Scottish Parliament: FMQs with First Minister Humza Yousaf - The Scotsman Roundup - video Dailymotion

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Scottish Parliament: FMQs with First Minister Humza Yousaf - The Scotsman Roundup

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00:00 Hello, welcome to the Scotsman's Politics Show. We're here to debate what happened at

00:13 First Minister's Questions. I'm joined by our political correspondent, Alistair Grant.

00:18 Alistair, it's been the story of the week, really. What's apps and no surprise that it

00:23 came out again today.

00:24 Yes, this was raised by both the Scottish Conservative leader, Douglas Ross, and the

00:29 Scottish Labour leader, Anna Sarwar. And just to give a bit of background to this, it's

00:33 obviously, like you say, it's been a big story that's been running for a number of days now,

00:38 in the headlines of a lot of Scottish newspapers, featuring in the front pages. And essentially,

00:43 it exploded into the headlines because the Scottish government was criticised for failing

00:48 to hand over WhatsApp messages at a hearing of the UK COVID inquiry last week. So the

00:55 Scottish government said that it was requesting a legal order, essentially, the inquiry would

01:00 make a legal order that would compel it to hand over WhatsApp messages. It argued, essentially,

01:06 that this was needed so that it didn't have to worry about data protection issues, people's

01:10 private data. And that order has now been issued. So the Scottish government now says

01:14 it's handing over those WhatsApp messages. However, there's been reports, particularly

01:19 at the weekend, that Nicola Sturgeon is among senior figures who may have deleted WhatsApp

01:24 messages, some of her messages from that, from the time of the COVID pandemic may no

01:28 longer be held. Nicola Sturgeon was doorstepped by journalists in the Scottish Parliament

01:33 about this in recent days, and essentially refused to address it, refused to confirm

01:39 or deny that she had deleted COVID WhatsApp messages, even though others have since come

01:44 out and confirmed they still hold them, for example, the former finance secretary Kate

01:48 Forres. So it's not quite clear why Nicola Sturgeon can't address that point. But this

01:53 got raised at First Minister's questions today, some quite strong language from Douglas Ross,

01:58 who essentially said that if WhatsApp messages had been deleted, it was equivalent of building

02:02 a bonfire to torch the evidence. He's going quite strongly on it, accusing the Scottish

02:08 government of potentially holding the inquiry in contempt of letting down grieving families.

02:13 Humza Yousaf, for his part, making the point that the Scottish government is now handing

02:17 over 14,000 WhatsApp messages. He was very, very keen as well to knock it back to a focus

02:25 on some of the evidence we've been hearing relating to the UK government, some of those

02:29 kind of embarrassing WhatsApp messages that have come out, the extraordinary evidence,

02:33 obviously, in recent days from people like Dominic Cummings. He's very keen to highlight

02:36 that. He was also bringing up Nicola Sturgeon's regular media briefings during the pandemic.

02:43 At one stage, they were almost daily, and saying that she was never shying away from

02:48 scrutiny. And again, Douglas Ross focusing in on the Scottish government's actual policy

02:54 at the time. So he was saying that the Scottish government's policy to delete WhatsApp messages

02:59 after a certain period of time was announced after the inquiry was put in place, sorry,

03:05 after the Covid inquiries were announced. So he was raising concerns about that. I think

03:10 that policy essentially says that messages relating to government business should be

03:14 kept, but WhatsApp messages as a whole can be deleted. There's some kind of ambiguity

03:19 around how that was put in place, how it was adhered to, particularly now you've got figures

03:23 like Humza Yousaf saying he kept his WhatsApp messages, so it doesn't seem to have been

03:27 adhered to by everyone. And importantly as well, Humza Yousaf very much saying that,

03:32 I think his quote was, "We certainly don't have anything to fear from the truth." And

03:37 Douglas Ross retorting to that, that we don't know the truth at the moment because obviously

03:42 the inquiry is still trying to get access to information. So I think this is a story

03:46 that will run and run. There's still a lot of questions to be answered, a lot of concerns

03:50 over WhatsApp messages, other informal messaging systems and what information might have been

03:56 kept. And just to kind of state the obvious, it's obviously extremely important if you're

04:01 holding public inquiries into the Covid pandemic to have access to messages that were said

04:07 by ministers, officials, to get a glimpse of why decisions were made. The Scottish government

04:13 is always keen to say that it didn't routinely make decisions over WhatsApp, but we're not

04:19 talking about the decisions that were made. We know what decisions were made. We lived

04:22 through the Covid pandemic. I think what the inquiry is trying to get a handle on is how

04:27 decisions were made, what the conversations were around them, what the decision making

04:30 process was. And obviously things like WhatsApp messages are crucial to that.

04:35 Alistair, as a title, the Scotsman's covered a lot of issues around transparency related

04:41 to the Scottish government, effectively asking and trying to answer the question about whether

04:45 it's been transparent enough across a range of issues like the ferries to things like

04:50 the WhatsApp messages. How do you, even if the argument is legitimate that HUMS is making

04:57 about the need for a section 21 notice to release this information under data protection,

05:01 what do you think the optics of this whole discussion? Do you think it makes the Scottish

05:06 government look good or does it make it look bad?

05:09 Well, I think you can see from spokespeople for the Scottish Covid Bereaved, for example,

05:13 that group that represents some of the families that were impacted, that lost loved ones during

05:18 the pandemic. They are not happy about it at all. You've got lawyers like Amir Anwar

05:23 who represents them, that have been quite outspoken about it. I think from the government's

05:27 point of view, to be criticised by a senior lawyer for the UK Covid inquiry for not handing

05:33 over messages or not going about it in the right way, I think it's not a good look. I

05:38 mean, they are obviously quite keen to point to some of the mess we're seeing down south

05:42 in terms of the evidence around the UK government's handling of it, Boris Johnson's administration,

05:48 some of the chaos that was happening behind the scenes. That's obviously true. Lots of

05:52 concerns about that. Some of it's frankly astonishing. But when you're facing questions

05:57 in Holyrood, you're talking about the Scottish government and the Scottish government can't

06:01 just say, well, look at them. There are serious questions to be asked up here as well. I think

06:06 transparency in general is obviously something that governments sometimes struggle with.

06:11 And this is just another example of that.

06:14 You can also read our story from Connor Matchett, a deputy political editor today on Microsoft

06:19 Teams on the fact that it has an auto-delete function activated as well as part of Scottish

06:26 government practice. That's at scotsman.com. Please follow all the latest. We'll be bringing

06:32 you what happened from FMQs either via our live blog or coverage on the site. Just select

06:38 the politics tab for all the latest. Thanks very much for joining us, Alistair, and thanks

06:43 to everyone else.

06:44 [MUSIC]

Scottish Parliament: FMQs with First Minister Humza Yousaf - The Scotsman Roundup

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