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I suspect that other pieces of legislation have attracted public concern. I also suspect that the degree of public concern might have had something to do with the way in which some members of the Parliament characterised the legislation. I am sure that Mr Fraser understands the point that I am making with that remark.

It is important that members of Parliament concentrate their deliberations on the substance of the issue. For me, that substance is whether we have in place the right legislative framework to deal with the possibility of a pandemic. Clearly, in March 2020, we did not, because we had to rush through two pieces of legislation in a matter of days to provide the legislative force to handle the pandemic. Our statute book was not sufficient or appropriate to deal with the circumstances that we faced in March 2020.

The Government is now learning a lesson from that experience and putting in place legislation that we consider to be proportionate and appropriate for those circumstances. The public health provisions of that legislation are to be used only in those circumstances, and there is to be appropriate and effective parliamentary scrutiny of the Government’s exercise of those functions. That is the justification for the bill, and that wider appreciation of it would be clearly understood by members of the public.

It depends on how you look at the questions. Do we look at the experience of the pandemic and think that there are no lessons to be learned and that we should be quite happy to put through significant primary legislation in a matter of days? On other occasions, members of Parliament would rail against making significant changes to primary legislation in that timescale. Generally, in my experience in Parliament, that is not viewed as a desirable approach.

Nobody saw the pandemic coming. We were aware that there was a likelihood of us experiencing some kind of pandemic, but that did not prompt us to review our statute book. Now we have had the pandemic—actually, we are still going through it; believe you me, some of us certainly are—and we are trying to adapt the statute book to learn the lessons from it so that we can put in place proportionate powers that can be scrutinised by Parliament through the normal legislative process, which is what we are going through just now, and Parliament can decide whether it wants to change the statute book to enable the provisions.

That is the type of thinking that has gone into the legislation to ensure that we do not have to rush significant primary legislation through Parliament in a matter of days. We take stock, learn the lessons from the pandemic and put in place powers—with sufficient parliamentary scrutiny—that enable us to act accordingly when a situation arises.

There is a lot in this area that we need to look at further. I welcome the report from the DPLR Committee. I had a thoughtful discussion with that committee when I appeared before it a few weeks ago. It was quite pragmatic in understanding the challenge for the Government, which is that the made affirmative procedure generally takes about 40 days. That procedure can be utilised with greater urgency, subject to parliamentary consent at a later stage. The DPLR Committee was exploring whether there was some other approach that we could take, which might be a halfway house or a partway house within all that. I am happy to explore that. I think that the point that Mr Fraser made—I did not quite catch the academic’s name—

We have to be careful here. Mr Mason will recognise the benefits of digital interaction, which we can see in all walks of life. We are trying, through the provisions in the bill, to make a set of pragmatic moves that will enable us to reform our public services in the light of the experience of the pandemic, where the technology allows us to do so.

We must always be mindful of whether everyone can participate using such platforms. If not, there is a need to have alternative arrangements in place to ensure that all parties can participate effectively in the administrative process that is involved. Although the digital approach suits many people, we must ensure that all individuals can access services accordingly.

As I said in my answer to the convener, they are broadly comparable. The provisions in England and Wales have been in place for in excess of 10 years, as I think I said earlier. Situations of this type were envisaged in the legislation that was considered by the United Kingdom Parliament, and the United Kingdom Government has been able to operate under many of its provisions, supplementing them under the emergency legislation that it has introduced.

Either I will have to defer to my officials to give me further guidance on whether it has been used or we can write to you, convener, to clarify that. Unless my officials can add detail now, I propose to write to you.

It will be published shortly. Essentially, the thinking around the plan has been informed by two years of experience of dealing with various outbreaks of different shapes and sizes around the country. Professor Leitch mentioned the significant outbreak at the 2 Sisters plant, and we have had a number of other examples in industrial, education and community settings, and in localities. Local health protection teams have developed a lot of good intelligence on how to respond in given circumstances.

In relation to the 2 Sisters plant, I remember the very effective approach that was taken by the public health team in Tayside, which decided not to recommend a localised lockdown, but to recommend isolation for staff and their families. That was a supremely successful intervention that was well executed and communicated. Essentially, that population was insulated from the rest of the population and there was no community transmission. That has been possible at certain moments of the pandemic.

In future, that is a more likely intervention to be undertaken than has been the case in the past six to nine months, when there has been extensive community prevalence, meaning that such tactics have been less relevant. The plan will draw on the expertise that has been built up over the past two years.

There will not be an obligation on people to do so. That is what is different.

The issue is a challenging and sensitive one, and I will invite Professor Leitch to add some comments to my initial remarks.

To ensure that we have knowledge of the emerging situation, we must have adequate surveillance measures in place at two levels. First, we must have such measures in place at a population-wide level. It would be difficult to justify on a persistent, long-term basis the type of intense testing arrangements that we have had in place at a population-wide level, but we need to have some population-wide information. We believe that a high-quality Office for National Statistics infection survey, combined with the data that we collect from waste water, for example, gives us a sufficiently strong base of information at a population-wide level to be able to assess what I might describe as the generality of the position on the prevalence of Covid in our society.

The second important element is our contribution—which is the same as the contribution of other countries around the globe—to developing the detection, understanding and appreciation of any new variants that may emerge. We must be able to continue to do a sufficient level of testing in the population to enable us to identify any variants that are emerging, in the way that the testing approach that was taken in southern Africa identified the omicron variant, which was then identified in a number of other jurisdictions very quickly. We were alerted to that and were able to respond swiftly.

That matters because, as I have rehearsed with the committee before, we took decisions very quickly to tackle the situation that we faced in relation to omicron. I am pretty certain that, if we had not done so, the national health service would have got into very deep difficulties. We averted that because of the speed of our actions. I know that our actions were controversial and that they did not command universal support, but the alternative would have been seeing our national health service overtopped. Intelligence about new variants is critical in enabling Governments to respond appropriately.

I do not know whether Professor Leitch wants to add to that.

I will make some comments on the contents of these sets of regulations.

The Coronavirus Act 2020 (Alteration of Expiry Date) (Scotland) Regulations 2022 extend the expiry date of temporary provisions in the UK Coronavirus Act 2020 by a further six months, thus ensuring that specific powers in the UK act will continue to be available to ministers until 24 September 2022.

The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Directions by Local Authorities) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2022 change the expiry date of the local authority direction regulations and will ensure that the powers given to local authorities in those regulations continue to be available to manage local outbreaks of coronavirus.

The Coronavirus (Scotland) Acts (Amendment of Expiry Dates) Regulations 2022 extend all the provisions in part 1 of each of the two Scottish coronavirus acts from 31 March 2022 to 30 September 2022, except for four provisions that will be expired by a further statutory instrument, the Coronavirus (Scotland) Acts (Early Expiry of Provisions) Regulations 2022.

Finally, the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Requirements) (Scotland) Amendment (No 5) Regulations 2022 remove from the principal regulations of the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Requirements) (Scotland) Regulations 2021 the provisions in relation to the Covid-19 vaccination certification scheme.