Pubs stay shut as Aberdeen eases out of local lockdown
●Hospitality businesses to face strict checks ahead of reopening this week
Aberdeen has been released from its three-week lockdown after the latest coronavirus figures saw Tayside record 12 times as many new cases as Grampian, further increasing pressure on the Scottish Government to lift the quarantine.
City leaders were told late yesterday evening that the city, which had been put in lockdown by the government after a spike in coronavirus, would be able to reopen “broadly in line with the rest of Scotland” today.
However, hospitality businesses, such as pubs and restaurants where the Aberdeen outbreak is believed to have originated, will remain closed until Wednesday to allow strict checks to be made.
The decision was made after a Scottish Government Resilience Room meeting yesterday afternoon, hours after city council leaders met government officials for crunch talks to allow the restrictions to be relaxed after local health experts said the virus was back under control.
While it is understood that no agreement was reached after two hours at the morning meeting, the Scottish Government later announced that lockdown would end at midnight.
The latest coronavirus figures,
published yesterday, revealed that only three more people had tested positive for the virus in Grampian in the previous 24 hours, compared with 37 in the NHS Tayside region – which is not under lockdown.
Overall there were 83 new cases of Covid-19 registered in Scotland on Saturday, with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde recording 16 and NHS Lothian, 11. All other health boards recorded cases below five, with four having no new cases at all.
As a result, from today the five-mile travel limit, restrictions on gatherings and limitations on hospital and care home visits in Aberdeen will be lifted.
Businesses due to open today in line with the national route map can also reopen unless they have a hospitality element. These, along with restaurants, pubs, casinos and other hospitality businesses, will be able to open from Wednesday once an environmental health check has been completed.
Hospitality business owners are being urged to get in touch with Aberdeen City Council to ensure they have received a health check.
Announcing the easing of lockdown for the city, Nicola Sturgeon said: “I am grateful to people in Aberdeen – the local authority and health board, local businesses and everyone who lives there – for complying so well with the rules that were put in place to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
“In particular, I am grateful for the understanding of the businesses that were required to close in order to help beat the virus. It’s due to the commitment of people in the city, as well as world-class contact tracing, that means we are now able to lift some of these measures from Monday and then again from Wednesday, but it is vitally important that everyone follows the FACTS rules in order to prevent an outbreak of this scale occurring again.
“That way we can move forward and get our economy, our society and our lives generally back to as much normality as possible.”
However, susan webb, director of public health for NHS Grampian, struck a warning tone and it is understood the Scottish Government has not ruled out extending restrictions if necessary to protect public health.
“We must be cautious to ensure the progress we have made is maintained.” she said.” Crucially, we must all be observing physical distancing from those not in our immediate household; whether at work, meeting socially, in a supermarket or out for exercise and recreation. It is also vitally important that anyone identified as a close contact of a detected case follows the guidance on isolating for 14 days.”
The latest figures show a total of 427 cases have been identified in Grampian since 26 July and, of these, 259 are associated with the same cluster linked to Aberdeen pubs, with 1,258 contacts being identified from those.
Aberdeen South SNP MP Stephen Flynn welcomed the news and said: “The last few weeks have been really tough but as a city we have collectively got the situation back under control. Let’s enjoy what is to come sensibly and, where and when we can, support our local businesses.”
Liam Kerr, Scottish Conservative list MSP for the North-east, said: “The people of Aberdeen will be understandably relieved that the lockdown is to be partially lifted but already a huge amount of economic damage has been done.
“Businesses are desperate to get back to normal but it’s clearly vital the continuing restrictions are followed.
“With over 5,000 jobs at risk the SNP government must provide more financial support so the Aberdeen community doesn’t face economic disaster.”
Scottish Labour’s Lewis Macdonald, MSP for the Norteast, said it was a “big win” for the city council’s co-leader Jenny Laing “and an evidencebased approach to tackling Covid-19”.
Earlier Aberdeen council’s other co-leader, Douglas Lumsden, said the local authorityhadput“thecaseforward that the health experts should not be ignored and we should follow their advice that restrictions should be lifted” and had expressed frustration that the morning meeting had not ended in consensus.
He said he was angry that Aberdeen businesses “were being treated unfairly” as “infection rates elsewhere in the country are much higher than ours and we have heard from health professionals that the Aberdeen outbreak is completely under control”.
Afer the announcement he said: “The main thing is we now have a clear path going forwards. It was clear there was no real case to maintain this lockdown any longer.”
The council had previously warned that more than 5,000 workers were at risk of losing their jobs after Ms Sturgeon continued local lockdown restrictions last week, witha 60 per cent drop in footfall for businesses.
“The main thing is we now have a clear path going forwards. It was clear there was no real case to maintain this lockdown any longer” DOUGLAS LUMSDEN Aberdeen council’s co-leader
There are times when opposition parties need to take a deep breath and do something that they may expect to be futile but is for the good of the country that they act rather than in their own self-interest. Now is one of those times.
The role of the opposition parties is chiefly to scrutinise and oppose the ruling administration so that its decisions are tested and its ministers know they will be held to account. The public deserve no less than a highly alert and active opposition. Without a strong opposition those without a voice will remain unheard.
Opposition should not mean opposing for its own sake; the opposition parties have to weigh up the evidence available of any ministerial failing – knowing there may be details they are not privy to or there is information they cannot reveal because it might expose their source to punishment for, say, leaking damaging but vital evidence.
When there is sufficient evidence of a ministerial failure – such as a government policy delivering dreadful unintended consequences like a collapse in cancer treatments, or a minister has misled the parliament in an answer to a question – opposition parties have to raise objections to the minister’s behaviour, demanding answers and possibly proposing a motion of censure or calling for the minister to resign.
It is not enough for the minister to respond by saying this or that inquiry or committee meeting are already or will in the future deal with an egregious breach of behaviour or reckless policy. Oppositions need to act immediately, for to do otherwise can mean the bad behaviour or incompetent policy can continue as if no one had objected. Crucially, oppositions need to press their case even though they will be outvoted, and that it will appear futile. Bringing to the attention of the public any partisan, malicious, self-aggrandising and serially incompetent behaviour of ministers – even if such motions are defeated – allows the public to make their own decisions and hold the party to account at the next election.
It also shows that an opposition is prepared to do the heavy lifting of sometimes being unpopular and not just chasing headlines for being nice. Sometimes consensus is not possible, sometimes consensus is the enemy of good government and delivers bad results.
If anyone doubted the job of oppositions a classic example has just passed us by when it was vital that a motion of no-confidence be moved on the failed education secretary John Swinney, even though it was entirely predictable that the representatives of the Green Party would vote to keep him in his job.
The motion of no-confidence forced the SNP government to admit it had made a dreadful error and should with urgency change its approach.
The job of opposition worked in large degree even if the motion failed. The political reputation of Mr Swinney is now seriously damaged – and so too is that of his boss, the First Minister, for failing to sack him or move him on. Such damage to their political reputations is wholly justified for it will mean all but the most sycophantic followers will now question the decisions of Mr Swinney and Ms Sturgeon.
I write all of this to argue that the time has come again for the opposition parties to take the brave pills, go into difficult territory and do their job. The time has now come to move a motion of no confidence
in the First Minister herself. Over these last months I have drawn the attention of readers to a number of decisions taken by the First Minister which – despite all her denials to the contrary – I believe have been taken with a view to advancing the interests of herself, her party and the cause of independence at the expense of delivering the best outcome for Scotland during the pandemic.
Quite often these decisions have involved a delay, or the rebranding of an initiative that was not necessary.
The most obvious example of this scandalous behaviour was the needless delay in halting the practice of sending patients from hospitals to care homes without tests for Covid-19. The practice, which undoubtedly led to Covid-19 infecting otherwise unaffected care homes, was halted in England by Health Secretary Matthew Hancock on 15 April – but it continued in Scotland until 21 April. The difference of ten days, I believe, undoubtedly led to deaths that could otherwise have been avoided. I have yet to hear of a legitimate reason for Scottish Health Secretary Jeane Freeman’s delay.
This indefensible decision does not end there, for it has since been established that patients who had been tested – but whose results had not yet been confirmed – were being moved from hospitals into care homes.
Worse still, some patients who had tested positive were still moved into care homes – a clinical decision that appears inexplicable. Is it really the case that the best place to put Covidpositive patients was a care home when they were already in hospital?
As if this episode was not bad enough, we now have an example of the First Minister telling parliament that the decisions that would result in patients being discharged from hospital into care homes did not involve ministers because these were clinical decisions.
Unfortunately for Ms Sturgeon, a letter signed by Ms Freeman has been made public that makes it quite clear her ministers, by setting a target for discharges, were influencing clinical decisions.
Pressure was being put on clinical staff to meet discharge targets and we know that, as a result, patients were moved when they should not have been. After all, how could a clinical decision be taken when patients were not being tested or, when they were tested, the results were ignored?
Misleading parliament about lifeand-death decisions is the most grave offence possible. The opposition must force the First Minister to explain herself.
•Brian Monteith is editor of Thinkscotland.org