Lies, Damned Lies and the SNP
The destruction of records by Scottish government ministers and officials is bad enough; the connivance of the civil service in this disgrace may be even worse. They abetted the creation of what was, in effect, a secret government. https://t.co/oL2gjgP8II
— alexmassie (@alexmassie) January 20, 2024
Alex Massie's column in the Times lays bare the extent to which the SNP have corrupted the business of government with its appalling culture of 'no minutes, no records, no notes' when it comes to important meetings.
"This can only be an entirely deliberate policy. Sturgeon and John Swinney, her then deputy, were vastly experienced politicians. They must have known that such meetings should have been minuted and that these minutes should have been kept. Consequently, they must also have decided that these meetings — at which policy of national importance and public interest was discussed — should not be recorded properly."
The same it seems is true of WhatsApp exchanges between ministers and civil servants which have not been handed over, as promised and in full, to the UK Covid Inquiry.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3c74871a-f4dc-4e02-a12f-8ca52bc211ef?
Nicola Sturgeon always wrapped herself in a shroud of secrecyEven at the height of the pandemic the Scottish first minister knew her emails, WhatsApps and meetings would later be scrutinised — so why weren’t records kept?
By Alex Massie - Sunday Times
Let us not be coy or euphemistically evasive here. This was a lie, pure and simple. A lie from a government with form for lying. A government that will lie and lie and lie again whenever it suits.
On Friday the UK Covid inquiry, chaired by Baroness Hallett, revealed the discovery of a “WhatsApp group chat” in which a senior Scottish government official warned that discussions of this sort between ministers and officials would be subject to release under freedom of information laws. This provoked a measure of banter. “Clear the chat!” another civil servant said. To which Leitch responded: “WhatsApp deletion is a pre-bed ritual.” This exchange took place on May 13, 2021 but it is obvious that the regular destruction of messages began much earlier than that.
Baroness Hallett is chairing the Covid inquiry - PA
Almost all governments struggled during the pandemic. It stressed the machinery of government like no other public health emergency in recent decades. Mistakes, some of them mortal, were inevitable. But in Scotland a great myth was also created. Here, we were encouraged to believe that Nicola Sturgeon’s ministry had a grip on the pandemic, in stark contrast to Boris Johnson’s chaotic and confused handling of the situation. Where Johnson floundered, Sturgeon offered reassurance; where he was overwhelmed by the detail of managing a problem of hideous complexity, she rose to the occasion. It was her finest hour.
Awkwardly, much of this proved to be just a triumph of public relations. Outcomes in Scotland were not very different from outcomes in England. Many of the same mistakes were made and even if some were made for understandable reasons their outcomes were still disastrous. It remains astonishing that elderly patients were sometimes discharged from hospitals into care homes even though it was known that they were carrying the virus.
It is important to emphasise that this is not simply a matter of political point-scoring. The Covid inquiry is charged with examining how politicians and their advisers responded to an unprecedented public health challenge. The idea is not just to discover what went wrong and who to blame but to establish what lessons should be learnt in advance of future crises. The inquiry’s ability to do that is obviously compromised if records of how and why decisions were taken have been destroyed.
Nicola Sturgeon’s government took some of its most important decisions during unrecorded meetings - GETTY
Sometimes, of course, records have not been destroyed because no records were kept in the first place. Sturgeon’s confidantes formed a “gold command” group at the heart of the Scottish government. This group, not the cabinet, took most of the most important decisions. As Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to Hallett’s inquiry, related: “It appears that no minutes of the meetings of this group were kept.”
This can only be an entirely deliberate policy. Sturgeon and John Swinney, her then deputy, were vastly experienced politicians. They must have known that such meetings should have been minuted and that these minutes should have been kept. Consequently, they must also have decided that these meetings — at which policy of national importance and public interest was discussed — should not be recorded properly.
One may only guess at the level of sanctimonious outrage SNP politicians would display if Conservative ministers were discovered to have been behaving in such a secretive fashion. If this were a story about Johnson and Dominic Cummings and Sir Patrick Vallance you may be sure that SNP indignation would have long ago gone nuclear.
Boris Johnson has not given the inquiry all his WhatsApp messages - GETTY
And, of course, the British government has many questions to answer too. Both Johnson and Rishi Sunak have been unable to supply the Covid inquiry with all their WhatsApp messages. This has long seemed suspicious and their explanations too conveniently self-serving to be wholly credible. Still, we may enjoy the spectacle of the modern Scottish nationalist justifying his own party’s disgraceful penchant for furtiveness and secrecy by arguing that the first minister of Scotland is at least no worse than the worst British prime minister in living memory.
