WhatsApp'ened with Nicola Sturgeon at the COVID Inquiry?
This Is Why
Sky News
4.0 • 552 Ratings
🗓️ 31 January 2024
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
She denied that she used platforms including WhatsApp to have serious policy discussions.
She said she'd deleted messages but relevant information was all on public records.
On this Sky News Daily, Niall Paterson goes through her answers with Scotland correspondent Connor Gillies. They also talk about whether the pandemic claims have damaged her leadership legacy.
Plus, with claims of key Tory cabinet names being part of an "Evil Plotters" WhatsApp group this week - our deputy political editor Sam Coates on the impact WhatsApp messages are having on politics.
Producers: Soila Apparicio and Alex Edden
Assistant producer: Iona Brunker
Promotions producer: David Chipakupaku
Editor: Paul Stanworth
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Evening, John. |
| 0:12.0 | For terraced properties with unusually big back gardens, |
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| 0:30.3 | For unlimited all-day travel in London, think TFL. |
| 0:33.8 | With the daily cap fair frozen until March 2027, |
| 0:47.9 | travel as much as you like on tube, bus, Elizabeth Line, DLR and Overground, knowing you'll never pay any more than £8.90 in Zones 1 and 2. |
| 0:54.0 | Download TFL Go to plan your journey. To the Mayor of London and TFL, every journey matters. Always use the same card |
| 0:55.5 | of device when touching in and out for full terms and conditions such TFL fair capping. I'm Neil Patterson. |
| 1:01.2 | Welcome back to the Sky News Daily on what has been a very big day at the COVID inquiry. But just |
| 1:08.2 | to be contrary, we're going to begin back in 2021 at a Scottish government COVID briefing. |
| 1:14.2 | Then First Minister, Nicholas Sturgeon, was asked if she would hand over WhatsApps to any future inquiry. |
| 1:19.9 | She promised that she would. |
| 1:22.5 | But she didn't. |
| 1:23.5 | In fact, she couldn't ever have fulfilled that promise, as when she made it, she'd already deleted many of her messages. |
| 1:30.8 | So today at the inquiry, Ms Sturgeon had this to say. |
| 1:34.9 | The importance, in my view, is making sure that the inquiry has, at its disposal, all of the evidence underpinning the decisions as well as the decisions |
| 1:45.6 | we were arriving at. |
| 1:47.4 | I operated from 2007, based on advice, the policy that messages business relating to government |
| 1:59.7 | should not be kept on a phone that could be lost or stolen |
... |
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