaccination in the history of the UK and that is going to begin next week.
And in line with the advice of the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation the first phase will include care home residents, health and care staff, the elderly and those who are clinically extremely vulnerable.
But there are immense logistical challenges: the vaccine must be stored at minus 70 degrees and each person needs two injections, three weeks apart.
So it will inevitably take some months before all the most vulnerable are protected, long and cold months. So it is all the more vital that as we celebrate this scientific achievement we are not carried away with over optimism – or fall into the naïve belief that the struggle is over.
Its not, we’ve got to stick to our Winter Plan, a comprehensive programme to suppress the virus, protect the NHS and the vulnerable, keep education and the economy going and use treatments, testing and vaccines to enable us to return to much closer to normal by spring.
Today in England we have ended national restrictions, opening up significant parts of the economy in doing so but also replacing them with tough tiers to keep this virus down.
And I know that those tiers will mean continued hardship for many, and it is going to continue to be tough for some sectors but until the vaccine is deployed, our plan does rely on all of us continuing to make sacrifices to protect those we love.
So please, please continue to follow the rules where you live, remember hands, face, space – and if you live in a tier 3 area where community testing will be made available, please take part in that community testing.
Together, these steps are for now the surest way to protect yourselves and those you love and by reducing the transmission of the virus, help de-escalate your area to a lower level of restrictions, as vaccines and testing, as I say, take an ever larger share of the burden.
And as we do all this, we are no longer resting on the mere hope that we can return to normal next year in the spring, but rather on the sure and certain knowledge that we will succeed: and together reclaim our lives and all the things about our lives that we love
So I want to thank the scientists and all those around the world who have taken part in the trials and got us to this stage.
‘TODAY IS GENUINELY A GOOD DAY’
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon welcomed the news at her daily media briefing from St Andrew’s House yesterday:
I want to warmly welcome the news that the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, has been authorised for supply in the UK, by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.
This is not unexpected. But even so, because it confirms that a safe and effective vaccine can now be used, it is perhaps the best news than any of us have heard about the virus since the pandemic began all these months ago.
Today is genuinely a good day, we’re not at the end of this pandemic yet and of course we cannot and must not ease up in our efforts to control it, but today feels like it may well be the beginning of the end of this horrible experience. And for that reason I am sure I am far for the only one this morning who feels a lightness of heart that I haven felt in quite some time
We expect vaccines to be delivered over the course of December. And we expect that that will start to happen in the next few days.
And – if we receive the first doses of vaccine as soon as we are expecting to and there is no reason right now to doubt that – I can confirm that the first vaccines against Covid will start to be administered in Scotland on Tuesday 8 December.
That is just six days from now. So to reiterate – the first vaccines against Covid will be administered in Scotland on Tuesday 8 December.
It is of course worth remembering that everyone will require two doses of the vaccine, and that these are likely to be offered 21-28 days apart – so it is unlikely that anyone’s vaccination will be completed until early next year. But there is no doubt that being able to have this degree of confidence that we can start a vaccination programme next week is absolutely fantastic news.
We will start by vaccinating the people who will be vaccinating everyone else. We will then follow the independent advice we have received from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.
They have recommended prioritising those with the greatest clinical need – including older residents in care homes, health and social care workers, and those aged over 80. Those groups will therefore be the first people we seek to vaccinate.
The authorisation which was issued today has some conditions which its important to be clear about, will make the Pfizer vaccine quite difficult to transport to some locations – especially individual houses. We are therefore in the process of planning how we can ensure that all people in priority groups can be vaccinated.
Overall, however, the high probability that vaccinations will start next week is welcome, and much-needed, good news for us all.
For all the difficulties that undoubtedly lie ahead, it should give us all real hope that the end of the pandemic for Scotland is in sight.
And it should also motivate us and I’ll come back to this point at the end, to do everything we can between now and then to keep ourselves and each other safe, including of course over the upcoming Christmas period.
“PROGRESSIVE VISION TO TACKLE POVERTY IN THE FACE OF TORY CUTS”
SNP MSP Gordon MacDonald has welcomed the announcement that every primary school pupil in Edinburgh will be eligible for free school meals, all year around, if the SNP is re-elected in May.
Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, set out this latest step in the drive to tackle child poverty and make Scotland the first nation in the UK to offer universal free primary school meals at the SNP annual conference at the weekend.
The SNP previously extended eligibility for a free school lunch to all P1 to P3 pupils while P4 to P7 pupils are eligible based on a range of income and benefits criteria.
Now, in the face of predictions that Westminster cuts will drive child poverty rates even higher, the expansion – estimated to cost around £230 million per year in additional expenditure – will introduce a free year-round breakfast and lunch for all primary school pupils from August 2022.
SNP MSP for Edinburgh Pentlands, Gordon MacDonald, said: “The Covid-19 pandemic has put real financial pressure on families, and it’s right that the Scottish Government ensured that children in Edinburgh would continue to receive free school meals over the holidays.
“But I am happy that we are not stopping there. If the SNP is re-elected in May, every single primary school pupil in Edinburghwill be eligible for free breakfast and lunch, all year round.
“And unlike the Tories, we didn’t have to be publicly shamed and condemned into choosing to feed hungry children – that is the basic duty of any government.
“This ambitious expansion of the free school meals scheme is the next step in our battle to stop the Tories forcing more and more kids into poverty, support families, and make Scotland the best place to grow up.
“That progressive vision, underpinned by human rights, equality and wellbeing, is exactly why people in Scotland continue to put their faith in the SNP.”
