BBC
Ms Sturgeon was asked by Channel 4 News in August 2021 whether she could “guarantee to the bereaved families that you will disclose emails, WhatsApps, private emails if you’ve been using them. Whatever. That nothing will be off limits in this inquiry?’
The question related to the Scottish Covid Inquiry, which is being held separately to the UK-wide one.
She had replied at the time: “If you understand statutory public inquiries you would know that even if I wasn’t prepared to give that assurance, which for the avoidance of doubt I am, then I wouldn’t have the ability. This will be a judge-led statutory inquiry.”
But the UK inquiry has been told by Jamie Dawson KC that Ms Sturgeon appeared to have retained no informal messages in connection with her management of the pandemic.
It has also been shown exchanges of messages between between senior Scottish government officials in which they were reminded that the conversations would be subject to Freedom of Information (FOI) laws and were urged to delete the messages.
Opposition parties and survivors groups have accused the government of an “industrial-scale” deletion policy in an attempt to avoid scrutiny.
However, some Scottish government figures – including Ms Sturgeon’s former chief of staff Liz Lloyd and current First Minister Humza Yousaf – have submitted text conversations with Ms Sturgeon to the inquiry.
