Limited powers

The main reason the Covid pandemic is so bad in Scotland (Brian Monteith, 8 June) is that we are part of the UK with limited fiscal powers and no control over our borders.

Like Wales and Northern Ireland, we had little choice but to follow UK policy and timescale which supposedly followed Sage advice over which Dominic Cummings had more influence than any arm’s length Scottish input.

Despite this, the Scottish Government made Covid-19 a notifiable disease earlier than in England and announced an earlier ban on mass gatherings. Also, the average z scores of additional mortality between weeks ten to 20 show the England figure as almost three times higher than in Scotland as our joinedup health service is working much better. Prof Hugh Pennington retired 17 years ago and it is an insult to current up to-date public health experts who advise the Scottish Government to imply that they don’t have sufficient expertise.

The support given to industry by the UK government lags well behind that in Germany, Italy and France, plus small independent countries like Denmark, Finland and Norway have matched the UK support for businesses and employees.

Unlike Boris Johnston and Matt Hancock, Nicola Sturgeon

has admitted that, with the benefit of hindsight, mistakes were made in the early stages and she has faced daily scrutiny from a mainly hostile press and Parliament, while the Tory UK government has boycotted numerous television programmes as they asked “Why?”.

FRASER GRANT Warrender Park Road, Edinburgh