The First Minister:

John Swinney announced yesterday that there will be an independent review to look at the lessons that should be learned, and I think that that is the right thing to do.

I made a judgment. We are in difficult circumstances and we did not get this right. I accept that, and it is important to be absolutely open about that. We did not get this right. We acted with the best of intentions. We judged that it was important to have a set of results this year that were comparable in standard with those in previous years. I think now that that was not the right judgment, which is why we have made the decision that John Swinney announced yesterday.

I accept that in the circumstances in which we are living, there has been no decision that I or any member of this Government has taken over the past five months that has been easy or where there has been an absolute right or wrong. We are living through the most horrendously difficult set of circumstances. That is why it is so important to recognise that where, despite the best of intentions, we get things wrong, we do not dig our heels in but we put things right. That is what we have done.

Again, I think that the evidence suggests that people prefer that approach to government to the ding-dong exchanges that I, in Opposition, have been as guilty of as anybody else—I am not criticising that. However, we are not living in normal times. Richard Leonard can quote me from four years ago or 20 years ago, but we are living through a global pandemic right now, where the choices that we face and the challenges that confront us are really difficult. We will continue to lead the country through this as best we can and we will not shy away from saying when we get things wrong and taking the action that we need to take to put things right. I think that people prefer that approach to the traditional approach to politics that we have in more normal times.