The Former First Minister is among 70 Scottish Government figures whose communications - which are being sought by a public inquiry - have not been retained. They include current First Minister Humza Yousaf and former Deputy First Minister John Swinney. The admissions from the Scottish Government also reveal that national clinical director Jason Leitch claimed to have deleted messages daily.
Jamie Dawson KC, lead council for the UK inquiry, last week said it was “surprising” that so many messages from politicians and officials had been deleted.
He said WhatsApp and other messaging systems appeared to have been used to send messages relating to and surrounding key decisions by some members of the Scottish government. However he added that the “majority of the messages have not been retained by witnesses”.
He said: “This is surprising, in particular, in light of the apparent availability of such messages in high volumes within the UK Government.”
Only one conclusion can be drawn - the Scottish Government had something to hide …
AFAIK, WhatsApp messages can be backed up prior to deletion and may be restored thereafter:
I delete messages/whatsapp from my phone all the time. So what.
Anyway I’m sure the clever clog nerds can retrieve them, after all I believe deleted emails can be yanked back from the computer depths.
When did they delete them? Was it during the pandemic? They would not have known at that time there would be an enquiry, so be needed. If so there would not have been any reason to keep them cluttering up the app.
The Scottish Government said that while it is not its culture to use WhatsApp for decision-making, its records management policy states clearly that government decisions, however they are made, should be recorded in the official record. (1)
Sturgeon gave assurances in May 2020 that a public inquiry would be held and the Scottish version was announced the following year.
At the subsequent news conference in August 2021 the Channel 4 reporter Ciaran Jenkins asked: “Can you guarantee to the bereaved families that you will disclose emails, WhatsApps, private emails if you’ve been using them. Whatever? That nothing will be off limits in this inquiry?”
Sturgeon replied: “If you understand statutory public inquiries you would know that even if I wasn’t prepared to give that assurance, which for the avoidance of doubt I am (2) , then I wouldn’t have the ability. This will be a judge-led statutory inquiry.”
(1) “Should” have been but obviously weren’t and all the WhatsApp evidence, compromising or not, deliberately deleted.
(2) That was, obviously, a lie - disclosure of WhatsApp messages was already impossible because the members of the Scottish Government, either collectively or individually, had decided to ignore their own records management policy and delete everything.
As I pointed out earlier, WhatApp messages can be archived “offline” before deleting the originals. The “backups” can be restored at a later date.
