My main regret is not locking down sooner, Sturgeon tells Covid inquiry

Not locking down “a week, two weeks earlier” at the start of the pandemic is a chief regret, Nicola Sturgeon told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry in an emotional evidence session.

The former first minister became tearful at times while giving evidence in Edinburgh on Wednesday, including when saying a “large part” of her wishes she had not been Scotland’s first minister during the pandemic.

She said: “Of the many regrets I have, probably chief of those is that we didn’t lock down a week, two weeks, earlier than we did.”

She denied making pandemic decisions for political reasons, adding she had not “thought less” about politics and Scottish independence in her life than she did during the pandemic.

“I was motivated solely by trying to do the best we could to keep people as safe as possible,” she added.

“We did that to some extent, but not to, and perhaps we never could have done it to the extent I would have wished we could have done.

“I carry the regret for the loss of life, the loss of opportunity, the loss of education of our young people, I carry that with me every single day.”

Earlier, she choked back tears as she said: “I was the first minister when the pandemic struck.

“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.”

Ms Sturgeon added it is “for others to judge” if she succeeded in her aim.

UK minister Michael Gove previously accused the Scottish Government of seeking “political conflict” during the pandemic.

Ms Sturgeon, fighting back tears, said: “The idea that in those horrendous days, weeks, I was thinking of political opportunity” was “not the case”.

She said she felt “fear” and was “overwhelmed by the scale of what we were dealing with” in the early days.

The Scottish Government became aware, the inquiry heard, that Covid-19 was something to “be very worried about” in late January 2020, with the cabinet discussing the virus for the first time on February 4 that year.

Ms Sturgeon also told the inquiry it was “not unreasonable” to keep information about an early outbreak at a Nike conference in Edinburgh from the public, on the advice of then chief medical officer Catherine Calderwood, although she later said she would have “gone the other way”.

She also said governments should seek to increase their “baseline” of testing and contact tracing capacity outside of pandemics, to ensure the need to scale up when an outbreak hits is limited.

She told the inquiry she did not use informal messaging such as WhatsApp to make decisions during the pandemic and said there was a “high degree of formality around Scottish Government decision-making”, in an inquiry statement.

Her statement continued: “During the pandemic I did not make extensive use of informal messaging and certainly did not use it to make decisions.”

She maintained the Scottish Government was “open, transparent and accountable” throughout its pandemic response.

Jamie Dawson KC, senior counsel to the inquiry, put it to Ms Sturgeon that she “at least rarely used (informal messaging)”.

She replied: “I have not said, and I’m not saying today, that I never used informal means of communication. What I am saying is that I did so very rarely and not to discuss issues of substance or anything that could be described as decision-making.”

While WhatsApp had become “too common” a means of communication within the Scottish Government, Ms Sturgeon said she exchanged WhatsApps with no more than a “handful” of people, and was not a member of any groups, with now First Minister Humza Yousaf and her former chief of staff, Liz Lloyd, the main people she communicated with in this way.

She said she deleted these informal messages, in line with official advice, but “salient” points were all recorded on the corporate record.

She said: “I operated from 2007, based on advice, the policy that messages, business relating to government, should not be kept on a phone that could be lost or stolen and insecure in that way, but properly recorded through the system.”

The inquiry was shown messages between Ms Sturgeon and Ms Lloyd showing the former SNP leader saying she is “having a crisis of decision-making” over hospitality and adding “it’s all so random” when discussing restrictions on restaurants.

Ms Sturgeon told the inquiry she did not think there was anything in the exchange which would not be recorded in cabinet minutes or in the public record, adding she does not think the messaging app “should be used to have substantial discussions”, because “four years on we can put on a different interpretation”.

Ms Sturgeon said she did not recall receiving a “do not destroy” order from senior civil servants relating to the Scottish Covid-19 Inquiry, but added she would not have “required to see that to know the matters that were relevant”.

The former first minister said she had “always assumed there would be a public inquiry” and apologised for any lack of clarity at a public briefing where she said her WhatsApps would be handed over, despite knowing they had been deleted.

She was also questioned on her decision to provide public health expert Professor Devi Sridhar with her SNP email address, which she said she “perhaps shouldn’t have”.

Ms Sturgeon added: “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.”

Ms Sturgeon was also asked about Boris Johnson – who she had described in a message to Ms Lloyd during the pandemic as a “f****** clown” – saying he was not the right person to be prime minister.

She denied Mr Gove’s assertion she “jumped the gun” on a decision to ban mass gatherings in March 2020 and said they were “going more slowly than we should have been” and she wished the decision had been taken earlier.

She said she did not breach confidentiality by announcing this following a Cobra meeting with UK ministers, ahead of Mr Johnson.

The inquiry continues.