COVID adviser Professor Jason Leitch denies daily purge of WhatsApps – despite ‘pre-bed ritual’ message
Professor Jason Leitch has said his claim of deleting WhatsApp messages as a “pre-bed ritual” was a “flippant exaggeration”.
The Scottish government’s national clinical director is giving evidence to the UK COVID inquiry, which is currently sitting in Edinburgh.
Last week the inquiry was shown transcripts of a group chat.
Within the message, Ken Thomson, the Scottish government’s former director-general of strategy and external affairs, warned that its contents were “FOI-recoverable” and sent an emoji face with a mouth zipped shut.
Professor Leitch responded: “WhatsApp deletion is a pre-bed ritual.”
On Tuesday, Professor Leitch said the comment was “slightly flippant”.
He added: “It’s an exaggeration. I didn’t daily delete my WhatsApp.
“My position is – as I have just described to you – that I tried to do today’s work today, and if I could assure myself that that work had been managed and dealt with, then I deleted the informal messaging that had led to that moment.
“But this was a flippant exaggeration in an informal messaging group, and it wasn’t done every day before I went to bed.”
Professor Leitch shot to prominence during the pandemic
Professor Leitch’s statement followed reports last year that senior Scottish government officials deleted messages relating to the pandemic regularly and could not hand them to the inquiry.
The inquiry has already heard former first minister Nicola Sturgeon and her deputy John Swinney did not retain messages, although Ms Sturgeon later said correspondence had been handed over after being saved by recipients.
Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to the inquiry, said the exchange in Professor Leitch’s chat suggested that those in the group were “keen to try to delete messages which may subsequently be recoverable in a freedom of information request”.
Professor Leitch refuted the suggestion.
He said: “That isn’t my position.”
Read more:
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Chief medical officer told colleagues to delete WhatsApps ‘at end of every day’
Professor Leitch admitted he had not retained one-to-one informal communications – except DMs from his X account – in relation to the management of the pandemic.
He maintained he deleted WhatsApp messages in line with the Scottish government’s policy on the use and retention of informal messaging.
Professor Leitch explained: “As you’ve heard, the record retention policy was that you could use informal messaging systems for Scottish government business.
“If you did, you should ensure that any advice or any decisions or anything that should be in the corporate record was then placed in that corporate record by email, briefing, etc, and then you should then delete the informal messaging, and that’s the guidance I followed.”
Professor Leitch shot to prominence during the pandemic, appearing at Holyrood briefings alongside Ms Sturgeon on a near-daily basis as well as fronting public information campaigns on TV, radio and online.
The inquiry was also shown a WhatsApp exchange in November 2021 with then health secretary Humza Yousaf where Professor Leitch told him “literally no one” wears a face mask under official guidance.
The now first minister was clarifying the rules around wearing a mask ahead of an event.
Mr Yousaf messaged: “I know sitting at the table I don’t need my mask. If I’m standing talking to folk, need my mask on?”
Mr Leitch responded: “Officially yes. But literally no one does. Have a drink in your hands at all times. Then you’re exempt. So if someone comes over and you stand, lift your drink.”
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Last month: Rishi Sunak appears at the COVID inquiry
Mr Dawson asked if the health secretary didn’t understand the rules, “what chance did anybody else have?”
Professor Leitch said he also found the guidance “tricky”.
He added: “I understood the rules and I understood what we were trying to do, but the reality of life and the environment in which we were trying to do these things perhaps suggest this guidance was nuanced rather than entirely right.”
Professor Leitch rejected a suggestion from Mr Dawson that he had offered Mr Yousaf a “workaround” to the rules.
He said: “I gave him advice to show him how to comply with the rules.”
The inquiry continues.
Politics
Norman Tebbit: Former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government dies aged 94
Norman Tebbit, the former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government, has died at the age of 94.
Lord Tebbit died “peacefully at home” late on Monday night, his son William confirmed.
One of Mrs Thatcher’s most loyal cabinet ministers, he was a leading political voice throughout the turbulent 1980s.
He held the posts of employment secretary, trade secretary, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Conservative party chairman before resigning as an MP in 1992 after his wife was left disabled by the Provisional IRA’s bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton.
He considered standing for the Conservative leadership after Mrs Thatcher’s resignation in 1990, but was committed to taking care of his wife.
Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit in 1987 after her election victory. Pic: PA
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called him an “icon” in British politics and was “one of the leading exponents of the philosophy we now know as Thatcherism”.
“But to many of us it was the stoicism and courage he showed in the face of terrorism, which inspired us as he rebuilt his political career after suffering terrible injuries in the Brighton bomb, and cared selflessly for his wife Margaret, who was gravely disabled in the bombing,” she wrote on X.
“He never buckled under pressure and he never compromised. Our nation has lost one of its very best today and I speak for all the Conservative family and beyond in recognising Lord Tebbit’s enormous intellect and profound sense of duty to his country.
“May he rest in peace.”
Lord Tebbit and his wife Margaret stand outside the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Pic: PA
Tory grandee David Davis told Sky News Lord Tebbit was a “great working class Tory, always ready to challenge establishment conventional wisdom for the bogus nonsense it often was”.
“He was one of Thatcher’s bravest and strongest lieutenants, and a great friend,” Sir David said.
“He had to deal with the agony that the IRA visited on him and his wife, and he did so with characteristic unflinching courage. He was a great man.”
Reform leader Nigel Farage said Lord Tebbit “gave me a lot of help in my early days as an MEP”.
He was “a great man. RIP,” he added.
Lord Tebbit as employment secretary in 1983 with Mrs Thatcher. Pic: PA
Born to working-class parents in north London, he was made a life peer in 1992, where he sat until he retired in 2022.
Lord Tebbit was trade secretary when he was injured in the Provisional IRA’s bombing in Brighton during the Conservative Party conference in 1984.
Five people died in the attack and Lord Tebbit’s wife, Margaret, was left paralysed from the neck down. She died in 2020 at the age of 86.
Before entering politics, his first job, aged 16, was at the Financial Times where he had his first experience of trade unions and vowed to “break the power of the closed shop”.
He then trained as a pilot with the RAF – at one point narrowly escaping from the burning cockpit of a Meteor 8 jet – before becoming the MP for Epping in 1970 then for Chingford in 1974.
Lord Tebbit during an EU debate in the House of Lords in 1997. Pic: PA
As a cabinet minister, he was responsible for legislation that weakened the powers of the trade unions and the closed shop, making him the political embodiment of the Thatcherite ideology that was in full swing.
His tough approach was put to the test when riots erupted in Brixton, south London, against the backdrop of high rates of unemployment and mistrust between the black community and the police.
He was frequently misquoted as having told the unemployed to “get on your bike”, and was often referred to as “Onyerbike” for some time afterwards.
What he actually said was he grew up in the ’30s with an unemployed father who did not riot, “he got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it”.
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