Sturgeon government less ‘mobilised’ for pandemic than Boris Johnson’s
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Nicola Sturgeon’s government was less prepared and “mobilised” for the pandemic than Boris Johnson’s shortly before it started, the UK Covid inquiry has heard.
Notes taken by Derek Grieve, a senior Scottish Government civil servant who led the initial response, showed that as late as March 5, 2020, few of his fellow mandarins in Edinburgh believed “this is going to be serious”.
After attending a Cobra meeting on Feb 26 that year, he wrote that it was “clear” that all UK Government departments were “fully engaged and mobilised in a way that the SG [Scottish Government] simply isn’t”.
The following day, Mr Grieve described how a colleague tried to increase the sense of urgency at a meeting of Scottish Government directors “to encourage them” but noted “there was still no real engagement”.
“They then spent 20 minutes talking about internal SG comms [communications]. Completely amazed!” he said. The country was put into lockdown less than a month later, on March 26.
The notes were made public as Jeane Freeman, the former SNP health secretary, told the inquiry that she would regret Covid deaths in Scotland’s care homes “for the rest of my life”.
Ms Freeman, who stood down from the role at the May 2021 Holyrood election, expressed regret over the Scottish Government’s decision to discharge hundreds of patients into care homes without testing them, to free up hospital beds.
No ‘risk-free choice’
She insisted there were not enough tests available for them to be checked first but argued there was no “risk-free choice”. Half of Scotland’s Covid deaths in the first wave of the pandemic occurred in care homes.
Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to the inquiry, challenged her that the “Scottish Government’s response to the care home crisis and the need for people who are vulnerable and elderly to be protected was completely inadequate”.
Ms Freeman said: “It was not as adequate as I would have wished it to be. I believe it was all that could be done with the resources available to us at that point, and that improved as time passed.”
John Swinney, the former deputy first minister, and Kate Forbes, the former finance secretary, are scheduled to give evidence on Tuesday. Ms Sturgeon is scheduled to appear before the inquiry, which is sitting in Edinburgh, all day on Wednesday.
Dame Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s health spokesman, said: “It is clear that the Scottish Government was woefully unprepared for Covid and made a number of serious mistakes.
“However, today brought no clear answers about the tragic decision to discharge untested and Covid-positive patients into care homes.”
Mr Dawson presented Ms Freeman with the comments in Mr Grieve’s notebook complaining about the lack of preparedness. The civil servant received a CBE for services to public health after later leading the Scottish Government’s vaccine division.
Ms Freeman said: “It’s clearly Mr Grieve’s feeling and view and I’m not going to prevail against that. I think he was reasonably frustrated that other parts of the directorate, a very big directorate, appeared to him to be taking a view that this was a public health matter and therefore not for them.
“And that was probably fair in those early days, but of course the directorate had to come together fairly quickly.”
An official report found 113 Scottish hospital patients who had tested positive for coronavirus, without later testing negative, were transferred to care homes in March, April and May 2020. A further 3,061 were sent from hospitals to care homes in the period without being tested.
‘Could have done better’
Ms Freeman said: “I want it read into the record. I was very concerned about our care sector, and regret very much and will do for the rest of my life, any deaths that occurred there because of action the Scottish Government didn’t, or did take, and could have done better.”
Blaming a lack of testing capacity, she said there were instead “additional mitigations” included in guidance to care homes issued in March 2020, including social distancing and staff wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) such as facemasks.
But Mr Dawson highlighted an email sent by a care home to trade body Scottish Care on Mar 25 that year, which stated that it was “not possible” for staff to wear PPE as “no care home has the appropriate equipment. None.”
Ms Freeman insisted there was no alternative to “those mitigating measures” until “our testing capacity increased to the level that we could undertake testing prior to discharge of admission to care homes”.
The requirement for a negative test was not introduced until updated guidance was issued on Apr 21, 2020.
But Ms Freeman argued that only 348 of the 843 care homes that took in patients discharged from hospital suffered a Covid outbreak, meaning the cause was “more complex” than a lack of testing.
She said an analysis had found that the size of the home was “a more significant factor”, along with the availability of PPE.
