Nicola Sturgeon has admitted he failed to properly record key discussions about the Covid crisis after being pressured at the UK Covid inquiry over claims some decisions were too centralized and secretive.
The former first minister, who led Scotland’s response to the pandemic, choked back tears as she admitted she found the pressures of the crisis “incredibly stressful” and sometimes wished she had not been in charge.
“I was the prime minister when the pandemic hit,” she said, her voice breaking. “A big part of me wishes I hadn’t been there, but I was and I wanted to be the best Prime Minister I could be during that period.”
During a daylong evidence session, Sturgeon repeatedly denied criticism from Jamie Dawson KC, the inquiry’s counsel, over whether she had tried to politicize the pandemic to promote independence.
She was shown a July 2020 email that appeared to come from the office of her deputy and close political ally, John Swinney, in which a senior official told Swinney and Sturgeon he was “extremely concerned” that Spain would have to comply with much stricter travel rules. than other countries.
The official said he feared the Spanish government would believe this was “entirely political”; they will not forget it; there is a real possibility that they will never approve EU membership for an independent Scotland.”
Sturgeon said she “assumed” she had read the email, but rejected the suggestion she agreed to it. The travel policy with Spain was determined entirely on “balanced” scientific and economic grounds, she said. The Scottish Government told the hearing that the email did not come from Swinney or his cabinet, but from another civil servant.
“Why is that even part of the discussions?” Dawson asked. “It wasn’t part of my consideration,” Sturgeon replied. “As far as I know, I certainly haven’t had any discussions of that nature.”
Under close questioning from Dawson, Sturgeon admitted she had made a number of mistakes in her handling of policymaking and some of the key decisions made during the crisis.
These include:
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That she regretted not telling people about the first outbreak in Scotland, involving 38 cases linked to a Nike conference in Edinburgh in March 2020, because it “had the potential to undermine public confidence undermine the public.”
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That she had ‘wrongly’ believed her chief doctor, Catherine Calderwood, could remain in post after admitting breaching lockdown rules by visiting her holiday home.
Sturgeon strongly refuted repeated suggestions from Dawson that there had been a deliberate attempt on her part to centralize and control key decisions by taking “a very firm grip on decision-making”. She said any errors were unintentional, caused by the intense pace and significance of the events that unfolded.
“At no time during the Covid pandemic have I acted in a way that sought to exclude people from decision-making,” she said.
“I tried to lead from the front. I tried to bear my fair share, sometimes deliberately more than my fair share of the burden of decision making, given the severity and difficulty of the decisions being made. I thought that was appropriate for a prime minister.”
Dawson pressed Sturgeon – who resigned as first minister last February in part, she said, due to the enormous pressures of the Covid crisis – about why her regular gold group meetings had not been noted, and why only a small group of ministers and advisers had done so . participated.
On Tuesday it emerged that Sturgeon had failed to involve Kate Forbes, then her finance minister, in gold group meetings, which routinely took place before Cabinet meetings. Forbes said she didn’t know they existed until early 2021.
Sturgeon denied that Forbes had been deliberately excluded, but admitted that these meetings were held with key advisers to help ‘shape’ the policies and decisions she wanted to put to Cabinet.
The investigation revealed on Tuesday that Sturgeon and Swinney had decided to close all Scottish schools in March 2020 without informing the Cabinet. Dawson then showed Sturgeon a WhatsApp conversation between her and her chief of staff, Liz Lloyd, which showed they jointly decided on a policy to ban alcohol consumption in public before a Cabinet meeting.
Sturgeon denied his suggestion that the Scottish Cabinet largely existed to ratify its decisions. Cabinet meetings were robust and had real power, she said, emphasizing that the inquiry had all the material it needed to see how and why policy decisions had been made.
However, she admitted that she preferred gold group meetings because she “didn’t have much patience” for large gatherings with “a cast of unnecessary thousands.” She said: “I wanted to get all the people in the room with the right expertise so we could make the best decisions possible.”
Sturgeon’s emotions broke through again as she denied seeking to exploit the crisis for political gain. She said her “only instinct” had been to minimize damage in “horrific circumstances”.
Again fighting back tears, she said, “As long as I live, I will carry the impact of these decisions with me, I will regret the decisions and judgments I made wrongly.
“But I will always know in my heart and in my soul that my instincts and my motivation were nothing more than trying to do the best I could in the face of this pandemic.”