Nicola Sturgeon has admitted failing to properly record key discussions about the Covid crisis after being pressed at the UK Covid inquiry over claims that some decisions were too centralised and secretive.
The former first minister, who led Scotland’s response to the pandemic, pushed back tears when she admitted she found the pressure of the crisis “incredibly stressful”, and at times wished she had not been in charge.
“I was the first minister when the pandemic struck,” she said, her voice breaking. “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 I could be during that period.”
During a day-long evidence session, Sturgeon repeatedly denied challenges from Jamie Dawson KC, the inquiry’s counsel, about whether she had sought to politicise the pandemic to promote independence.
She was shown an email from July 2020 that appeared to come from the office of her deputy and closest political ally, John Swinney, in which a senior official told Swinney and Sturgeon he was “extremely concerned” about Spain being subject to far tougher travel rules than other countries.
The official said he feared the Spanish government would believe this was “entirely political; they won’t forget; there is a real possibility 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 with it. Travel policy with Spain had been decided entirely on “finely balanced” scientific and economic grounds, she said. The Scottish government told the hearing the email had not come from Swinney or his private office, but from another civil servant.
“Why is that even part of the discussions?” Dawson asked. “It wasn’t part of my consideration,” Sturgeon replied. “I, certainly to the best of my knowledge, didn’t have any discussions of that nature.”
Under close questioning from Dawson, Sturgeon admitted she had made a number of errors in her handling of policymaking and some of the key decisions taken during the crisis.
Those included:
An admission that crucial discussions with her closest advisers during private “gold command” meetings should have been recorded.
That she regretted not telling people about Scotland’s first outbreak, involving 38 cases linked to a Nike conference in Edinburgh in March 2020, as that “had the potential to undermine public confidence”.
That she should not have promised journalists in August 2021 that all her WhatsApp messages would be kept, knowing she had been systematically deleting them.
That it was inappropriate for her to give the public health expert Devi Sridhar her private SNP email address.
That she had “thought wrongly” that her chief medical officer, Catherine Calderwood, could remain in post after admitting she had breached lockdown rules by visiting her holiday home.
Sturgeon “strongly refuted” repeated suggestions from Dawson that there had been a deliberate effort on her part to centralise and control key decisions by taking “a very firm grip of decision-making”. She said any mistakes were unintentional, driven by the intense pace and significance of the events that were unfolding.
“I did not operate on any issue at any point of the Covid pandemic in a way that sought to exclude people from decision-making,” she said.
“I tried to lead from the front. I tried to shoulder my fair share, sometimes deliberately more than my fair share of the burden of decision-making given the severity and the difficulty of the decisions that were being made. I thought that was appropriate for a first minister.”
Dawson pressed Sturgeon – who quit as first minister last February in part, she said, because of the immense pressures of the Covid crisis – on why her regular gold group meetings had not been minuted, and why only a small group of ministers and advisers had taken part.
It emerged on Tuesday that Sturgeon had failed to include Kate Forbes, then her finance secretary, in gold group meetings, which routinely took place before cabinet meetings. Forbes said she had known they existed only in early 2021.
Sturgeon denied Forbes had been deliberately excluded but admitted those meetings were held with key advisers to help “shape” the policies and decisions she wanted to put to cabinet.
The inquiry heard on Tuesday that Sturgeon and Swinney had decided to shut all Scottish schools in March 2020 without telling the cabinet. Dawson then showed Sturgeon a WhatsApp exchange between her and her chief of staff, Liz Lloyd, which appeared to show them jointly deciding on a policy to ban alcohol consumption in public, before a cabinet meeting.
Sturgeon denied his suggestion that the Scottish cabinet had largely existed simply to ratify her decisions. Cabinet meetings were robust and had real power, she said, insisting the inquiry had all the material it needed to see how and why policy decisions had been taken.
However, she admitted she preferred gold group meetings because she “didn’t have a great deal of patience” for large meetings with “a cast of unnecessary thousands”. She said: “I wanted to get all of the people with the right expertise in the room so that we could take the best decisions we possibly could.”
Sturgeon’s emotions again broke through when she denied seeking to exploit the crisis for political gain. She said her “only instinct” had been to minimise harm in “horrific circumstances”.
Again fighting back tears, she stated: “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.”