Worrying blunders

oN June 23, Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf told Holyrood’s Health and Sport committee that health officials had been contacting ‘approximately 20 per cent’ of visitors to Scotland to provide them with information about self-quarantining.

Yesterday, Mr Yousaf admitted that was not true.

in a letter to committee chairman lewis Macdonald, he said his statement had been ‘based on the information provided to me by my officials’.

in fact, although quarantine rules were introduced on June 8, the first checks took place only yesterday.

The Justice Secretary’s letter, in which the word ‘apology’ is noticeably absent, leaves a number of questions unanswered, including one in particular about the role of the police.

Mr Yousaf originally told the committee that ‘the message from Police Scotland’ was that ‘compliance with the self-isolation requirements has been very high’.

Yesterday, he said the force ‘confirmed’ prior to his appearance ‘that no calls reporting non-compliance with the selfisolation requirements had been received’.

although superficially similar, these two statements mean two different things.

The first implies that police are in possession of all the relevant information.

The second reflects what we learned from chief constable iain livingstone last week: that data about passengers and breaches was not passed on to Police Scotland.

This blunder comes a week after the Justice Secretary was forced to concede he had incorrectly stated the criminal threshold in his own Hate crime Bill.

at a time when the Scottish public need it most, these unforced errors will not inspire confidence.