Scotland had no plan for a non-flu pandemic ahead of Covid-19 arriving in the country in 2020, Nicola Sturgeon has told a public inquiry.
The former SNP leader, who was Scotland’s first minister for the duration of the pandemic, told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry there was “thinking” within government around how to deal with infectious diseases which were not flu before the outbreak, but nothing was ever properly laid down in documents.
Giving evidence to the inquiry in person, she also conceded a commitment by her government to review what lead counsel Hugo Keith termed as the UK’s “sole strategy” for a possible influenza pandemic written in 2011 never happened.
She said she believed, however, that even if the document had been updated to consider other possible non-flu pandemics, it would not have radically changed.
“The 2011 four-nations plan was not updated,” she said, adding: “In my view, had that plan been updated, I do not think it would have changed substantially.
“A review would not have changed the fundamental assumptions or planning or modelling at the heart of it.”
Asked if she agreed with other inquiry participants who previously described the plan as “wholly inadequate”, Sturgeon replied: “In summary, yes. The plan was for a different type of pandemic than the one we unfortunately were confronted with.
“What there wasn’t, and I think this is the significant gap, is there was no set plan into how we dealt with a pandemic that had the features and characteristics of flu in terms of transmissibility, but also the severity and what we came to understand in terms of asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19.
“The questions in my mind, literally every day, are not so much did we lack a plan but did we lack capabilities for dealing with a pandemic of the nature of Covid-19 - and obviously I’m talking there about contact tracing, testing, infrastructure in particular.”
Later in her evidence, Sturgeon was quizzed about her government’s decision to divert resources from emergency planning in the lead up to the pandemic to prepare for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit.
“A significant amount of time, energy and resource was diverted into that from a range of other matters,” she said.
Asked why resources were pulled from emergency planning when the risk of pandemic had been identified as “the greatest risk facing the nation” in the national risk register, Sturgeon said her government had “no choice”, adding: “I deeply regret any consequences that had for our emergency planning in other areas.”
Questioned if this was a “false economy”, she answered: “I think every aspect of Brexit has been a false economy.”
She was then warned she was in a “witness box, not a soap box”.
It is expected that Sturgeon will be called upon later in the inquiry to give further evidence concerning her government’s response to the pandemic.
Her evidence on Thursday was followed by that of her deputy first minister during the pandemic, John Swinney.
Asked why there was “no real financial pandemic planning put in place for support or counter-measures”, he said the terms of the devolution settlement do not allow a reserve to be built up.
“The Scottish Government is specifically prevented from building up a reserve that it can deploy for eventualities of this type,” Swinney stated.
He said the UK Government’s economic intervention during the pandemic was “very welcome” and “saved many people’s livelihoods from great jeopardy”, but also demonstrated the scale of the financial challenge created by the pandemic.
Earlier, Sir Jeremy Farrar, a former member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), which advised the UK Government during the pandemic, gave evidence.
He said having a so-called “red team” to constructively challenge scientific thinking “from the outside”, could add a different perspective to a pandemic response in the future, adding that this system worked well when he was part of a similar enterprise in the US.
Former Wellcome director Sir Jeremy said that Independent Sage - set up by former chief scientific adviser to the UK Government Sir David King - tried to work like a red team “but unfortunately, for reasons others can debate, sometimes it became more confrontational than perhaps was constructive”.
On Wednesday, senior Scottish Government officials began giving evidence to the inquiry.
Former Scotland health secretary Jeane Freeman said that, while Scotland could have better handled the pandemic, there was ultimately “no plan” that could have helped the country cope with Covid.
“There were certainly areas where Scotland could have been better prepared in terms of the underlying structure and delivery of all those recommendations,” she said. “But Scotland, like other countries throughout the world, was dealing with a virus which was unknown and new.
“So, in that sense, I don’t believe there is a plan that would have been possible that would have been able, in and of itself, to cope with Covid-19.”
The inquiry also heard that a board set up to work on Scotland’s preparations to deal with a pandemic had to suspend meetings for over six months prior to the Covid outbreak because of warnings over the effects of a no-deal Brexit.
Gillian Russell, a senior civil servant who was the director of safer communities in Scotland between 2015 and 2020, told the inquiry that the Scottish Government Pandemic Flu Preparedness Board (PFPB) made “disappointing” progress on its plans prior to the pandemic.
The inquiry heard the board was commissioned in the summer of 2017 by then deputy first minister John Swinney, and the group was formed “to lead on Scotland’s interests at UK level and further develop preparedness in Scotland”.
The discussion came after Kate Blackwell KC raised the subject of the Scottish Government’s simulation of a flu pandemic in 2016 named Operation Silver Swan, and a series of recommendations made after the exercise to improve the nation’s readiness to deal with a pandemic.
She told the inquiry a number of meetings were subsequently held by health officials to review progress on the delivery of those recommendations as well as further calls for improvements made following another UK-wide pandemic rehearsal called Operation Cygnus one year later.
Blackwell pointed out many of the recommendations had still not been fully implemented by June 2019, however, and went on to ask Russell why minutes of a resilience team meeting held that month to review progress stated work to deliver them had been “paused”.
Russell replied: “In October 2018 we were presented with the Yellowhammer planning assumptions for a no-deal Brexit and they were significantly challenging.
“A decision was taken that priority should be given to working through how we would mitigate the significant risks that would immediately crystalise on a no-deal Brexit.
“That took up a huge amount of strategic capacity across many parts of Scottish Government, including the resilience co-ordination of a lot of that work.”
Turning to the formation of the PFPB to oversee the work, Blackwell went on to ask Russell why it appeared the group initially met every two months then stopped meeting altogether between November 2018 and June 2019.
Russell again cited behind-the-scenes planning for leaving the EU as the reason the group failed to convene. “That was no-deal Brexit”, she said.
Asked if there had also been a problem with resources, Russell replied: “There’s a finite resource in Government of people with certain skills and expertise.”
She went on to explain that employees with expertise on subjects such as drug supplies would have been involved in pandemic preparedness, but had to be tasked to consider the effect a no-deal Brexit would have on supplies instead.
“There was a lot of work across Government to try to mitigate and understand those risks,” she said.
Noting some outstanding work of pandemic preparedness was then later described in documents as being dealt with under the term “business as usual”, Blackwell asked: “It was a disappointing response, wasn’t it, to the recommendations from both Silver Swan and Cygnus?”
Russell replied: “It was disappointing but other factors came into play.”
Meanwhile, it had been widely reported that Scotland’s former chief medical officer would give evidence to the inquiry on Wednesday. But Dr Catherine Calderwood, who quit her role after breaching her own lockdown rules by travelling to her second home during the first lockdown, did not appear for questioning.
No explanation was provided for her absence, but it is understood she will now be called later in the inquiry to give her evidence.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “Dr Calderwood recently suffered an accident that required emergency medical treatment.”
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