Nicola Sturgeon gives evidence in UK Covid inquiry
Nicola Sturgeon has been under intense scrutiny while giving evidence to the UK Covid Inquiry on Wednesday.
During her testimony in Edinburgh, Scotland’s former first minister said “part of me wishes I hadn’t been” first minister when the pandemic hit. “But I was, and I wanted to be the best first minister I could be during that period. It is for others to judge the extent to which I succeeded,” she said.
Sturgeon went on to say that she believed Boris Johnson was the “wrong person” to be prime minister.
Last week, it was revealed that messages between Sturgeon and her chief of staff, Liz Lloyd, referred to Boris Johnson as a “f****** clown” in the height of the pandemic.
The deletion of messages exchanged by ministers and officials during the pandemic has come under close scrutiny during the inquiry. Messages between Sturgeon’s deputy John Swinney, Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf, now first minister, were found to have been manually deleted.
Professor Sir Gregor Smith, Scotland’s chief medical officer, told colleagues to delete WhatsApp messages “at the end of every day”.
Sturgeon told the inquiry her messages “weren’t retained” in line with government policy, adding, “‘I deleted messages but pandemic decisions were not made via WhatsApp”.
She also 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,” and admitted there were “flaws and deficiencies” in care home guidance in the early part of the pandemic.
She said, “I do not think we got everything right around care homes and I deeply regret that. There were undoubtedly flaws and deficiencies in that guidance, but the advice at the time was isolation – keeping people as separate as possible – was the best way to protect people in care homes, and clearly that didn’t have the effect that we wanted it to have.”
Sturgeon denied making decisions for political reasons, claiming she had not “thought less” about politics and Scottish independence, insisting her government was “focused entirely” on helping Scotland through Covid.
She said, “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”, it would have been a betrayal of the Scottish people.
“Which is precisely why I didn’t do it – I wouldn’t have done it,” she concluded.
The inquiry was shown an email, sent by John Swinney and cc-ed to Sturgeon, which voiced concerns that the Spanish government would block an independent Scotland from joining the EU if it did not lift travel restrictions in July 2020.
It read, “I’m extremely concerned about this. Spain is now being held to a much higher level of scrutiny and performance than other countries.
If it is not added to the exemptions list, ministers will have to explain why not when it has an estimated point prevalence rate of 0.015 compared to 0.33 when the decision not include (sic) was originally taken – 0.015 is verging on green.
There is visible action from the Spanish authorities to do whatever it takes to suppress outbreaks (compare and contrast with outbreaks in England).
It won’t matter how much ministers might justify it on health grounds, the Spanish government will 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.”
She argued that the decision to keep Spain on the safe list a day later was made on ‘public health grounds’, rather than with EU membership in mind.
The full testimony can be watched below.
UK media was divided following Sturgeon’s testimony – with the majority of right-leaning or right-wing tabloids clutching onto the questions around Sturgeon and Scottish independence, taking Swinney’s out of context. This is unsurprising, as right-leaning outlets are overwhelmingly unionist.
Left-wing publications offered a more comprehensive coverage, focusing on decisions and actions that are more closely related to and – and impacted by – Sturgeon’s Covid policy decisions.
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