COVID inquiry: Kate Forbes ‘did not delete’ WhatsApps during pandemic and ‘surprised’ no minutes exist from key meetings

Kate Forbes did not delete any of her WhatsApp messages with senior Holyrood ministers and officials until January 2022 when all major COVID decisions had been made, an inquiry heard.

Scotland’s former finance secretary told the UK COVID-19 Inquiry that a junior member of her private office advised her it was Scottish government policy from January 2022 for all messages within the office to be deleted going forward, and she “acquiesced” because she believed it was an instruction.

She said she did not recall the policy applying to anybody else in and around the cabinet or government.

Ms Forbes, SNP MSP for Skye, Badenoch and Lochaber, said she provided her messages to the inquiry “in the spirit of being completely open”.

Use and retention of WhatsApp messages by senior Holyrood ministers and officials has proved contentious, with First Minister Humza Yousaf making an “unreserved” apology for the Scottish government’s “frankly poor” handling of requests from the inquiry for WhatsApp messages to be handed over.

Apologising while giving evidence to the inquiry last week, he said he accepted this would have caused “serious grief and re-trauma” for those who lost loved ones during the pandemic.

The inquiry has already heard how former first minister Nicola Sturgeon and her deputy John Swinney failed to retain their WhatsApp messages, although Ms Sturgeon later said correspondence had been handed over after being saved by recipients.

Professor Sir Gregor Smith, Scotland’s chief medical officer, told colleagues to delete WhatsApp messages “at the end of every day”, while national clinical director Professor Jason Leitch described the daily deletion of messages a “pre-bed ritual”.

Questioned further on Tuesday about record retention, Ms Forbes said she was “surprised” to learn that meetings of the Scottish government Resilience Room (SGoRR) and “gold command” group had not been minuted.

She said: “That surprises me, and this would be the first of me hearing it.”

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Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to the inquiry, said: “The reason we think that is the case is we have obviously asked the Scottish government for all of its papers concerning these matters and although we have cabinet minutes, we don’t have minuted records of either of those groups.

“It becomes difficult to understand what the ultimate decision-making process was when there is no record of how those decisions were taken.”

Ms Forbes responded: “I can understand that frustration.”

Ms Forbes said she was unaware of the gold command group’s existence until she was invited in 2021.

Inquiry chair Lady Hallett asked Ms Forbes: “Given your seniority in the Scottish government, why weren’t you at the command meetings in 2020?”

Ms Forbes said: “I wasn’t aware. I am not even sure I was aware they existed.”

Lady Hallett said: “You would have expected to be invited, wouldn’t you?”

Ms Forbes replied: “I would have expected to be invited to any meeting where there were significant financial implications.”

She also told the inquiry she could not recall being aware of epidemiological evidence about coronavirus available to the Scottish government when she became finance secretary in February 2020.

The MSP also said she could not recall anything relating to COVID being in the budget she presented to parliament on 6 February 2020, that had been prepared by her predecessor Derek Mackay.

The inquiry, which is currently sitting in Edinburgh, continues.