UK Covid Inquiry: Nicola Sturgeon misses chance to allay public concerns over why she deleted her WhatsApp messages – Euan McColm

Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon made a failed attempt to advance a semantic argument that her WhatsApp messages were ‘not retained’ rather than ‘deleted’

The purpose of the UK Covid Inquiry may be to scrutinise and learn from government responses to the coronavirus pandemic but, for former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, her appearance offered a personal opportunity. We recently learned that, despite promising all of her communications relating to the pandemic would be made available to the inquiry, Sturgeon had deleted a number of WhatsApp messages.

Her limited explanation for this had been that she had acted in line with government policy and that, anyway, she hadn’t deleted anything important. This was Sturgeon’s chance to convince us that she’d behaved entirely properly. The former First Minister, in a most lawyerly performance at the hearing in Edinburgh, failed to reassure.

For much of the hearing, during which she was questioned by Jamie Dawson KC, Sturgeon chose to dance on the heads of a succession of pins. On whether some messages had been deleted, she replied that she preferred the words “not retained” to “deleted”. Yes, said Dawson, but the messages were deleted, weren’t they? Yes, said Sturgeon.

Nicola Sturgeon's evidence to the UK Covid Inquiry about her deleted WhatsApp messages didn't impress Euan McColm (Picture contributed)

Definition of decision-making

The First Minister seemed keen to establish firm rules around what actually constituted decision-making. So far as she was concerned, Cabinet is where decisions are taken and there was a disconnect between this and any preliminary discussions. Sturgeon felt able to say that discussions by the so-called “Gold” group – cliques of senior ministers brought together to discuss relevant pandemic-related matters in advance of Cabinet meetings – did not form part of the decision process even though there is a clear and compelling argument that anything that might inform a decision constitutes part of the process.

A sceptic might wonder whether Sturgeon wished to so narrowly define “decision-making” in order to render deleted WhatsApps irrelevant. Dressed in sombre black, Sturgeon was a most cautious witness, her evidence at times going no further than confirming the existence of messages provided to the inquiry by other people.

Her star has fallen some way over the past year. Her resignation as SNP leader and First Minster last year threw her party into chaos. Revelations that Police Scotland were investigating allegations of fraud in the SNP while Sturgeon was leader and her husband, Peter Murrell, was its chief executive, seriously damaged her standing in the party and across the wider independence movement.

The Nicola Sturgeon who wishes us to believe that, despite promising she’d make available her WhatsApp messages to the Covid Inquiry, there is nothing untoward about the fact it turns out she’d actually deleted them is not the Nicola Sturgeon of a year ago.

The Covid Inquiry – and the rest of us – will never know whether Sturgeon’s deleted WhatsApps would have been relevant to its deliberations. It should not have been for the former First Minister to make that call.

During the former FM’s day-long appearance at the committee, new facts were scarce. But one revelation stuck out. We now know that when Nicola Sturgeon promised, in August 2021, she would make available her WhatsApp messages to the inquiry, she was aware they’d already been erased. The former First Minster’s hollow promise to provide evidence seems doubly cynical now.