That is simply a complete and utter mischaracterisation of what we have heard. On every occasion that I have had exchanges on the issue, I have, first, acknowledged the impact on the Scottish Covid bereaved of the decisions that we made on informal communications. I do so again, and I apologise again, unreservedly, as I did at the inquiry and directly to those who were representing the Scottish Covid bereaved, for our mishandling in relation to informal communications. We could and should have done better.

However, I go back to the point that I just made to Douglas Ross, which I will repeat to Anas Sarwar. Yes, we should have done better on the retention policy for informal communications but, over the course of the pandemic, when it came to the important decisions that helped to save lives, I believe that we took the decisions for the right reason.

We can evidence very clearly that protecting the people of Scotland from harm was the number 1 overriding priority. Through the actions that we took, when it came to one measure—I accept that it is only one measure—which was that of age-standardised mortality rates per 100,000 across the four United Kingdom nations, Scotland’s rate was 124.9 per 100,000. That was different from England, which had 145 per 100,000; Wales had 144 per 100,000; and the UK averaged 143 per 100,000. That is not to diminish the number of lives that continue to be lost to Covid to this day.

The decisions that we took also ensured that we had, at one point, one of the fastest booster vaccination programmes in the world—certainly the fastest in the UK by quite some distance.

I fully accept that we could and should have done better on message retention. I handed over the messages that I had, of course, and was questioned about them for almost three hours. However, on the big calls that helped to save lives, I believe that we can evidence—we have seen that evidence—that not only did we do things for the right reason, but our interventions helped to save lives here in Scotland.