Inquiry lawyer Jamie Dawson tells Sturgeon that it's been suggested by a number of witnesses that Boris Johnson, formerly the UK prime minister, was the "wrong prime minister for this crisis" and asks if this is a view she shares.

"Yes," Sturgeon says, adding:

Image source, EPA

Back to her cabinet and these gold command meetings, Sturgeon says she didn't operate on any basis that sought to exclude people from decision-making during the pandemic.

"I tried to lead from the front, I tried to shoulder my fair share - sometimes deliberately more than my fair share of the burden of decision making," she tells the inquiry lawyer.

Asked about an exchange between then Health Secretary Humza Yousaf and Professor Jason Leitch, in which the latter says "she actually wants none of us" at certain meetings, Sturgeon says she'll admit that she didn't "have a great deal of patience" for everybody wanting to be in the room at times.

The former first minister adds that she tried to use the best resources, and have the "right people around the table", to reach the best decisions.

Still on the topic of these gold command meetings, Nicola Sturgeon says the people that made up those meetings were a "reasonably fluid group" to ensure the right people were around the table.

"My only motivation at any point during the pandemic was to do the best we could to keep the country as safe as possible," she tells the inquiry.

She says she carries regrets for the occasions they did not achieve this "all the time and always will do," adding:

Sturgeon is being asked again why then Finance Secretary Kate Forbes was not at specific gold command meetings, early on in the pandemic.

Forbes, who was at the inquiry yesterday, said in her evidence that she did not attend these meetings and did not even know about the so-called gold group in 2020.

Sturgeon says Forbes may not have attended the meetings, but that her office did know about them - and adds that Forbes's office was copied into communications about them.

She later adds that Forbes "was an extremely highly valued member of my cabinet and an extremely competent member of my cabinet".

Image source, PA Media

In a punchy moment, the inquiry lawyer asks if the Scottish government "doesn't like" to have a "light shone" on how its decisions are made.

"No, I would very strongly refute that," Sturgeon responds, before Jamie Dawson moves on.

The inquiry lawyer makes the same suggestion that he did yesterday, but this time to Sturgeon herself, that her cabinet was a "decision ratifying rather than a decision-making body".

Sturgeon says this is wrong and explains how cabinet was often presented with a range of different options for various issues. She gives an example of a December 2021 cabinet in which three options existed - stick with existing measures, enhance them somehow or have a circuit breaker.

Cabinet had the opportunity to "chew over" decisions beforehand, she says.

"Cabinet has a full discussion and then it reaches a decision ... Cabinet would have a range of options," Strugeon tells the inquiry.

Still being questioned about the Scottish cabinet's involvement in making key decisions during the pandemic, Nicola Sturgeon says she was not given some kind of "carte blanche to take decisions I wanted to take".

She insists, again, that cabinet would delegate the final decision - and that it was involved in the decision-making process.

When inquiry lawyer Jamie Dawson suggests Sturgeon was free to do "virtually anything" she wanted to, the former FM says this was not the case.

She says she would not have had "wide latitude" to depart from the strategic timetable - amd adds she wouldn't have wanted that latitude.

Inquiry lawyer Jamie Dawson's now asking Sturgeon about the so-called gold command meetings, which included a small group of ministers including herself, John Swinney, Humza Yousaf and Kate Forbes.

Sturgeon is asked whether this select group took decisions on their own.

She says that the group was "not a decision-making or a formal governance body". She also stresses that any proposal from this team would have gone through cabinet.

We're still on those messages between Humza Yousaf and Prof Jacon Leitch from 2021.

Sturgeon says she was not particularly happy with Yousaf at the cabinet meeting in question because she "felt he was doing a disservice to the [then] finance secretary", Kate Forbes.

Forbes had put a lot of work into trying to secure funding, Sturgeon tells the inquiry, and she expected ministers to treat each other with respect.

She also reveals that, days before the cabinet meeting, Yousaf had brought up the offer of giving £100m from his health budget to support business through another lockdown - but says she instructed him to speak to Forbes. It became clear he hadn't done that, she adds.

Angus Cochrane
BBC Scotland News

Here's a bit more context to our last post. The inquiry heard yesterday that Nicola Sturgeon, then first minister, was angered by then Health Secretary Humza Yousaf at a cabinet meeting in December 2021.

Yousaf accused Sturgeon of “ranting” at him, and said he had taken "one hell of a bullet" from her, after he unexpectedly said he could make £100m from the health budget to support businesses through another lockdown.

In messages seen by the inquiry, National Clinical Director Professor Jason Leitch said Sturgeon was being "ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous" and that he had "almost intervened" at the meeting to say as much.

Former Finance Secretary Kate Forbes, in messages about the same cabinet meeting, and also seen by the inquiry, said she had "never seen the FM this angry in all my cabinets - and for good reason". She also said "surprises" weren't appreciated at cabinet.

Image source, PA Media

We're once again looking at messages from December 2021, between then Health Secretary Humza Yousaf and Scottish government clinical director Jason Leitch, which were shown twice at yesterday's hearing.

In the exchange, Yousaf says he "took a bullet" from a "ranting" Sturgeon after he told cabinet he could provide £100m from his health portfolio to support businesses during another lockdown.

Inquiry lawyer Jamie Dawson asks whether this is indicative of a culture of Sturgeon not taking kindly to things being brought up at cabinet, which had not already been brought to her attention.

"That is absolutely not the case," she says. "There was no such culture in the government I led."

Image source, PA Media

Questioning has resumed and we've moved into new territory - we're now looking at Nicola Sturgeon's cabinet and how it was used to make decisions during the pandemic. (This is something former Deputy FM John Swinney was asked about extensively yesterday.)

Asked if the Scottish cabinet is supposed to be the main decision-making forum of the Scottish government, Sturgeon responds by insisting that "the Scottish cabinet is the main decision making forum of the Scottish government".

She also denies that a small group of people made important decisions during the pandemic, telling the inquiry:

While we wait for the inquiry to resume from a morning break, let's recall a moment from earlier where Nicola Sturgeon gave her “personal assurance” that the UK Covid-19 Inquiry has “anything and everything” relevant to her decision-making in the pandemic.

Sturgeon went on to say that she thinks about the impact of those decisions “every day”.

Here it is:

The inquiry lawyer moves on to a newspaper report yesterday, which looked at Nicola Sturgeon's expenses claim - and suggested Sturgeon purchased two pre-paid phones.

Asked if she purchased those devices, the former first minister says she did not personally purchase the phones - they were bought on her authority but they were not for use by her, she says.

"They were not used by me at all," she goes on to say, explaining that they were used by her constituency office for constituency business.

The inquiry will now take a short break and return at 11:30.

Image source, Covid inquiry

Jamie Dawson KC asks Nicola Sturgeon about using her personal phone for conducting government business as First Minister.

"Is it appropriate?" he asks Sturgeon.

The former first minister replies that it was "never suggested to me" that using a personal phone was inappropriate.

Sturgeon adds that the reason she used a personal phone and not a different, government issued one, was because she did not want to have multiple devices.

The inquiry lawyer wants to know why Sturgeon gave her SNP email address to a key Covid expert.

She had encouraged Professor Devi Sridhar, part of the Scottish Covid Advisory Group, to contact her either on her SNP email address or government email address.

Dawson asks if the SNP email was "appropriate" for government business.

"In reflection perhaps I shouldn't have done that", says Sturgeon. "But if I was trying to keep something off the government system, then I wouldn't have also given her my [government] email address."

Sturgeon denies that a culture of trying to get out of FOI requests existed during her time as first minister or deputy first minister.

Probed by Dawson if this was found and deemed to be the reality of her time, whether this would be a "serious breach" of the bond of trust between the government and the public, Sturgeon agrees.

She says: "If that was the case - and let me repeat - it is not my view that it was, then yes, what you are putting to me would be true.

"The bond of trust between any government and the public at any time is of paramount importance but this was particularly the case during the extraordinary and unprecedented situation we found ourselves in during the pandemic and it was something I felt to my core every single day of that."

Image source, Covid inquiry

Still being shown some messages between Scottish government officials during the pandemic, Nicola Sturgeon pauses and says she wants to make something very clear.

Removing her glasses, and looking between the screen in front of her (where messages are displayed) and the inquiry lawyer, she says the decisions her government had to make were "extremely sombre" and at times "very, very dark".

"Because the public were going through unimaginable trauma... reading now light-hearted exchanges can be very difficult because it gives an impression that people weren't taking the situation seriously," she says.

She adds that this couldn't be "further from the truth".

Civil servants and ministers were likely engaging in light-hearted exchanges "to try and get themselves through the day," Sturgeon says.

Dawson asks about WhatsApp messaging within the Covid outbreak group and quotes Scottish government official Ken Thomson who, in evidence presented to the inquiry, reminds Prof Jason Leitch the exchange would be discoverable under a freedom of information request: "Know where the 'clear chat' button is".

The hearing is shown that Thomson went on to write: "Plausible deniability are my middle names. Now clear it again!"

The former first minister explains she was not a member of this group and had not seen the evidence before last week.

Sturgeon tells the inquiry she would expect all officials to retain information in line with government policies.

She says the exchange is light-hearted and Thomson is reminding people to be professional and all the individuals in the chat are "public servants of the utmost integrity" and they were working in a committed and dedicated fashion "above and beyond the call of duty".

The inquiry lawyer then reads out some of Sturgeon's WhatsApp messages from October, pointing out specific sentences used by Sturgeon and questioning why the former first minister used informal language.

Sturgeon replies by saying that these messages were from October 2020, and adds that she had not had a day off since March that year.

She's "not saying that for sympathy" she says, but that those phrases likely reflect how she felt at the time when she was running on little sleep.

But by "the time she got to cabinet", Sturgeon adds, she is confident she would have collected her thoughts and had a good discussion that was properly recorded.