Here's a quick recap of the headlines from the third day of the UK Covid inquiry in Edinburgh:

• The inquiry heard that the Scottish government could have legislated to impose a lockdown earlier in March 2020 as coronavirus took hold – but decided to act in step with the rest of the UK
• Prof Paul Cairney said Scottish ministers repeated mistakes as they dealt with new waves of infection
• Dr Donald Macaskill said people being admitted to care homes should have been tested for Covid and that the care sector had been "hung out to dry"
• The Scottish Care chief executive told the inquiry Scottish government guidance for care homes "was not fit for pupose" and there was a "lack of trust in the hospital discharge process"
• He said people who might have been saved had died due to uncertainty caused by the poor guidance

• Cosla's Nicola Dickie said there was "peaks and troughs of engagement between local and Scottish government

We'll be back tomorrow morning with coverage of the next evidence session in the UK Covid inquiry.

Claire Diamond was today's editor. The writers were Craig Hutchison and Jamie McIvor.

In October 2020, The Scottish government placed Scotland under a new five-level system of coronavirus restrictions.

Local authorities were designated a "level" between zero and four based on the prevalance of the virus in the area.

Meanwhile in England, a three-tier system was in place.

Ms Dickie says this meant there was "definitely potential for confusion".

The inquiry KC refers to a survey of Scotland's local authorites and quotes examples of concerns from councils around their engagement with the government over the levels system.

Ms Dickie says she thought it was fair to say that local authorities had mixed experiences of their engagement with the Scottish government.

The evidence session draws to a close.

Nicola Dickie says there was tension between the Scottish government and local authorities, during the pandemic.

That did improve as the pandemic went on.

She said there was a concerted effort to bring the views of local government to the Scottish government and Cosla was consulted through the various stages of the pandemic.

Ms Dickie says there were times when indiviual local authorities felt engagement by the government was good but equally there were other councils who didn't think things had gone well.

She calls it peaks and troughs of engagement.

Ms Dickie says there were times where Cosla leaders expressed concerns, and had an opportunity to give that feedback to the Scottish government.

She states that lockdown measures were decided by Scottish ministers and were not made at a local government level.

The next witness is Nicola Dickie, the director of people policy at Cosla, the body represeting local councils in Scotland.

She leads the team responsible for health and social care policy development.

Dr Macaskill says he believes visiting restrictions should have been withdrawn far earlier.

He says: "We took too long, and as a result we restricted the lives of people."

The Scottish Care chief executive thinks the Scottish government did not act quickly enough to lift the rules, saying residents were being "imprisoned".

Dr Macaskill says Scottish Care encouraged members to be as flexible as possible with the viting rules.

The evidence session draws to a close.

The inquiry quotes from an email Dr Macaskill received from a care provider expressing their concerns.

The writer calls for "much clearer admissions guidance" from government.

It says policy it was currently operating was "dangerous", leaving staff with a "dreadful dilemma" - whether to admit untested patients and risk bringing Covid into the care home, or refusing to take untested patients and leave them in NHS beds.

The provider says forcing care homes to take new residents without testing them was "a disaster waiting to happen".

They highlight that even hospital staff with specialist PPE and infection control training were struggling to contain the virus.

The email ends with the plea: "Surely there's a better way".

Dr Macaskill says there was a lack of PPE in care homes.

He adds Health Protection Scotland and Public Health Scotland did not understand the social care sector.

"The care home sector was literally hung out to dry," he says.

Dr Macaskill tells the inquiry that people who could have been saved died due to the uncertainty caused by poor guidance.

He says the guidance indicated individuals should be isolated for seven days if a Covid test could not be taken.

The Scottish Care chief executive says the sector faced a "dreadful dilemma" when balancing the need for new residents to be Covid free versus the desire to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed.

He highlighted that a number of residents died "unneccessarily" in the month that lapsed between the care sector raising concerns and the Scottish govenment changing the rules to require two negative Covid tests prior to admission to a care home.

Dr Macaskill said the care sector faced a "very real risk of collapse" amongst its workforce during the pandemic.

He said there was "sheer terror" among staff working in care homes and those who visited people's homes.

The care at home workforce was "the forgotten frontline" of the pandemic, he added.

The predominant concern was the lack of testing prior to admission to a care home, he adds.

Dr Macaskill says NHS was priorittised at the expense of the social care sector.

He says: "Testing wasn't a panacea but it was an additional tool to give reassurance."

Image source, Getty Images

Dr Macaskill says Scottish Care realised in February 2020 that testing of new residents was necessary.

There was a lack of trust in the hospital discharge process, he says.

He says there was a myopic focus on the NHS and there had always been a pressure to make sure that hospital beds "were not blocked".

Dr Macaskill tells the inquiry Scottish Care issued its own guidance in February 2020.

He explains social distancing was impossible as care homes are busy interactive environments.

The idea that you can discourage contact is "really far-fetched" making it "really traumatic" for residents who were used to communual activity says the Scottish Care chief executive.

The Scottish government guidance was "not fit for purpose" he says.

Dr Macaskill says care homes felt "undeniable pressure" to accept people discharged from hospitals.

Health and social care partnerships were under pressure to clear the hospitals and there was a "constant barrage" that the social care sector must step up to the plate.

"There were multiple points of pressure and many found it difficult to resist that," he adds.

Dr Donald Macaskill, chief executive of Scottish Care, says people being admitted to care homes should have been tested for Covid.

He tells the inquiry the older population were most at risk and in late February it was clear the classic symptoms were not prevalent in older victims.

They were disappointed with the guidance that emerged in March, he says and he adds the "lack of engagement and public respect from Public Health Scotland" was "wholly regrettable".

The inquiry will quiz Dr Donald Macaskill, chief executive of Scottish Care.

Scottish Care represents independent care homes throughout Scotland.

This afternoon we'll also hear from Nicola Dickie, from COSLA - the body representing all of Scotland's councils.

Her team is responsible for developing health and social care policy.

Lady Hallett thanks Prof Cairney for his evidence to the inquiry.

The inquiry will reconvene at 13:35.

Nicola Sturgeon became a regular feature on our TV screens during the pandemic as she led the Scottish government's coronavirus briefings.

Initially, Ms Sturgeon was flanked by her health secretary Jeane Freeman and the chief medical officer Dr Catherine Calderwood.

Dr Calderwood had to resign after making two trips to her second home during the coronavirus lockdown.

Her deputy Dr Gregor Smith, a GP, stepped into the breach and became Scotland’s chief medical officer.

The country’s national clinical director Prof Jason Leitch was another high-profile figure throughout the pandemic, appearing alongside Ms Sturgeon and across all media outlets.

Jamie Dawson KC turns to government communications and he asks if Nicola Sturgeon adopted a presidential style of governance.

Prof Cairney replies: "Yes."

The academic explains the Scottish government scored consistently higher in terms of performance satisfaction than the UK government during the pandemic.

However, satisfaction and trust are a weak proxy of how things are going, he explains.

There was a lack of trust between ministers from both governments, says Prof Cairney.

The academic says Scottish government ministers did not trust UK government ministers which would have undermined delivery of a separate lockdown.

He adds that it's hard to imagine a worse relationship between the UK and Scottish governments.

Prof Cairney says the Scottish government had the power to instigate a lockdown before it did, but it preferred to wait and go into a unified lockdown with the UK's other nations.

The academic says the Scottish government felt this was the most sensible and quickest way to lock down Scotland.

He explains that it makes sense for Wesminster to legislate in these circumstances as it would not receive a potential challenge to legislation which legislation at Holyrood could have been vulnerable to.

He adds that the Scottish government does not have the means to borrow money to pay for a lockdown.

However, the professor notes that Scottish Ministers can decide what money from Westminster is used for.

He notes that there is a "lack of clarity" on what the money allocated to the pandemic response was spent on.

Prof Cairney says his impression is the Scottish government is only answering questions posed by the inquiry and does not go any further.

He says government departments were reorganised as part of a "short-term crisis response" which continued to improve as the pandemic went on.

The professor says the Scottish government may not have been prepared at the start of the pandemic, but it feels it has learned and will be ready for further pandemics.

However, his assessment is that the government "appear[s] to have made the exact same mistakes twice," he says.

He adds that the Scottish government did not appear to have learned from the first wave of Covid and the first lockdown.

Image source, Getty Images

Prof Cairney tells the inquiry: "The first minister says, 'I told the Scottish Cabinet in December 2020 that essentially we have learned that you cannot wait for the problem to become a crisis, you have to act quickly, we learned that from the first lockdown'.

"But what I can't then do is reconcile that with the fact that they appear to have made exactly the same mistakes twice.

"The first one was understandable because the virus was novel, lockdown in March was something that was profoundly different from what anyone had been used to, they clearly were not sure what would happen, how much people would adhere to the guidelines.

"But they state time and time again in their documents, we learned a lot from what happened during that lockdown and we've learned a lot about what this virus is - and yet they appear to have produced the same delays in response for the second lockdown as the first."

"There is a rhetoric of learning that does not match reality," he notes.

Prof Cairney concludes: "The Scottish government produces beautiful strategy documents. It has a wonderful language to describe how it wants to be. It does not have the same effective language for describing how it is."

Prof Cairney details relations between the Scottish and the UK governments and how devolution has developed.

He described some of the ways the Scottish government has sought to operate since then, for instance seeking more consultation and collaboration and placing more faith in public bodies and professionals to deliver policy.

But he noted that aspirations were not always achieved and could sometimes be contradictory.

He has also been describing the four key harms identified during the pandemic: Covid itself, other health issues, harm to society and harm to the economy.

But he said this was more of a statement of the problem rather than a solution.

He goes on to talk about how Scottish government resources were reorganised to respond to the pandemic.

Today's evidence session gets under way with the inquiry KC, Jamie Dawson, beginning questions to Prof Paul Cairney, of Stirling University, about reports he has produced.

Prof. Cairney has studied the Scottish and UK governments' response to the pandemic.

He has looked at the role devolution played in both administrations' response to the crisis.