Nicola Sturgeon’s reckoning with eternal shame is now only a question of when - Brian Monteith

How can former First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, look herself in the mirror and not see a bare-faced liar?

Nicola Sturgeon’s reckoning with eternal shame is now only a question of when – Brian Monteith

On 20 June 2020, during the first year of the pandemic, Sturgeon said in answer to questions from BBC’s Glenn Campbell at her daily briefing, “I want to just come back to basics, here. We’re not dealing with politics at the moment… Frankly, anybody who is trotting out political or constitutional arguments is in the wrong place, completely, and has found themselves completely lost… this is just about what we need to do from a public health practical perspective to stop a virus. From comments yesterday that sounded as if we were dealing with something that was a constitutional argument – that’s nonsense, and we cannot see it like that or we are letting down the people that we are here to serve.”

On the very same day, Sturgeon and her Cabinet “Agreed that consideration should be given to restarting work on independence and a referendum, with the arguments reflecting the experience of the coronavirus crisis and developments on EU exit.”

Nicola Sturgeon told the Scottish people she was not trying to advance her constitutional and political policy for independence while dealing with Covid, that she was not seeking to use Covid as a means to develop that case, and were anyone to do so they would be letting down the Scottish people. Yet that is exactly what she was agreeing to do on the same day she condemned such an abhorrent action.

Throughout the Covid pandemic Nicola Sturgeon sought to make herself and her government look better than the UK Government by doing things differently without any science or evidence-based justifications. In the end the outcomes for the Scottish people were worse.

We already know from the UK Covid Inquiry it was Nicola Sturgeon who bounced the UK Government into enforcing the wearing of masks against the prevailing scientific advice.

We also know the Scottish Government’s guidance of 13 March 2020 acknowledged the concern of care homes about the risks of accepting hospital discharges yet it carried on with the policy – only 650 of 3,599 patients discharged were tested for Covid – and could still be moved even if testing positive.

On 14 April Matt Hancock decided all patients discharged from English hospitals to care homes must test negative for Covid. In Scotland this decision was delayed a full week until the 22 April – why the delay? Nothing was gained by waiting, but patients and especially care home residents were put at grave risk.

On 12 May 2021 the UK Government announced there would be a Covid Public Inquiry. On Friday we learned from that inquiry, holding a session in Edinburgh, that the very next day, 13 May 2021, a senior Scottish civil servant, Ken Thompson, reminded a high level Scottish Government Covid discussion group their WhatsApp messages could be subject to Freedom of Information requests and should be deleted.

The response of the National Clinical Director, Jason Leitch, was to say, “WhatsApp deletion is a pre-bed ritual”.

By 14 December 2021 the Scottish Government announced it would hold a separate Scottish public inquiry, yet it would appear records of messages were still being deleted and minutes of meetings still not being taken.

We know, because she has read them out on television, that Nicola Sturgeon kept messages between herself and Alex Salmond, so why not keep the messages between herself and colleagues regarding management of the Covid pandemic? Surely it would be to everyone’s advantage, not least the public interest of ensuring lessons could be learned about what worked and what did not for any similar situation in the future.

We should remind ourselves WhatsApp phone messages are used above other forms of contact not just because they are quick and handy but because they are end-to-end encrypted – preventing people intercepting them. They provide a high level of secrecy and it is this secrecy that means frank conversations can be had in a one-to-one or group setting.

In August 2021 Ciaran Jenkins of Channel 4 had asked Nicola Sturgeon, “Can you guarantee to the bereaved families that you will disclose emails, WhatsApps, private emails if you’ve been using them. Whatever. That nothing will be off limits in this inquiry?” Her typically terse answer was, “If you understand statutory public inquiries you would know that even if I wasn’t prepared to give that assurance, which for the avoidance of doubt I am, then I wouldn’t have the ability. This will be a judge-led statutory inquiry.” Yet Sturgeon had been deleting her messages when she gave that answer.

She went on to say, “I mean this really, really, really strongly, I desperately want every appropriate lesson from what we’ve gone through to be learned so that any future government, hopefully not for decades to come… has the benefit of that learning.” It was a lie.

The Deputy First Minister, John Swinney also destroyed his records. Yet Kate Forbes (then Finance Secretary) and Humza Yousaf (then Justice Secretary) were in many of these WhatsApp conversations and did not delete records of the messages. They have been handed over to the inquiry. So why did Sturgeon and Swinney believe they should delete them, given their obvious importance and the existence of legislation requiring they be kept?

It is not for Nicola Sturgeon to decide what evidence it is appropriate to keep and what should be destroyed. Neither is it a defence that Scottish Government policy or guidance (it decides for itself) allows for or even recommends destroying records – it is legislation that decides what should be kept or disposed of. To protect the public interest the Inquiries Act 2005 makes it a criminal offence to destroy evidence that could inform a public inquiry of decisions.

Sturgeon’s own words and concurrent actions condemn her to eternal shame – but Scottish people paid the price.

Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European Parliaments and editor of ThinkScotland.org​​​​​​​