Recommendation 10

HM Government Acknowledged

The UK Government has long recognised the threat to the UK and other countries posed by global pandemics and has involved the DAs closely in preparing for them The UK Influenza Preparedness Strategy 2011 is a UK-wide document on influenza pandemics, produced jointly by the then Department of Health, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government, and the Northern Ireland Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety. The DAs participated in Exercise Cygnus in 2016 (discussed above) and were an integral part of the consequential pandemic preparedness work. That work prepared the foundations for: • the Coronavirus Act 2020, passed by the UK Government with the legislative consent of all the devolved legislatures in respect of the devolved provisions, and • the Coronavirus Action Plan of March 2020, published by the Department of Health and Social Care, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government, and the Northern Ireland Department of Health. The Committee recommends that the UK Government and the DAs should plan for mitigating the impact of pandemics on migration, supply chains, and exports. Under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, section 2, Secretaries of State and others have a duty to plan for the immediate impacts on human life and welfare, the environment, and the security of the UK. In addition, the UK Government does take the consequences for migration, supply chains, and export into account in planning for and responding to emergencies, and works with the DAs, as appropriate, in doing so: • The UK Government and the DAs require travellers, including migrant workers, to self- isolate for fourteen days after arrival in the UK, unless they are travelling from a country on the specified list of travel corridors or are engaged in exempt work. The Health Protection (Coronavirus) (International Travel) (Scotland) Regulations 2020, made under the Public Health etc (Scotland) Act 2008, are the operative regulations in Scotland. The UK Government has established processes at official and ministerial level to try and secure the maximum alignment between its lists of travel corridors and exempt work for England and the corresponding lists of each of the DAs, while respecting the competence of the DAs in this devolved matter of public health. • The UK Government also put in place procedures to regularise the positions of foreign nationals working in the UK whose visas have expired but who are unable to return home because of COVID-19. The procedure is known as exceptional assurance. • Several of the Committee’s witnesses gave evidence about the impact of the pandemic on logistics and transport infrastructure. In order to protect sixteen 10 Second Special Report of Session 2019–21 vital freight routes into and out of the UK, and between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the UK Government signed agreements with ferry operators and provided necessary funding to them. These routes included the routes between Cairnryan and Northern Ireland, and the Department for Transport did, of course, consult the Scottish Government about the matter. • The coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated the importance of resilient supply chains to ensure the continued flow of critical goods and to keep global trade moving. • The Department for International Trade (DIT) is working closely across UK Government departments and with the DAs to analyse UK supply chains for a range of critical goods, and help define strategies to ensure the UK has resilient and diverse critical supply chains. • With Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland support, the Department for International Trade has shared early analysis and actions with the Scottish Government and the other DAs. The Committee’s interim report also contained recommendations on various subjects not included in its final report. For completeness, those recommendations and responses to them are outlined below. (2) The UK Government has failed to make clear when its messaging applies only to England, causing unnecessary confusion in the devolved nations. There should be messaging clarity to minimise confusion across national boundaries, and this must begin to happen with immediate effect. Then, in its response to the Committee, the Government must outline how it intends to address its failings in messaging, and how it plans to distribute future messages. (Paragraph 42 in the interim report) From the beginning of the pandemic, the UK Government has been in constant contact with the Scottish Government and other DAs at both ministerial and official level, to deliver a joined-up approach on messaging. When the overarching public health campaigns diverged at the time of the introduction of the Stay Alert message, the Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland, and communications officials elsewhere in the UK Government, worked to ensure that associated marketing campaigns did not run into Scotland, fully respecting the Scottish Government’s request not to use that new campaig