No minutes kept of Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘gold command’ meetings, Covid inquiry told

Scotland’s former finance secretary Kate Forbes said she did not know gold command existed until she was invited to join a meeting in 2021. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA

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.