Nicola Sturgeon's Cabinet looked at how Covid could boost support for independence
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Nicola Sturgeon’s Cabinet agreed to consider how the pandemic could be politicised to boost support for independence, as hundreds of Scots were hospitalised with the virus during the first lockdown.
In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, SNP ministers said they had “paused” their preparations for an independence referendum so they could focus on tackling the virus.
But the UK Covid public inquiry was shown the secret minutes of a Scottish Cabinet meeting on June 30 that year, which stated ministers “agreed that consideration be given to restarting work on independence and a referendum”.
The minutes said that the case for separation should be updated “with the arguments reflecting the experience of the coronavirus crisis and developments on EU exit.”
On the same day the meeting was held, Ms Sturgeon used her daily televised Covid briefing to argue that anyone who was “trotting out political or constitutional arguments is in the wrong place completely and has found themselves completely lost”. She added: “We’re not dealing with politics at the moment.”
Earlier in the same briefing, she announced 885 people were in hospital with the virus, including 19 in intensive care. A further three deaths had been registered in the previous 24 hours, taking the total at that time to 2,485.
Although Scotland had started moving out of the first lockdown in June 2020, significant restrictions remained on people and businesses.
‘Revelations are disgusting’
Non-office workspaces, outdoor sports venues and playgrounds had only started reopening the day before the Scottish Cabinet meeting.
Marriages were only permitted outdoors with “minimal attendees”, and zoos and garden attractions could only be visited by those living within a five-mile radius. Mixing between households remained severely restricted.
Stephen Kerr, a Scottish Tory MSP, said: “These revelations are disgusting. When people were dying from Covid, the SNP was focusing on how to use the pandemic to further their plans to break up the United Kingdom.
“Nicola Sturgeon and her SNP colleagues reassured us repeatedly that the pandemic was their sole focus. This has now turned out to be lies - there’s no other way to describe it.”
The Scottish Cabinet minutes were published on Friday afternoon as the inquiry took evidence from Ken Thomson, who was then manager of the Scottish Government’s Covid Coordination Directorate and one of its most senior mandarins.
A leaked video of him emerged last year in which he joked that his job was “breaking up” the UK. At the time, he was director-general of strategy and external affairs.
Using Covid to further independence
Jamie Dawson KC, lead counsel for the inquiry’s module on Scotland, asked him about claims that the SNP government’s response to Covid had been politicised to further independence.
Mr Thomson said he did not agree with that, adding: “The second way I hear that criticism is that somehow in her decisions the First Minister was seeking...to be different for the sake of being different to remind people that Scotland has the ability to take decisions on its own. And I also don’t agree with that.”
But Mr Dawson read out the passage from the Cabinet minutes about using the pandemic to promote independence and asked whether this was “indicative of the fact that the Scottish Cabinet in June 2020 wished to politicise the coronavirus crisis.”
Mr Thomson prevaricated and admitted “that runs slightly contrary to what I said in my previous answer”.
Recalling that independence work had stopped at the start of the pandemic, he said: “As we moved out of the lockdown restrictions, more of the ordinary business of the Scottish Government started to resume, including this bit.”
He added: “I don’t think I gave significant time to that but some of my team, who for example had been moved from that independence work into work such as travel restrictions, might then have resumed work on this because we had been able to adapt our structures.”
The same day as the Cabinet meeting discussed promoting independence, Ms Sturgeon used her Covid briefing to dismiss claims that differences in her lockdown rules from Boris Johnson’s were politically motivated.
She said: We’re not dealing with politics at the moment. We are dealing with a virus, a virus that we know poses a real risk to health and to life.”
The Scottish Government, the SNP and Ms Sturgeon were approached for comment.
