I thank Willie Rennie for his questions. They are both very important.
On compliance, the weekly Public Health Scotland report shows that the total number of people who have had to quarantine from 22 June to 25 October is just shy of 150,000.
Public Health Scotland will try to get in touch with a person several times. If that fails, it will then pass that contact on to Police Scotland. Police Scotland has published those figures. The total number of travel regulations referrals from Public Health Scotland to Police Scotland has been 241. By and large, Public Health Scotland is managing to get through to the majority of people that it needs to contact. Remember that 150,000 is the total number and not the number of people who have been contacted—it takes a dip sample of that total.
That suggests that Public Health Scotland is not having too much difficulty getting in touch with people. Bear it in mind that everyone gets an email as well as a potential follow-up call. I meet Police Scotland representatives every week and they have not raised with me any challenges in relation to compliance. In fact, there have only been four fixed-penalty notices related to breaches of the travel regulations. Those figures have been published. That gives me a degree of assurance.
I will raise the matter again with Police Scotland at our meeting, which I think is on Thursday, and if any particular issues of interest to the committee are raised, I will write to the convener.
Testing is an important issue. Grant Shapps, the UK Government Secretary of State for Transport, has created what is called a global travel task force, to consider the issue of airport testing. There was a call with the four nations on the issue. My officials have been involved in discussions since that initial call. I am somewhat disappointed that there has not been more ministerial interaction and engagement. I intend to raise the issue when we have our four-nations call tomorrow. I am told that the work has been progressing and that, this month, there should be feedback to ministers, including in the devolved Administrations, on the UK Government’s findings on airport testing.
The UK Government is proactively exploring the question that Willie Rennie asks, of whether the quarantine period could be shortened to seven or eight days and whether it should involve double testing. The challenge with double testing is that, if someone tests negative at the airport that could provide false assurance, which might affect behaviour patterns and could impact on compliance. If we do not do double testing, but test on day 7 or 8, we also need to consider how effective that is in comparison to 14 days’ quarantine. There has to be a be a balance between considering whether people are adhering to the 14-day quarantine system as we would like them to and whether they are more likely to comply with a seven-day restriction if that is what it were shortened to. That is a very long answer to Willie Rennie’s short question but I hope that I give him some reassurance that those questions are being asked. If I have a further update on that I will provide it to the committee.