Tearful former First Minister heckled by bereaved families who accused her of ‘putting politics before patients’
By Bill Heaney and agency reporters
NICOLA Sturgeon was heckled as she arrived at the UK Covid Inquiry to give evidence amid ongoing scrutiny around the Scottish Government’s handling of the pandemic.
The former First Minister, dressed in a dark suit, was dropped off at the inquiry doors in the Edinburgh Conference Centre just after 8am.
But despite the early start she was met with a crowd of photographers and video cameras – and a small group of hecklers who were reported to be from the Bereaved Families Group, a tiny minority of the 18,000 people who lost relatives and friends to the deadly virus
Ms Sturgeon had already conceded messages had not been retained on her own digital devices but said she had managed to retrieve copies to submit to the inquiry. She has said informal messages were handed over to the inquiry last year.
But finally Ms Sturgeon had to admit it – “I deleted them,” she told the Covid Inquiry counsel Jamie Dawson KC.
The former First Minister was verging on tears as she admitted parts of her wished she hadn’t been First Minister when Covid first came on the agenda.
Mr Dawson asked: “Did you consider yourself, against that background and your considerable ministerial experience, to be precisely the right First Minister for the job?”
An emotional Ms Sturgeon responded: “No, that’s not how I would have thought of it at all.
“I was the First Minister when the pandemic struck, there’s a large part of me that wishes I hadn’t been, but I was and I wanted to be the best First Minister I could be during that period.”
Scotland’s former FM denied allegations of secrecy within her government, that power was too centralised and that pandemic decisions were made for political reasons.
The ex-SNP leader held back tears at several points during the six-and-a-half-hour session.
She denied that decisions she took during the pandemic were made to further political ends, saying she had not “thought less” about politics and Scottish independence in her whole life than she did during the pandemic.
“I was motivated solely by trying to do the best we could to keep people as safe as possible,” she said.
“We did that to some extent, but not to, and perhaps we never could have done it to the extent I would have wished we could have done.
“I carry the regret for the loss of life, the loss of opportunity, the loss of education of our young people, I carry that with me every single day.”
She added: “I will always know in my heart and in my soul that my instincts and my motivation was nothing other than trying to do the best in the face of this pandemic.”
Asked about such accusations, the former Scottish first minister said “the idea that in those horrendous days, weeks, I was thinking of political opportunity” was “not the case”.
The inquiry heard there was concern the Spanish government would block an independent Scotland from joining the EU if travel restrictions during the pandemic remained.
Sturgeon also spoke of the impact of the early parts of the pandemic on her personally, saying: “At times in those early days, I felt overwhelmed by the scale of what we were dealing with and perhaps more than anything, I felt an overwhelming responsibility to do the best I could.”
Aamer Anwar, lawyer for the Scottish Covid Bereaved, said later that Sturgeon had delivered a “polished performance” at the inquiry but said his clients were “deeply unsatisfied” with the explanations around the deletion of WhatsApps.
Anwar said: “(Ms Sturgeon’s) industrial deletion of WhatsApps, along with those of her inner circle, still begs the question of why.
“Why were they deleted when she knew that there was a public inquiry on its way?”
Pamela Thomas, a member of the Scottish Covid Bereaved who lost her brother during the pandemic, accused Sturgeon of “crocodile tears”.
Sturgeon denied that she “jumped the gun” on a decision to ban mass gatherings in March 2020.
She said the Scottish Government was “perfectly within our rights to take that decision” and she was “perfectly within my right” to announce the decision.
Government Minister Michael Gove told the Covid-19 inquiry that he believed Sturgeon had jumped the gun on the move but Sturgeon told the inquiry she would “counter” that, and that they were “going more slowly than we should have been”.
She said if she had a regret about the decision, it was that it had not been taken earlier.
The former first minister 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.”
She apologised over a pledge she made to release all Covid-era WhatsApps to a public inquiry at a time when she had already deleted messages. She could have been more “clear” in answering a journalist’s question at a Covid briefing where she was asked whether an inquiry would have access to all of her communications.
She also apologised for any lack of clarity in the answer she gave to Channel 4’s Ciaran Jenkins during one of her media briefings in August 2021.
At the time, the former SNP leader said any inquiry would have access to the messages but, in fact, many had been deleted some months previously.
Referring to the exchange in August 2021, inquiry counsel Jamie Dawson KC said: “(Mr Jenkins) asked specific questions about informal means of communication, including WhatsApps.
“But you knew by that stage that your WhatsApps had been destroyed?”
Sturgeon responded: “I also knew that anything of any relevance or substance from any of that material would be properly recorded in the Scottish Government system.”
She added: “I operated from 2007, based on advice, the policy that messages, business relating to government, should not be kept on a phone that could be lost or stolen and insecure in that way, but properly recorded through the system.
“I would want to again underline that communication was extremely limited and would not relate it to matters of substantive government decision-making.”
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar claimed Sturgeon’s answer to the Channel 4 journalist amounted to an “outright lie”.
Sturgeon claimed that she did not use “informal messaging” such as WhatsApp to make government decisions during the pandemic.
She said her use of such communications was “extremely limited”.
She was quizzed over why she deleted WhatsApps with senior government ministers and officials during the course of Covid.
The former SNP leader said the use of WhatsApp had become “too common a means of communication” in the Scottish Government.
She said she deleted informal messages, in line with official advice, and “salient” points were all recorded on the corporate record – “I operated from 2007, based on advice, the policy that messages, business relating to government should not be kept on a phone that could be lost or stolen and insecure in that way, but properly recorded through the system.”
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross urged Sturgeon to apologise for “destroying vital evidence”.
Sturgeon said she was not “particularly conscious” of WhatsApp groups where officials were exchanging information.
She said she had “never seen messages before” in which Ken Thomson reminded civil servants in the group chat where the “clear chat” function was and that “plausible deniability is my middle name”.
The former first minister said she saw the discussion as “light-hearted” and that she would read that as him reminding people to be professional on WhatsApp.
She added that the civil servants in the Covid outbreak group chat were public servants of the “utmost integrity”.
A number of Scottish Government ministers and officials have said decisions were routinely recorded on the official system even if messages were deleted in line with policy.
But the inquiry heard that Kate Forbes – who served during the pandemic as finance secretary – was not aware of any deletion policy and retained all her messages.
Sturgeon said she did not recall receiving an email from Lesley Fraser and Kenneth Thomson about the importance of record retention of material relevant to the work of the inquiry.
She was asked by counsel Jamie Dawson KC if she recalled receiving that email on August 3 2021 – “I do not as far as I am aware, I did not receive that.”
Mr Dawson asked: “You recall, I would imagine, in a general sense that such a notification was sent out?”
Sturgeon said: “I would say this: that I don’t think I would have required to see that to know that matters that were relevant to know the matters that were relevant.”
The former first minister said she had “always assumed there would be a public inquiry”.
Ms Sturgeon told her former chief of staff Liz Lloyd, above, that she was “having a crisis of decision-making” over restrictions on Scotland’s hospitality sector.
WhatsApp messages exchanged between Sturgeon and her former chief of staff Liz Lloyd show the former first minister telling Lloyd she was “having a crisis of decision-making” over hospitality.
Sturgeon told the inquiry it was something she would have “preferred not to be” on the public record.
The messages between Sturgeon and Lloyd show in-depth discussions about what times to allow restaurants to stay open.
Sturgeon wrote: “I am having a bit of a crisis in decision-making in hospitality, not helped by the fact I haven’t slept. The public health argument says stick with 6pm/no alcohol for level 3. But I suspect the industry will go mad – and I worry we could derail debate.”
Sturgeon also said there was “nothing to show” that they had listened to industry on the matter.
Scotland’s national clinical director Jason Leitch told Humza Yousaf he ‘almost intervened’ during Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘rant’.
Current First Minister Humza Yousaf, in his evidence to the inquiry, offered an “unreserved” apology for the Scottish Government’s “frankly poor” handling of requests for WhatsApp messages.
He has announced an external review into the Government’s use of mobile messaging.
The inquiry, before Baroness Hallett, pictured right, returned to Edinburgh on Friday before which rival politicians commented on Ms Sturgeon’s evidence.
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP said: “Today, the trust that millions of Scots and their families placed in the former First Minister lies in tatters.
“We now know that there were, by Nicola Sturgeon’s own admission, ‘flaws and deficiencies’ in the guidance that allowed Covid positive patients to be discharged into care homes.
“We now know that on decisions as serious as shutting schools, Nicola Sturgeon kept key figures in her government locked out. She led meetings where major decisions were discussed, but no minutes were kept, effectively creating a government within a government.
“And we know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Nicola Sturgeon deleted every single one of her WhatsApps, breaking the promise she made to bereaved families and the imminent public inquiry to keep all her private messages. That is, quite simply, unforgivable.”
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross said: “Despite her best efforts to spin, deflect and deny, Nicola Sturgeon could not escape two glaring realities: that she led an orchestrated cover-up of her government’s actions during the pandemic and that decision-making was motivated by the SNP’s political agenda.
“Her repeated claims that no meaningful decisions were taken over her deleted WhatsApps – and her cringeworthy efforts to deny she lied to the public over destroying them – were repeatedly exposed by evidence to the contrary.
“She claimed she was offended by suggestions that the SNP’s independence obsession entered into her decision-making – yet we saw from [her special adviser] Liz Lloyd’s messages, minutes of a June 2020 cabinet meeting and the explosive email on Spain travel restrictions that it was front and centre of her government’s mind.
“This slippery performance confirmed what the public now know – COVID INQUIRY: That’s why her reputation and credibility lie in ruins.”
Top picture: Aamer Anwar, solicitor for Scottish Bereaved Families, speaking to the media outside the Edinburgh Conference Centre where the inquiry is being held.