Nicola Sturgeon: Treat the public ‘like grown ups’ over lockdown

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon applauds outside St Andrew's House to salute health service and care workers during Thursday's nationwide Clap for Carers

The First Minister said she has been working closely with the UK Government, and insisted that Scotland would stick to UK-wide guidance as much as possible.

But Ms Sturgeon repeated that she would not hesitate to take a different course if scientific advice said it was necessary.

Speaking to the Today programme on the BBC, the First Minister said: “I'm not going to set out next week the date on which lockdown will be lifted.

"What I'm going to try to do is set out the decision-making framework that we're operating in, so that we are treating the public like grown-ups that they are."

Ms Sturgeon added: "If I was being advised, and if the judgment I was applying to that advice told me that I had to do something different to the rest of the UK because it was right and necessary to continue to control the virus in Scotland, of course I would do that."

She said she will be driven by what advice, science and her own judgment is telling her but that "the more consistency we can have across the UK in how we do these things, the better".

"I'm not sure I am saying that much different to the UK Government, to be perfectly frank, but I'll speak for myself rather than trying to speak for anybody else,” Ms Sturgeon said.

"We're all going through this, we're all experiencing it slightly differently, but we're all going through this incredible challenge, for most of us, in the most difficult circumstances we've ever lived through.

"None of us have all the answers, I certainly don't have all the answers, but I do think, as First Minister, in the difficult times I've got a duty to try to be as open with people as I can be about what I do know, what I don't know, about what we're trying to do to find the answers to the questions we don't yet have."

Meanwhile, the Scottish Secretary Alister Jack said it was not the time to "muddy the message" by talking about lockdown exit strategies.

Alister Jack said it is important to keep people focused on the message to stay at home to help save lives by protecting the NHS as it copes with the coronavirus pandemic.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has called for clarity about what plans are being put in place to lift the lockdown when the time is right after the UK Government announced on Thursday it will be extended for another three weeks.

And this morning, Mr Starmer suggested that ministers were holding off on making key decisions on the lockdown because they were waiting for Prime Minister Boris Johnson to return to work after recovering from coronavirus.

But Mr Jack said it is important not to confuse the message by discussing strategies at this stage.

He told Good Morning Scotland on the BBC: "We are seeing the rate of infection dropping below one and I would suggest that this is not the time to muddy the message by talking about exit strategies or getting into arguments about sectors or geography or demographies or anything else, this is not the time to be doing that, this is the time to be keeping people focused on the simple message which is stay at home, save lives by protecting the NHS.

"It's the time to keep everyone focused on the really important message which is that if we're going to avoid a second peak we need people to stay at home and carry on the good work of what they've definitely achieved so far.

"We see a flattening of the graph, the measures we've taken have worked, we want people to carry on with those measures, I don't want to give any other messaging at this stage."

Mr Jack said the UK and Scottish governments are working very well on the issue together, and he added it is important they are both "in lockstep on coming out of lockdown because the economy does not respect borders".