ALISTER Jack has offered UK Government help to the Scottish Government in the roll-out of its vaccine programme as Nicola Sturgeon again faced claims that it was “lagging way behind” other parts of Britain.

In a letter to the First Minister, the Scottish Secretary described “our joint mission” to vaccinate people across the UK as the “most important peacetime endeavour this country has ever undertaken”.

And he stressed how he was sure Ms Sturgeon would agree that it was in everyone’s interests that the vaccination programme in Scotland “matches the best efforts of the rest of the UK” and argued there were significant advantages to “moving in lockstep on major decisions”. 

“With that in mind, we stand ready to offer any support or assistance we can give you to accelerate your rollout programme.  

“Matt Hancock, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has underlined our open offer of mutual aid between health services around the UK,” added Mr Jack.

Ms Sturgeon has come under repeated fire for the rate of vaccine rollout in Scotland with Mr Jack’s Tory colleague Douglas Ross asking: “When we’re in a race against the virus, why are the SNP running backwards?”

At Holyrood, Jeanne Freeman, the Scottish Health Secretary, admitted the rollout needed to speed up.

Asked why the rollout in Scotland was falling behind the other UK nations and English regions, she replied: “I do believe that we need to vaccinate faster in Scotland than we have been doing and the plans that are in place from this week onwards significantly increase those numbers.”

In exchanges in the Scottish Parliament, Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader told MSPs: “Scotland saw the lowest number of jags administered since the start of the mass rollout over a month ago”.

She hit out at the FM, saying: “At the moment, all the evidence shows the Scottish Government’s rollout is slow, stuttering and lagging way behind the rest of the UK.”

While just 21% of 75-79-year-olds in Scotland had been vaccinated, Ms Davidson pointed out that this was “just a quarter of the proportion vaccinated south of the border” for the same age group.

Ms Sturgeon insisted she had not rubbished anyone’s concerns about the pace of the rollout and stressed the SNP Government was “on track” to meet its mid-February target of inoculating the most vulnerable groups. She confirmed that 98% of the most elderly in care homes had now been vaccinated as had almost 90% of staff.

The FM told MSPs she was not denying her Government wanted to “accelerate the overall progress” but she also insisted she would not apologise for having “deliberately focused on maximising uptake in the most clinically vulnerable groups”.

She declared: “I want to see the daily rate grow and accelerate,” noting how the latest number was 55% higher than last Monday and was the highest daily number so far.

The latest figures showed of the 4.4 million people in Scotland who need to be vaccinated, 610,778 have received their first dose, up 34,881 on Monday’s number. Some 8,345 had received their second dose.