Covid inquiry live – Nicola Sturgeon insists WhatsApp not used to make decisions during pandemic

Nicola Sturgeon said she “perhaps shouldn’t have” given professor Devi Sridhar an SNP email address.

The inquiry saw messages between the pair where Ms Sturgeon gave prof Sridhar an SNP email address as well as a Scottish government email address.

She said: “On reflection perhaps I shouldn’t have done that.

“But if I had been in any way trying to direct her to a private email address, I doubt if I would have put my government email address in there as well.”

Nicola 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”.

Ms Sturgeon 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”.

Nicola Sturgeon discussed a curfew for hospitality venues with one of her top aides, messages shown to the Covid inquiry reveal.

The former first minister discussed a 6pm curfew for restaurants in parts of Scotland with Liz Lloyd, who served as her chief of staff at the time.

“Ok we should prob stick with 6 – it’s all so random. But I think we need to be prepared for a bit of a backlash”, she wrote in one of the messages.

She was responding to a message from ms Lloyd, which said: “That’s why I would stick with 6pm. But if you want to compromise it would be about giving people regulated places to be in the winter, rather than unregulated homes – but no alcohol because it changes behaviour.”

Nicola Sturgeon said that Scottish government decisions made during the pandemic could not be kept secret, even if ministers had wanted to.

She said: “I would like to give an assurance to the inquiry that contrary to any desire on the part of me or my government to keep things secret, I would suggest the opposite was the case during the pandemic.

“We went to great lengths to communicate, not just the decisions – I took a view very early on in the pandemic, it’s for others to judge whether it was right or wrong, that if we were to achieve a level of compliance with the restrictions that we were to achieve a level of compliance with the restrictions we were asking them to do but why we were doing it.”

WhatsApp messages exchanged between Nicola Sturgeon and her former chief of staff Liz Lloyd show Ms Sturgeon telling Ms Lloyd she was “having a crisis of decision making” over hospitality.

Ms Sturgeon told the inquiry it was something she would have “preferred not to be” on the public record.

The messages between Ms Sturgeon and Ms Lloyd show in-depth discussion about what times to allow restaurants to stay open until.

Ms 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.”

Ms Sturgeon also said there was “nothing to show” that they had listened to industry on the matter.

Nicola Sturgeon said the impact of decisions she made throughout the Covid-19 pandemic will stay with her forever.

She said she wanted to ensure that “those who come after me in politics have the benefit of the learning, the things my government did right and the things that my government that were not right or with hindsight that we wish we had done differently.

“I cannot say strongly enough how important that is to me.

“These decisions were of a magnitude beyond what I had ever experienced, and that is true of decision-makers everywhere and the impact of them I think about literally every day.

“I want this inquiry and the Scottish inquiry to scrutinise those decisions so that we can learn and future governments can learn lessons from them.”

Nicola 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.

Ms Sturgeon was asked by senior counsel to the inquiry, Jamie Dawson, if she recalled receiving that email on August 3 2021.

She answered: “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?”

Ms 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”.

Nicola Sturgeon has said she did make use of informal messaging but only to discuss Covid decisions that might be taken.

“There would be an element of reflection”, she told the official inquiry. “Reflecting on the decisions that we were having to make.

“But I was doing that openly – in daily briefings with the public – so I would not be reflecting in any way where I was…I suppose engaging in some secret course of discussion”.

There was a “high degree of formality” in Covid-era decision-making by Scottish ministers, Nicola Sturgeon has said.

The former first minister said she very “rarely” used informal messaging to conduct government business.

She said that all matters of “substance” were recorded in official channels.

“There was a high degree of formality around the decision-making of the Scottish government,” she said.