Nicola Sturgeon has refused to confirm or deny allegations that she deleted some or all of her WhatsApp messages during the Covid pandemic.
After questions emerged from the UK Covid inquiry whether the former Scottish first minister had kept all her WhatsApp messages, there were reports at the weekend they had all been deleted.
The inquiry’s Scottish counsel, Jamie Dawson KC, stated that WhatsApp messages from 70 ministers and officials, including senior public health officers – some of whom were involved in 137 WhatsApp groups – had not been disclosed despite repeated requests.
“Very few messages appear to have been retained,” he said, potentially in breach of requests to retain the records and legal orders to keep them, which were issued later.
In her first public statement about the allegations, Sturgeon insisted she was committed to “full transparency” about her conduct during the pandemic, adding: “I have nothing to hide.”
Yet, flanked by her former deputy John Swinney, she was asked four times by reporters at Holyrood whether she had kept or deleted her WhatsApp messages and on each occasion refused to say.
On Monday, Humza Yousaf, her successor as first minister, said publicly he had kept all his WhatsApp messages and was providing them to the UK inquiry, adding to the pressure on Sturgeon.
She stated on Tuesday she followed all the necessary rules and was in the process of writing her third statement to the inquiry. She would be in breach of her obligations of confidentiality to the inquiry if she disclosed what that evidence said, she added.
“I will be very clear to the inquiry what I hold and what I don’t hold and why that is the case but let me say again, I wasn’t a member of any WhatsApp groups,” she said. “I didn’t manage the Covid response by WhatsApp.”
The uncertainties over Sturgeon’s handling of her messages will be central to the evidence she is expected to give to the UK inquiry early next year.
In May 2020 Boris Johnson, the then prime minister, pledged there would be a public inquiry. In May 2021 the UK Covid inquiry was formally confirmed; lawyers for the Covid bereaved believe that should have triggered a formal data retention rule for ministers.
In August 2021 Sturgeon promised all WhatsApp messages would be kept for a future Scottish public inquiry. In November 2021, the UK inquiry issued its first do-not-destroy instructions. In June 2021, and again in February and October 2022, the UK government wrote to all devolved governments asking for all data to be retained.
