Nicola Sturgeon at Covid Inquiry Live: Former First Minister at inquiry amid scrutiny around WhatsApp messages
Former First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon is giving evidence at the UK Covid Inquiry amid ongoing scrutiny around the deleted WhatsApp messages.
Keep up to date with every moment with The Scotsman live blog.
Statement from the Scottish Covid Bereaved
The human rights lawyer, Aamer Anwar, who is representing the Scottish Covid Bereaved group, has given a statement outside the hearing:
Nicola Sturgeon insisted a cabinet meeting where Humza Yousaf offered to find £100m from the health budget was not indicative of how her government business was conducted.
Ms Sturgeon was asked about a cabinet meeting where a discussion took place about finding an additional £100 million in December 2021 for business support.
The former first minister said she was “unhappy” with Mr Yousaf’s actions because he felt it did a “disservice” to former finance secretary Kate Forbes and “took the feet from under her”.
She told the inquiry Humza Yousaf had sent her a WhatsApp message about it a few weeks previously and she had told him to “speak to Kate (Forbes) about it”.
Mr Yousaf had said he "took a hell of a bullet" and was "ranted" at by Ms Sturgeon.
Sturgeon says she did not make decisions outwith Cabinet
Sturgeon says she did not have “carte blanche” to make decisions within the Scottish cabinet.
"I was not given carte blanche to take any decision I wanted to take.
“Cabinet would say to me we want to do this assuming the data supports it, and I would look at that and make that final decision.
Mr Dawson said: “I would put it to you that you had incredibly wide discretion to decide on anything.
Ms Sturgeon said: “I would not have latitude to depart from the strategic framework not would I have wanted to. No one would take solely on to their own shoulders the decisions being made, so I don’t think the characterisation of that is accurate.”
She was asked by Jamie Dawson KC if it was the case that cabinet was a decision ratifying body rather than a decision-making body.
She said: “No that’s not the case."
After saying she did not believe Boris Johnson was the right person to be Prime Minister "full stop", not just during the pandemic, Ms Sturgeon is asked whether she was the right person to be First Minister.
“I was the first minister when the pandemic struck," she says.
“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 says she "wanted to be the best First Minister she could be during that period."
Her voice cracking up, she chokes back tears and says "it's for others to judge the extent to which I succeeded".
"Perhaps more than anything I felt an overwhelming responsibility to do the best I could," she adds, again choking up.
Scottish Government did not use pandemic for political purposes, Sturgeon insists
Suggestions that the Scottish Government used the pandemic for political purposes are “not the case”, Nicola Sturgeon has said.
UK minister Michael Gove previously accused the Scottish Government of seeking “political conflict” during the pandemic.
But asked about such accusations, the former first minister, who was again fighting back tears, said: “The idea that in those horrendous days, weeks, I was thinking of political opportunity” was “not the case”.
Ms Sturgeon also spoke of the impact of the early parts of the pandemic on her personally, saying: “At times in those early days, I felt overwhelmed by the scale of what we were dealing with and perhaps more than anything, I felt an overwhelming responsibility to do the best I could.”
Emotion on full display
While the hearing has calmed down as it moves into the minutiae of testing and data modelling, earlier in the day emotions were running high:
Lunch time analysis
Some analysis of Ms Sturgeon's testimony so far from our Investigation Correspondent Martyn McLaughlin:
"It has been less than a year since Nicola Sturgeon’s shock decision to step down as first minister, with the intense scrutiny of the 53 year-old’s leadership during the pandemic among the myriad issues that have cast doubt over her political legacy, with serious concerns reasoned over how decisions were made and a lack of transparency.
"Yet even though such a short period of time has passed, it was a different Ms Sturgeon the nation saw today at the UK Covid-19 Inquiry. Compared to the figure who dominated Scottish politics for the best part of a decade, she came across at times as vulnerable and uncertain, as she struggled to provide substantive answers to some of the sharper questions from the inquiry’s lead counsel, Jamie Dawson KC." - Read more here.
Industrial deletion
Braved the wind and the rain to listen to Aamer Anwar and the Scottish Covid Bereaved give their assessment of Ms Sturgeon's morning testimony:
Will have on their statement soon.
Sturgeon's advisers
We're back underway after a brief lunch break.
Sturgeon is asked about concerns her senior medical advisers were “not sufficiently expert” at the start of the pandemic.
Former chief medical officer Dr Catherine Calderwood is trained in obstetrics, while national clinical director Professor Jason Leitch’s background and current Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Gregor Smith was initially a GP.
But Ms Sturgeon said: “The advice I got from all of these individuals, not just initially, but in the case of two of them over the course of the pandemic, I had a high degree of confidence and trust and I think that confidence and trust was justified.”
Ms Sturgeon added that at no point did she feel she “was not getting good advice”.
Calderwood
Sturgeon feared the “disruption” that could be caused by the resignation of former chief medical officer Dr Catherine Calderwood, the inquiry has heard.
Dr Calderwood left the role after it emerged she made a trip to her holiday home in Fife, breaching lockdown regulations.
The former first minister told the inquiry she had initially tried to keep Dr Calderwood in post.
“I was mindful of how disruptive it would be to suddenly in those circumstances lose a chief medical officer,” she said.
Ms Sturgeon said she initially wanted to achieve two things; quell public anger and retain the “very valuable expertise” of Dr Calderwood.
Over the course of the day after the story broke, however, it became clear to both Ms Sturgeon and Dr Calderwood that she would have to resign.
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