Scotland’s first minister has said he has not deleted WhatsApp messages relating to the COVID-19 pandemic following press reports his predecessor and senior officials may have.
Last week, a note to the chair of the UK COVID-19 Inquiry from one of its counsels said the inquiry was of the belief that the “majority” of informal messages, including on WhatsApp had “not been retained.”
The first minister said on Monday he had retained his messages, but that there had been a Scottish Government policy on social media messaging which advised their deletion after 30 days.
Press reports in recent days suggested former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon; the national clinical director, Professor Jason Leitch, and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Gregor Smith may have deleted messages either manually or through the use of the app’s auto-delete function.
Speaking to the PA news agency on Monday, the first minister said: “I don’t know why there’s been press reports suggesting I’ve deleted my WhatsApp messages, that’s not true.
“I’ve retained my WhatsApp messages and, of course, whatever the COVID-19 Inquiry asks for, I’ll be absolutely prepared to hand them over as I would for the Scottish inquiry too.”
Asked if Ms. Sturgeon, Mr. Leitch and Sir Gregor had deleted their messages, the first minister was unable to say, but added that he would expect the officials to have retained messages relevant to the inquiry.
“They will have to answer for themselves, I can’t answer for the former first minister, I haven’t seen her statement to the COVID-19 Inquiry,” he said.
“As for Jason Leitch and also Gregor, the chief medical officer, my expectation would be that they retain whatever information that is relevant to the inquiry, particularly after the do not destroy notice.
“So, it’s important for them to make sure that they satisfy that do not destroy notice.”
A spokeswoman for Ms. Sturgeon said she would fully cooperate with the inquiries and had just submitted a statement which ran to about 200 pages.
A clip of Nicola Sturgeon speaking during one of the near-daily coronavirus briefings held during the pandemic, which has resurfaced online, showed her pledging to provide any inquiries with the necessary communications.
Asked why a blanket policy was not installed to ensure ministers and officials saved all messages from after the announcement of an inquiry—which Scotland was the first in the UK to do—the first minister said it would be “very difficult” and would have gone against Government social media policy which suggested the deletion of messages after 30 days.
He added: “The important thing, I don’t think is always necessarily whether you communicate over email, whether you communicate over WhatsApp, whether you have a telephone call, the point is that if a decision is made, then it’s properly recorded within our records management system. That was done–of course, many documents have been handed over to the inquiry, somewhere in the order of 13,000.”
Asked if the deletion of messages could damage the credibility of both the Scottish and UK-wide inquiries, the first minister did not answer, saying instead that any decisions would have been logged in the Scottish Government’s records management system.
“Of course, that’s important—people need to know what decisions were made and, rightly, can question us on why those decisions were made when we appear in front of any of the inquiries.”
Deputy First Minister Shona Robison, who is leading the Scottish Government’s response to the inquiry, is due to make a statement in Parliament this week on the evidence that has been handed over.
