Nicola Sturgeon was greeted with heckles as she strode into the Covid inquiry just before 8am — two hours before the much-anticipated session was due to begin — her dark suit offset by a shiny silver brooch.
“Where are your WhatsApps?” came the cry from a small smattering of protesters as television cameras illuminated the former first minister on a dark morning outside the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.
Her appearance was perhaps made more uncomfortable by Aamer Anwar, solicitor for the Covid bereaved, who suggested in a press conference minutes before the hearing began that her deleted WhatsApp messages may have been linked to the sexual assault trial of Alex Salmond and the police investigation into SNP finances.
There was little respite from this line of questioning.
Swaying rhythmically and expectantly, Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to the inquiry, launched into an interrogation of the Sturgeon government’s “openness and transparency” after the mass deletion of WhatsApp messages during the pandemic.
Informal messaging systems were used to communicate “routine exchanges” and “logistics” but not key decision-making, said Sturgeon, who reiterated that her use of WhatsApp had been “extremely limited”.
“It’s not my style,” she said, adding that the messaging app had been used too often by government ministers and policy aides during the pandemic.
In his first charge at the former first minister’s defences, Dawson asked whether she had received an email warning government ministers that they should “not destroy” material that could be relevant to the inquiry.
Sturgeon was asked whether she recalled receiving an email on August 3, 2021, from the public servants Lesley Fraser and Ken Thomson about the importance of record retention. She said: “I do not as far as I am aware. I did not receive that.”
One of Sturgeon’s most difficult moments centred on her public promise to retain all private messages during a daily Covid briefing in August 2021. This was months after she knew that a public inquiry would be established.
Sturgeon claims she was instructed to delete WhatsApp messages from phones that could be stolen or lost when she became a minister. She apologised if her pledge was “not clear”.
“I also knew that anything of any relevance or substance would be properly recorded in the Scottish government system,” she said before offering the inquiry a “personal assurance” that “everything and everything” relevant to her decision making during the crisis had been submitted.
Sturgeon fought back tears three times in the session, each time when questioned about her integrity, motivations and leadership during the Covid crisis.
About 90 minutes in, Dawson said the Scottish government that Sturgeon led “did not like light to be shone” on the manner in which decisions were made during the pandemic. Sturgeon replied: “I would very strongly refute that.”
As she faced sustained questioning over her leadership during the crisis, Sturgeon choked back tears as she addressed speculation of a cabinet rift and claims that she used the crisis for political gain. She said: “I was the first minister when the pandemic struck. There’s a large part of me wishes that I hadn’t been but I was and I wanted to be the best first minister.”
Her voice shaking, Sturgeon rejected claims that she was “thinking of political opportunity” during the early days of the pandemic when she often “felt overwhelmed by the scale” of what the country was facing.
Sturgeon again became emotional when asked whether she had been the right first minister to lead Scotland when the virus struck, saying she felt an “overwhelming” responsibility to do the best she could.
She said that Boris Johnson had been “the wrong prime minister” for the Covid-19 crisis.
Her biggest regret, she said, was failing to order a lockdown in Scotland a fortnight earlier in 2020.
Asked about decision-making across the four nations during the pandemic, Sturgeon said the government in Westminster was “often the outlier”. Northern Ireland and Wales often joined Scotland while the UK government communicated coronavirus measures “too slowly”, she said.
Sturgeon said her introduction of coronavirus measures in Scotland before they were announced and introduced in England was not designed to “annoy” Westminster. “At no point in my thinking was I trying to steal a march on anybody else or trying to get ahead of it,” she said. “I was simply trying to do my job to the best of my ability.”
Shown a minute from a cabinet meeting in June 2020 in which her ministers had “agreed” to consider relaunching an independence campaign, Sturgeon denied using the pandemic for political gain or to reignite the campaign for independence. “If I had at any point decided to politicise a global pandemic that was robbing people of their lives and livelihoods, and educational opportunities, and had decided in the face of that to prioritise campaigning for independence, then, yes, it absolutely would have been as you described,” she told Dawson KC. “Which is precisely why I didn’t do it — I wouldn’t have done it.”
Sturgeon was again moved to tears and said she took it “very, very personally” when her government’s response to the pandemic was questioned.
She said she would carry the impact of the decisions made during the pandemic “for as long as I live”.
In an emotional response to questioning at the Covid inquiry in Edinburgh, she recalled a night in February 2020 in Bute House when she was presented with a “set of reasonable worst-case scenario figures”, which, she claimed, changed her political instincts and made her focus on stopping the virus.
She told the inquiry “In that moment, my only instinct and the instinct I brought to the management of the pandemic was: how do I lead a government that makes the best possible decisions in horrific circumstances to try to minimise the harm that this virus is going to do?
“People will make their own judgments about me, about my government, about my decisions, but for as long as I live I will carry the impact of these decisions; I will carry regret at the decisions and judgments I got wrong, but 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.”
An emotional Sturgeon said: “I feel to my core that the number of lives lost to this pandemic was far too high. We were never going to be able to get through a pandemic with no loss of life. I think it was far too high.
“I think the other impacts were far too high, and, you know, every death is a tragedy that I regret, and that people in this room and outside across the country are living with the grief and trauma of, so we didn’t do as well as I wish we were able to.”
Morning Rando. The Unionists were very quiet yesterday; oddly quiet.
Of course Aamer Anwar is involved. The man loves the sound of his own voice.
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(Article)
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Nicola Sturgeon was greeted with heckles as she strode into the Covid inquiry just before 8am — two hours before the much-anticipated session was due to begin — her dark suit offset by a shiny silver brooch.
“Where are your WhatsApps?” came the cry from a small smattering of protesters as television cameras illuminated the former first minister on a dark morning outside the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.
Her appearance was perhaps made more uncomfortable by Aamer Anwar, solicitor for the Covid bereaved, who suggested in a press conference minutes before the hearing began that her deleted WhatsApp messages may have been linked to the sexual assault trial of Alex Salmond and the police investigation into SNP finances.
There was little respite from this line of questioning.
Swaying rhythmically and expectantly, Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to the inquiry, launched into an interrogation of the Sturgeon government’s “openness and transparency” after the mass deletion of WhatsApp messages during the pandemic.
Informal messaging systems were used to communicate “routine exchanges” and “logistics” but not key decision-making, said Sturgeon, who reiterated that her use of WhatsApp had been “extremely limited”.
“It’s not my style,” she said, adding that the messaging app had been used too often by government ministers and policy aides during the pandemic.
In his first charge at the former first minister’s defences, Dawson asked whether she had received an email warning government ministers that they should “not destroy” material that could be relevant to the inquiry.
Sturgeon was asked whether she recalled receiving an email on August 3, 2021, from the public servants Lesley Fraser and Ken Thomson about the importance of record retention. She said: “I do not as far as I am aware. I did not receive that.”
One of Sturgeon’s most difficult moments centred on her public promise to retain all private messages during a daily Covid briefing in August 2021. This was months after she knew that a public inquiry would be established.
Sturgeon claims she was instructed to delete WhatsApp messages from phones that could be stolen or lost when she became a minister. She apologised if her pledge was “not clear”.
“I also knew that anything of any relevance or substance would be properly recorded in the Scottish government system,” she said before offering the inquiry a “personal assurance” that “everything and everything” relevant to her decision making during the crisis had been submitted.
Sturgeon fought back tears three times in the session, each time when questioned about her integrity, motivations and leadership during the Covid crisis.
About 90 minutes in, Dawson said the Scottish government that Sturgeon led “did not like light to be shone” on the manner in which decisions were made during the pandemic. Sturgeon replied: “I would very strongly refute that.”
As she faced sustained questioning over her leadership during the crisis, Sturgeon choked back tears as she addressed speculation of a cabinet rift and claims that she used the crisis for political gain. She said: “I was the first minister when the pandemic struck. There’s a large part of me wishes that I hadn’t been but I was and I wanted to be the best first minister.”
Her voice shaking, Sturgeon rejected claims that she was “thinking of political opportunity” during the early days of the pandemic when she often “felt overwhelmed by the scale” of what the country was facing.
Sturgeon again became emotional when asked whether she had been the right first minister to lead Scotland when the virus struck, saying she felt an “overwhelming” responsibility to do the best she could.
She said that Boris Johnson had been “the wrong prime minister” for the Covid-19 crisis.
Her biggest regret, she said, was failing to order a lockdown in Scotland a fortnight earlier in 2020.
Asked about decision-making across the four nations during the pandemic, Sturgeon said the government in Westminster was “often the outlier”. Northern Ireland and Wales often joined Scotland while the UK government communicated coronavirus measures “too slowly”, she said.
Sturgeon said her introduction of coronavirus measures in Scotland before they were announced and introduced in England was not designed to “annoy” Westminster. “At no point in my thinking was I trying to steal a march on anybody else or trying to get ahead of it,” she said. “I was simply trying to do my job to the best of my ability.”
Shown a minute from a cabinet meeting in June 2020 in which her ministers had “agreed” to consider relaunching an independence campaign, Sturgeon denied using the pandemic for political gain or to reignite the campaign for independence. “If I had at any point decided to politicise a global pandemic that was robbing people of their lives and livelihoods, and educational opportunities, and had decided in the face of that to prioritise campaigning for independence, then, yes, it absolutely would have been as you described,” she told Dawson KC. “Which is precisely why I didn’t do it — I wouldn’t have done it.”
Sturgeon was again moved to tears and said she took it “very, very personally” when her government’s response to the pandemic was questioned.
She said she would carry the impact of the decisions made during the pandemic “for as long as I live”.
In an emotional response to questioning at the Covid inquiry in Edinburgh, she recalled a night in February 2020 in Bute House when she was presented with a “set of reasonable worst-case scenario figures”, which, she claimed, changed her political instincts and made her focus on stopping the virus.
She told the inquiry “In that moment, my only instinct and the instinct I brought to the management of the pandemic was: how do I lead a government that makes the best possible decisions in horrific circumstances to try to minimise the harm that this virus is going to do?
“People will make their own judgments about me, about my government, about my decisions, but for as long as I live I will carry the impact of these decisions; I will carry regret at the decisions and judgments I got wrong, but 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.”
An emotional Sturgeon said: “I feel to my core that the number of lives lost to this pandemic was far too high. We were never going to be able to get through a pandemic with no loss of life. I think it was far too high.
“I think the other impacts were far too high, and, you know, every death is a tragedy that I regret, and that people in this room and outside across the country are living with the grief and trauma of, so we didn’t do as well as I wish we were able to.”
Morning Rando. The Unionists were very quiet yesterday; oddly quiet.
Of course Aamer Anwar is involved. The man loves the sound of his own voice.