Alasdair Galloway

Last weekend I replied to the letter immediately below by well-known Unionist Richard Allison of Edinburgh.

“SHOULD anyone have a scintilla of doubt left as to how the SNP-led Scottish Government operated furtively and in a clandestine fashion, then surely that is dispelled by the shocking disclosures about WhatsApp messages being deleted on a daily basis during the Covid pandemic (“Scots ministers accused of withholding Covid texts”, The Herald, October 27).

It should be noted that the questions of this shameful Government headed at the time by the ex-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, are not being led by opposition parties but by an esteemed KC, Jamie Dawson, who is lead counsel for the UK Covid inquiry’s module on Scotland. Further, Mr Dawson notes that “subject to one exception, no WhatsApp or other informal messaging material” has been received. To those many people who lost loved ones during Covid and without being able to see them (including myself) these disclosures are distressing.

Should the cabal that operated during Covid of Ms Sturgeon, Jeane Freeman and Jason Leitch avoid the real scrutiny they deserve due to these WhatsApp deletions, it would be a disgrace to any claims of transparency in Government and will not be forgotten.”

ENDS

Such as Sturgeon is well able to look after herself, and as a politician knows it is par for the course. Ditto Jeanne Freeman. But Jason Leitch is Public Health professional and a Civil Servant, who, perhaps more than many others committed the unforgiveable sin of creating a good deal of public trust when he spoke. Perhaps even more than Nicola Sturgeon?

To speak of  “the cabal that operated during Covid” is over heated enough but to refer not only “to Ms Sturgeon [and], Jeane Freeman” but to include Jason Leitch in his claim that he and the others named were seeking to “avoid the real scrutiny they deserve due to these WhatsApp deletions, it would be a disgrace to any claims of transparency in Government and will not be forgotten” is wrong because it airbrushes from history the context in which health professionals such as Leitch were working in for much of 2020. This was the major point of my letter (below)

       “What a nasty, vindictive letter from Richard Allison this morning, parroting much the same bile as Dame Jackie Baillie. Both seem to have forgotten what was going on when Jason Leitch “unforgivably” deleted WhatsApp messages for them to pour over three years later, in order to create political controversy and seek political advantage. Scotland, as well as the rest of the world, was in the grip of a virus of which we had limited understanding and thus little basis to determine the most appropriate response.

Professor Leitch and his colleagues throughout the world, were using what they could learn from their previous experience and corpus of knowledge in order to respond, but given the novelty of Covid there was always a sense (and I don’t mean this as criticism) of “making it up as we go along” because of lack of understanding of the virus.

The “Great Individual” theory of history teaches that in such a period of crisis a leader emerges with the capacity to lead us from danger. In reality this is mostly the consequence of discussion and work within a group of qualified individuals, which is where WhatsApp comes in.

This computer app describes itself as follows “With private messaging and calling, you can be yourself, speak freely and feel close to the most important people in your life no matter where they are.” It is, to be technical a discontinuous communication app, allowing discussion without the parties being simultaneously present, and is widely used.

But being the most widely used such app did not make it unhackable and in 2018 advice was to routinely delete messages for security reasons (India Today). According to the Guardian in 2021 “Ministers and civil servants [UK] are required by policy to set instant messaging chats to delete automatically”.

Lastly whether or not self-destructing messages is/was the more appropriate course of action, the fact is that the ‘do not destroy’ instruction came only last year, two years after the pandemic began in early 2020.

To speak of a “cabal” and the “real scrutiny” they “deserve” airbrushes out the scale of the public health challenges that Scotland and the rest of the world faced at the time. And for what? Cheap political advantage! Disgusting.”

ENDS

The difficulty faced by such as Leitch in the early days of the pandemic are really not appreciated. To speak of “pushing back the boundaries of knowledge” is an overly romanticised view, but for sure Leitch and his colleagues – using what they knew from other (different) situations with (different) viruses (the dominant view was that if something like this did happen, it wouldn’t be a corona virus but something flu based) and applying these to the different situation they faced in March 2020. Do they do the same thing, even though the problem is different? Do they change things to accommodate the differences in the problem posed? If yes, what changes? How radical?

There are three things to notice

1. The increase in uncertainty – or put another way, the decline in the degree of certainty
2. Decisions like this are much more qualitative, and no longer of the “if x do y” type, supposedly beloved of the UK Civil Service.
3. Simultaneously the lack of information in a sea of information. Leitch and his colleagues would have enormous volumes of information coming in (some from abroad – if you want to understand the panicked lockdown on 23^rd March, check out what was happening in Italy and France), but what information was really the more important. The old certainties were gone. How to decide this, other than by trial and error?

My reply  to Allison’s letter below

What a nasty, vindictive letter from Richard Allison this morning, parroting much the same bile as Dame Jackie Baillie. Both seem to have forgotten what was going on when Jason Leitch “unforgivably” deleted WhatsApp messages for them to pour over three years later, in order to create political controversy and seek political advantage. Scotland, as well as the rest of the world, was in the grip of a virus of which we had limited understanding and thus little basis to determine the most appropriate response.

Professor Leitch and his colleagues throughout the world, were using what they could learn from their previous experience and corpus of knowledge in order to respond, but given the novelty of Covid there was always a sense (and I don’t mean this as criticism) of “making it up as we go along” because of lack of understanding of the virus.

The “Great Individual” theory of history teaches that in such a period of crisis a leader emerges with the capacity to lead us from danger. In reality this is mostly the consequence of discussion and work within a group of qualified individuals, which is where WhatsApp comes in.

This computer app describes itself as follows “With private messaging and calling, you can be yourself, speak freely and feel close to the most important people in your life no matter where they are.” It is, to be technical a discontinuous communication app, allowing discussion without the parties being simultaneously present, and is widely used.

But being the most widely used such app did not make it unhackable and in 2018 advice was to routinely delete messages for security reasons (India Today). According to the Guardian in 2021 “Ministers and civil servants [UK] are required by policy to set instant messaging chats to delete automatically”.

Lastly whether or not self-destructing messages is/was the more appropriate course of action, the fact is that the ‘do not destroy’ instruction came only last year, two years after the pandemic began in early 2020.

To speak of a “cabal” and the “real scrutiny” they “deserve” airbrushes out the scale of the public health challenges that Scotland and the rest of the world faced at the time. And for what? Cheap political advantage! Disgusting.

ENDS

Allison’s letter, as well as the comments by Jackie Baillie are all too typical. Should we be surprised that press comment on the UK inquiry just now, seems to focus on that Dominic Cummings swears rather than anything much more substantive. When politics comes to be treated more as a soap opera, how much confidence can we have, not just in our politicians, but about the political process at all?

I am, of course grateful to John for the information about security issues with What’s App, but my own main focus was on

1. The high degree of uncertainty in a problem that unexpectedly presented itself
2. The failure to consider this context, particularly as to do so would mean giving up political advantage. Political considerations seem more important than finding a solution to a practical problem, even if it means using established knowledge in uncertain ways, having debated this with colleagues, which is where WhasApp comes in. “What do you think about    ?)”, “How much confidence in    ?” “Have you heard about    ?”

The rush to get this data illustrating an almost inevitable lack of certainty in a highly novel situation is more important for the political advantage that it could bring. How surprising is it that the human fly, Jackie Baillie, is attracted to this particular dung heap, displaying her usual standards of self-righteousness?

But importantly, how will such as Leitch react to this? Such information is available because of its form. If it were kept in a private file (diary for instance) then it would never be known about. Learning is lost on the alter of political advantage. Given short-term thinking, it seems unlikely that the likes of Jackie Baillie really cares about that.

  But, perhaps more importantly, what does this say about the ethics of how we conduct our politics? Treating highly skilled professionals as “fair game” while they are working in highly uncertain situations to address novel problems, displaying what they don’t know because it is an unknown, rather than their expertise is not ideal for future relations between civil servants and their political masters. Is political advantage SO important? Well I think in practical terms we know the answer to this – for Jackie Baillie, the answer is Yes.