NICOLA Sturgeon called out Douglas Ross for not being aware of a government policy that has been in place since the start of the pandemic, amid a row about the introduction of vaccine passports.

The First Minister hit back after the Scottish Tory leader claimed the government were introducing a “new approach” of four E’s, which Sturgeon had previously mentioned in her statement in relation to the enforcement of the vaccine certification scheme.

The approach, which police officers have been using since the beginning of the pandemic, stands for Engage, Explain, Encourage and Enforce.

Ross tried to make a funny quip out of the policy, stating that only one word is needed to describe the scheme, “embarrassment”.

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In her Covid-19 update, the First Minister told MSPs: “As indicated last week, the first two weeks of the scheme will effectively be a grace period in relation to enforcement, while businesses and users become accustomed to the new rules.

“However during this period we expect businesses to implement and test their approach to certification - and to prepare their compliance plan - so that they are fully prepared by 18 October.

“At that point, the regulations will become enforceable by local authority officers.

“Those officers – as has been the case throughout the pandemic –will use what we call the 4 E’s approach.

"They will Engage, Explain, Encourage and only then - if those options are exhausted - will they Enforce.”

Ross, who has consistently argued against the implementation of the vaccine passport scheme, again argued for it to be dropped and said the First Minister wasn’t listening to businesses.

He said: “Now she talks of a new approach, the four E’s. First Minister we don’t need four E’s to describe this scheme, we only need one.

“Embarrassment. A complete and utter embarrassment.

“So can the First Minister tell us, when the Scottish Government paid £600,000 of taxpayers money to a Danish app developer, how many people were expected to try and download the app?

“Can the First Minister tell us how many people tried and failed to download the app? And to return to the same question I asked just hours before the scheme went live last week, will the First Minister now accept that the scheme wasn’t ready to be launched and should have been delayed, and isn’t it about time she listened to businesses and scrapped it altogether?”

The First Minister replied: “Before I address all the points that Douglas Ross has made, can I just pick up on one, if Douglas Ross thinks that four E’s is a new approach, then the only question that begs is where has he been for the past 18 months?

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“That’s the approach police, environmental health officers have been using day in and day out around all of the regulations that have been in place.

“So perhaps Douglas Ross might just want to reflect a little bit on that in future.”

It comes as the First Minister admitted the issues with the vaccine passport app were "deeply regrettable".

She also told MSPs that almost 380,000 people had downloaded the app since midnight on October 3.