"Politicising the pandemic" Nicola Sturgeon at the UK Covid 19 Inquiry

The Scotsman

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00:00 You will recall that Mr. Johnson visited Scotland on the 23rd of July 2020, Sturgeon.

00:09 I do.

00:10 Yes, and this is a tweet by you where you say, "I welcome the PM to Scotland today.

00:15 One of the key arguments for independence is the ability of Scotland to take our own decisions

00:19 rather than having our future decided by politicians we didn't vote for,

00:23 taking us down a path we haven't chosen."

00:25 His presence highlights that.

00:27 This is a political tweet relating to your support for the cause of independence in July 2020, isn't it?

00:34 It is, but it's also a response to the Prime Minister at the time coming to Scotland

00:42 and very overtly describing that visit as a mission to save the Union.

00:49 I think he had first-person pieces in at least one newspaper ahead of that.

00:54 Now, in reflection, should I have risen to the debate and posted that tweet?

00:59 Probably not.

01:00 But I would never even have been in that space at all but for the pretext of the Prime Minister's visit.

01:07 I was also, because he was coming to Scotland, because of the narrative that the UK Government

01:13 had put around his visit, I was inevitably being asked about it in my briefings and interviews.

01:20 But, yeah, perhaps I should have been the bigger person and not reacted in that way with that tweet.

01:27 I had intended, of course, to put to you also the context, which is that on his visit

01:32 and I think in the newspapers before, Mr Johnson has spoken about the might and merit of the Union

01:37 and therefore your interpretation of that is that he was seeking to politicise the situation. Is that right?

01:43 I think I say in my written statement, to be fair, I don't think generally the UK Government tried to politicise the pandemic.

01:54 I think this was a rare exception to that. If they did...

02:00 Do you think this was?

02:02 I think Boris Johnson, not coming to Scotland per se, but coming to Scotland with the narrative that they put around that

02:10 was an exception to what I said. I think generally they didn't try to politicise the pandemic.

02:16 And other than this occasion, the occasions where I thought they did, it was more around Brexit

02:23 and the vaccine rollout being possible because of Brexit.

02:27 So it's not a general accusation I would have levelled at them. I think this was an exception.

02:34 I listened to parts of Michael Gove's evidence earlier in the week and now realise that there may have been discussions

02:41 at UK Government level that led to this that I wasn't aware of at the time.

02:45 So this was a response. Was it as mature a response as it was a reflection? I might have wished for perhaps not.

02:52 But it wasn't me deciding suddenly to start talking about independence apropos of nothing.

02:59 It was a response to the Prime Minister's visit and in particular the narrative of his visit.

03:04 Again, Ms Sturgeon, in fairness, I was also going to refer you to the paper that we took Mr Gove to,

03:08 the State of the Union paper which he delivered to the UK Cabinet on the 21st of July, two days before the visit,

03:14 in which he described the risks to the Union as the greatest challenge for the UK Government to confront

03:19 and said that protecting and strengthening the Union had to be the cornerstone of all that the UK Government did.

03:26 So I put to him that that put some context, which of course you were not aware of at the time, to the visit.

03:31 But your position, as I understand it, was that I may have politicised the pandemic, but he did it first.

03:40 No, I don't think I did politicise the pandemic at all. I responded to a particular narrative of his with a tweet

03:50 and undoubtedly some answers to media questions. And the answers to media questions were unavoidable

03:56 because I took lots of questions every day from journalists. The tweet, perhaps I shouldn't have,

04:01 but I don't think a tweet adds up to politicising the pandemic.

04:05 Perhaps I was just trying to defend the position against the claims that were being made.

04:13 Perhaps, though, the accumulation of evidence which we've looked at might suggest that there was an attempt

04:19 on your part to politicise the pandemic.

04:22 I would strongly argue the reverse. And with respect to the evidence that's been put to me today,

04:30 the evidence of that, I would say it demonstrates nothing of the sort.

04:35 In the period after the election, did you attempt to revive the campaign for a second independence referendum?

04:45 I think the work on a second independence referendum did not restart in government until much later in 20...

04:54 There was an announcement, though, that you made in September.

04:57 September, which is some six months or more after the Scottish election.

05:01 What I'm interested in exploring is whether, in fact, there was within the Scottish Government

05:06 an attempt to seek to do so before that. We went with Mr Thompson to an entry in his diary

05:13 from a period in May 2021, shortly after the election, in which, amongst some reflections about his position

05:23 and his future role within the Scottish Government, he wrote the words "in day back".

05:28 Does that not suggest that it was a policy of the Scottish Government at that time to try to seek independence again,

05:35 despite the fact that you made no announcement to that effect until September?

05:39 As a matter of fact, it was not the case that work on independence restarted at that point.

05:44 We were still in a very challenging situation with COVID through the summer of 2021.

05:53 So I heard Ken Thompson's answer to what that meant, that he was looking ahead to things that might be

06:02 on the horizon for civil servants and the varying degrees of challenges they might be facing.

06:07 As a matter of fact, independence work did not restart at that point.

06:12 So at the risk of contradicting somebody I've got the highest regard for, at that point, indeed was not back.

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