No minutes kept of Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘gold command’ meetings, Covid inquiry told

The UK Covid inquiry is struggling to understand how Nicola Sturgeon took key decisions during the pandemic because her “gold command” meetings were not minuted, the inquiry has heard.

Jamie Dawson KC, the inquiry’s Scottish counsel, said it appeared that the Scottish government failed to record discussions during any of the Sturgeon’s crucial “gold” meetings with a small handful of her advisers and senior ministers during 2020 and 2021.

Sturgeon excluded Kate Forbes, then Scotland’s finance secretary, from those meetings throughout 2020. Forbes told the inquiry on Tuesday she did not know gold command existed until she was invited to join one of its meetings in 2021.

Dawson said the inquiry had asked the Scottish government for the minuted records of gold command meetings and from its emergency resilience group meetings, only to be told no official records were made.

Speaking as Forbes was giving evidence, Dawson said: “Therefore, it becomes difficult to understand what precisely the ultimate decision-making process is, when there is no record of how those decisions were ultimately taken.”

Sturgeon, John Swinney, then Sturgeon’s deputy, and senior civil servants routinely deleted WhatsApp messages, the inquiry has also established. Swinney began his evidence after Forbes, with Sturgeon due to appear at the inquiry on Wednesday.

Forbes, who took over as finance secretary in February 2020, confirmed she was excluded from all the gold group meetings in 2020. Dawson said at least six of those meetings were held that year.

Asked by Heather Hallett, the inquiry’s chair, about why she thought she had been excluded “given her seniority,” Forbes said she did not even know they existed until 2021, and she agreed with Dawson that they all should have been minuted.

“I’m not even sure I was aware they existed because I remember when I was invited to my first one not really knowing what it was until someone explained it,” she said. “I would expect to be invited to any meeting where there were significant financial implications.”

She said it was possible that Fiona Hyslop, the economy secretary, took part in some.

Humza Yousaf, Sturgeon’s successor as first minister, told the inquiry last week that a revolving group of ministers took part in gold meetings. He was shown a WhatsApp message to him from Jason Leitch, the government’s national clinical adviser, complaining about “some first minister ‘keep it small shenanigans’ as always. She actually wants none of us.”

Yousaf said gold group decisions were sometimes needed to finalise or add detail to cabinet decisions. “There were times when the former first minister needed a tighter cast list, and wanted to make a decision on a very specific issue,” he said.

During detailed questioning about Scottish government spending, Forbes agreed with remarks by one senior Scottish official that it initially responded to the looming crisis in early 2020 with “lethargy” compared with the UK government.

She said the Scottish government was immersed in its normal budget preparations. “With hindsight there should have been a lot more discussion on how to budget for the pandemic” in early 2020, she said.

She agreed with complaints by Mark Drakeford, the first minister of Wales, that the Treasury’s failure to fund local lockdowns and “fire breaks” in devolved nations was “one of the most misguided decisions of the pandemic”.

Drakeford said the department was “acting like a Treasury for England rather than a Treasury for the whole of the UK”. Forbes said the Treasury ignored “prophetic comments” from Wales and Scotland about the need for extra furlough spending until England needed to lock down again.