3. We have all seen the pictures of hundreds of people queueing in the snow for emergency food in Glasgow’s George Square last week. That people are experiencing that level of desperation in the city that the First Minister and I represent is an indictment of the failure to tackle poverty and hunger in Scotland.

The charities that feed people in Glasgow have warned that funding is not getting to where it is needed. Last year, 80 organisations got the resources that they needed to provide such emergency relief. This year, it is expected to be less than half that number. I will give an example. The Children’s Wood, which runs a holiday club for children in Maryhill, has not received funding. Does the First Minister think that it is acceptable that getting food to hungry children is a postcode lottery in Glasgow? Will she commit to universal solutions, such as extending free school meals to all primary pupils all year round?

I have already made that commitment. We have made it clear that, if we are returned to government, we will provide free school meals to all primary pupils and children in early years all year round. I hope that other parties across the chamber will join us in that so that, whoever emerges victorious from the election in May, we know that that policy will be implemented.

On the wider issue, there is much more that we all need to do to tackle poverty. Like Patrick Harvie, I was appalled and disturbed by the photograph that circulated a few days ago. I asked my officials to look into the circumstances of that and to engage with relevant partners to see what more we can do. Throughout the pandemic, we have increased funding to tackle food insecurity and, specifically, to help people whose poverty is being exacerbated by the pandemic, and the Cabinet Secretary for Finance announced even more funding for that just yesterday.

We will continue to take whatever steps we can to help those who are finding it toughest as a result of the situation that everybody is dealing with at the moment, but we are also taking the crucial steps to deal with the underlying causes of poverty. Perhaps the most significant thing that has happened in that regard this week is the launch of the new Scottish child payment. Scotland is the only part of the United Kingdom to have such a scheme, which is about lifting children—and, by extension, families—out of poverty. We will continue to do what we can to try to consign poverty to history in our country.

The First Minister does not need to wait until May to commit to the policy of extending eligibility for free school meals; it could be built into the budget that the Parliament will vote on later this month.

The First Minister has made it clear that, as we build a recovery from the pandemic, returning schools to normal will rightly be the first priority but, if we are to do that, we need first to talk about how we keep teachers and support staff safe. Vaccination must have a role to play here. I make it clear that we are not asking the Government to ignore the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. It has recommended the first priority groups but, in the paper that it published at the end of December, it said that occupational groups could be considered for priority in the next phase of the vaccine programme.

Yesterday, the First Minister told my colleague Alison Johnstone that some teachers will have been vaccinated already, but with schools reopening to more pupils from Monday, surely we must ask whether it is safe for those teachers who have not been vaccinated to be sent back into full classrooms without that protection. Does it not stand to reason that, if reopening schools is a high priority, vaccinating the staff who enable those schools to function must be a priority, too?

The First Minister:

First, I want to make the point very clearly that we would not be going ahead with the decision that we confirmed yesterday on the phased reopening of schools if we were not assured that it was safe. We are not complacent about it and we do not take these decisions lightly.

Mitigations will be in place in schools. In the senior phase, there will be very limited numbers of pupils there, and we know that the risk of transmission is much lower when we are talking about the younger age groups. We also know from the evidence that the risk from reopening schools comes less from transmission within schools than it does from the behaviour of adults around the reopening of schools, with people taking it as a trigger for a return to normality. That is why I was at such pains yesterday to ask parents across the country not to do that as of Monday.

We are introducing twice-weekly testing for teachers and school staff, which will get under way straight away as schools return from Monday.

It is important to take the points on the issue of vaccination seriously. I know that Patrick Harvie is not suggesting that we do not follow the JCVI, but we are still in the process of vaccinating the JCVI priority list. We hope that we can complete that as soon as possible—even sooner, perhaps, than our original target date—but that is the focus right now.

We are waiting to see whether the JCVI gives us any more detailed advice on the order of priority for the rest of the population. It is absolutely the case that there may be a focus on occupational groups, in which case that is what we will follow. However, there are still unknowns about the vaccines’ impact on transmission as opposed to mortality and illness, and that is why, at the moment, it is really important that we follow the clinical priorities that the JCVI is setting.

We will continue to consider the matter with the other nations of the UK and we will set out as soon as we can what the approach will be once we have vaccinated the initial JCVI groups and whether there is an order of priority to be followed for the rest of the population.