Former First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon departs the UK Covid Inquiry at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) on January 31, 2024. Photo / AP
Former First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon departs the UK Covid Inquiry at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) on January 31, 2024. Photo / AP
In a bruising day of evidence, the former first minister told the Covid Inquiry she had started destroying her WhatsApp messages, despite promising Scots they would all be handed over.
Sturgeon said she “didn’t retain” any of the messages before she was directly challenged on whether she had actively deleted them, being forced to admit she had done so.
She repeatedly broke down during questioning from Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to the inquiry, and has been accused of “crocodile tears” by bereaved families.
In the first of several occasions when she became emotional, she admitted a “large part of her” wished she had not been in power when the pandemic struck.
The revelations came as the former first minister defended her stance on independence, insisting her “burning desire” for Scotland to break free of Westminster played no role in her decision-making regarding lockdowns.
Sturgeon became emotional as she admitted a “large part of her” wished she had not been in power when the pandemic hit.
Her voice broke and she appeared to wipe away tears as she said it was for others to judge how well she had performed.
“I was the first minister when the pandemic struck,” she said. “There’s a large part of me that wishes that I hadn’t been. But I was.
“And I wanted to be the best first minister I could be during that period. It’s for others to judge the extent to which I succeeded.”
Sturgeon appeared on the brink of breaking down shortly after being asked about Boris Johnson.
She acknowledged she did not think he was the right person to be prime minister during the crisis, but denied this meant she believed she was “precisely the right first minister for the job”, given her experience.
Previous hearings have shown she privately referred to Johnson as a “f***ing clown”.
She also appeared upset as she denied looking to use the pandemic for political gain.
“My memories of the early part of 2020, in terms of how I was feeling and thinking and the emotions that I was experiencing, was first fear at what might be about to unfold and confront the country,
“At times, and I think, you know, you’ve seen snippets perhaps, you know, the sort of human side of being a leader... Perhaps more than anything, I felt an overwhelming responsibility to do the best I could.
“So the idea that in those horrendous days, weeks, I was thinking of a political opportunity, I find - well, it just wasn’t true”.
Former First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon departs the UK Covid Inquiry at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) on January 31, 2024 in Edinburgh. Photo / Getty
Wiped WhatsApp messages admitted
Nicola Sturgeon eventually admitted to deleting all her WhatsApp messages from the pandemic and apologised if the public felt misled by her public pledge to hand over all her messages to the inquiry.
After months of obfuscation, the former first minister told the UK inquiry that she “didn’t retain” any of the messages but was then challenged directly on whether she had actively deleted them. “Yes”, she eventually told Dawson.
Sturgeon conceded she had already started destroying them when she made an unequivocal pledge to make them available to the UK and Scottish public inquiries during a televised press conference in August 2021.
In a tense exchange, she insisted that what she meant to promise on TV was that the substance of anything relevant in her messages would be transferred to the Scottish government’s official record.
She apologised if this was not “clear” when she made the pledge and insisted she had not seen a legal notice handed to the Scottish government in August 2021, which warned against the destruction of material relevant to the inquiry.
While Sturgeon attempted to downplay her use of WhatsApp, the inquiry heard she used the informal messaging site to contact figures including Humza Yousaf, chief of staff Liz Lloyd, John Swinney, the then-deputy first minister, and Jeane Freeman, the former health secretary.
In addition, he said she had contacted Mark Drakeford, the Welsh first minister, and Michelle O’Neill, the then-deputy first minister of Northern Ireland. Sturgeon accepted she had done so, but insisted “those messages would have been extremely limited”.
However, despite her claims decisions were not made on WhatsApp, messages were shown of Sturgeon engaging in detailed discussions with Lloyd about restrictions for the hospitality industry.
Writing on October 27, 2020, Sturgeon complained that she was having a “crisis of confidence” and had not slept. After eventually deciding that she should “probably” stick with a 6pm closing time, she said: “It’s all so random.”
The inquiry was previously shown an exchange from August 2020 between Ken Thomson, a senior civil servant who was then manager of the Covid directorate, and other senior colleagues.
Thomson told the others: “Just to remind you (seriously), this is discoverable under FOI. Know where the ‘clear chat’ button is …” He later added: “Plausible deniability is my middle name. Now clear it again!”
He also said “this information you requested is not held centrally”, a stock phrase the Scottish government uses when refusing FOI requests.
Sturgeon said she interpreted the exchange as “light-hearted”, noting it did not appear to make any decisions on the Covid response.
Asked whether Thomson’s remark about information not being held centrally was “an excuse officials trotted out in response to FOI requests”, she agreed that was “an interpretation that can be out on it”.
She added: “All the public servants are people of the utmost integrity, and at this point and throughout the pandemic, they were public servants working in a dedicated fashion … above and beyond the call of duty.”
Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson. Photo / Getty
‘Burning desire’ for independence
Sturgeon admitted that she had a “burning desire” for Scotland to become an independent nation.
While she repeatedly insisted that it had played no role in her decision-making, she was confronted with evidence that called this into question.
Among the most damning exchanges was an email sent from her deputy John Swinney’s office discussing travel corridors in July of 2020.
The message raised serious concerns that should Spain not be added to an exemptions list, it could scupper an independent Scotland’s application to join the EU.
Sturgeon insisted that regardless of what the minute says, her government did not begin campaigning for independence at that stage.
She said she had learned “for a fact” that she had been able to separate her constitutional views from Covid decision-making.
“I don’t think in my entire life have I ever thought less about politics generally and independence in particular than I did during those early stages of the pandemic,” she said.
“People will judge for better or worse the decisions my government took. None of those decisions were influenced in any way by political considerations or trying to gain an advantage for the cause of independence.”
Not locking down up to two weeks earlier was one of Sturgeon’s main regrets, she told the inquiry.
While the former first minister repeatedly said she made general mistakes, not locking down sooner was one of the few specific examples she gave of an action she regretted.
She said: “Of the many regrets I have, probably chief of those is that we didn’t lock down a week, two weeks earlier than we did.”
The Scottish government became aware Covid-19 was something to “be very worried about” in late January 2020, the inquiry heard, with the cabinet discussing the virus for the first time on February 4 that year.
Sturgeon also told the inquiry it was “not unreasonable” to keep information about an early outbreak at a Nike conference in Edinburgh from the public, on the advice of Catherine Calderwood, the then-chief medical officer, although she later said she would have “gone the other way”.
It is often claimed that Spain could block Scotland’s accession to the EU because of a fear that doing so would provide a boost to its own separatist movements.
The email read: “It won’t matter how much ministers might justify it on health grounds, the Spanish government would conclude it is entirely political; they won’t forget; there is a real possibility they will never approve EU membership for an independent Scotland as a result.”
However, Sturgeon denied that a possible route to EU membership for an independent Scotland had any bearing on her thinking. She argued that if this had been the case, Spain would never have been added to the list in the first place.
She was also interrogated about a cabinet paper from June 2020 which showed SNP ministers agreed to consider “restarting work on independence and a referendum”, with the case updated with the “experience of the coronavirus crisis”.
She denied the suggestion from Dawson that the Scottish government was “asleep at the wheel”, after evidence showed Covid was listed under the “any other business” section in a cabinet meeting as late as February 2020.
Defending Kate Forbes with attack on Yousaf
Sturgeon explained a cabinet row with Humza Yousaf, who would succeed her as first minister, by claiming she was standing up for his rival Kate Forbes.
Yousaf provoked anger from Sturgeon at a cabinet meeting in December 2021 when he said he had found £100 million from his health budget which could help pay to compensate businesses for additional restrictions.
Yousaf described taking “a hell of a bullet” at the meeting, while Jason Leitch, the national clinical director, privately described Sturgeon’s behaviour as “absolutely ridiculous”.
However, Sturgeon said she had been angered by Yousaf springing the offer of an extra £100m on colleagues, after Forbes, her finance secretary, “diligently” attempted to find more cash but came up with nothing.
“I was not particularly happy about it,” she admitted. “A couple of weeks before that, Yousaf had said he may be able to find some money, and my response was ‘speak to Kate’. It appeared he hadn’t done so.
“It was more on behalf of Forbes, as I felt it did a disservice to her and the very professional job she had done.”
Sturgeon denied that the exchange was indicative of a culture in which she did not “take kindly” to ministers making unsolicited suggestions or challenging her at cabinet meetings.
