The UK Covid inquiry is struggling to understand how Nicola Sturgeon took key decisions during the pandemic because her “gold command” meetings were not minuted, the inquiry has heard.
Jamie Dawson KC, the inquiry’s Scottish counsel, said it appeared that the Scottish government failed to record discussions during any of Sturgeon’s crucial “gold” meetings with a small handful of her advisers and senior ministers during 2020 and 2021.
Sturgeon excluded Kate Forbes, then Scotland’s finance secretary, from those meetings throughout 2020. Forbes told the inquiry on Tuesday she did not know gold command existed until she was invited to join one of its meetings in 2021.
Dawson said the inquiry had asked the Scottish government for the minuted records of gold command meetings and from its emergency resilience group meetings, only to be told no official records were made.
Speaking as Forbes was giving evidence, Dawson said: “Therefore, it becomes difficult to understand what precisely the ultimate decision-making process is, when there is no record of how those decisions were ultimately taken.”
Forbes, who took over as finance secretary in February 2020, confirmed she was excluded from all the gold group meetings in 2020. Dawson said at least six of those meetings were held that year.
Asked by Heather Hallett, the inquiry’s chair, about why she thought she had been excluded “given her seniority”, Forbes said she did not even know they existed until 2021, and she agreed with Dawson that they all should have been minuted.
“I’m not even sure I was aware they existed because I remember when I was invited to my first one not really knowing what it was until someone explained it,” she said. “I would expect to be invited to any meeting where there were significant financial implications.”
Sturgeon’s then deputy, John Swinney, was repeatedly pressed on the nature of decision-making when he gave evidence later on Tuesday, with Dawson suggesting that decisions made by the gold group were “merely ratified” by cabinet.
Swinney said “very extensive” discussions about Covid restrictions and strategy were had at cabinet level, while the delegation of decisions to him and the former first minister was only “on marginal questions and finalising the details”.
But he revealed that the decision to close schools in March 2020 was taken during a conversation between himself and Sturgeon and was not discussed in full cabinet. Nor was any assessment made on the potential impact of closures on disadvantaged children, those with disabilities and learning difficulties or on young people’s mental health, concerns raised by the children and young people’s commissioner for Scotland, because the situation was moving “at a ferocious pace”, according to Swinney.
The former deputy first minister said he had deleted all his informal text messages relating to the pandemic because he had always been advised that this was the “appropriate approach”. The inquiry has previously established that Sturgeon and other senior civil servants likewise deleted their messages routinely.
Swinney was shown an exchange between Sturgeon’s successor as first minister, Humza Yousaf, who was then the health secretary, and the national clinical director, Jason Leitch.
Sent in December 2021 as the Omicron variant was emerging as a further threat to public health, Yousaf described “taking a bullet at cabinet” and wrote that Sturgeon was “ranting at me”, to which Leitch responded that her behaviour was “ridiculous”.
Swinney denied that this was indicative that the culture of the Scottish cabinet was “driven by [Sturgeon’s] strong mindedness where challenging her was seen as taking a bullet”.
Asked if it was the case that the former first minister “sought to trump” views she disagreed with, Swinney replied: “Not in my experience.”
Yousaf told the inquiry last week that a revolving group of ministers took part in gold meetings. He was shown a WhatsApp message to him from Leitch complaining about “some first minister ‘keep it small shenanigans’ as always. She actually wants none of us.”
Yousaf said gold group decisions were sometimes needed to finalise or add detail to cabinet decisions. “There were times when the former first minister needed a tighter cast list, and wanted to make a decision on a very specific issue,” he said.
During detailed questioning about Scottish government spending, Forbes agreed with remarks by one senior Scottish official that it initially responded to the looming crisis in early 2020 with “lethargy” compared with the UK government.
She said the Scottish government was immersed in its normal budget preparations. “With hindsight there should have been a lot more discussion on how to budget for the pandemic” in early 2020, she said.
She agreed with complaints by Mark Drakeford, the first minister of Wales, that the Treasury’s failure to fund local lockdowns and “fire breaks” in devolved nations was “one of the most misguided decisions of the pandemic”.
Sturgeon will give evidence to the inquiry on Wednesday.
