Following the announcement of the extended quarantine regulations, constituents in the oil and gas sector have raised concerns that offshore workers who support overseas projects on a two-two rota would have to spend 10 of their 14-day field break alone in a hotel room. They understand the need to minimise the chance of introducing new variants as well as the need to restrict exemptions, but, given the unique nature of the offshore rota, will the First Minister consider reviewing the list of exemptions to allow those overseas workers to self-isolate at home?

We have already said that we will consider any arguments that are made for particular groups, so I suppose that the short answer is yes, we will consider that. However, I follow that up immediately with a strong caveat. The more exemptions that we have from the managed isolation policy, the more chance there will be of new variants of the virus coming into the country. We therefore have to balance all that and come to the best position overall.

As we suppress the virus and vaccinate more people—we are doing both successfully right now—the bigger risk that we face will increasingly be the importation of new variants of the virus that might spread more quickly and be able to beat lockdown restrictions; more seriously, they might undermine the efficacy of the vaccines that we have at our disposal right now. That is why we need to exercise the utmost caution over borders and travel.

We will continue to consider fairly any calls for greater flexibility, but we will apply a rigorous assessment to such calls because we do not want to undermine the effectiveness of the policy that we have put in place any more than is already the case, given that we do not yet have a four-nations approach.