Another day, another way the taxpayers’ dime is wasted. According to the Taxpayers’ Alliance, the Covid Inquiry is costing £300,000 a day – £94 million so far in the last two years that it has been going on. The costs of Covid continue…
It doesn’t stop there, as just last year, a group of 265 civil servants dedicated their full-time efforts to furnishing the inquiry – costing a whopping £100,000 a day and totalling £44 million when combined with legal advice. Meanwhile, the Scots have spent £21 million so far on its separate inquiry. John O’Connell of the TPA said on the excessive cost, “The Covid inquiry should be short, sharp and decisive, not an expensive political pantomime.” Still no sign of Simon Case either…
Welsh First Minister Vaughan Gething hasn’t even been in his post for two months, and already it appears he’s struggling to stay out of trouble. Co-conspirators will remember when the former Welsh health secretary broke his own covid rules more than once – now it’s emerged that he misled the UK covid inquiry over deliberately deleting WhatsApp messages. Devolved leaders have a habit of appearing trigger-happy when it comes to deleting messages…
At the inquiry, Gething said it wasn’t him who deleted any messages, instead when it was serviced by the Senedd’s IT department. A text from Gething in 2020 says otherwise, where he wrote “I’m deleting the messages in this group.” Telling lies at a statutory public inquiry is a criminal offence of perjury – not quite the look the First Minister would hope for. It doesn’t look like he can turn to his own party to rally round him either, with one senior Welsh Labour insider saying “It’s difficult to see how Welsh Labour can [bring Wales together] if there are fundamental doubts about the integrity of the First Minister.” Maybe he can seek support from his Spanish friends instead…
Sturgeon has had a marathon run at the Covid Inquiry which doesn’t leave her looking rosy. She tried to argue that she didn’t delete her WhatsApp messages, which just “weren’t retained“. Sturgeon was pressed repeatedly by Jamie Dawson KC. “But did you delete them?” he asked. Sturgeon said: “Yes”. On top of that, Nicola:
- Argued she “did not take decisions for political reasons” and that IndyRef work was suspended in March 2020. Guido is reminded of secret minutes of a Scottish Cabinet meeting from June 2020 which stated ministers “agreed that consideration be given to restarting work on independence and a referendum”…
- Admitted that decisions were made and work undertaken, for example on expanding testing capacity, without any official documentation at all.
- Couldn’t explain why Kate Forbes, then finance minister and leadership rival, was kept out of response planning meetings.
- Was shown messages which displayed decisions were made informally over WhatsApp despite Sturgeon claiming they were not.
- Insisted she “had a strong commitment to four nations working” despite regularly trying to undermine the UK government response.
- Said “I thought Boris Johnson was the wrong person to be prime minister, full stop” while at the same time claiming : “I don’t think in my entire life have I ever thought less about politics generally and independence in particular than I did during the course of the pandemic“. Even as she uses the inquiry itself to play politics…
- Tried to deflect the disruptive effect of Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer resigning over rule-breaking by saying it “stands in contrast to other incidents“. A clear Cummings jibe.
- Admitted “we absolutely didn’t get” all decisions right after Sturgeon spent much of the first half of the pandemic giving lip service to a Zero Covid strategy, egged on by her top advisor Devi Sridhar.
- Admitted she should “probably not” have tweeted derisive messages about Boris’ visit to Edinburgh. Sturgeon then argued she was only responding to “a particular narrative” from No 10…
Sturgeon broke into tears in the afternoon à la Matt Hancock and said “I was the First Minister when the pandemic struck and part of me wishes I hadn’t been“. So do we…
The SNP will always have its defenders. This morning ScotNat apologist Kelly Given rowed with BBC Scotland presenter Kaye Adams about the Covid Inquiry’s decimation of Sturgeon and Yousaf. Given whined at scrutiny of politicians:
“I think, you know, why are we holding these people to account as if they’re not human beings? Nicola Sturgeon got a new phone or whatever, deleted her messages or whatever…“
Adams made the obvious point: “Because in this instance they’re not human beings, they’re politicians“. Guido has been saying it for years…
Given went on to defend Humza Yousaf allegedly being given a workaround by top officials to avoid wearing a mask at events – “just hold a drink in your hand“. Given said “the coverage around Humzsa Yousaf is outrageous… the advice was constantly changing, what is the problem with him asking for clarification of mask rules?”
“Kelly, he was the health secretary…” ‘Nuff said…
The Covid inquiry has heard this morning that Nicola Sturgeon “retained no messages whatsoever” from the pandemic. That explains her constant refusal to confirm which messages have been retained. If it looks like a cover-up and sounds like a cover-up…
Jamie Dawson KC said:
“Under the box ‘Nicola Sturgeon’, it says that messages were not retained, they were deleted in routine tidying up of inboxes or changes of phones, unable to retrieve messages.What that tends to suggest is at the time that request was made Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister of Scotland, had retained no messages whatsoever in connection with her management of the pandemic”.
While SNP officials were busy torching message archives, Sturgeon was happy to use the Covid inquiry for political point-scoring and anti-Brexit attacks. It doesn’t look like the inquiry will get much more out of her…
UPDATE: Messages between senior Scottish Government officials hve been shown to the inquiry:
UPDATE II: Video below presented without comment.
‘Can you 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?’
— Ciaran Jenkins (@C4Ciaran) October 29, 2023
My question to @NicolaSturgeon August 2021
pic.twitter.com/OJDCBTESCe
While Tory MPs plan their moves in response to the Rwanda bill, Sunak is stuck over at Dorland House giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry. His performance so far has been pretty clear and well delivered. Rishi pointed out that in the early stages of the pandemic “advice was put to the government, to the prime minister from SAGE, and advice was followed – pretty much imminently“. Far from No 10 trolleying and changing its mind constantly, “the scientific advice changed and the government obviously changed with it”. An important addition to the dud inquiry…
Rishi also caught himself referring to the tax burden being “historically high” before correcting himself and saying it’s “higher than I would like“. The last person in Britain to insist things are still going fine…
