Covid: Public inquiries into Nicola Sturgeon and Boris Johnson's handling of crisis must be swift and thorough – Scotsman comment

This weekend, there will be a most-welcome outbreak of happiness as families are reunited for the first time in months.

Nicola Sturgeon said in the early days of the Covid outbreak 'we were faced with a horrendous situation, with horrendous decisions that flowed from that' (Picture: Russell Cheyne/PA)

The Scottish government’s decision to lift the travel ban from Friday – earlier than planned – is a momentous step towards that light at the end of the tunnel we seem to have been talking about for so long.

However, with thousands grieving the loss of loved ones to Covid, there will be an empty chair at many reunions, any sense of joy tempered by lasting sorrow.

So while we should allow ourselves to celebrate our new freedoms, we cannot lose sight of what we have been through.

There could be a temptation to focus on the future and getting on with our much-interrupted lives, but still we need to know, with a degree of urgency, exactly what happened and what went wrong.

Both Nicola Sturgeon and Boris Johnson have said public inquiries will be held. However, depending on how it is set up, an inquiry can be used as a way to kick serious questions into the long grass – as the Iraq War and the Edinburgh tram inquiries have both demonstrated.

Already Johnson has shown signs of what could be an attempt to stall the process, saying an inquiry would be held “as soon as it wouldn’t be an irresponsible diversion of the energies of the key officials involved” in response to calls for one as soon as the restrictions are lifted.

In Scotland, it is already clear that the decision to transfer more than 3,000 patients from hospitals to care homes without first testing them for Covid – and, astonishingly, 113 patients who had actually tested positive for the deadly disease – in the early weeks of the crisis was an appalling error.

Sturgeon said “please believe me when I say I carry the weight of this every single day and always will, in terms of the decisions we were taking”, but her refusal to apologise smacked of a lawyerly reluctance to say anything that suggests an admission of liability.

This is not about a witchhunt but, even as we celebrate, we must not allow any politicians who seek to put the maintenance of their reputations above the search for answers to get away with it.

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.