The First Minister:

I will come to the NHS Louisa Jordan in a moment, but before I do I will expand on, or close off, the first part of Richard Leonard’s question. He asked me to give a guarantee about routine testing for NHS workers, because symptomatic NHS workers already have access to testing. If the nosocomial review group recommends that, I give a guarantee that we will implement that recommendation, but we will do that on the basis of expert advice that we have asked for. I hope that Richard Leonard accepts that that is the right and responsible way to proceed on such matters.

I am delighted and relieved that, so far, we have not had to use the NHS Louisa Jordan. Had we required to do so, it would have meant that the existing capacity of our hospitals, including their surgical capacity, had been overwhelmed, which would have meant many more people becoming ill and, unfortunately and undoubtedly, many more people dying—even more than has been the case. We should all be very thankful for the fact that the hospital has not had to be used so far.

We will ensure that the NHS Louisa Jordan is there for as long as we may need it, and I can confirm that, as part of the remobilisation plans, we are considering whether and to what extent we could use the Louisa Jordan to do some elective treatments. We have to be careful in the judgments that we make about that. I fervently hope that this is not the case—and we are doing everything possible to avoid it—but if we face an autumn or winter resurgence of coronavirus, we will need to ensure that those facilities are there to deal with it. That goes for overall NHS capacity: we have to protect some capacity to deal with any surge in the virus, while getting the NHS back to normal.

The NHS Louisa Jordan is part of our considerations, and the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport will keep Parliament updated.