THE SNP has hit out at Boris Johnson's "crass and inaccurate" claim that there would not be a Covid vaccine available in Scotland if it were up to Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP.
The Guardian reported that the Prime Minister made the comment at a virtual meeting of the 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs on Tuesday evening before Wednesday’s Commons vote on the third national lockdown in England.
Johnson is said to have answered various questions from MPs on the Zoom call, including one from a Scottish Tory MP about the SNP and he criticised the party in his answer.
The Prime Minister is understood to have said that the strength of the union lay in what could be done for people across the UK, claiming that if it was up to the SNP there would not have been a single coronavirus vaccine delivered in Scotland.
READ MORE: Boris Johnson: There'd be no Covid vaccine in Scotland if it was up to Nicola Sturgeon
One MP in the virtual meeting said: “Essentially, the point the Prime Minister was making is that the UK is a major country, we’ve got sufficient clout to get the vaccines rolled out. He did actually mention that we were ahead of the rest of Europe.
“He said if it were up to the SNP then there wouldn’t have been a single vaccine delivered in Scotland. It was a UK effort, in other words and needed the clout of a big government.”
An SNP spokesperson told The National: “These comments are as crass as they are inaccurate and show once again how desperate the Tories are to politicise the pandemic. The development of vaccines has been a global effort and our focus is on ensuring we vaccinate people in Scotland as quickly and as safely as it is possible to do so.”
Asked about Johnson’s comments on Wednesday, the prime minister’s press secretary, Allegra Stratton, said she had not been present at the 1922 meeting. But she said: “In terms of the broader point about the vaccine, there’s no doubt that the union’s been critical in the development, production and administration of the vaccine, and indeed across a range of measures, the UK governments during this pandemic, we have all worked together to provide for the British people.
“I think on Monday Nicola Sturgeon said they have 100,000 vaccines in Scotland. It’s great news for the Scottish people but it’s been a collective effort.”
On Sunday, Johnson suggested there should not be another referendum on Scottish independence until 2055.
"Referendums in my experience, in my direct experience in this country, are not particularly jolly events. They don't have a notably unifying force in the national mood and they should be only once in a generation," he told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme.
The UK has secured access to 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine, enough for most of the population.
Scotland will get a proportionate 8.2% of the jabs.
READ MORE: Scottish Government aims to vaccinate all over-50s in Scotland by early May
The Scottish Government said its priority is to vaccinate as many people with their first dose as quickly as possible, with the second dose to be given within 12 weeks.
Addressing MSPs, the First Minister said mixing the Pfizer-BioNTech the Oxford-AstraZeneca jabs is “not our policy in Scotland" unless there are "exceptional circumstances such as we don’t know what vaccine was given in the first dose".
Both vaccines require two doses which are now to be administered 12 weeks apart.
Confusion around the vaccine roll-out mounted at the weekend after Dr Mary Ramsay, Head of Immunisations at Public Health England, said that people should receive a second dose of the same vaccine.
She said: “We do not recommend mixing the Covid-19 vaccines – if your first dose is the Pfizer vaccine, you should not be given the AstraZeneca vaccine for your second dose and vice versa.”
Medical professionals have also questioned the scientific reason for mixing injections. Allyson Pollock, co-director of Newcastle University Centre of Excellence in Regulatory Sciences and a former member of Independent Sage, said: “We need to see the data and basis for this decision.”
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