2. Yesterday, the Minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science told Parliament that

“we decided that asking” students to all

“stay at home and begin their courses online would have inflicted significant harm on them”.—[

Official Report

, 30 September 2020; c 24.]

This morning, I spoke to Adam, who is a first-year drama student in Glasgow. He told me that he has been there for a week and a half, that he has spoken to only two people in his class and that he cannot access the rehearsal space in his accommodation. Last night, on the BBC, a student nurse who worked for five and a half months on a Covid ward described how she is now having to isolate in a 6 foot by 8 foot room. Does the First Minister really think that those students are better off than they would have been if they were studying from home?

That is a really difficult matter to judge, to be honest, because I think that people will suffer detriment whatever decision is taken. That is the nature of all the decisions that we are taking around Covid right now. Every day, I am conscious that when we take a decision to try to reduce harm in one area, there is the potential for us to create harm in another area. We make the best balanced judgements that we can make.

We have sought to ensure—Governments across the United Kingdom and many other parts of the world have reached the same decisions—that we give as many young people as possible the opportunity to have some normality in their university or college education, while taking important steps to mitigate the risk of transmission of the virus.

People can argue—it is not illegitimate to do so—that we should have just kept everyone at home, but harm would have been done to students by doing that. They would have been denied the opportunity to make the links and connections that come with being in a campus environment, because university is about more than lectures and academic learning.

We put in place substantial guidance to make sure that universities take the right steps, and we continue to work with universities to ensure that that is the case. The welfare of students should, at this point, be universities’ paramount interest, so we continue to liaise with them closely to make sure that that is the case.

Let us talk about the decision-making process. The First Minister mentioned “substantial guidance”. It is substantial; in the past seven days, students have been given three different sets of guidance, all from different people and all through multiple channels. While students were being asked and advised to act by the Government, some were being threatened with expulsion and fines by their universities. This past week has been a lesson in how not to communicate during a pandemic.

Yesterday,

The Times reported that draft guidance that was prepared by the Scottish Government on 30 August for student accommodation gave an instruction to universities that

“Work and study that can be done remotely must be done so.”

That would have compelled universities to allow most students to work from home. However, when the formal guidance was published on 1 September, that phrase had been removed. That was not, as the First Minster has insisted, simply a “change of wording”; it was a fundamental change in the guidance.

The National Union of Students Scotland says that students should be studying from home, and university staff say that most students should be studying from home. Who were the stakeholders whom the Government consulted and agreed the change with? Why, exactly, was the change made in the space of just 48 hours?

The First Minister:

The draft guidance and the final guidance both contemplated a form of blended learning—some work being done remotely online at home and some being done physically face-to-face on campus. As I said the other day, the piece in

The Times quoted the first paragraph of the draft guidance but not the next part. It said that where work and study cannot be done from home, physical distancing must be followed. It went on to set out measures that universities need to take in relation to physical distancing, cleanliness, hygiene and other matters. Therefore, it was always envisaged that there would be a form of blended learning.

That point gets to the heart of the matter. I am pretty sure that if the Scottish Government had decided that no student should return to their university campus, some people would have said that that was outrageous and that we were denying students the opportunity to access learning.

We therefore take balanced decisions. In dealing with the pandemic, no decisions can be made categorically one way or the other; we are trying to strike the right balance in a very difficult situation. Of course, in any circumstance in which students—or any other people—are in physical proximity to one another, a wide range of mitigating measures need to be taken. That is what the guidance, in both its draft and final forms, sets out

I will make a final point. Richard Leonard talked about discipline and punishment. The Government and I could not have been clearer that the advice applies to the general population. Of course, in any situation such as this we have to have enforcement measures as a backstop. However, we should all be supporting each other to do the right things. Students should not be blamed or disciplined unless they flagrantly breach the rules. There should be a supportive environment, which is what we have been encouraging universities to provide.

My very final point is on the fact that different bits of guidance have been issued. In a situation such as this, any Government that comes up with a position to which it sticks rigidly, regardless of the need to adapt to changing circumstances is, frankly, not doing its job properly. We need to ensure that we support people in difficult situations, and that we try to build in as much flexibility as possible, which is what we will continue to do.

A trail of confusion has been left behind. In the past week, that confusion has not only been about the rules for students, but about the lack of due process in the Scottish Government’s approach.

The guidance that was agreed between the Scottish Government and the universities blurred the lines between mere advice and harsher—even criminal—sanctions. That is a worrying trend. Since the need for local and targeted restrictions has arisen, new rules have, increasingly, been announced via late-night press releases, Twitter and television interviews. So far, Parliament has not had an opportunity to give its consent to local restrictions unless they have already expired. That is no way to govern. Parliament is supposed to provide checks and balances on Government power. Without those, we risk having a real democratic deficit.

In the past 24 hours, there has been a suggestion that the Government is considering the introduction of a two-week lockdown to act as a circuit breaker. Does the First Minister accept that such a move would require the consent of Parliament? Will she agree to bring future regulations to a parliamentary vote before they are imposed?

The First Minister:

Yes. I give an undertaking that, where possible, we will seek to bring matters to Parliament in advance. [

Interruption

.]

With the greatest of respect to members across the chamber, I point out that we are dealing with an infectious virus. Therefore, we must at times act quickly and flexibly—for example, if sudden spikes or outbreaks put people’s health and lives at risk. It is important that the Government has that flexibility.

The restrictions that have been made under regulations are reviewed every three weeks, at which points I have come to the chamber to report to members. The coronavirus legislation has to be reviewed periodically; that process is under way right now. I agree that we need, as we move into a different phase in our response, to build in more—and earlier—parliamentary scrutiny. I happily undertake to do so, because such scrutiny is important and welcome.

However, I say to members across the chamber that it is also important that Governments are able to act quickly in order to protect the population from the threat of the virus. If Richard Leonard thinks that particular restrictions that we have put in place are wrong, perhaps he should get up now and tell us which ones those are. This is not a criticism, but I point out that, every three weeks, when I have stood here and outlined the decisions that the Scottish Government has been making, he has usually stood up and said that he agreed with them.

I am happy for there to be parliamentary scrutiny, but in the hurly-burly of politics, let us not forget that we are dealing with a virus, or that we have an obligation to protect the public from it as best we can.