Hansard

This is the actual debate. I respect Ruth Maguire. She stood up and could not defend her own Government wanting to use a pandemic to boost independence. I am not the one grandstanding. That is what Nicola Sturgeon and her Cabinet were agreeing to do, months into the pandemic. Just as it has always done and will continue to do, the SNP was fixated by its political obsession when there were far bigger issues affecting Scotland. The SNP is a national disgrace.

That is from the messages that we know about, because the then First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, her deputy, John Swinney, and countless political advisers and civil servants have all manually deleted their WhatsApp messages. He is not here just now—I know that he is in the Parliament—but no one will ever refer to Mr Swinney as “Honest John” ever again. Sleekit Sturgeon will be remembered for deleting vital evidence on an industrial scale, denying grieving families the truth that they deserve. The current First Minister is winging it so badly that he told the inquiry that he had deleted all his messages but told the public that he had retained them—and all those actions by all those characters despite both the UK and Scottish inquiries making it clear that destroying evidence, including WhatsApp messages, is an offence.

We have seen the national clinical director, Jason Leitch, describe deleting WhatsApp messages as a “pre-bed ritual”. Ken Thomson, who was then a director general at the Scottish Government, bragged about “plausible deniability” being his middle names. The chief medical officer, Gregor Smith, advised his colleagues to delete messages

“at the end of every day”.

John Swinney revealed in his evidence to the inquiry this week that he has been following that practice for 17 years. For 17 years, the Scottish Government has been deleting evidence. If there was nothing to hide, why did those involved feel the need to have daily digital bonfires of evidence that they knew had been specifically requested by two public inquiries? It can only be, as we have seen from the few messages that the UK Covid inquiry has been able to get its hands on, because of the appalling culture of secrecy that has permeated through every level of this rotten SNP Government.

At the question-and-answer session with journalists in 2021 that I referred to earlier, Nicola Sturgeon said that,

“for the avoidance of doubt”,

nothing would be off limits in providing evidence to a public inquiry, including WhatsApps. However, Jamie Dawson KC has said:

“at the time that request was made Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister of Scotland, had retained no messages whatsoever in connection with her management of the pandemic.”

Nicola Sturgeon made the promise of transparency in the full knowledge that she had already deleted what evidence she could and that, far from nothing being off limits, there was nothing to give.

“What a fraud this woman was”.

If SNP members do not like that, I can say that those are not my words. That is the verdict of one of their former SNP colleagues, Joan McAlpine. I am sure that that is a verdict that more and more of the public are beginning to agree with.

The Scottish Conservative motion today calls for the COVID-19 Recovery Committee to be reconstituted to look into the very serious matters that we have raised, and for Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney and Humza Yousaf to be referred to the independent adviser on the Scottish ministerial code to look at what has happened.

We know that Governments across the world made mistakes during the pandemic, but we now know that the perception that the Scottish Government was better—that it was whiter than white—was achieved only because it was frantically deleting every shred of evidence that would have shown otherwise. What little evidence we have seen shows an SNP Government that is steeped in secrecy, that was joking about the virus spreading across the country, that was “winging it” instead of making decisions based on hard public health evidence and that was pursuing “purely political” objectives while people died.

For all the sacrifices that the Scottish people made during the pandemic, the very least that they deserve from this SNP Government, even at this late stage, is openness and transparency. It is truly unforgivable that it looks as though they will never get that. I urge members across the chamber today to support the Scottish Conservative motion to get the answers that the public desperately need.

I move,

That the Parliament expresses its concern at the evidence revealed from the UK Covid-19 Inquiry from Scottish Government ministers, special advisers and officials, both past and present, on their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic; calls for the Parliament’s COVID-19 Recovery Committee to be reconstituted for the purpose of providing parliamentary scrutiny of evidence revealed by the Inquiry; recognises that the former First Minister promised to handover WhatsApp messages to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry; believes that the former First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and the former Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, have failed grieving families by deleting evidence that they knew would be required for the Inquiry; further believes that the current First Minister has misled the public on the detail of the retention of his WhatsApp messages, and recommends that all three be referred to the independent adviser on the Scottish Ministerial Code so that COVID-19-bereaved families and the public can get the answers that they deserve.