Covid-19: Preparing for Winter and Priorities for Recovery

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 2 December 2021.

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Photo of Pam Duncan-Glancy Pam Duncan-Glancy Labour

On Monday, the First Minister addressed the country and offered new advice on Covid-19. Once again, we are at a significant moment in the pandemic. In that update, the First Minister announced that the first cases of the new omicron variant had been detected here in Scotland, including in Glasgow, which I represent. The First Minister told people in Scotland to redouble their efforts to suppress the virus. The same must be true for the Scottish Government. We must see prompt action, which must be taken with us all—and the long term—in mind.

We must avoid a situation whereby people are left without the support that they need in order to live or the income that they need in order to get by. The pandemic, and all that has come with it, has had a disproportionately detrimental impact on women, unpaid carers, black and minority ethnic people, poorer people, older people and disabled people. It has also had a disproportionate impact on the people of Glasgow. For those groups, things were already impossibly hard before the pandemic, but the pandemic has made things worse.

I have made it my mission to be a voice for the people who have been left behind. Our unpaid carers are one such group. They are terrified at what lies ahead. Families are having care packages cut as local authorities ask relatives to step up and step in where social care has been stopped and not yet reinstated. The social care system is not ready, prepared or resourced for another wave of Covid-19. As a result, unpaid carers, who are predominantly women, will bear the brunt. They are already broken. We cannot continue to lock down social care services with no end in sight. We need an effective track and trace system—something that we have not really had—to protect people from the virus and allow us to remobilise key services such as social care.

When I talk to carers, they tell me that they feel abandoned, let down and forgotten. Last week, one unpaid carer said of the decision to live with Covid that unpaid carers had been

“sacrificed at the altar of economic growth.”

The pandemic has had a huge impact on disabled people’s human rights too. Inclusion Scotland has said that it is

“not just the” direct and

“catastrophic impact of the virus” itself that has had an impact on disabled people, but the

“Inaction, turmoil and ... indifference to our lived experience”,

which has shut them out and left them behind.

Too many decisions have been taken about those groups without them. I have said many times in the chamber that our recovery journey must not repeat those mistakes. We must take all those groups with us, and that includes ensuring that decisions that are made as a result of the new variant and the need to double down on our efforts once more are made with the wellbeing of those who have been hardest hit in mind.

That includes our financial wellbeing. The First Minister set out new guidance that, should test and trace contact us, we must self-isolate, regardless of our vaccination status. That marks a significant change in the guidance. The difference now is that we are faced with no furlough, and much of the support and protection has gone. We do, however, have the benefit of hindsight. We can learn from where we went wrong, perhaps understandably, and where things did not work, and we can support those who were left behind through this uncertain moment.

That starts with ensuring that anyone who needs to self-isolate is able to do so without fear of losing out on income. Affordability must not be a barrier to isolation. That is why I have written to the Scottish Government this week to ask it to update eligibility for the self-isolation support grant to include people who are advised by NHS track and trace to self-isolate, which will now be not just those who are unvaccinated. That is merely reverting to previous guidance. There cannot be additional restrictions without additional resources. The public are doing all that they can to protect themselves and each other, and the Government must do the same and ensure that everyone, regardless of their income, is able to follow the First Minister’s guidance safely without putting themselves at risk of ill health or hardship.

We cannot force people to choose between paying the bills and surviving the virus. There is much that we still do not know about the virus, but we have known from very early on that it does not discriminate in who it affects and that, without proper support, the impacts are felt disproportionately by those who already face significant disadvantage. I hope that the Government will consider my proposal seriously and give people confidence in the new guidance, and that it will reflect carefully on those who have lost the most this year and learn from that, listen to those people and take action to protect us all.