And back to the SNP’s Scotland, which is not quite the land of milk and honey that the Nats would like to make out. It turns out that former first minister Nicola Sturgeon and the majority of her ministers refused to use government-issued mobile phones during her time in office. Cover-ups? Surely not!
Government officials confirmed to the Times that the former first minister and her most senior colleagues used only personal devices to call or text workmates. It reports that, in fact, only a quarter of those ministers in post between February 2020 and January 2022 were recorded as having official phones. Interestingly, 26 of the 30 ministers currently working under Humza Yousaf, the first minister, have government-issued devices. Junior minister and Green co-leader Lorna Slater is one of those who doesn’t. Hapless Humza getting something right — who’d have thunk it?
A spokesperson for Sturgeon said that whether or not she had a government device would have ‘no impact on FOIs [Freedom of Information requests] or security’.
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