Sturgeon's views on her ability to communicate well seem unchangedpublished at 15:31 Greenwich Mean Time 31 January

15:31 GMT 31 January

Kirsten Campbell
BBC Scotland political correspondent

Nicola Sturgeon was clearly annoyed earlier by the suggestion she was irritating the UK government by making announcements ahead of it.

She said she had made it clear in a Cobra meeting that the Scottish government had decided to ban mass gatherings. She also made the point that it was her decision to take.

The former first minister insisted she wasn't trying to steal a march on the UK government - but there was no point in keeping a decision secret once it had been made.

She suggested, perhaps, she wasn't too quick and the UK government was too slow.

Earlier in the inquiry we saw messages between Sturgeon and her then chief of staff in which she bemoaned the fact she didn't get more credit for being better at communicating with the public than the UK government. Her view doesn't appear to have changed.

Just before a quick break, the inquiry lawyer asked Nicola Sturgeon if it'd be considered a betrayal of the Scottish people if the inquiry found that her government had politicised the pandemic to pursue Scottish independence.

"I don't believe that conclusion would fairly be reached," she said, adding that if she had done so she'd have been "robbing people of their livelihoods" and compromising the education of children to pursue a political goal.

That would "absolutely" have been a betrayal of the Scottish public - "and that's why we didn't do it," she told the room.

The inquiry is resuming now, so let's see what more Sturgeon has to say.

Sturgeon faces a series of questions about a Scottish cabinet meeting where the minutes suggest they agreed to restart work on the campaign for Scottish independence, contrary to what she suggested to the inquiry (see our last post).

However, the former first minister says the proposal was never put to her and independence work did not start at that point or anywhere near that point.

Sturgeon is again asked about whether her drive for Scottish independence played a part in her decision making during the pandemic.

She says she carries "the regret of loss of life, of opportunity, the loss of education of our young people... every single day".

But, she continues: "I will absolutely assert that I did not take decisions for political reasons... or that were influenced in some way by considerations for the constitutional argument".

Sturgeon goes on to give an example of this, saying her constitution secretary in March 2020, Mike Russell, wrote to the UK's then Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove to say the Scottish government was suspending all work on an independence referendum. That work didn't recommence until late 2021, she adds.

The line of questioning turns to politics and Dawson asks Sturgeon if it is possible for her to take decisions on any matter without seeing them through the "prism" of Scottish independence which "runs through her very core".

Sturgeon says: "I have been in politics for thirty years. I have been a lifelong campaigner for independence. I don't think in my entire life have I ever thought less about politics generally and independence in particular than I did during the course of the pandemic."

She says people will judge "for better or worse" the decisions her government made but she wishes to assure the public and the inquiry that none of the decisions she made were based on political considerations or trying to gain an advantage for the cause of independence.

"I was motivated solely by trying to do the best we could to keep people as safe as possible," she says.

Dawson asks if the Scottish government pushed for an earlier lockdown.

"No," replies Sturgeon and adds that the Scottish government was starting to argue the need to move "more quickly".

She cites the examples of mass gatherings (in our earlier posts) and the fact the Scottish government took the decision to recommend the closure of schools "quickly".

The former first minister says: "Of the many regrets I have, probably chief of those, is we didn't lockdown a week, two weeks, earlier than we did."

Speaking about working together as the four nations, the former first minister says that Scotland wasn't diverging from the orthodox view. She reminds the inquiry that "the UK government's position was considered as the orthodox one".

"We were joined in that by Wales and Northern Ireland, so often we were exactly at the same position but the UK government had decided to take a different position.

"They often became the outlier of four nations," says Sturgeon. "Not Scotland."

Sturgeon continues speaking about her strained relationship with the UK government during the pandemic, saying she was "simply trying to do her job" and lead Scotland during a difficult time.

Your job involved responsibility to the Scottish people, says Dawson, but also a responsibility to try and promote the working of the four nations. "Why could those two responsibilities not coexist?" he asks.

It's not a question of coexisting, she replies. Sturgeon says she would have had to do whatever the UK government wanted her to do to avoid "irritating" Prime Minister Boris Johnson - even if it was bad for Scotland.

Where I thought the UK government was taking a decision for England, she says, "I would have been negligent in my responsibilities just to go along with that in order to avoid irritating [Boris Johnson]."

As Dawson continues to press her on why she announced a ban on mass gatherings before the UK government, Sturgeon points out that her daily briefings took place at 12:15 each day - while the UK government briefings were at 17:00.

If UK ministers were not happy about that, she says, they should have brought forward the time of their briefings.

"I wasn't trying to steal a march - I was simply trying to do my job to the best of my ability".

The conversation about mass gatherings is not over.

Jamie Dawson KC recalls evidence given by Michael Gove, saying that what happened the day Sturgeon announced a ban on mass gatherings caused "considerable irritation" to a number of people, including then prime minister Boris Johnson.

Sturgeon says it was never her intention to irritate anyone.

She explains the Scottish government had reached a view that to stem transmission, mass gatherings should be cancelled. Cobra had taken a decision asking symptomatic people to isolate and not leave their homes.

Sturgeon says she felt it was "vital" to communicate these decisions quickly and effectively.

She explains: "I wasn't doing it to irritate anybody and I'm sorry if that was the effect. I got lots of things wrong in the whole process of this, I don't suggest otherwise for a second.

"But my overwhelming motivation and priority was to try to reach the best decisions, communicate those decisions so the public could comply with those decisions and we could collectively try to stem the spread of a virus that was already doing significant harm."

Nicola Sturgeon says she had a "strong commitment to four nations working even when the detail of our approaches started to diverge".

The former first minister says the four nations aligned their approaches where they could.

She explains that some people think the UK government should have decided what all four nations did at the same time. However that would have meant Scotland acquiescing to decisions it felt was wrong, she adds.

Sturgeon pays tribute to UK Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove for having very constructive discussions.

"I couldn't allow that to usurp my duty, as leader of a government with particular responsibilities, to take the decisions we thought were best in the circumstances."

Sturgeon insists she did not breach confidentiality by communicating Scottish government decisions to the public before speaking to the other nations.

I did not breach confidentiality," says Sturgeon. These were Scottish government decisions, she says. The fact that the four nations were coming up with a strategy together does not mean this wasn't in the purview of the Scottish government, she says.

"Given the situation we were dealing with, the whole notion of confidentiality is a bit absurd."

She adds that the only way they would have successfully stopped the virus from spreading was to get guidance to the public as quickly as possible.

Sturgeon is asked again about her decision to announce a ban on mass gatherings in Scotland, before the UK government had made its own decision.

She made the announcement after a Cobra meeting with UK ministers.

She’s asked why she announced this before Boris Johnson was due to speak to the public about the outcome of that meeting.

"My responsibility was to the Scottish people, not to Boris Johnson" she says.

“I was within my rights to announce it,” she says.

“It was essential.”

Dawson presses Sturgeon on her decision to make the announcement cancelling large scale gatherings following the Cobra meeting.

Sturgeon says: "I was in that meeting. I recall it very clearly and there was no doubt that was the decision I communicated.

"I tried to persuade the other governments to follow suit, as it happens they all did follow suit within two or three days because the situation was developing at pace in a not good direction."

She adds that she believes the Scottish government was right to take the decision when it did and if she has any regrets, it would not be that she took it that day but that she didn't take it earlier.

Image source, Covid inquiry

Image source, Covid inquiry

The inquiry lawyer is pushing Sturgeon on the Scottish government's decision to ban mass gatherings while the UK on a whole was still considering whether this was necessary.

She says she, and other Scottish officials, had a responsibility to reduce the rate of transmission wherever they could. She also says she became concerned that there appeared to be a "serious disjoint" between messaging from the various UK governments.

"If people saw that it was OK to do that [gather at big events], they would have been less inclined to follow the day to day rules" they were being given in other aspects of their lives, Sturgeon says of the issue.

The conversation turns to mass gatherings and Sturgeon explains that the Scottish government took the decision to cancel gatherings of over 500 people while the UK, through Cobra, still had the issue under review.

"This was a Scottish government decision to take," she says.

She says at this time she was increasingly concerned they were not moving fast enough to deal with the rate of transmission of Covid.

She refutes the claim from Michael Gove that she "jumped the gun on mass gatherings" and she says "we were arguably going more slowly than we should have been".

Jamie Dawson KC points out that early predictions from January 2020 indicated the pandemic would largely affect the elderly. Scotland has a large elderly and vulnerable population, he says, and asks whether Public Health Scotland was being set up to deal with this challenge.

Sturgeon says Public Health Scotland - a project to respond to Scotland's health challenges - was meant to be set up anyway by April 2020.

But she adds that the Scottish government was not only dealing with this issue around the time that this project was established. Sturgeon says there were existing bodies and processes to protect the Scottish population - including vulnerable groups.

Dawson presses Sturgeon to be more specific about what was being done to protect vulnerable populations. "At this stage, the Scottish government was asleep at the wheel, wasn't it?" he asks.

"No," replies Sturgeon.

Image source, Covid inquiry

Sturgeon is asked again if she treated the virus with enough urgency in the early days of the outbreak.

In February and March 2020, there was significant work was going on in the Scottish cabinet, she says.

She says she and her colleagues realised this was serious, and health secretary Jeane Freeman was working to build up testing capacity.

Jamie Dawson KC moves on and reads aloud from notes made by civil servant Derek Grieve, where he describes his attendance at Cobra meetings from February - March 2020.

From a selection of entries over a five day period, Grieve writes that it was "clear all departments in the UK government are fully engaged and mobilised in a way the SG [Scottish government] simply isn't.

"I attended directors' meeting. Laid it out thickly but few believed this is going to be serious."

Sturgeon says she couldn't comment on the UK government's operations at that point but it "wouldn't be her understanding or experience" that this was accurate.

She says: "At a cabinet [meeting] on - I think - 10 March 2020, I make some quite extensive comments on the fact this was going to be a whole government, whole society challenge and not just health.

"So clearly at that point it was something I was stressing that it had to be something everybody saw as their business and their priority."

Note: Cobra is an emergency response committee made up of ministers, civil servants and others.

Scotland's chief medical officer (CMO) resigned on 6 April 2020, as we've just been hearing at the Covid inquiry, after making two trips to her second home during lockdown.

Dr Catherine Calderwood had apologised for her actions, and initially said she planned to continue in the role.

She was backed by then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who said Calderwood had made a mistake but should stay in her job.

But Calderwood released a statement later saying she had quit.

• Read more here

Image source, Getty Images