Nicola Sturgeon says Covid inquiry has copies of messages after hearing heard pandemic texts were 'all deleted'

20 January 2024, 17:37 | Updated: 20 January 2024, 17:40

Nicola Sturgeon said the UK Covid Inquiry has been provided with copies of messages between her and colleagues after the hearing heard the former first minister's pandemic WhatsApp messages were 'all deleted'.

Sturgeon, who stepped down as Scottish first minister last year, said despite messages having "not been retained" on her own device, she was still able to obtain copies to submit to the inquiry.

The UK Covid inquiry is currently sitting in Edinburgh where it previously heard Sturgeon's messages, as well as her deputy John Swinney, were routinely deleted or were set to auto-delete.

In a statement on X on Saturday afternoon, Sturgeon said messages communicated through "informal means" had been recovered from other devices, however, and had been provided to the inquiry.

She had come under criticism from opposition parties following the revelations she had deleted messages.

Tweeting her statement, the former First Minister said: "I do not intend to give a running commentary on the ongoing Inquiry. Instead, out of respect to all those impacted by the pandemic, I will answer questions directly and openly when I give evidence at the end of this month."

"However, in light of recent coverage, there are certain points I feel it important to make clear.

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"Contrary to the impression given in some coverage, the Inquiry does have messages between me and those I most regularly communicated with through informal means.

"Although these had not been retained on my own device, I was able to obtain copies which I submitted to the Inquiry last year."

It comes after the Inquiry said Sturgeon's WhatsApp messages sent and received during the pandemic had all been deleted.

Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to the inquiry, said Sturgeon appeared to "have retained no messages whatsoever".

The former first minister previously stressed she never used informal messaging - such as WhatsApp - to make decisions during the pandemic. However, she has since been criticised for what opposition politicians consider an attempt to hide exchanges with key ministers and advisers.

"In the summary table that we see here, we can see that under the box 'Nicola Sturgeon' it says that 'messages were not retained, they were deleted in routine tidying up of inboxes or changes of phones, unable to retrieve messages'," Mr Dawson said in the inquiry.

"What that tends to suggest is that at the time a request was made, Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister of Scotland, had retained no messages whatsoever in connection with her management of the pandemic."

He went on to ask Lesley Fraser, the director-general corporate at the Scottish Government, if that was correct. "That's what that indicates to me," she replied.

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When the inquiry asked for messages retained by the Scottish Government, Mr Dawson said: "You provided us with none," to which Ms Fraser said: "Correct."

He went on to ask if the inquiry had "no access" to Ms Sturgeon's messages in connection with the pandemic.

Ms Fraser said: "Ms Sturgeon will be able to explain this much better.

Ms Sturgeon would have worked with her private office in order to ensure that her views and instructions were clearly understood and they may well have been informed by some of the exchanges she had with her chief of staff or with other ministers, but she would have relayed that to her private office and that would be then the instruction that went from private office and that would be retained."

Asked if she is sure that is what would have happened, Ms Fraser said that course of action is "how Government works", adding it is a "necessity" for information to be recorded, but she was unable to be absolutely sure.

In 2021, during one of the regular Covid-19 briefings she held, Ms Sturgeon gave an assurance that correspondence - including messages - would be handed to any future inquiry.