STURGEON’S APOLOGY FOR BREAKING COVID RULES
First Minister admits ‘stupid mistake’ after being photographed without a mask in a pub after funeral service
FIRST Minister Nicola Sturgeon apologised last night for breaking her own coronavirus rules. The SNP leader was caught on camera chatting to pensioners in a pub without wearing a mask.
She is understood to have breached the Scottish Government’s Covid prevention regulations at a funeral wake last week. Last night Miss Sturgeon, who again highlighted the importance of wearing face coverings during a speech at Holyrood yesterday, said: ‘This was a stupid mistake and I’m really sorry.’
She said she was ‘kicking herself ’ and ‘in the wrong’ – adding that she had no excuses for the lapse.
Her apology came after The
Scottish Sun published a photograph showing Miss Sturgeon standing and chatting to three elderly women after a funeral in Mortonhall, Edinburgh.
Under a law passed by her own SNP ministers, customers in hospitality settings must wear a mask unless seated at a table, including when they are entering, exiting and moving around the premises. In a statement
released to the Mail, Miss Sturgeon said: ‘ Last Friday, while attending a funeral wake, I had my mask off briefly.
‘This was a stupid mistake and I’m really sorry.
‘I talk every day about the importance of masks, so I’m not going to offer any excuses. I was in the wrong, I’m kicking myself and I’m sorry.’
The photograph shows Miss Sturgeon leaning on the back of a chair using her left hand. It is said to have been taken at the Stable Bar and Restaurant following the funeral of a senior Scottish Government civil servant at nearby Mortonhall Crematorium.
Miss Sturgeon is pictured without a mask while looking towards the table of pensioners. The First Minister had been wearing a tartan mask and is said to have taken it off briefly as she was leaving the venue.
Since September 14, it has been mandatory for customers in hospitality settings to wear a face covering.
It is now set down in the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions and Requirements) (Local Levels) (Scotland) Regulations 2020.
Schedule 7 of the rules details a ‘requirement to wear face coverings in certain indoor places’, including in restaurants, cafes, pubs and bars.
An exemption states that a mask does not need to be worn if a person is ‘in a restaurant, cafe, bar or public house and seated at a table’.
The First Minister is said to have been in a function room before speaking to the women, who were several paces away.
As with other Covid laws, breaches are punishable by a fixed penalty notice of £60.
This is reduced to £30 if paid within 28 days.
Penalties double for repeat offences, up to £960.
However, people can also be prosecuted for breaches, with unlimited fines.
Yesterday at Holyrood, Miss Sturgeon, who wore a mask as she headed to the Chamber, again underlined the importance of face coverings.
She stated that the new and aggressive strain of the virus ‘seems to transmit more easily but it can still be stopped in its tracks by the FACTS advice we have emphasised so many times before’.
She listed what each letter of the FACTS acronym stands for, starting with ‘face coverings’. The embarrassing misstep follows Nationalist MP Margaret Ferrier being suspended by the SNP in October after travelling by train from London to Glasgow following a positive Covid test.
In November, the Metropolitan Police announced it was taking no action against the 60-year-old MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton We s t , ruling she had broken no laws in England.
But earlier this month, Police Scotland said it had submitted an initial assessment of the circumstances to Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and was ‘carrying out further inquiries under their direction’.
Former chief medical officer Catherine Calderwood – one of the key public faces of the Government’s efforts to curb coronavirus – was forced to resign in April after breaking the lockdown rules she helped to lay out by twice visiting her holiday home in Fife.