Pressure grows over vaccine delays
Ministers have been accused of being “evasive and secretive” over the rollout of coronavirus vaccinations amid growing concerns over the pace of the programme in Scotland compared with elsewhere in the UK.
Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie said confidence in the SNP administration was at “rock bottom” as he called for a focus on the recovery from Covid-19 at Holyrood yesterday.
Ministers have been accused of being “evasive and secretive” over the rollout of coronavirus vaccinations amid growing concerns over the pace of the programme in Scotland compared with elsewhere in the UK.
Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said confidence in the SNP administration was at “rock bottom” as he called on the Scottish Government to ditch plans for a second independence referendum and focus on the recovery from Covid-19 during a debate at Holyrood yesterday.
But Constitution Secretary Michael Russell accused the SNP’S opponents of a “desperate politicisation” of the vaccination rollout.
There have been 462,092 people vaccinated in Scotland so far, but this is proportionately behind the rate of inoculation Uk-wide where about 6.8 million have received the jab.
Latest figures reveal wide variations in vaccination rates across Scotland, with three times more people per capita receiving jags in the Western Isles than in Edinburgh, where fewer than one in 20 have been vaccinated. North Lanarkshire has the highest number of cases per 100,000 people in Scotland, but also one of the lowest vaccination rates.
Accusing the government of evasion and secrecy yesterday, Mr Rennie said: "Trust in the SNP on the vaccine programme is rock bottom and it’s not me who is generating it.
"I can tell you from my inbox that it is not me. People are genuinely concerned because they see the numbers – 140,000 vaccines behind England. England is speeding up, we are slowing down.
"For a Government who frequently points how useless Boris Johnson is, this is a terrible record.”
In response Constitution Secretary Michael Russell accused opposition parties of “interfering with the delivery of the vaccines and hit out at the "desperate politicisation" of the number of jabs being administered.
Mr Russell told MSPS that a doctor’s surgery in his own constituency had completed the vaccination of all over-80s, ahead of the Scottish Government target, and was about about to start on over-70s
But he said: "They have another problem – the difficulty of doing all that given the constant phone calls from often vulnerable people who have heard some in this chamber creating doubt about whether they will get what they so keenly want – a vaccination that starts them back on the road to normality." Mr Russell added: "There should not be a desperate politicisation of such a crucial matter."