SNP ‘plotted to spin’ report on moving patients to care homes

SNP ministers spent days ‘plotting how to spin’ a report into the discharging of Covidpositive and untested patients from hospitals to care homes, it has been claimed.

A report into the practice, which is feared to have contributed to hundreds of deaths in residential facilities, was published on October 28.

The document was released publicly only 15 minutes before First Minister Nicola Sturgeon unveiled its findings and answered questions.

But it yesterday emerged that the Scottish Government was briefed on the report by Public Health Scotland (PHS) five days earlier, on October 23.

It was then handed to officials and ministers on October 26 – two days before it was made public.

Emails, released under freedom of information legislation, reveal a plan of ‘tactics’, including suggested answers for the First Minister to questions from the media.

The Scottish Conservatives have claimed the correspondence shows SNP ministers ‘spent almost a week plotting how to spin a damning report into Covidpositive patients being transferred to care homes’.

Tory health spokesman Donald Cameron said: ‘SNP spin is contaminating Scottish public life, but even by their cynical standards this is shocking.

‘Is there no subject too important or sensitive that the SNP spin machine is not willing to bend and manipulate? It seems not from these revelations.

‘Grieving families who lost loved ones in care homes were desperate to see this report but it kept on being delayed. Now we find out that the SNP were hard at work spinning a response to downplay the report’s findings.’

The revelation comes only weeks after PHS was criticised by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) for the presentation of the report.

Although the watchdog did not dispute the overall conclusions, it said that there were ‘lessons to be learnt’ on the presentation of the findings.

Speaking on October 28, Miss Sturgeon said ‘there is no statistical evidence that hospital discharges of any kind were associated with care home outbreaks’.

But the OSR said there was a ‘causal’ link between arrivals of patients who had tested positive for the virus and outbreaks.

Newly released correspondence shows that five days before the PHS report was published, government officials identified a line which said ‘not statistically significant’.

An email between officials on

October 22 said that there would be a meeting with Health Secretary Jeane Freeman the following day, adding: ‘They will have prerelease properly tomorrow.’

Another email on October 23 stated that officials had ‘made a start on a handling plan’.

It added: ‘Explaining the “not statistically significant” in English is challenging me too much at this time of the evening.’ Miss Freeman strongly denied the claims – dismissing them as ‘nonsense’.

She insisted: ‘We did not spend any time trying to spin anything.

‘This is an independent report – independent of government and with academics from both Glasgow and Edinburgh university.

‘Now, if people want to make political capital or attempt to make political capital out of this, that is their prerogative but I think it is much more serious than that.

‘I take the safety of our residents and staff in care homes much more seriously than that.

‘As to that claim, I don’t have anything more to say about it – it is nonsense.’

A PHS spokesman said: ‘The final report was made available to key stakeholders, including the Scottish Government, under pre-release access on Monday, October 26, as previously stated.

‘Pre-release access of up to five working days is a standard practice, which is in place for all statistical publications in Scotland.

‘Recipients of pre-release access are noted in appendix three of the report.

‘Public Health Scotland briefed Scottish Government on the key findings of the report on Friday, October 23, but they were not given access to [it] until Monday October, 26.’

‘Families were desperate’ ‘Make political capital’