Sturgeon chokes back tears after grilling over Whatsapp messages – live

Nicola Sturgeon fought back tears as she was asked whether she was the right leader to guide Scotland through the pandemic.

She was asked if she thought she was well suited to the role after having heavily criticised Boris Johnson.

She said: “I don’t think I’m betraying any secrets here when I thought Boris Johnson was the wrong person to be prime minister – full stop.

“I was the first minister when the pandemic struck. There’s a lot part of my wishes that I hadn’t been”, she said as she became audible and visibly upset.

“But I was and I wanted to be the best first minister I could be during that period. It’s for others to judge the extent to which I succeeded”.

Nicola Sturgeon rejected an accusation that the Scottish government “does not like light” to be shone on discussions it had during the pandemic.

In an exchange about so-called “gold command” meetings chaired by Ms Sturgeon during her time in Bute House and senior ministers at the time where no minutes were taken, lead counsel to the inquiry Jamie Dawson KC asked if there was a “theme” developing where her government sought to hide discussions at the meetings.

“No – I would very, very strongly refute that,” the former first minister said.

“I have look at all of the cabinet papers and minutes over that whole period – it runs to thousands of pages.”

Those pages, she said, don’t simply record the decision made, but the rationale behind the decisions.

Nicola Sturgeon said she did not have “carte blanche” to make decisions within the Scottish cabinet.

She told the inquiry: I was not given carte blanche to take any decision I wanted to take.

“Cabinet would say to me we want to do this assuming the data supports it, and I would look at that and make that final decision.

Jamie Dawson KC said: “I would put it to you that you had incredibly wide discretion to decide on anything.

Ms Sturgeon said: “I would not have latitude to depart from the strategic framework not would I have wanted to. No one would take solely on to their own shoulders the decisions being made, so I don’t think the characterisation of that is accurate.”

She was asked by Jamie Dawson KC if it was the case that cabinet was a decision ratifying body rather than a decision-making body. She said: “No that’s not the case.”

Nicola Sturgeon insisted a cabinet meeting where Humza Yousaf offered to find £100 million from the health budget was not indicative of how her government business was conducted.

Ms Sturgeon was asked about a cabinet meeting where a discussion took place about finding an additional £100 million in December 2021 for business support.

The former first minister said she was “unhappy” with Mr Yousaf’s actions because he felt it did a “disservice” to former finance secretary Kate Forbes and “took the feet from under her”.

She told the inquiry Humza Yousaf had sent her a WhatsApp message about it a few weeks previously and she had told him to “speak to Kate (Forbes) about it”.

Nicola Sturgeon told the UK Covid-19 inquiry that she used a personal phone to conduct government business.

She said she used a personal phone because she did not want to use multiple devices, due to the risks associated with losing a phone.

Jamie Dawson KC put it to her if it was appropriate to do that not on a government-issued phone.

Ms Sturgeon said it had never been suggested to her that it was not appropriate.

Nicola Sturgeon has admitted that she deleted her WhatsApp messages from the pandemic.

The former First Minister told the inquiry that it was “not my style and it’s never been my practice” to use WhatsApp “because it’s not a helpful process in reaching decisions”.

While she initially said her messages “weren’t retained” rather than deleted, when Jamie Dawson KC asked her: “But did you delete them?” she conceded: “Yes, in the manner I have set out.”

Nicola Sturgeon said she “perhaps shouldn’t have” given professor Devi Sridhar an SNP email address.

The inquiry saw messages between the pair where Ms Sturgeon gave prof Sridhar an SNP email address as well as a Scottish government email address.

She said: “On reflection perhaps I shouldn’t have done that.

“But if I had been in any way trying to direct her to a private email address, I doubt if I would have put my government email address in there as well.”

Nicola Sturgeon said she was not “particularly conscious” of WhatsApp groups where officials were exchanging information.

She said she had “never seen messages before” in which Ken Thomson reminded civil servants in the group chat where the “clear chat” function was and that “plausible deniability is my middle name”.

Ms Sturgeon said she saw the discussion as “light-hearted” and that she would read that as him reminding people to be professional on WhatsApp.

She added that the civil servants in the Covid outbreak group chat were public servants of the “utmost integrity”.