SNP Covid WhatsApp scandal deepens every time a minister opens their mouth - Jackie Baillie

‘The only thing that is clear is that SNP Ministers aimed to obscure the truth’

Even the shabbiest of defence lawyers would be able to get their dates straight. But it appears that in the SNP’s Covid cover-up Ministers are not even capable of reading the calendar.

In a scandal which deepens every time a Minister opens their mouth none can get their facts right on how and why the Scottish Government withheld evidence from both the UK and the Scottish Covid inquiries.

Both the First Minister and his deputy told Holyrood last week that the Inquiry had asked the Scottish Government for pandemic-related WhatsApp messages in September.

However, at the Inquiry’s request, the Government this week published a full timeline showing the Inquiry had actually first asked for WhatsApp messages in February.

It is obvious this was a move by the inquiry team to vent their frustration at the lack of of co-operation from the Scottish Government and the clearly misleading public utterings of the First Minister. What the timeline also shows is that the Scottish Government had failed to hand over any WhatsApps when it gave its final response to the Inquiry in June.

We already know from the UK inquiry how important WhatsApp messages have become in understanding both the chaos and calculations behind decisions made during the pandemic.

But lo and behold key Scottish figures in handling the pandemic, including former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and national clinical director Jason Leitch, reportedly failed to retain their phone messages.

The UK inquiry's counsel, Jamie Dawson KC, said "very few" of the messages from 70 Scottish government officials, special advisers and former ministers appear to have been retained.

The Scottish government cannot even tell us how many officials failed to comply with the do not destroy request which we now know came months before Ministers admitted and several months after Nicola Sturgeon gave a public commitment that all messages would be kept.

The Scottish inquiry issued a "do not destroy" order at the beginning of August 2022, meaning it could be an offence for witnesses to have deleted Covid-related messages after that date.

That clicking sound you could hear in the background for that summer was not birdsong it was the chirp of mobile phone messages being deleted wholesale. The humming sound was the shredder destroying evidence.

The First Minister Humza Yousaf appears to have found an old phone with his WhatsApp messages and will hand them to the inquiry.

But the erstwhile former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has twisted in the wind over whether she did or did not press the delete button on her mobile messages.

The former First Minister cannot answer a straight question on whether she retained her WhatsApp messages. The question for her has moved on from what did she delete to what is she hiding?

Ministers can dance on the head of a pin over whether an informal or formal request was made or whether rights to privacy were being respected - the outcome remains the same.

This timeline directly contradicts statements made by the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister in parliament and that is a very serious matter.

What is even more serious is Ministers and officials playing fast and loose with public confidence and trust. The families of those who lost love ones during Covid deserve answers and justice but they are being badly let down.

The only thing that is clear is that SNP Ministers aimed to obscure the truth by hiding their decision making from public scrutiny, The tactic is incredible in its cynicism.

By hiding the truth, the SNP undermine public faith in the outcome of the covid inquiries and in politics too.