Covid in Scotland: Freeman accused of breaching ministerial code
- Published
Scotland's health secretary may have broken the ministerial code by revealing the location of a secret vaccine storage facility, the Scottish Conservatives have claimed.
Jeane Freeman disclosed details of the facility during a question and answer session with MSPs at Holyrood on Wednesday.
The Scottish government later asked journalists not to report the location.
The Conservatives said Ms Freeman had committed a clear breach of the code.
The security services have previously warned that information about the storage facilities should not be made public to avoid attracting "unhealthy interest" - with the Scottish government pledging to follow that advice "to the letter"., external
Separately, Ms Freeman said she had apologised to her UK counterpart Matt Hancock after the Scottish government published sensitive information in its vaccine rollout plan.
The document was deleted from the Scottish government website on Thursday morning after the UK government raised concerns about the level of detail it gave about how many vaccine doses the UK is due to receive.
It said the information was commercially sensitive and could threaten future supplies of the vaccine.
The PA press agency quoted a UK government source as saying: "The reason we didn't want to publish these figures was because everyone in the world wants these vaccines.
"If other countries see how much we are getting, they are likely to put pressure on the drug firms to give them some of our allocation."
Scottish Conservative health spokesman Donald Cameron said Ms Freeman had failed to properly respect the confidentiality of sensitive information.
He has written to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon asking her to investigate whether the errors amounted to a breach of the ministerial code.
'Integrity and confidentiality'
The code states that ministers have a "personal responsibility to safeguard the integrity and confidentiality of government business".
And it says that failure to maintain good security can "cause damage to the interests and reputation of the government and may prejudice the effective conduct of official business".
Mr Cameron said: "The SNP government itself has admitted they got this wrong. They asked journalists not to report a secret location, the Covid plan was removed within hours and the first minister acknowledged the flaws in publishing restricted supply figures.
"These multiple blunders in the space of 24 hours have risked shaking public confidence in the government's handling of the Covid vaccine.
"These are not mere day-to-day gaffes, they are serious lapses of judgement. Repeated mistakes like this cannot be overlooked when so much is at stake."
Speaking at the Scottish government's daily coronavirus briefing on Friday, Ms Freeman - who is due to stand down as an MSP at the next election - said it would be for the first minister to decide whether she had broken the code.
She added: "I am absolutely confident that she will take any such assertion very seriously and look at it in some detail and make up her mind on that."
Ms Freeman also said she had apologised directly to Mr Hancock for the "mistake" in publishing sensitive information on the Scottish government website.
She added: "I regret that what was done, with the right intentions I firmly believe, has caused some upset and I apologise for that.
"I am confident that those I have spoken to are now content and we can move on."