Sturgeon says she felt ‘at times overwhelmed’ by pandemic as Sarwar accuses her of lying over WhatsApps – UK Covid inquiry live | Nicola Sturgeon

Sturgeon said her introduction of coronavirus measures in Scotland before they were announced and introduced in England by the UK government was not designed to “annoy” Westminster.

“At no point in my thinking was I trying to steal a march on anybody else or trying to get ahead of it,” she said.

“I was simply trying to do my job to the best of my ability.”

Sturgeon added that if she were to seek to not “irritate” former prime minister Boris Johnson, she would have had to agree to do “whatever Boris Johnson wanted me to do”.

Sturgeon said that the UK Government may have communicated coronavirus measures “too slowly” rather than the Scottish government doing so too quickly.

The former first minister was accused throughout the pandemic of attempting to undermine the UK Government by announcing decisions made on a four-nations basis before Boris Johnson was able to.

Sturgeon announced a ban on mass gatherings at 3.20pm on 12 March 2020 after a Cobra meeting, the inquiry heard.

She said her responsibility was “to the Scottish people, not Boris Johnson”.

“I would put it that I communicated these things quickly, perhaps the UK Government were communicating them too slowly.”

She added: “Doing so with urgency at that point was required.”

Sturgeon has denied a claim by Michael Gove that she broke confidentiality and “jumped the gun” when she announced a ban on mass gatherings in Scotland before other parts of the UK agreed to the move during the pandemic.

The then first minister announced on 12 March 2020 that the Scottish government would ban any gatherings of 500 people or more the following week, before that decision had been agreed at a Cobra meeting called later that day to discuss the crisis.

Michael Gove, the then UK cabinet minister, has said this caused “discomfort” and “disquiet” in Whitehall, the inquiry has previously heard.

But responding today, Sturgeon said she would counter his allegations.

“I think by this point none of us were jumping the gun and we were arguably going more slowly than we should have. The public was ahead of the government in terms of the action we should have taken.”

She added that her view on mass gatherings was that she felt it was important to take the action because there was still a of transmission, she was concerned about the pressure on emergency services having to police large events and also because she thought a “disjoint” was emerging in the messaging from government that the virus was serious.

Sturgeon insists that work was undertaken to protect Scotland’s vulnerable population, which was disproportionately larger than in many other parts of the UK.

She replies “no” when Jamie Dawson KC, for the inquiry, puts it to her that in the early stages of the pandemic that the Scottish government was “asleep at the wheel”.

This came after Sturgeon insisted notes that had been taken by civil servant Derek Grieve which suggested there was a lack of preparedness and urgency within the Scottish government would have been taken seriously at the time.

Grieve made the notes in March 2020 which showed Scottish government officials discussing “internal Scottish government communications”.

Sturgeon said: “I didn’t know about these views at the time, Derek Grieve is a civil servant that I have worked with in various capacities over my time in government. Again, you know, he is a civil servant of the utmost professionalism, so I would have taken seriously what he said.”

But, Sturgeon said, it had not been her experience at the time that there was a lack of preparedness.

Sturgeon ‘lied’ about keeping WhatsApp messages – Anas Sarwar

Sturgeon is being asked about her non-attendance at the “Operation Nimbus” planning exercise in early 2020, which brought together senior figures from the UK government and other administrations.

With hindsight, her instinctive reaction might be that she should have been there, though she says that “not everybody can be at everything” in times such as the ones they were living in.

The meeting was aimed at drawing up a ‘battleplan’, the inquiry has previously heard, and set out a scenario in which the virus had claimed 840,000 lives in the UK.

Sturgeon is being asked about the resignation of Dr Catherine Calderwood, who quit her role as chief medical officer to the Scottish government in April 2020 after facing intense criticism for breaking her own rules to twice visit her second home during the coronavirus outbreak.

This happened at a pivotal moment when the government and its experts were settling into a rhythm, Sturgeon says. Calderwood was a pivotal part of that and the then First Minister was “mindful” of the disruption that could be caused from losing her.]

She eventually realised, as more reports emerged, that Calderwood would be unable to stay. Calderwood had already reached that decision and it was to her credit that she had been clear with the First Minister that public messaging had to take precedence, Sturgeon says.

This stands in contrast to “some other episodes,” she says, in a potential reference, some might suspect, to the behaviour of those in government in London.

The inquiry has returned and Sturgeon has said she had confidence in the advice she received from Scotland’s chief medical officers during the pandemic, despite none of the three coming from a respiratory disease or related background.

Sturgeon also moves again to speak up in defence of Dr Catherine Calderwood in response to a suggestion from counsel for the inquiry that Calderwood “did not seem to have much of a plan” when it came to preparing to implement a strategy for testing.

Sturgeon rejects the suggestion that there was any “culture of secrecy” on the part of the Scottish government when it came to things like whether Scottish ministers covered up the first recorded Covid outbreak in Scotland, from a Nike conference in Edinburgh in February 2020.

In the case of Nike, the decision taken was informed by considerations of patient confidentiality, but she accepted that others may have taken a different view.

“On Nike, I saw the potential – I don’t think this risk materialised – I saw the potential for the Nike conference to emerge later through a media disclosure to undermine confidence. In hindsight I would have gone the other way,” she added.

The inquiry is now breaking and will return at 1.45pm.

Sturgeon was asked about another aspect of planning – the need for public messaging – and she was asked if there had been a recommendation that keeping the public informed at an earlier stage was as important as the later process of daily briefings.

She says she recalls in advance of the briefings more regularly being asked about it in interviews, so the public messaging was something that her government was aware of.

Jamie Dawson KC (for the inquiry) says there was evidence of some things not being communicated to the public, such as the identity of the first person to die from Covid in Scotland and concerns about a rugby fixture. None of them were communicated at the time with any detail. Was this on the advice of Dr Catherine Calderwood, who was the chief medical officer in Scotland for a period before she later resigned?

Sturgeon says there were difference considerations in relation to those different examples.

She had discussed them with Dr Calderwood, though looking back now she might take a different decision. That said, she did not believe her advice was unreasonable.

A different physician might have had a different “risk appetite” and given different advice, while a “different politician” might have taken a different decision, she added.

She accepted the decisions made in that regard had the potential to undermine public messaging.

Sturgeon is asked about previous evidence that the health system had lacked the kit and resources when it came to getting testing in place.

It didn’t reflect a lack of urgency in terms of planning, she insists, and there was an intense supply chain pressure.

It took time for larger testing labs to be got up and running, although it would always have been the case that things didn’t move as quickly as she would have liked.

Sturgeon: ‘At times I felt overwhelmed with what we were dealing with’

Sturgeon says Johnson was ‘wrong prime minister’ for Covid crisis

Sturgeon was asked about a WhatsApp exchange in which Jason Leitch, a clinical director who advised on the response to the pandemic by the Scottish government, referred to the then first minister’s “‘keep it small’ shenanigans”.

Leitch was “crucial in a very positive way to our handling of the pandemic”, says Sturgeon.

She goes on to say that she suspects it was a reference to things that were sometimes said about her in government, which is that she “didn’t like a cast of unnecessary thousands” in meetings.