The Scotsman Bulletin Friday October 27 2023 #WhatsApp
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00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 Hello, and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Bulletin
00:11 for Friday.
00:12 I'm Alan Young.
00:12 I am Deputy Editor of the Scotsman,
00:14 joined by our political editor Alistair Grant.
00:16 Take a look at the main headlines.
00:19 What's up, Alistair?
00:22 How's it going?
00:23 Good.
00:24 Let's have a look at the front page.
00:28 And we lead today, as many papers do,
00:31 on the revelations from FMQs yesterday
00:37 around the COVID inquiry and the missing WhatsApp
00:42 messages from the Scottish government hitting the headline.
00:46 More about that in a minute.
00:49 We also have a full roundup of the European action
00:52 from last night's draw for Rangers and heartbreak
00:56 for Aberdeen at Cotterdray.
01:00 But the WhatsApp story, as I mentioned,
01:02 is dominating the news agenda really today.
01:06 I think we can take a look at what happens
01:09 after FMQs in Parliament.
01:13 Did you or have any of your ministers
01:14 or previous ministers ever used auto-delete on WhatsApp?
01:17 I don't know if any of my ministers
01:19 have used auto-delete on WhatsApp,
01:20 but we don't routinely conduct parliamentary business
01:23 through WhatsApp.
01:25 I mean, you did, Prime Minister.
01:27 No, we use WhatsApp to have conversations.
01:31 That's not unusual to anybody else.
01:33 We don't routinely make decisions.
01:36 Why haven't any of your WhatsApps been put forward?
01:39 All relevant information that has been asked for
01:41 will be sent across.
01:42 But routinely, decisions weren't made via WhatsApp.
01:46 [INTERPOSING VOICES]
01:50 So Hamza, you're clearly under a lot of pressure
01:54 on this issue, Alistair.
01:56 Maybe just give us the background first
01:59 on how we got here.
02:01 Yeah, so the issue of WhatsApps and how
02:03 they're used by the government, used by ministers,
02:06 used by officials behind the scene
02:08 has been a kind of issue in politics for a while now.
02:12 It's been something that's kind of been brought up
02:14 a number of times.
02:15 I know Connor Matchett, the Scotsman's deputy political
02:17 editor, has written stories about this
02:20 in the past, about ministerial use of WhatsApp.
02:23 And I suppose the concerns are about record keeping.
02:25 They're about the public's access to decision making
02:28 and how decisions are made.
02:29 And this becomes particularly important
02:32 when it comes to the pandemic, to the COVID pandemic,
02:34 because obviously decisions were being made extremely fast.
02:37 They were being made in very unusual circumstances.
02:40 They were quite extreme.
02:41 There was quite extraordinary measures
02:43 that were put in place, extraordinary constraints
02:46 on the public.
02:47 And the normal decision making processes
02:49 were not gone through in the same way.
02:51 And I think the public understands that.
02:52 They understand that there was this completely unprecedented
02:56 pandemic and that decisions had to be made extremely quickly.
02:59 But now that we have these inquiries,
03:01 we've got the UK COVID inquiry and the Scottish COVID inquiry
03:05 looking into this, looking into the pandemic and government
03:08 decision making, it's extremely important that we have details
03:12 of how decisions were made.
03:13 And in the modern era, WhatsApp and other messaging services,
03:17 Telegram, even things like the chat service of Microsoft
03:21 Teams, which I know is quite widely used
03:24 in the Scottish government, all these things
03:25 become very important if you're trying to get a handle on how
03:29 decisions were made, who took them, when they were taken,
03:31 why they were taken.
03:33 And if you think back to some of those decisions
03:35 in the pandemic, some of them were extremely controversial.
03:37 Things like the decision to move people out of hospitals
03:41 and into care homes.
03:42 This had a huge impact.
03:43 It's still very controversial to this day.
03:45 So how those decisions were made is extremely important.
03:48 And Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader,
03:51 brought this up in First Minister's questions
03:53 because at the UK COVID inquiry, one of the councils
03:56 to the inquiry, one of the senior lawyers,
03:59 had essentially raised concerns about the Scottish government
04:01 not handing over WhatsApp messages
04:04 and also raised concerns about how few of those messages
04:07 might still exist.
04:10 So I think there's two separate issues there.
04:11 And I think on the issue of not handing it over,
04:14 the Scottish government released a statement quite late
04:19 on yesterday afternoon in which they essentially said
04:21 that the inquiry had initially asked them for WhatsApps
04:24 related to decision making.
04:26 I think some of those were handed over
04:28 or information in that regard was handed over.
04:31 But then the inquiry has--
04:33 well, the Scottish government is saying the inquiry subsequently
04:35 asked for WhatsApp messages relating to logistics
04:38 and day-to-day communications.
04:39 And the Scottish government is essentially
04:41 arguing that it is going to hand those over,
04:43 but it needs a legal basis to do so.
04:45 It's asking for a section 21 order.
04:47 It essentially wants the inquiry to compel
04:49 it to hand over these WhatsApps.
04:51 And my understanding is of the reasons behind that
04:54 is so that they can then hand them over unredacted.
04:57 And they don't have to worry about things
04:58 like data protection because they've been legally
05:01 compelled to hand them over.
05:03 So they can just hand them over to the inquiry and kind of say,
05:05 well, you guys deal with the rest of that.
05:08 So I think that section 21 order is going to be put in place.
05:12 So their position is that these will be handed over.
05:14 We've obviously got reports today that Jason Leitch,
05:17 the national clinical director, obviously a very well-known
05:20 figure during the pandemic, became a household name.
05:22 He was on TV all the time.
05:23 He was on things like Off the Ball.
05:25 People were very used to hearing about him.
05:27 It turns out that he was deleting,
05:29 or it's reported that he was deleting his WhatsApp messages
05:32 daily.
05:33 So they no longer exist, and they can't be handed over
05:36 to the inquiry.
05:37 And I think one thing to add to that
05:39 is that there was a Do Not Destroy notice that
05:41 was put out by these inquiries to the governments,
05:46 to officials, essentially telling them
05:48 not to destroy evidence, not to destroy information that
05:52 might be relevant to the inquiry.
05:54 I think I'm right in saying that was put out in August 2022.
05:58 So there's no suggestion that Jason Leitch has broken the law
06:01 because he would have been deleting them as he went.
06:04 And I think a lot of people who use WhatsApp
06:06 will be aware that there's a kind of--
06:07 I think it's called disappearing messages, where you can
06:10 essentially set up WhatsApp so that your messages are
06:12 automatically deleted daily or whatever
06:15 length of time you choose.
06:18 So perhaps he was using that.
06:20 But I think this becomes--
06:23 this gets very technical.
06:24 But I think it's an issue because it's
06:25 about decision making.
06:26 It's about the public's access to information.
06:29 And we all know how well-used messaging
06:32 servers such as WhatsApp are now.
06:34 And the idea that they weren't used by officials
06:37 and government ministers, I think, is far-fetched.
06:40 And I think the government's line in this
06:42 is quite interesting because Humza Yousaf's language
06:45 yesterday in Parliament was quite careful.
06:47 I think he said that the Scottish government does not
06:49 routinely use WhatsApp for decision making.
06:53 I think the word routinely there is important,
06:55 but also the emphasis on decision making.
06:57 We're not just talking about decision making.
06:59 We're talking about conversations,
07:01 about policy behind the scenes.
07:02 We're talking about interactions between officials
07:05 and ministers.
07:06 And that is quite a broad definition.
07:08 It might not strictly relate to decision making.
07:11 And indeed, you also used the phrase
07:15 "all relevant information" a couple of times
07:19 while being questioned yesterday.
07:21 And that, I thought, was quite interesting as well
07:23 because who is to say what is relevant
07:26 and what is a relevant message?
07:28 And we know from some of the messages
07:29 we've seen from the UK inquiry involving Boris Johnson
07:35 and Dominic Cummings, for example,
07:39 they are not necessarily directly related
07:42 to decision making, but are clearly massively important.
07:47 Yeah, it's massively important that we get access
07:49 to this information, I think.
07:50 If we want to actually find out what went on,
07:53 and I think it has to be interpreted in quite a broad way.
07:56 And like you say, we've seen those messages
07:58 that have come out of the UK COVID inquiry
08:00 in relation to the UK government.
08:02 And some of them are extremely embarrassing
08:04 for the UK government, messages sent by officials
08:07 like Simon Case.
08:08 You know, I can understand why people would be reluctant
08:10 to hand over that kind of thing.
08:12 But at the end of the day,
08:13 these inquiries have been set up now
08:14 and we need to get to the bottom of this.
08:16 And that's one of the ways to go about that
08:19 is to get access to these messages
08:20 that people were sending to each other.
08:22 - Indeed. Thanks very much for that.
08:24 Also, we're sure the story is going to develop today
08:27 and in the coming days.
08:29 Please keep an eye on scotsman.com
08:32 for all the very latest throughout the day.
08:33 If you're on the site, please do subscribe.
08:35 If you can, then you will not miss a thing.
08:37 And if you're out and about today,
08:38 do pick up a copy of the paper from me and from Alistair.
08:41 Bye for now.
08:42 (upbeat music)
08:46 (upbeat music)
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