1. An email that was revealed yesterday at the United Kingdom Covid inquiry included—[

Interruption

.] Really? Scottish National Party members are groaning because we are asking about the Covid inquiry, so let me start again.

An email that was revealed yesterday at the UK Covid inquiry included senior SNP Government figures discussing the travel ban to Spain in July 2020. The email said:

“I’m extremely concerned about this ... It won’t matter how much ministers might justify it on health grounds, the Spanish government will conclude it is entirely political; they won’t forget; there is a real possibility they will never approve EU membership for an independent Scotland as a result.”

That was not a low-level consideration. The people who were included in the discussion were Nicola Sturgeon, who is again absent from Parliament; John Swinney, who is again absent from Parliament; Jeane Freeman; and Humza Yousaf. Why was independence even considered in a decision about public health?

Of course, it was not.

Douglas Ross said that the email came from a senior SNP official, but it came from a Scottish Government civil servant. It did not come from John Swinney, nor did it come from Nicola Sturgeon, me or Jeane Freeman. To suggest that the decision on Spain was made for any other reason than epidemiology is, I am afraid, a fantasy.

Even if we accepted Douglas Ross’s framing of the situation—that we were looking at the issue through a constitutional lens and attempting to curry favour with Spain—surely we would have put Spain on the exempt list. We did not put Spain on the exempt list. That is the exact point.

Why did we not do that? Let us look at the epidemiology at that point. Scotland did not include Spain on the exempt list, as England and Wales did. We did not do that because its point prevalence at that time was 0.33. That was four times higher than the point prevalence in Scotland. In fact, at that point, Spain was the only country that was proposed for the exempt list that had significantly higher prevalence than Scotland did.

When I look at the evidence and the advice from the chief medical officer at the time, I see that he expressed concern about the importation risks. Ministers concluded that they should not add Spain to the list of exempted countries due to the lower prevalence in Scotland and the fact that the prevalence in Spain was four times higher.

Douglas Ross can do his best to spin, to throw insults—

Briefly, First Minister.

The First Minister:

— to misrepresent facts and to malign not just ministers but civil servants, but I believe that the people of Scotland know that, for all the challenges that we had during the pandemic, the Scottish Government always prioritised protecting the public from the harms of Covid. I do not think that Douglas Ross can say the same of what his party did in the UK Government.

Amid pretty stiff competition, that might be the most bizarre answer that I have ever heard from Humza Yousaf. [

Interruption

.] He is saying that it is fact, so here is a fact.

The day after Humza Yousaf received that email, which spoke about political concerns that there might be with the Spanish Government allowing an independent Scotland into the EU, he announced that the Scottish Government was introducing a travel corridor with Spain. The very next day, the Government opened up travel to Spain and, five days later, it had to close it down again because Covid cases were rocketing. That is the fact and we know it because Humza Yousaf told us. It is down in black and white in evidence to the inquiry that the Government was thinking about independence instead of focusing purely on public health.

We have not seen any evidence of Humza Yousaf’s response to that email and Nicola Sturgeon’s messages from that time have all gone because she deleted them. The former SNP leader destroyed all her WhatsApp messages, despite knowing that a do-not-destroy order was in place, despite promising grieving families that she would be transparent and despite assuring journalists that all her messages would be handed to the inquiry. She unequivocally told the press that her messages would be provided, so why did Nicola Sturgeon say yes when she actually meant no?

The First Minister:

I say again that, effective from 10 July 2020, Spain was not included on the first list of exempt countries, due to the fact that it had a four times higher prevalence of Covid than Scotland.

On the subject of WhatsApp messages, Douglas Ross has thrown all sorts of incendiary accusations at people, particularly Nicola Sturgeon, for not retaining WhatsApp messages. He has demanded investigations and reviews. However, not only did his boss, the Prime Minister, not retain his messages, he took the inquiry to court and lost.

In just the last hour, the UK Covid inquiry heard from Alister Jack, who was Douglas Ross’s boss when he was in the Scotland Office. What did Alister Jack say about his WhatsApp messages? He was asked whether he had deleted his WhatsApp messages. He said, “I did delete them”, and he deleted them because he wanted to free up storage capacity on his phone. When he was asked whether there was any Government business on those WhatsApps, he said:

“I didn’t think anything of it.”

When he was asked whether he had considered the needs of the public inquiry—[

Interruption

.]

The Presiding Officer:

Please be quiet, Mr Sarwar.

The First Minister:

—here is what he said, which I will quote directly:

“No I didn’t. I was quite keen for my phone to start working again.”

That is what he said. It is astonishing that Douglas Ross demands investigations and reviews of Nicola Sturgeon for not retaining her WhatsApps when his boss and colleague, who deleted his WhatsApps and did not even think about the inquiry, is perfectly fine. There is one word for that and that word is hypocrisy. The people of Scotland can see right through Douglas Ross.

It is not perfectly fine. Alister Jack was wrong to delete his WhatsApp messages. He has apologised and he regrets it, but Humza Yousaf cannot step out of the Shadow of his disgraced predecessor and say the same. Nicola Sturgeon has not apologised for doing that: she has said that she was right because she was following Government policy. That is a massive difference.

I cannot let the First Minister’s confusion about the travel ban with Spain pass. He is saying that the restrictions concerning Spain were kept in place. On 20 July 2020, the day after the email was sent, Humza Yousaf said:

“We are able to lift the requirement for those travelling from Spain.”

Five days later, he said:

“The decision to exempt Spain earlier this week was taken when the data showed there was an improvement. The latest data has given us cause for concern to overturn that decision.”

He definitely made a decision on the back of that email. [

Interruption

.]

The Presiding Officer:

I ask the Government front bench to resist any temptation to contribute.

I think that they are trying to come up with a story, because what the First Minister has said so far does not match what he did in practice in 2020.

We know that the deleted WhatsApp messages were covering up major decisions made by the SNP Government and we know that because of the messages that we have been able to see. When Humza Yousaf was health secretary and was in charge of the national health service, he joked with the national clinical director, Jason Leitch. They laughed about false claims that children were hospitalised because of Covid. In one revealing exchange, Humza Yousaf said:

“I’m winging it and will get found out sooner or later.”

At what point does the First Minister think he was finally found out?

The First Minister:

Let us look again at the facts. Douglas Ross is right that Spain was not initially exempt from the travel corridor and then was put on a travel corridor. That was because we had data, presented by the UK Government, from the London School of Hygiene—[

Interruption

.]

The Presiding Officer:

We have so many members who want to put questions to the First Minister. That would be more likely if we could get on with our session and if I do not have to keep asking members on the front benches to resist the temptation to contribute when they should not be.

The First Minister:

They do not want to listen to the facts. In his own response, Douglas Ross said that the situation improved in Spain, which is correct. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine showed a marked improvement in the position in Spain, with point prevalence going down to 0.015 per cent. That is the reason why Spain was then put on the exempt list. When the situation worsened considerably, just a matter of days later, all the UK nations decided to take it off the exempt list. Again, we made the decisions for purely epidemiological reasons.

When it comes to the UK Government and the messages that we have seen, I remind Douglas Ross of what has been revealed. He had a Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who he not only backed to the very end but invited to his party conference. According to the evidence that we have heard, Boris Johnson allegedly said,

“let the bodies pile up high”.

When discussing long Covid, he called it—forgive me, Presiding Officer, for the language—“bollocks”. We had a Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who partied in number 10 while people missed the funerals of their relatives and loved ones.

Yes, we could have done better when it came to the retention of informal messages, but when it came to steering this country through some of its darkest days, I am very pleased that we had Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government in charge here, as opposed to Boris Johnson.

The Presiding Officer:

I remind all members of the need for courtesy. [

Interruption

.] Members, I would be grateful if you could desist for a moment.

Let us remind one another of the need for courtesy and respect in the chamber. That applies to using quotations to say words that might otherwise be regarded as unparliamentary. I am also very conscious, as I have said, of the number of members who wish to put questions today. I would be grateful for more concise questions and responses.

Even after yesterday’s evidence from the former First Minister and the words that we have heard from the Covid bereaved, Humza Yousaf still backs her to the hilt. That tells us everything that we need to know about this First Minister, who is simply the continuity candidate for team Sturgeon.

As health secretary during the pandemic, the First Minister joked about not knowing what he was doing. When he sent that message, by that stage, 10,000 people in Scotland had already lost their lives from Covid. However, he was not the only one who has been found out. Nicola Sturgeon destroyed evidence on an industrial scale. The SNP Government considered independence in making key decisions. It did things for purely political reasons. It broke promises to grieving families and the public, who sacrificed so much. Humza Yousaf was winging it, but has the whole SNP Government not been found out?

The First Minister:

I go back to the point that I have made several times in these exchanges over the weeks. I absolutely accept whole-heartedly that our retention policy on informal communications clearly could have and should have been better. That is why I have commissioned an externally led review. However, on the big calls, many of the decisions that we made helped to save lives.

If we look at the evidence from Professor Sir Ian Diamond that has been presented to the Covid inquiry—[

Interruption

.] Jackie Baillie is shouting, but she might want to listen to the evidence of Professor Sir Ian Diamond, who is the chief executive of the UK Statistics Authority and the UK national statistician. He gave details of age-standardised mortality rates per 100,000 right across the four nations. This is his data, not my data. That analysis shows that, in Scotland, we had the lowest level of deaths per 100,000, according to the ASMR data. Every single one of those lives lost is undoubtedly a tragedy—in fact, many of my colleagues on these benches lost a loved one to Covid. However, on those calls, the decisions that we made have helped to save lives.

Let us look at what the World Health Organization said. Again, this is not my data; it is the World Health Organization’s data. It estimated that 22,138 lives in Scotland were saved as a direct result of the Covid-19 vaccination programme. I fully accept that, when it comes to informal communications, we could and should have done better. We can also look at other decisions that we made and think that we could have moved quicker or earlier, or done things differently.

Although political opponents may well try to rewrite history and engage in, frankly, smears and insults—

The Presiding Officer:

Briefly, please, First Minister.

The First Minister:

— towards Government ministers and civil servants, I can stand up here and say that I know that, every single day of the pandemic, Nicola Sturgeon and the rest of us in the Scottish Government, civil servants included, worked for one reason and one reason only: to protect the people of Scotland from the harms of Covid.