I thank the cabinet secretary for his statement, but it comes two months later than it did last year, and he knows that every day counts.

A mutated H3N2 flu is heading this way—it has devastated Australia, has closed schools in Japan and is surging in India and mainland Europe. The flu season has already started, more than five weeks early, and vaccination rates are down. There are 400,000 fewer adults vaccinated now than there were this time two years ago. Children’s vaccination rates are also down, and some areas have not even started. In the Highlands and Islands, GPs were promised that they would be able to deliver vaccinations to increase take-up rates, but nothing appears to have happened.

Today, the cabinet secretary and I attended a Royal College of Nursing conference at which we both spoke about the importance of prevention instead of the crisis-driven, sticking-plaster approaches that are so common under this Government. By not delivering vaccinations at pace and scale to protect the population and to protect our NHS from winter pressures, has the cabinet secretary failed at the first hurdle of prevention?