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 government.
It led to a very embarrassing First Minister’s Questions at Holyrood today for the hapless Humza Yousaf, as he faced a grilling from Douglas Ross. ‘Grieving families deserve answers… Where are the messages, where have they gone and has the Scottish Government deleted any messages?’ raged the Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross.
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