Anas Sarwar demands clarity on 'triggers' for future restrictions
The Scottish Labour leader has published his own plan for "Living with Covid"
Scotland should have clear "triggers" for reimposing lockdown measures if they are needed in future, according to the Scottish Labour leader.
Anas Sarwar has set out his party’s plan for “living with Covid” as restrictions introduced to tackle Omicron are eased as he criticised the Scottish Government for its "ad-hoc decision making".
It includes agreed support for people and businesses and improved contact tracing.
Mr Sarwar said he wanted to avoid any more restrictions and predicted there would not be any more complete national lockdowns.
But he argued that, if more variants emerge, there should be an agreed system across the UK where certain hospitalisation levels, infection rates, number of deaths or health worker absences are used so imposing restriction "doesn't become a political football".
Mr Sarwar bemoaned the communication between the Government and businesses as "woeful and often non-existent" during the pandemic while Scottish Labour's deputy leader, Jackie Baillie, said the NHS, social care sector and contact tracing system needed "surge capacity" if new variants cause further spikes in infections.
The Scottish Labour leader calls for an end to 'ad hoc decision-making'
Speaking at a meeting with hospitality representatives, Mr Sarwar said: "The reality is we're almost two years into the pandemic and over that time we haven't built the resilience in the system that we should have built - in terms of business support, resilience in terms of what's happening in our schools, resilience in terms of what's happening in our NHS.
"There comes a point where an ad hoc decision-making process isn't fit for purpose anymore."
He suggested that ongoing restrictions and the way they are introduced at short notice was having a "detrimental impact" on poeple's health, mental wellbeing and businesses."
"The only fair way going forward is to recognise that people can't be expected to live their life like this indefinitely, it will not be acceptable, it will not be tolerable," Mr Sarwar said.
"So it's time that the Scottish Government and the UK Government in partnership sets out a clear framework and clear trigger points about what levels do they have to consider restrictions, if they consider restrictions at all.
"And, if they do bring in any level of restrictions, what people can expect them to be and then what it means for businesses at every level of that, what level of business support is going to come in to protect their business, and what level what level of economic support is going to go into support independent individual workers.
"Because at the moment, the ad hoc decision-making isn't working for anyone."
Stephen Montgomery, from the Scottish Hospitality Group, said the decision by Public Health Scotland ordering the cancellation of Christmas parties and guidance for people to avoid crowded spaced "crippled the sector".
Describing the decision as "probably the hardest of the restrictions we faced", Mr Montgomery said the Christmas restrictions were estimated to have cost the hospitality sector in Scotland more than £1 billion and he now expects it to be between three and five years before the industry fully recovers.