The Scotsman Bulletin Friday October 27 2023 #WhatsApp

The Scotsman

Transcript

00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:03 Hello, and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Bulletin

00:11 for Friday.

00:12 I'm Alan Young.

00:12 I am Deputy Editor of the Scotsman,

00:14 joined by our political editor Alistair Grant.

00:16 Take a look at the main headlines.

00:19 What's up, Alistair?

00:22 How's it going?

00:23 Good.

00:24 Let's have a look at the front page.

00:28 And we lead today, as many papers do,

00:31 on the revelations from FMQs yesterday

00:37 around the COVID inquiry and the missing WhatsApp

00:42 messages from the Scottish government hitting the headline.

00:46 More about that in a minute.

00:49 We also have a full roundup of the European action

00:52 from last night's draw for Rangers and heartbreak

00:56 for Aberdeen at Cotterdray.

01:00 But the WhatsApp story, as I mentioned,

01:02 is dominating the news agenda really today.

01:06 I think we can take a look at what happens

01:09 after FMQs in Parliament.

01:13 Did you or have any of your ministers

01:14 or previous ministers ever used auto-delete on WhatsApp?

01:17 I don't know if any of my ministers

01:19 have used auto-delete on WhatsApp,

01:20 but we don't routinely conduct parliamentary business

01:23 through WhatsApp.

01:25 I mean, you did, Prime Minister.

01:27 No, we use WhatsApp to have conversations.

01:31 That's not unusual to anybody else.

01:33 We don't routinely make decisions.

01:36 Why haven't any of your WhatsApps been put forward?

01:39 All relevant information that has been asked for

01:41 will be sent across.

01:42 But routinely, decisions weren't made via WhatsApp.

01:46 [INTERPOSING VOICES]

01:50 So Hamza, you're clearly under a lot of pressure

01:54 on this issue, Alistair.

01:56 Maybe just give us the background first

01:59 on how we got here.

02:01 Yeah, so the issue of WhatsApps and how

02:03 they're used by the government, used by ministers,

02:06 used by officials behind the scene

02:08 has been a kind of issue in politics for a while now.

02:12 It's been something that's kind of been brought up

02:14 a number of times.

02:15 I know Connor Matchett, the Scotsman's deputy political

02:17 editor, has written stories about this

02:20 in the past, about ministerial use of WhatsApp.

02:23 And I suppose the concerns are about record keeping.

02:25 They're about the public's access to decision making

02:28 and how decisions are made.

02:29 And this becomes particularly important

02:32 when it comes to the pandemic, to the COVID pandemic,

02:34 because obviously decisions were being made extremely fast.

02:37 They were being made in very unusual circumstances.

02:40 They were quite extreme.

02:41 There was quite extraordinary measures

02:43 that were put in place, extraordinary constraints

02:46 on the public.

02:47 And the normal decision making processes

02:49 were not gone through in the same way.

02:51 And I think the public understands that.

02:52 They understand that there was this completely unprecedented

02:56 pandemic and that decisions had to be made extremely quickly.

02:59 But now that we have these inquiries,

03:01 we've got the UK COVID inquiry and the Scottish COVID inquiry

03:05 looking into this, looking into the pandemic and government

03:08 decision making, it's extremely important that we have details

03:12 of how decisions were made.

03:13 And in the modern era, WhatsApp and other messaging services,

03:17 Telegram, even things like the chat service of Microsoft

03:21 Teams, which I know is quite widely used

03:24 in the Scottish government, all these things

03:25 become very important if you're trying to get a handle on how

03:29 decisions were made, who took them, when they were taken,

03:31 why they were taken.

03:33 And if you think back to some of those decisions

03:35 in the pandemic, some of them were extremely controversial.

03:37 Things like the decision to move people out of hospitals

03:41 and into care homes.

03:42 This had a huge impact.

03:43 It's still very controversial to this day.

03:45 So how those decisions were made is extremely important.

03:48 And Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader,

03:51 brought this up in First Minister's questions

03:53 because at the UK COVID inquiry, one of the councils

03:56 to the inquiry, one of the senior lawyers,

03:59 had essentially raised concerns about the Scottish government

04:01 not handing over WhatsApp messages

04:04 and also raised concerns about how few of those messages

04:07 might still exist.

04:10 So I think there's two separate issues there.

04:11 And I think on the issue of not handing it over,

04:14 the Scottish government released a statement quite late

04:19 on yesterday afternoon in which they essentially said

04:21 that the inquiry had initially asked them for WhatsApps

04:24 related to decision making.

04:26 I think some of those were handed over

04:28 or information in that regard was handed over.

04:31 But then the inquiry has--

04:33 well, the Scottish government is saying the inquiry subsequently

04:35 asked for WhatsApp messages relating to logistics

04:38 and day-to-day communications.

04:39 And the Scottish government is essentially

04:41 arguing that it is going to hand those over,

04:43 but it needs a legal basis to do so.

04:45 It's asking for a section 21 order.

04:47 It essentially wants the inquiry to compel

04:49 it to hand over these WhatsApps.

04:51 And my understanding is of the reasons behind that

04:54 is so that they can then hand them over unredacted.

04:57 And they don't have to worry about things

04:58 like data protection because they've been legally

05:01 compelled to hand them over.

05:03 So they can just hand them over to the inquiry and kind of say,

05:05 well, you guys deal with the rest of that.

05:08 So I think that section 21 order is going to be put in place.

05:12 So their position is that these will be handed over.

05:14 We've obviously got reports today that Jason Leitch,

05:17 the national clinical director, obviously a very well-known

05:20 figure during the pandemic, became a household name.

05:22 He was on TV all the time.

05:23 He was on things like Off the Ball.

05:25 People were very used to hearing about him.

05:27 It turns out that he was deleting,

05:29 or it's reported that he was deleting his WhatsApp messages

05:32 daily.

05:33 So they no longer exist, and they can't be handed over

05:36 to the inquiry.

05:37 And I think one thing to add to that

05:39 is that there was a Do Not Destroy notice that

05:41 was put out by these inquiries to the governments,

05:46 to officials, essentially telling them

05:48 not to destroy evidence, not to destroy information that

05:52 might be relevant to the inquiry.

05:54 I think I'm right in saying that was put out in August 2022.

05:58 So there's no suggestion that Jason Leitch has broken the law

06:01 because he would have been deleting them as he went.

06:04 And I think a lot of people who use WhatsApp

06:06 will be aware that there's a kind of--

06:07 I think it's called disappearing messages, where you can

06:10 essentially set up WhatsApp so that your messages are

06:12 automatically deleted daily or whatever

06:15 length of time you choose.

06:18 So perhaps he was using that.

06:20 But I think this becomes--

06:23 this gets very technical.

06:24 But I think it's an issue because it's

06:25 about decision making.

06:26 It's about the public's access to information.

06:29 And we all know how well-used messaging

06:32 servers such as WhatsApp are now.

06:34 And the idea that they weren't used by officials

06:37 and government ministers, I think, is far-fetched.

06:40 And I think the government's line in this

06:42 is quite interesting because Humza Yousaf's language

06:45 yesterday in Parliament was quite careful.

06:47 I think he said that the Scottish government does not

06:49 routinely use WhatsApp for decision making.

06:53 I think the word routinely there is important,

06:55 but also the emphasis on decision making.

06:57 We're not just talking about decision making.

06:59 We're talking about conversations,

07:01 about policy behind the scenes.

07:02 We're talking about interactions between officials

07:05 and ministers.

07:06 And that is quite a broad definition.

07:08 It might not strictly relate to decision making.

07:11 And indeed, you also used the phrase

07:15 "all relevant information" a couple of times

07:19 while being questioned yesterday.

07:21 And that, I thought, was quite interesting as well

07:23 because who is to say what is relevant

07:26 and what is a relevant message?

07:28 And we know from some of the messages

07:29 we've seen from the UK inquiry involving Boris Johnson

07:35 and Dominic Cummings, for example,

07:39 they are not necessarily directly related

07:42 to decision making, but are clearly massively important.

07:47 Yeah, it's massively important that we get access

07:49 to this information, I think.

07:50 If we want to actually find out what went on,

07:53 and I think it has to be interpreted in quite a broad way.

07:56 And like you say, we've seen those messages

07:58 that have come out of the UK COVID inquiry

08:00 in relation to the UK government.

08:02 And some of them are extremely embarrassing

08:04 for the UK government, messages sent by officials

08:07 like Simon Case.

08:08 You know, I can understand why people would be reluctant

08:10 to hand over that kind of thing.

08:12 But at the end of the day,

08:13 these inquiries have been set up now

08:14 and we need to get to the bottom of this.

08:16 And that's one of the ways to go about that

08:19 is to get access to these messages

08:20 that people were sending to each other.

08:22 - Indeed. Thanks very much for that.

08:24 Also, we're sure the story is going to develop today

08:27 and in the coming days.

08:29 Please keep an eye on scotsman.com

08:32 for all the very latest throughout the day.

08:33 If you're on the site, please do subscribe.

08:35 If you can, then you will not miss a thing.

08:37 And if you're out and about today,

08:38 do pick up a copy of the paper from me and from Alistair.

08:41 Bye for now.

08:42 (upbeat music)

08:46 (upbeat music)

08:48 [MUSIC]

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