The next item of business is a statement by Kate Forbes on the publication of the United Kingdom Covid-19 inquiry module 2 report. The Deputy First Minister will take questions at the end of her statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions.
16:26
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on people across Scotland, and its impact continues to be felt today. In recognition of the loss, hurt and suffering experienced by people across Scotland and the rest of the UK, it is vital that we learn lessons from the pandemic to make improvements for the future. We want to make effective and practical changes to learn from past events and ensure that we are prepared and ready for future challenges, such as another pandemic.
The Scottish and UK Covid-19 inquiries are playing a valuable role in helping us to do that by scrutinising the approach taken during the pandemic and holding decision makers, including the Scottish Government, to account. Today, I welcome the publication of the UK Covid-19 inquiry’s module 2 report, which was published this afternoon. The report examines decision making and political governance across the United Kingdom during the Covid-19 pandemic, which was a period that profoundly affected every aspect of our national life.
The Scottish Government has fully engaged with and supported the evidence-gathering process for the UK inquiry. The First Minister and I gave oral evidence during the module 2A public hearings in Edinburgh in January 2024, alongside many other current and former ministers and officials, contributing to the wealth of evidence collated by the inquiry. I extend my thanks to the chair and the inquiry team for their efforts in preparing the report. I am conscious of the immense responsibility that the inquiry team holds in ensuring that important lessons are learned for the future.
I appreciate that timing of the publication of the independent report means that members will have had limited time to review the report prior to this statement, but the same is true of me. However, given the significant public interest, I thought it important that I update Parliament on the day of publication within the parliamentary day. I am giving a statement today so that I can provide a more detailed update than a response to a parliamentary question would allow, and to provide the opportunity for members to ask me questions on such an important report.
As the report is published, my thoughts turn to the many families across Scotland who lost loved ones during the pandemic. In recognition of the hurt, loss and suffering that are felt by so many, we are committed to learning from the past.
I enormously appreciate the contributions of all the organisations and individuals who have shared their experiences with the inquiries, often revisiting traumatic events and profoundly challenging periods of their lives. Their contribution has been vital in helping to tell the story of the pandemic and in allowing the inquiries to play their role in scrutinising the decisions that were taken.
During the pandemic, the Scottish Government’s foremost priority was to protect the public from the novel coronavirus Covid-19. We had to learn and adapt rapidly, implementing unprecedented measures to limit transmission and safeguard our most vulnerable communities. With the benefit of hindsight, we acknowledge that some choices, which were made in good faith at the time and under immense pressures, might not have been the right ones.
As the Parliament will be aware, in July 2024, the UK inquiry published its first report, which looked at resilience and preparedness. We published our response to that report in January this year. Since then, we have taken forward further key actions, including participating in a UK-wide exercise to test Government pandemic preparedness and publishing a report setting out improvements and changes that have been introduced to the Scottish resilience landscape.
Following publication of the module 1 report, there was collective discussion on the recommendations across the four nations ahead of our publishing our response. In considering the inquiry’s findings for module 2, we remain committed to working constructively with our counterparts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to ensure that our collective response to any future emergency is effective, practical and well co-ordinated.
The Scottish Government will now take the necessary time to carefully consider the findings and recommendations. We are committed to a thorough and thoughtful review process, and we will respond fully in due course. Those who have been affected by the pandemic, particularly those who bore some form of loss, have placed a great deal of trust in the Scottish Government not just to take on the challenges that Covid posed but to be open and transparent in our approach.
Taking into account the views of people who lived through and experienced the pandemic will be vital in helping to shape our response to the recommendations. That is why our response will be informed by wide stakeholder engagement, including a dedicated Covid inquiries response engagement group, which brings together representatives from key stakeholder organisations. It includes, among others, voices from organisations representing bereaved families, as well as those working with disabled people, minority ethnic and other marginalised communities, and older people. Members of the group will provide their learning and insight to the Scottish Government during the development of the response to the recommendations, ensuring that the interests of their member groups are fully represented. The group, which I will chair, will meet over the coming weeks to discuss the report and its recommendations. I look forward to engaging directly with those who have generously offered their time, expertise and challenge to support that vital work.
We will now take the necessary time and space to carefully and comprehensively examine the inquiry’s report and its recommendations. That will enable us to reflect meaningfully on the findings, consider the implications in depth and engage constructively with the content, ensuring that any subsequent actions or responses will drive meaningful improvement. The engagement group will play a vital role in providing robust and effective challenge as we navigate this journey.
Although today is an important milestone in the UK inquiry’s work, we must remember that it is one part of a careful and thorough process. We will continue to fully engage and work with the UK and Scottish Covid inquiries, and we look forward to their future findings. It is vital that our national response to any future emergency is informed and strengthened by the lessons that we have learned from the Covid pandemic. We remain committed to being open and transparent, and focused on delivering a response that delivers improvements for the future.
The Deputy First Minister will now take questions on the issues raised in her statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions, after which we will move to the next item of business. I would be grateful if members who wish to put a question were to press their request-to-speak button.
I thank the Deputy First Minister for her statement and for advance sight of it. I echo her thanks to the inquiry chair and the team for the preparation of this very detailed report. That said, I wonder what the point was of scheduling the statement this afternoon. It is deeply disappointing that the statement was scheduled for a time just half an hour after the 800-page report was published, with no time for members to read—far less to digest—the very detailed information that is contained in it. That appears to be part of the pattern of secrecy and cover-up that was exposed by the inquiry.
In 2021, the then First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, told journalists that nothing would be off limits in providing evidence to a public inquiry. We now know that both she and the current First Minister, John Swinney, deliberately deleted WhatsApp messages, seemingly under official guidance, to dodge freedom of information requests in the future. They have taken no responsibility for those actions.
Moreover, no minutes were kept of the gold command meetings between ministers and senior advisers. The Scottish inquiry counsel said that it is
“difficult to understand what precisely the ultimate decision-making process is when there is no record of how those decisions were ultimately taken.”
Shockingly, those gold command meetings were so secret that Kate Forbes herself told the inquiry that even she did not know that they were happening until a year after they started.
The absurd boast that the Government is committed to transparency is an insult to those who lost loved ones. Out of respect to them and all Scots, will the Government now commit to scheduling, after a suitable time has passed to allow the report to be digested, a full debate in the Parliament in Government time, so that we can properly discuss what is in the report?
I suspect that, if I had not scheduled a statement, I would have been called to the chamber to give one, and I wanted to make myself available to all Opposition members as quickly as possible. I reassure Murdo Fraser and others that I am sure that there will be plenty of further opportunities for scrutiny and debate.
On the issues that Murdo Fraser identified, he will understand many of the changes that have already been implemented, particularly after the report of module 1. He will understand that we carefully considered the recommendations from the Martins review of the Scottish Government’s use of mobile messaging applications and non-corporate technology and that, on 20 June this year, a new policy came into effect that ended the use of mobile messaging applications to conduct Government business.
Murdo Fraser talked about gold command meetings. As set out in our closing statement to the Covid inquiry, gold meetings were not convened to make decisions to apply or lift measures.
In general, in response to the inquiry’s report, I would say that we are committed to learning lessons from the pandemic. We will consider all recommendations that are made in the module 2 report. I have already offered, and I repeat again, my deepest sympathies and condolences to the many thousands of people who lost loved ones. We acknowledge that mistakes were made and that lessons must be learned. The decisions that were taken by the Government were entirely focused on fighting the pandemic and protecting the people of Scotland, but we will review the report in detail.
As Murdo Fraser has said, it is a large report, and I fully accept that, in the space of 30 minutes, none of us in this room will have had time to digest it. I understand that other Governments were planning to issue lengthy written statements, but I do not believe that our parliamentary procedures would have allowed for that. It felt like the issue was too important just to be put into an answer to a parliamentary question, which is why I am here.
I would like to thank the Deputy First Minister for her statement but, I regret to say, it tells us precisely nothing. It is disappointing that John Swinney is not responding, given that he was central to decision making. In my view, the statement is a masterclass in spin because it fails to address the substance of any recommendations and talks only about process. I am reminded of the tale of the emperor’s new clothes.
We know that the Scottish Government was not prepared and failed to take action quickly enough. We know that hospitals were emptied of older people, who were sent to care homes, untested, when they were Covid positive, which led to a devastating 4,000 deaths. We know that the impact on vulnerable and disadvantaged groups was not considered and that John Swinney downgraded the exam results of working-class kids based on their postcode.
What we know today is that most members of the Cabinet were sidelined. They were not included in decision making, no minutes were taken and there was wholesale deletion of WhatsApp messages by Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney.
Families who lost loved ones deserve answers. Will the Deputy First Minister have the grace to apologise for the errors that were made by her Government and will she tell us when we will have the formal response to the Covid inquiry’s recommendations?
In response to Jackie Baillie’s questions, I put on record again that we acknowledge—as we have acknowledged in the past—that mistakes were made and that lessons must be learned. As I said, our decisions were entirely focused on fighting the pandemic. It was an unprecedented, systemic threat to global health, to healthcare systems, to economic activity and to wider society. Jackie Baillie talks about the things that, she says, she knows—everybody in Scotland has a similar list, because they lived it. They understood the impact that it had on them individually.
In relation to the Government’s response, I made some comments about process. The member will appreciate that I have to provide statements to the Opposition as far in advance as possible; that is not ideal when the Covid inquiry report landed at 4 pm. I reassure her that I would be happy to give the Parliament more information.
We have committed to Baroness Hallett that we will respond to the inquiry in a timely manner. There are requirements to respond in a timely manner built in to the process. The way we did that in response to the module 1 report was to give an initial response. Here, we also have to do as much as we can to engage with the stakeholder group that I talked about, because, this time, the recommendations are a lot weightier—if I can put it like that. We will engage with the engagement group and I would be happy to come back to the Parliament in due course to give a more fulsome update on our response.
Will the Deputy First Minister join me in acknowledging that the most meaningful way to recognise the loss, hurt and suffering of the people of Scotland during the pandemic is to learn from the evidence and continue to make measurable improvements in pandemic planning and preparedness? Will she reaffirm the Scottish Government’s commitment to delivering on those outcomes?
As I said in my statement, it is in recognition of the loss, hurt and suffering experienced by people across Scotland that it is vital that we show that we have learned the lessons from the pandemic, and that we make improvements for the future. We are committed to delivering on those improvements.
On 30 September, we laid our first report on the issue, “Scottish Government Report on Whole System Civil Emergency Preparedness 2025”, in Parliament. That set out the resilience structures that are currently in place in Scotland and the work that we have already undertaken in response to the module 1 report to improve our approaches. We have committed to laying a report every three years for the Parliament to scrutinise.
Whole-system civil emergency preparedness includes preparedness for pandemics, but it is worth recognising that the next civil emergency may not look like the last Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, we need to ensure that we are as resilient as possible. To make that whole system work, we have established a specific programme of work to improve our preparedness across all the Scottish Government. Ministers have oversight of that work and senior officials from across the Scottish Government are progressing it. I assure Fulton MacGregor that I am totally committed to delivering on those outcomes.
The Covid inquiry exposed the deeply troubling way in which decisions were made by senior ministers and advisers during the pandemic. In a WhatsApp message about her own Covid rules for hospitality, Nicola Sturgeon said:
“it’s all so random.”
Her chief of staff wanted
“a good old-fashioned rammy”
with the UK Conservative Government about furlough policy and wrote in a notebook about
“political tactics calling for things we can’t do to force the UK”.
A civil servant who was working for John Swinney expressed concern that putting restrictions on Spain could endanger an independent Scotland joining the EU.
What does the cabinet secretary say to Scots who lost family members and livelihoods during the pandemic, who will be appalled by how politics influenced the Scottish Government’s decision making at a time when all decision making should have been scientifically backed?
I say to those who are listening that decisions that the Scottish Government made involved judgment by ministers that was informed by scientific advice and other considerations, which included analysis of harms through the Scottish four harms process.
Brian Whittle rightly referred to the hospitality sector. Having engaged with that sector on an almost weekly basis for two years, I understood intimately the extent of the brunt of the impact that it felt from some of the non-pharmaceutical interventions, including lockdowns. We remain committed to understanding the impact of the NPIs, as they are called, and learning lessons for the future about managing pandemics. However, I say quite clearly that the decision to implement NPIs, including lockdowns, was never taken lightly.
On holding to account and lessons learned, others will rightly focus on the human impact of the measures that were taken, but I want to focus on the £4.1 billion that was awarded in 28 failed contracts to those with connections to the Conservative Party. I do not know whether that is mentioned in the report—if it is not, it should be. The case of Michelle Mone is the most publicised—contracts that were worth £200 million went to Medpro, which made £60 million in profits on the back of that, for defective products.
I understand that, before the election, Labour undertook to introduce legislation to recover some of those moneys, which were fraudulently obtained. Can the Deputy First Minister advise whether Labour is pursuing that legal remedy?
I invite the Deputy First Minister to respond on matters for which she has responsibility.
Our procurement processes in Scotland were robust. They were overseen by my colleague Ivan McKee. Audit Scotland’s report on support for business and the economy during the pandemic highlighted the particularly robust approach that we took to fraud to ensure that as much funding as possible was spent on businesses that desperately needed it.
The Deputy First Minister has said that we have had only a brief opportunity to read the report. However, I have no doubt, from my brief reading of it, that public confidence in the Scottish Government’s decision making will be significantly affected.
Important decisions were made through informal structures, which reduced transparency and, ultimately, accountability. A number of witnesses who were involved in the UK Government’s response to Covid-19 told the inquiry that, in their view, part of the reason for the divergence in approach between the UK Government and the Scottish Government was a desire on the part of the Scottish Government on a number of occasions, for political rather than policy reasons, to adopt measures and language that were different from those adopted by the UK Government.
How does the SNP plan to rebuild the public’s trust in Government after such findings? Can the Deputy First Minister indicate when another statement will be made so that we can scrutinise the issue? Does she accept that that must happen well before the end of the parliamentary session?
In relation to the first part of Carol Mochan’s question, I assure her that, even during the rapidly evolving and intense circumstances of the pandemic, which we all remember, the Scottish Government sought to maintain its usual process of formal collective decision making. We were open, transparent and accountable in respect of the decisions that were made. I personally recall the number of statements that I gave to members in the chamber, making myself open to scrutiny and debate. Our former First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, gave updates to the public and made herself available to the press on a regular basis.
Another point that I would like to put on the record is that co-operation between the Scottish Government and the UK Government during the pandemic was frequent and collaborative. There was wide-ranging collaboration and co-ordination on a range of issues, including testing, vaccine roll-out and public health measures. I know that to be a fact, and I am hopeful that it is recognised in the report.
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, it was clear that co-operation between Governments, stakeholders and organisations was vital to tackling the virus and keeping the country safe from harm. Will the Deputy First Minister reaffirm the Scottish Government’s unwavering commitment to working closely with local and national partners to make effective and practical improvements in pandemic planning and preparedness following the publication of the module 2 report?
The short answer is yes. Rona Mackay is right to recognise that, for the whole-system approach to work, we need all parts of the public sector to be involved.
I talked about exercise Pegasus, which was the UK-wide pandemic preparedness exercise. Learnings identified from the public inquiries and from exercises such as Pegasus are being captured and worked on in that programme of work to ensure that we are as prepared as possible.
It has already been remarked that, before the pandemic, all nations of the UK were too reliant on assumptions that preparedness planning should be based on a flu pandemic. In speaking to the new report today, the inquiry chair said that, in the early stages of the pandemic,
“All four governments failed to appreciate the scale of the threat or the urgency of response it demanded”
and relied
“in part on misleading assurances that the UK was properly prepared for a pandemic.”
In taking forward the work that the Deputy First Minister referred to, which is a broader approach to crisis planning and preparedness, does she recognise that we are in the early stages of that work and that we are not well prepared for the kind of crises that we might face? In particular, does she acknowledge that poverty and inequality exacerbated the risk that many people faced and would face in future emergencies and that, ultimately, a more equal society would be a more resilient society?
In response to module 1, which covered the questions around preparedness, we provided the inquiry chair with a progress update in July 2025, which set out the action that had already been taken to deliver the recommendations in module 1. That included work to improve our approach to risk assessment and the findings of a significant horizon scanning project.
We will provide the inquiry chair with a further progress update in January 2026, precisely in response to the recommendations of module 1 and to the points that Patrick Harvie has outlined. He is absolutely right to make the point that, in terms of resilience, we cannot assume to know what the next civil emergency or pandemic will look like. That is why exercise Pegasus, which is a UK-wide test that we have come through, tested our ability to respond to a hypothetical pandemic and tested all the processes.
Patrick Harvie is also absolutely right about the equalities and human rights considerations. That is why the population health framework highlights health inequalities. Addressing those health inequalities remains a top priority for the Government, because the evidence is quite clear.
In the pages of the report, we learn that our entire pandemic response was dictated by those in a small clique at the heart of the Scottish National Party Government, none of whom are in the chamber this afternoon. That clique had a damaging distrust when it came to working with others and no strategy at key moments.
The inquiry rejects Nicola Sturgeon’s assertion that meetings of gold command were not decision-making meetings; it says that the group
“diminished the role of the ... Cabinet”
and reduced the transparency of decision making as a result. Does the Deputy First Minister accept that that reality crucially undermined democratic oversight and any suggestion of openness by her Government and, in turn, that it has robbed families of answers and of evidence about the innermost calculations behind the decisions under which we lived and under which, sadly, too many of us died?
I can respond quite clearly to Alex Cole-Hamilton that the primary decision-making forum in the Scottish Government is the Cabinet. That remained the case during the pandemic and it remains the case today.
There are profound lessons to be learned from the impact of the pandemic on those with protected characteristics, health inequalities and those living in poverty. The evidence highlights unequal effects across different age groups and for those living with learning disabilities. There is also the issue of digital inclusion at such an important time. Can the cabinet secretary outline how such inequalities, including those linked to age or learning ability, will be addressed in future public health planning, based on the evidence that has emerged in the aftermath of the pandemic?
For the reasons that Clare Adamson set out, improving health and reducing health inequalities across Scotland remains a clear ambition for the Government. The Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, in collaboration with others, published the population health framework in June, which is about taking a cross-Government and cross-sector approach to improving the key building blocks of healthcare. There are initial priorities in that document on embedding prevention into our systems.
Three local authority areas have been established as Marmot places through the collaboration for health equity in Scotland. In response to the recommendations from the expert reference group on Covid-19 and ethnicity, we have taken targeted action to tackle the healthcare inequalities that are experienced by minority ethnic communities. That is built into the Government’s approach.
There is no point in the Deputy First Minister saying that the Cabinet made all those decisions. The report states clearly that the Cabinet was not involved at all. I cannot understand why the Deputy First Minister would stand there and say something that is clearly not true.
The inquiry report also concludes that efforts to differentiate Scotland’s Covid response from that of the rest of the UK were counterproductive. In the few minutes that we have had to look at the report, we have seen that paragraph 5.154 states:
“The idea of eliminating the virus from Scotland was inappropriate and destined to fail in the light of an open border with England and there being no agreement with the UK government to close it.”
Paragraph 5.155 states:
“... the use of different language by the Scottish Government to express policy intent led to challenges in its development of guidance.”
The Deputy First Minister used the word “fact” earlier—we all remember the travesty of acronym nonsense that was “FACTS”. Does the Deputy First Minister not understand or not accept, based on what I have just read, and in the light of Nicola Sturgeon’s infamous text message to Liz Lloyd that said that her “aim” was to be maximally different, that the response was at times driven by political rather than public health consideration?
I fundamentally disagree with that characterisation. The member has completely misquoted and come up with a distortion in saying that the Cabinet was not involved at all. That is not representative of the report; it is total nonsense. As someone who sat through Cabinet, I can vouch for that.
While some drank and danced in Downing Street, young people across Scotland were some of the most affected throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Like many others, my own daughter saw her transition from primary school to secondary school disrupted, with long-term impacts still being felt. Will the Deputy First Minister speak to the importance of the views of young people throughout the inquiry and advise how the Scottish Government will use their experiences to inform its response to the module 2 report and its findings, and how we will prepare for such a threat again?
Elena Whitham spoke movingly about her own child and the personal impact that the pandemic had on so many of Scotland’s children. There is a module that looks specifically at the impact of young people, particularly through the education system.
All communities in Scotland have a personal testimony of how Covid impacted them, and the views of young people are incredibly important as we address the impact of and learn from Covid-19. The member may be aware that both inquiries sought views from young people to inform their work, and we will engage with a wide range of stakeholders and organisations to inform our response to the report, so that it is based on lived experience.
The Deputy First Minister has defended Cabinet responsibility during Covid and has gone as far as to say that she disagrees with the conclusions of the report. The report says that the decision to close schools in Scotland was taken by John Swinney and the First Minister alone, and that the Cabinet should not have been “sidelined”. Does she agree?
I can reassure the member, happily, that the only person I disagreed with was Stephen Kerr.