Senior SNP politicians who led Scotland during the Covid-19 pandemic are coming under growing pressure after informal WhatsApp messages were not handed over as evidence to the Covid inquiry because they had been deleted.
Both the UK and Scotland Covid inquiries have asked for the messages from as many as 70 government officials from 137 WhatsApp groups, almost all of which were wiped from the devices used.
A group of people who lost family members during the pandemic have demanded an inquiry into why the messages were deleted. Aamer Anwar, chief solicitor for Scottish Covid Bereaved families group said that the Scottish government had not disclosed when or why the messages were deleted.
Anwar said: “From May 2020, if there was a position of auto-delete, if there was a situation where government ministers and senior civil servants were deleting their WhatsApps, it should have been ordered to stop.
“We want to know when was the deletion brought in, who ordered it, why was it not ordered to be stopped?”
This is despite former first minister Nicola Sturgeon in a press conference in August 2021 saying that she would hand over all messages to the inquiry. When asked: “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?”
Sturgeon replied: “I think 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 public inquiry.”
“I desperately want every appropriate lesson from what we’ve gone through to be learnt so that any future government…that is in a similar situation has the benefit of that learning,” she added.
A spokesperson for the disgraced former first minister who left office amid a scandal over her party’s finances said she would continue to cooperate with UK and Scottish Covid inquiries and provide them with all the information she could.
They said: “She has recently submitted her third written statement to the UK inquiry – running to around 200 pages – and expects to give oral evidence again next year when she will answer all questions put to her.”
Current first minister Humza Yousaf and national clinical director Jason Leitch are also included in the list of officials whose messages were deleted. Deputy first minister Shona Robison is expected to give a speech in Holyrood addressing the matter this week.
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