Scotland

You have to hand it to the Scottish government: the deletion of WhatsApp messages is good preemptive news management, whether accidental, by default or deliberate. Once journalists get their hands on them, those curt, day-to-day messages can be just a tad embarrassing — as this week’s expletive-laden evidence to the UK Covid Inquiry confirms. The Scottish government may not, however, be subjected to the same level of message scrutiny. Just how many WhatsApps have been deleted we still do not know. The Scottish government policy on message deletion was confirmed yesterday in a convoluted statement from the deputy first minister Shona Robison, which came just after Dominic Cummings had finished giving

The mystery of the missing WhatsApps continues. Deputy First Minister Shona Robison took to the floor at Holyrood today to issue an update about the Scottish Government’s interactions with the UK Covid Inquiry. Amid ongoing concern about whether ministers deleted public records, Robison’s contributions don’t offer a whole lot of clarity… Addressing the Scottish parliament today, Robison said that all requested Scottish Government messages that are still ‘held’ will be shared ‘in full and unredacted’ by 6 November. Any deleted messages ‘will be for individuals to explain to the inquiries any actions they have taken in relation to records retention,’ she continued ominously. But ‘with regards to the Scottish Government’s records management

The mystery of the missing WhatsApps gets murkier. The Scottish Sunday Mail revealed yesterday that Nicola Sturgeon ‘manually’ deleted WhatsApp messages from during the pandemic; her successor Humza Yousaf was one of the government figures who was reported as claiming that the relevant message data no longer exists. The First Minister denies this, however. ‘I’ve kept WhatsApp messages and fully intend to hand them over,’ Yousaf clarified today. The media debate now centres around whether the Scottish Government had a policy on social media messaging in place — and when exactly the messages of senior figures were deleted. Yousaf has today shed light on the first of these questions. In

A great modern Scottish myth is that the handling of the coronavirus pandemic by government ministers in Edinburgh was vastly superior to that of their counterparts in London. This rather distasteful display of Scottish exceptionalism ignores the fact that where the UK government got things right, so did the Scottish and that, likewise, mistakes were replicated on both sides of the border. This should come as a surprise to nobody. Quite rightly, both the UK and Scottish governments moved in lockstep throughout the worst of the pandemic, with scientific advisers and ministers in regular cross-border contact. It’s not as if Sturgeon didn’t know that an inquiry would, in time, wish

Eight months ago, Ash Regan was a contender for the leadership of the SNP, alongside Kate Forbes and eventual winner Humza Yousaf. Today she quit the party, defected to Alex Salmond’s rival Alba, and becomes that outfit’s first ever MSP. In a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter, Regan said it had ‘become increasingly clear that the SNP has lost its focus on independence, the very foundation of its existence’. She added that she ‘could not, in good conscience, continue to be part of a party that has drifted from its path and its commitment to achieving independence as a matter of urgency’.  Regan won Edinburgh East under the SNP

It will no doubt be referred to in Whitehall circles in future as the ‘Jason Leitch protocol’. Scotland’s clinical director appears to have escaped scrutiny by the UK Covid Inquiry. It was revealed last night that his WhatsApp messages sent during the pandemic were deleted at the end of each day. The Scottish government have this afternoon denied this, saying that it was not correct to say that Professor Leitch deletes his Whatsapp messages and that guidance had been followed. But this does not change the fact that by the time the ‘do not destroy’ notice was issued by the Inquiry, Leitch’s messages were already gone.  First Minister Humza Yousaf

What comes around, goes around. The SNP government has never been slow in condemning the Tories for a lack of transparency in the ongoing UK Covid Inquiry. So it was to Steerpike’s amusement then that Humza Yousaf and his Scottish government are now facing criticism for not handing their key messages over to that same probe. Talk about being hoist by your own petard… This morning Jamie Dawson KC, the legal counsel to the inquiry, said that the Scottish government had been asked to provide ‘all communications related to key decisions made during the pandemic’, including informal messages on WhatsApp, but that ‘no messages’ had been handed over. So much for open

With a general election – and the prospect of forming a government – now firmly on the horizon, the Labour party has no shortage of long-standing policies that it is quickly seeking to recast, review or revoke entirely.  Sir Keir Starmer’s earlier pledges to abolish tuition fees, increase taxes on higher earners and scrap the two-child benefit cap have all been unceremoniously dumped. Other commitments, such as a £28 billion per annum ‘Green Prosperity Plan’, have been significantly watered-down, while proposals for a tax raid on US tech giants have shifted to a wider review of business rates. This is, in many ways, a natural and prudent process for a

It’s a red letter day for Nicola Sturgeon: she’s finally achieved something of lasting value. For the former First Minister has managed to pass her driving test at the precocious age of, er, 53. That’s just one year less than the average life expectancy of some of her male constituents under the SNP-run health service. Impressive stuff! Sturgeon praised her driving instructor for his help, writing on Instagram that ‘It was really important to me, as a 53-year-old former FM, not just to have an excellent teacher but someone I could trust and feel comfortable with.’ So clearly not Humza Yousaf then. She added that the experience of passing her test

Scotland is stuck. This week has only confirmed it. SNP leader Humza Yousaf used his party conference in Aberdeen to announce a council tax freeze. It quickly emerged that he had done so without telling councils and without telling even his own cabinet. As his deputy admitted in an interview, the decision to freeze was agreed between 24 and 48 hours before the speech. Council tax was reportedly chosen because there wasn’t enough time to get expert advice on the impact of freezing other taxes. Councils are furious. Not only weren’t they consulted, but they are already making £300 million in cuts amid a two-year budget shortfall of £1.1 billion.

After the SNP won its first Holyrood election in 2007, foolish council leaders across Scotland rushed to sign up to what then finance secretary John Swinney described as a ‘historic concordat’. In return for Swinney pulling back from his threat to centralise education, Scotland’s 32 local authorities agreed to uphold the nationalists’ promise to freeze council tax rates. Lots of councillors swanked about, bragging about this brilliant deal. Look at us, they said, we’ve got a ‘historic concordat’. It appears that Yousaf has announced a flagship policy that he is simply unable to cost. And then reality slapped them across their faces. Swinney had stitched them up good and proper.