Scotsman panel discussion on the UK Covid 19 Inquiry with Nicola Sturgeon in Edinburgh
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 Hello, and welcome to a Scotsman broadcast.
00:11 My name is Alexander Brown.
00:13 I'm the paper's Westminster correspondent.
00:15 And I'm joined by a plethora of my colleagues
00:18 to discuss Nicola Sturgeon with the former First Minister
00:21 finally getting evidence to the UK COVID inquiry that
00:25 was both teary and full of news lines.
00:28 Alistair Grant, you were there.
00:30 What happened?
00:32 I wasn't there.
00:33 Some of my colleagues were there.
00:34 But I was watching the live stream with great interest.
00:37 I think it was quite an extraordinary day of evidence,
00:40 really.
00:41 I mean, I think some of the key points
00:42 were around the confirmation that Nicola Sturgeon did
00:45 indeed delete her WhatsApp messages,
00:47 despite telling journalists previously
00:50 that she would hand over all relevant information,
00:53 including WhatsApps.
00:54 And that was comments she made, I think, in 2021
00:57 to a journalist from Channel 4 News
00:58 during one of her COVID briefings.
01:01 And even at that point, she knew that wouldn't be possible,
01:03 because she was deleting her WhatsApp messages.
01:06 I mean, she says that the Scottish government policy
01:09 at the time--
01:10 Scottish government's policy, anyway,
01:12 was to retain the relevant information from those WhatsApp
01:16 messages, to retain the key points,
01:19 and put those into the corporate record,
01:21 but to delete the messages themselves,
01:23 partly for security reasons.
01:24 Obviously, if you lose your phone,
01:26 there could potentially be sensitive information on there.
01:28 But I think the point still stands,
01:30 that she deleted messages despite implying otherwise.
01:33 I think one of the other main points
01:35 was a lack of minutes from some of the key meetings that
01:37 happened during the pandemic, some
01:41 of those key decision-making meetings.
01:43 I think the inquiry also heard evidence suggesting
01:45 that there was quite a small, tight-knit group of people
01:48 who were effectively taking decisions during the pandemic
01:52 with the Scottish cabinet.
01:54 For example, the decision to shut down schools--
01:57 to close schools in March 2020 was
01:59 taken by Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney.
02:02 It wasn't a decision that was taken by the full cabinet.
02:06 I think in John Swinney's evidence to the inquiry,
02:08 on a previous day, he talked about the absolutely ferocious
02:12 pace at which events were moving.
02:14 They simply didn't have time to follow the normal decision
02:17 making processes.
02:18 It seems like there was an element of, if not panic,
02:21 then certainly extreme anxiety.
02:24 At the top levels in government, about the state of the virus,
02:28 what might happen to people.
02:30 And I think one of the other key strands yesterday
02:32 was these accusations that there was a political element
02:35 to the pandemic, there was a politicization of it.
02:38 And that was something that Michael Gove had certainly
02:40 suggested to the inquiry when he gave evidence in Edinburgh,
02:44 effectively saying that some of the Scottish government's
02:47 decision-making was influenced by their political motives,
02:53 essentially the SNP's political project to break up the union.
02:57 I don't think there was any kind of hard and fast evidence
03:01 around that that proved that.
03:03 But I think there were certainly suggestions that,
03:05 for example, minutes from 2020 from a cabinet meeting
03:08 in which independence was mentioned,
03:11 potentially restarting the campaign for independence.
03:13 Nicola Sturgeon very much saying that that never happened.
03:17 It was only a consideration that was in the cabinet minutes,
03:20 but never actually took place.
03:22 I think the other side of this is that, you know,
03:24 you mentioned yourself that there were moments
03:26 where Nicola Sturgeon was genuinely emotional.
03:29 And I think those moments certainly to me came across
03:32 as quite powerful, quite genuine.
03:34 You saw the toll the pandemic had taken on her,
03:37 the impression that she essentially took the decisions
03:40 that she thought were right and that were in the kind
03:43 of interests of saving lives.
03:46 And I think anyone's actions, well,
03:50 I don't think anyone's actions would stand up
03:52 to complete scrutiny a couple of years down the line
03:54 and an inquiry like this would always be able to pick holes
03:57 in decision-making.
03:59 So I think there's an element of,
04:01 there will be some genuine sympathy for her in the sense
04:04 that this also took a massive toll on her.
04:05 And these were impossible decisions
04:07 with no right answers in some ways.
04:09 - Joseph, I think one of the key things that came out
04:14 on social media and afterwards is obviously this difference
04:16 between messages being not retained or deleted.
04:20 I was wondering what your perspective on that was
04:22 and also what the atmosphere was like in the room,
04:26 as it were.
04:27 - Yeah, well, I think I tried to work out,
04:29 I spent probably over 24 hours listening of my life,
04:32 listening to these hearings.
04:33 Now, this was the first time I've been in the room
04:36 that there's been a real outpouring of emotion,
04:38 not just from the people in the auditorium,
04:41 there was a lot of tears from people,
04:43 particularly when the deaths in care homes
04:46 were being talked about,
04:47 but also for the first time that we've seen the tears
04:50 from one of the people giving testimony,
04:52 obviously Nicola Sturgeon,
04:53 whenever it was touched on that her legacy
04:57 was more about the politicization of the pandemic
05:01 rather than doing the best thing for the Scottish people,
05:04 she was moved to tears.
05:07 On the WhatsApps, I always give the test
05:11 that if I was to walk out of the office now
05:12 and go into Prince's Street and ask somebody,
05:15 did you know that they deleted their WhatsApps?
05:17 They'll probably shrug their shoulders and say,
05:19 yeah, we already knew that,
05:21 that there's not much that we heard from Sturgeon's evidence
05:24 that is a huge smoking gun,
05:27 that the average person on the street,
05:29 we're all very much in the cut and thrust of it,
05:32 we love all the minutia of, oh no, she retained them,
05:35 this is Scottish government policy,
05:37 the minutes are being recorded separately
05:41 from the WhatsApp.
05:42 The average person on the street doesn't know that
05:44 and I think all that Sturgeon's appearance done
05:47 has confirmed to people
05:48 what they already believed about Sturgeon.
05:51 I think her fans will say that she was doing the best
05:55 that she could, that they did marginally better
05:57 than down in Westminster
06:00 and they will still very much see Sturgeon
06:02 as somebody who did a great job during the pandemic.
06:06 Conversely, the critics of Sturgeon
06:09 will say it was full of secrecy,
06:11 she was the one making all of the decisions,
06:13 she was bypassing cabinet.
06:15 Although it was an incredibly emotional day
06:18 and for people like ourselves
06:20 and people hugely interested in politics,
06:22 that there are a lot of news lines,
06:24 I think for the average person
06:25 that you might stop in the street
06:27 and try and explain this to,
06:29 I don't think we learned a huge amount yesterday.
06:32 - Well, I mean, that leads us on to, I suppose,
06:35 Jane, who I believe spoke to or knows about
06:37 what was said by the COVID brief.
06:40 What was their response to her evidence?
06:42 - Yeah, so, I mean, the people I spoke to yesterday
06:49 are people who have lost a loved one to COVID.
06:51 They all had really, really awful stories
06:54 about what they went through during the pandemic.
06:56 When they heard Nicholas Sturgeon speak,
06:58 I mean, I think the reaction really was
07:00 just one of disbelief that they're not being told the truth.
07:04 They'd hoped this inquiry would finally give them
07:07 the answers they were looking for
07:09 and they didn't feel that.
07:10 One man I spoke to, he lost his wife
07:12 during the pandemic.
07:14 She'd been shielding.
07:16 And then literally a few weeks
07:18 after the shielding rules were lifted,
07:19 she contracted COVID and unfortunately she died.
07:22 And he was saying he and his wife,
07:23 before that point, used to watch Sturgeon
07:25 on the briefings every day.
07:26 He said, "We thought she was doing a great job.
07:29 We thought she was way better than
07:31 what was going on down South.
07:32 We thought she was brilliant."
07:34 Both of us sat there sort of going,
07:36 "We're so happy we're living in Scotland.
07:39 We're so happy we've got Nicholas Sturgeon
07:40 leading us all from his eyes."
07:41 And he does not feel the same anymore.
07:44 He feels like he's being lied to.
07:45 And he said, "If he could go and speak
07:46 to Nicholas Sturgeon right now,
07:48 he'd just say, 'Are you telling me the truth
07:50 that you think I want to hear
07:52 or the truth that you want me to hear?
07:53 Or are you telling me the actual truth?'"
07:55 And that's what they want to know.
07:56 - I mean, what was your perspective?
08:00 Did you think that she's saying plausible things?
08:03 I mean, having a vague understanding
08:06 of how the inquiry is going.
08:09 Do you think that what you've heard is plausible
08:12 and it's all fine?
08:13 These are normal answers.
08:15 - It's very difficult to tell.
08:19 I mean, will we ever know exactly
08:21 whether we're being told everything?
08:22 Will we ever be able to see all the details?
08:25 You know, I mean, as we know,
08:27 huge swathes of WhatsApp messages have been deleted.
08:31 I think everyone's just going to have
08:33 to have their own opinion on that.
08:35 - Okay.
08:36 Martin, I think you wrote some analysis on this.
08:38 I mean, I speak to MPs all the time
08:40 and obviously with the messages that had come out,
08:43 they were telling me that, you know,
08:45 there's nothing to see here.
08:46 This is all just Westminster and media hype
08:50 and getting overly excited.
08:52 And the former First Minister did a very hard job
08:55 and a very good job in very, very difficult circumstances.
08:58 I mean, I'd be interested in your perception
09:01 of the evidence.
09:02 - I think that sums up.
09:05 Alex, there's a lot of seemingly contradictory truths
09:08 in this, which can exist at the same time.
09:11 Watching the full day of evidence yesterday,
09:13 I was really struck by a duality
09:16 to what Nicola Sturgeon was saying.
09:17 On the one hand, she was transparent,
09:21 but emotionally transparent.
09:23 You know, much has been written about the moment
09:25 she was reduced to tears
09:27 and struggled to maintain her composure,
09:29 especially when her integrity was questioned.
09:32 And while I can fully empathise with the families
09:35 who've questioned that,
09:38 I think it would be unreasonably cynical
09:40 to regard those moments as performative in any way.
09:44 I think it's hard to conceive of the extraordinary toll
09:48 the pandemic took on Nicola Sturgeon
09:50 during her time in charge.
09:51 And based on her conduct during the pandemic
09:54 and her evidence yesterday,
09:55 I think she deserves the benefit of the doubt
09:57 that, as she said, she did her very best.
10:01 But on the other hand,
10:02 there was anything but transparency
10:04 when it came to some of the big substantive issues
10:08 that the inquiry is actually trying to address.
10:11 It was quite telling that at those moments
10:14 when she became emotional yesterday,
10:16 Nicola Sturgeon said that she was fully open
10:19 to anyone scrutinising the decisions that she made.
10:22 Just don't question my motives.
10:25 But the fundamental problem is
10:26 we can't scrutinise those decisions
10:29 thanks to her government's vague and incoherent policy
10:33 around information retention.
10:35 It's simply impossible to do that.
10:38 Our generation and future generations
10:39 are going to have a very curtailed understanding
10:43 of how her government confronted
10:47 a once-in-a-century crisis.
10:50 And that is a failing
10:51 which she's ultimately responsible for.
10:54 I mean, on the issue of the WhatsApp messages,
10:57 she really failed to mount any kind of robust defence of that.
11:00 And she had very little mitigation
11:02 when she was asked about her promise in August '21
11:07 to hand over the WhatsApp messages,
11:08 a time when she knew they had already been deleted.
11:12 And equally, there was very little, she said,
11:15 that refuted the suggestion that it was a narrow clique
11:20 in charge of the major decisions at that time.
11:25 She was very evasive around questions
11:27 on the Gold Command Group,
11:30 describing it as a forum
11:31 where there were discursive opportunities,
11:33 which is just a real political euphemism,
11:36 if ever there was one.
11:37 I mean, we know more about the Bilderberg Group
11:39 than we know about the Gold Command Group.
11:41 So, I mean, the upshot of it is,
11:44 yeah, Nicola Sturgeon was emotionally literate
11:48 and transparent, but the big questions
11:51 that the COVID-bereaved families want to know
11:54 and everyone else wants to know remain unanswered.
11:56 - So I suppose, Alistair, the big question is,
12:00 does this matter?
12:01 We have not had perhaps the answers we would have hoped for,
12:04 but we've also seen other people give evidence.
12:06 You know, you've had Boris Johnson go up.
12:08 We've had numerous UK figures, I believe.
12:10 Alistair Jack is giving evidence today.
12:13 Is this damaging for the SNP,
12:15 or is it, you know, everyone maintains the view
12:17 they already held?
12:18 - I think it's definitely been bruising for them.
12:22 I think it's been bruising for Nicola Sturgeon.
12:24 I think her evidence session has left a mark.
12:27 I think those questions over transparency will remain.
12:31 And I completely appreciate what Joseph is saying
12:32 about the kind of WhatsApp messages
12:35 and people kind of already knowing they were deleted.
12:36 It was something that was previously reported.
12:39 But I think just to hear that confirmed
12:41 and to hear the, as Martin was saying,
12:42 the kind of the sheer lack of any real defence
12:45 as to why they did that, particularly when they knew
12:46 there was an acceptance from May, 2020 onwards
12:49 that there probably would be a public inquiry into COVID.
12:52 So they knew this was coming from very near the start
12:55 of the pandemic.
12:56 And as Amir Anwar, the kind of lead solicitor
12:59 for the Scottish COVID Bereaved has said,
13:01 you know, it was blatantly obvious
13:03 that the inquiry would have an interest
13:05 in these kinds of messages.
13:06 I think there is a gray area here in the sense that,
13:09 you know, everyone knows that a government
13:11 like any other kind of, you know,
13:14 frantic, fast-paced office environment,
13:16 you need an informal space where you can have conversations
13:18 honestly without them being, you know,
13:20 in that kind of formal recorded basis.
13:22 It's just not possible to operate without having a way
13:25 to kind of informally chat about stuff.
13:27 And those conversations that would normally have happened
13:29 in the office that wouldn't have been minuted
13:31 just over a cup of coffee or as you pass someone's desk,
13:34 those kind of honest conversations weren't happening
13:36 face-to-face during COVID.
13:38 You know, they were having to happen
13:39 over these informal messaging services.
13:42 And we can see from some of the ways
13:43 that people were communicating with each other,
13:45 you know, Jason Leitch is a classic example of this.
13:47 He was saying things in a very informal way
13:49 that he obviously never considered would be brought up
13:52 to light and scrutinized in the way they have been.
13:55 But at the same time, these were being,
13:57 these were views and discussions that were written down
14:00 in a recorded format.
14:01 And frankly, you know, the inquiry is obviously
14:04 going to be interested in that.
14:05 And we can see from some of the conversations,
14:07 for example, that Liz Lloyd,
14:09 Nicola Sturgeon's former chief of staff,
14:11 was having with Nicola Sturgeon over WhatsApp
14:13 in which they were discussing COVID policy.
14:15 They were discussing things like indoor mixing rules,
14:18 hospitality restrictions,
14:20 the number of people who could go to weddings.
14:22 These were real COVID issues and they were being discussed.
14:25 And certainly from those conversations,
14:26 it seems like they were influencing decision-making.
14:29 So if we truly want to understand
14:31 what went on during the pandemic
14:32 and how decisions were taken,
14:34 those messages are crucial.
14:36 And everyone knows how widely used WhatsApp is,
14:38 particularly in politics,
14:39 but obviously in many other aspects of society as well.
14:42 Politicians use it all the time.
14:44 So it's just, I think it is quite crucial to this.
14:47 And Nicola Sturgeon's position is obviously that she,
14:50 she herself uses WhatsApp very rarely
14:53 and only with a handful of people.
14:55 And that may well be true.
14:56 It certainly seems like she is, you know,
14:58 the kind of politician who would like things
15:00 to be done on a formal basis
15:01 and like things to be done
15:04 in this kind of almost,
15:06 the kind of formal channels
15:07 because she's someone who likes to have oversight of things.
15:10 But the fact remains,
15:12 we don't know it's true for a fact
15:13 because those messages were deleted.
15:15 And if they were so sparse
15:18 and if they didn't really contain much information
15:20 of note to the inquiry,
15:22 you've got to wonder why they were being deleted
15:25 in this fashion.
15:26 Or certainly it leaves Nicola Sturgeon
15:28 open to those kinds of questions.
15:29 So I think damage has been done.
15:31 I think the final point I'd make
15:33 is that those critics of the inquiry
15:36 who worry about it becoming too political
15:39 and too of a kind of,
15:40 too much of a political Rami
15:42 may look at yesterday's evidence,
15:44 look at Wednesday's evidence of Nicola Sturgeon
15:46 and perhaps have their fears confirmed in some ways.
15:49 I don't think we learned that much new.
15:52 I think parts of it were quite political
15:55 but that's understandable
15:57 in the sense of what the issues inquiry wants to look at
16:00 in terms of governance and decision-making.
16:03 But certainly, I don't think we have necessarily learned
16:07 that much Nicola Sturgeon's evidence
16:08 that we didn't already know.
16:10 - I think on the WhatsApps, I think it was interesting.
16:15 I've had an MP said to me,
16:17 defending the use of WhatsApps,
16:19 that Nicola Sturgeon was so formal in everything that she did
16:22 that she actually emailed asking
16:24 where her government car was
16:26 rather than send a WhatsApp asking if it was outside.
16:29 She emailed the MP going,
16:30 do you know if the car is there
16:32 rather than using WhatsApp,
16:34 which sounds like a terrible way to communicate with someone
16:36 that you're supposedly friends and colleagues with.
16:39 On the campaigning, I think the SNP pro-independence
16:44 use of the pandemic was an accusation leveled at the party.
16:49 Joseph, I was wondering what your take was on that.
16:51 And is that wrong?
16:53 It doesn't seem to be, I would say,
16:55 a unique thing to be campaigning during a pandemic.
16:58 The UK government was extremely full of it
17:01 at the same time.
17:02 - I think it depends on what time,
17:03 what period of the pandemic that you're talking.
17:05 I mean, right at the start, obviously,
17:08 within the first year, that would be beyond the pale,
17:11 as Sturgeon mentioned in her evidence,
17:14 looking at independence started happening again.
17:17 As we went on, we heard a lot.
17:20 We heard a lot of accusations against Nicola Sturgeon
17:22 that she was politicising the pandemic.
17:24 And we heard a lot of denials,
17:26 which to be honest with you,
17:27 will just play into both camps.
17:30 The only interesting thing that we heard
17:34 from the UK covered inquiry,
17:36 it turned out to not be true.
17:38 Jim Adorson, the KC, the lead counsel of the inquiry,
17:42 read out an email, which he said was from John Swinney,
17:44 which turned out to not be from John Swinney,
17:46 alleging that if they don't open a travel corridor to Spain,
17:51 then Spain will block an independent Scotland
17:53 from rejoining the EU.
17:56 So a lot of people, myself included,
17:58 jumped on that as a news line, as you obviously would.
18:01 This is proof that they've politicised the pandemic.
18:04 We then later on in the evening,
18:07 all furiously contacted by the Scottish government,
18:11 saying that this actually wasn't John Swinney,
18:13 it was someone else in the UK covered inquiry
18:14 had made a mistake.
18:15 So as I said earlier,
18:18 I really think your biases will just be confirmed
18:22 by what we heard yesterday,
18:24 whether you're pro Sturgeon or anti.
18:26 - Well, I suppose on the biases and on the anger then,
18:30 Jane, I know that you obviously,
18:32 we talked briefly about the bereaved families.
18:34 Do you think that there is an anger, in a broader sense,
18:37 do we think the anger is directed at both the UK
18:40 and Scottish governments,
18:42 or do you think one is facing more of the blame
18:44 in a wider context?
18:45 - Yeah, I mean, I think so, very much so.
18:53 Sorry, could you repeat that last question?
18:54 Sorry, my wifi keeps dropping out, apologies.
18:56 - Is the anger directed from the bereaved families
19:00 more broadly at both governments,
19:03 or just Scottish or UK?
19:04 Is there a distribution on that?
19:07 - Yeah, I mean, I think the anger is both governments.
19:13 I think every single person in the COVID bereaved group,
19:15 they have a different situation.
19:17 They're angry about different things,
19:19 about different elements of how the pandemic was handled,
19:21 whether we should have locked down earlier,
19:23 over whether people should have been allowed
19:25 to die alone in hospital,
19:27 or in one gentleman's case that I spoke to yesterday,
19:29 his son had died alone in a prison cell,
19:32 having called for help through an intercom
19:36 and said he was really, really unwell
19:37 and wasn't seen by medical staff.
19:40 You know, I mean, I think there's a lot of questions
19:42 that they all have individually about their individual cases
19:45 and some of those decisions were decisions
19:46 that were made at a level at Westminster
19:48 and some of them were made more locally
19:50 by the Scottish government.
19:51 But there's just an anger
19:53 that they feel like they're not being told the truth.
19:55 They're not being told how all these decisions were made
19:57 and they're not being told what the reasoning
20:00 was behind these decisions.
20:01 And they were really hoping this inquiry
20:03 would give them some answers.
20:05 And they very much, from what they said
20:07 after Nicola Sturgeon's evidence yesterday,
20:09 they still don't feel like any of these questions
20:10 have been answered.
20:11 And there is a lot of anger behind that.
20:13 - Well, I suppose that ties up nicely
20:17 for the final question.
20:19 Martin, I mean, where do you think this leaves us?
20:21 Like going forward,
20:21 what are the questions that we as journalists
20:24 should be looking into
20:26 and that the government will have to answer?
20:27 Like where will you be digging
20:29 following yesterday's evidence?
20:31 - Well, at Holyrood, I suspect that the evidence yesterday,
20:36 obviously the Scottish government
20:37 have already announced a review
20:38 of their information retention policy.
20:41 But I think it would be perhaps an opportune moment
20:43 for an opposition MP to look at bolstering
20:46 the freedom of information legislation in Scotland
20:49 to ensure that this information can be firstly recorded
20:54 and then disseminated in the future.
20:56 Because if there's one lesson from the inquiry this week,
21:00 it's that we can't have a full comprehensive understanding
21:05 or learning of what happened
21:07 and how decisions were taken because of government policy.
21:11 And that's just simply not good enough.
21:12 That has to change,
21:14 not just for in the event of something of this magnitude,
21:18 but just day-to-day business.
21:20 It's not good governance.
21:22 Somebody made the quite askew point yesterday
21:24 that during the pandemic,
21:26 obviously a lot of people were taking leave of absence,
21:29 becoming unwell, looking after loved ones.
21:31 It was a kind of chaotic, fluid time.
21:34 And without that continuity,
21:36 how can we expect the government to operate
21:39 as best as it can?
21:40 So that has to change.
21:43 And I suspect that will probably be played out
21:46 in the chamber at Holyrood.
21:48 But there's undoubtedly quite a lot else
21:51 that will be pursued.
21:55 One of the things that also struck me
21:56 was around the issue of WhatsApp.
21:58 I seem to recall that during the long running incident
22:04 with Mr. Salmond,
22:06 Nicola Sturgeon presented her messages to Alex Salmond,
22:10 which were three or four years old at that time.
22:13 And yet she didn't retain any during the pandemic.
22:15 So even though she's not in a position
22:18 of any kind of seniority within the government anymore,
22:20 I think there has to be renewed scrutiny of that.
22:24 And perhaps that will come
22:25 during the Scottish COVID inquiry.
22:28 - Can I just add just a final point to that?
22:31 I mean, I think the, I suppose there's two things.
22:34 I think the civil service, I think,
22:36 has questions to answer in Scotland.
22:38 I think you, Joseph was referring to that,
22:41 that email that people thought had come from John Swinney
22:44 raising concerns about travel restrictions on Spain,
22:48 potentially having an impact on a future decision
22:51 that Spain might take to block
22:53 an independent Scotland's EU membership.
22:55 That was actually a civil servant that wrote that email.
22:58 And it certainly seems slightly baffling
23:01 from an outsider's perspective
23:02 as to why a civil servant was making
23:05 quite so political a point.
23:07 It just, it's a bit hard to understand.
23:10 And I think there was previous evidence
23:12 that the inquiry saw with senior figures,
23:14 senior civil servants in the Scottish government,
23:16 Ken Thompson, basically joking about deleting
23:21 WhatsApp messages, joking about,
23:23 making kind of lighthearted comments
23:25 about freedom of information.
23:27 I think there are questions that the civil service
23:29 needs to answer here.
23:30 I think, I actually strongly suspect that
23:33 if the Scottish government will have to look again,
23:35 as Martin says, at its kind of retention policy
23:38 when it comes to these kind of informal messaging services.
23:41 I don't know if it is actually possible
23:42 to draw up a policy that actually captures them
23:45 in any meaningful sense,
23:46 because I think people can just use disappearing messages.
23:49 They can use things like Telegram.
23:50 They can use all sorts of different ways to communicate
23:52 without it being necessarily captured.
23:54 And I don't really think the Scottish government
23:56 can really do anything about that.
23:58 I also think that if you require people
24:00 to hand over WhatsApp messages,
24:01 you're getting into all sorts of data protection issues
24:04 in terms of private stuff
24:05 that would potentially be handed over.
24:07 So I don't know how the Scottish government
24:09 is gonna handle that.
24:10 I don't think they even get into a position
24:11 where they just create a blanket rule
24:13 that the civil service, for example,
24:15 should not conduct government business
24:17 on WhatsApp full stop.
24:18 And again, how easy will that be to police?
24:22 So I think there's a number of thorny issues
24:25 that will come out of this.
24:26 And I think it'll just run and run.
24:28 - I just have one question actually for you
24:31 as you're on this.
24:32 MPs in Westminster, SNP, broadly now have
24:36 that message is set to delete.
24:38 So if you're messing with an MP,
24:41 their message will delete on WhatsApp
24:42 after I think 24 hours.
24:44 So basically there's no history of it,
24:46 which I imagine is so they can all brief anonymously
24:49 against each other without getting caught.
24:50 Is that the same in Holyrood?
24:52 - Yeah, I mean, I think there's certainly,
24:55 there are people who use auto-delete functions.
24:57 There are all sorts of ways to get around this.
24:59 I mean, I'm sure it is the same in many ways.
25:04 And this kind of feeds into the point you're making
25:05 that I just don't think you can really,
25:07 any policy can really capture
25:09 these kind of informal messaging,
25:11 the use of informal messaging services
25:14 to any kind of great degree.
25:16 You can create rules around it,
25:17 but people will always get around it,
25:19 particularly when we have all these
25:20 delete functions in apps,
25:24 certain apps that only ever use disappearing messages.
25:26 There's just no way to kind of capture this.
25:29 And in a sense, it's just the modern equivalent
25:31 of those off the record conversations
25:33 that people have in corridors
25:35 that would never have been minted in the first place.
25:37 So it's something as a society that,
25:39 not just the government,
25:40 all sorts of organisations are having to grapple with this.
25:42 People's use of things like WhatsApp
25:44 and the kind of mixing of informal
25:46 and informal decision-making.
25:48 And it's gonna be a headache
25:50 for the government going forward.
25:52 And I don't think this is the last we'll hear of it.
25:55 - Well, either way, a lot of things for us to write about
25:57 and talk about going forward.
25:59 Thank you all for your time.
26:00 Thank you, you, the viewer at home for watching.
26:02 And for all this and more,
26:03 stay tuned to theescotsman.com.
26:06 Cheers.
26:07 (upbeat music)
26:11 (upbeat music)