The First Minister:

Graham Simpson talks about “certainty”. I would love nothing more than to give people—including those in the aviation sector—certainty, but we are in a global pandemic, with an infectious virus, and it is not possible to do that.

Other parts of the UK are often described as having given certainty, but I do not think that they have given it, either. Last night, I took part in a four-nations call that was chaired by Michael Gove, who was at pains to say that the 17 May date for the UK Government was not set in stone and that it would depend on the state of the virus. That is the reality of the situation that we face.

The situation that we face right now is that we are suppressing the virus domestically, although we are not complacent about that, given the trends in the past week, and we are rolling out a vaccination programme, which is going really well, although we are not complacent about that either, given the recent indications about interruptions to supply.

One of the biggest risks that we face is importation of the virus from overseas—in particular, importation of new variants that might undermine the effectiveness of our vaccines. Graham Simpson might think that I should simply ignore that, but it would not be responsible to do so. We are investing in all sorts of processes to try to mitigate those risks in other ways. Yesterday, I announced funding for a new genomic sequencing centre in Scotland, which will give us much faster access to sequencing of viral strains so that we know whether new variants are coming into the country.

However, there is no quick fix or magic-wand solution to the situation. Frankly, anybody who suggests that there is is being deeply irresponsible and doing a great disservice not only to people generally but to the aviation sector, too.