STURGEON ‘SORRY’ FOR BREAKING OWN COVID LAW (AGAIN)
FM spoken to by police after mask rule breach but force says ‘no further action necessary’
NICOLA Sturgeon has apologised after she was spoken to by police for breaking her own face mask law – but will escape without a fine.
Police Scotland confirmed officers had reminded her of ‘the importance of wearing a face covering when there is a legal requirement to do so’.
But the force said yesterday it wanted to take a ‘proportionate’ approach and that ‘no further action is necessary’. The First Minister issued an apology for her ‘error’ and appealed for people to continue wearing face masks when they can reduce the risk of infection.
her response came just hours after her health Secretary attempted to play down the rule breach.
humza Yousaf said it was a ‘momentary lapse’ and that ‘these things happen’. Scotland’s national
clinical director, Professor Jason Leitch, was also accused of misrepresenting the rules as he leapt to Miss Sturgeon’s defence despite his role as a politically impartial civil servant.
She launched an SNP local election campaign bus just days ago urging voters to ‘send a message’ to Boris Johnson over his fine for breaching lockdown restrictions.
Conservative MSP Craig Hoy said: ‘We appreciate that the police have not chosen to be heavy-handed to people breaking the SNP’s rules.
‘However, it seems strange not to take any further action considering that this appears to be a very clear rule breach in commercial premises, where face masks should have been worn.’
It is the second time Miss Sturgeon has had to apologise for not wearing a face mask. She was previously photographed without one at a wake in December 2020.
The latest incident happened during a visit to Iconic Gents Hair in East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, on Saturday, when Scottish Government rules were still in force.
The rules stated ‘by law, everyone aged 12 and over must wear a face covering, unless exempt, in most indoor public spaces’, includI ing in ‘hair salons, beauty and nail parlours… and any other indoor close contact service setting’.
Miss Sturgeon had posted her own footage on social media of her visit to the barber shop. It showed her wearing a tartan face covering while shaving a man, with others around her not wearing masks.
But separate footage emerged which showed her joking with others within the same barber shop without a face covering and without physical distancing. A member of the public made a complaint to police on Sunday morning.
In a statement yesterday, Police Scotland said: ‘Local officers have spoken to the First Minister to remind her of the importance of wearing a face covering when there is a legal requirement to do so.
‘Given the circumstances of this incident, Police Scotland is satisfied no further action is necessary. This is in line with our proportionate approach throughout the pandemic.’
The complainer, Jane Lax, a former treasurer for the Moray Conservatives who is no longer connected to a political party, said: ‘What message does it send to those who strictly followed the rules? It makes a mockery of any laws within Scotland.’ Miss Sturgeon was accused of being ‘in hiding’ yesterday after failing to appear at any public election events.
In a statement issued through the SNP press office, she said: ‘On Saturday, while campaigning outdoors in East Kilbride I was invited into a local barber shop.
‘After a few seconds of being in the shop, I realised I had forgotten to put my face covering back on. I then immediately put it on.
‘However, I accept that not wearing a face covering, even for a few seconds, was an error on my part and I am sorry for that.
‘Having received complaints about the matter, Police Scotland made contact with me. This is what they would have done with anyone else in these circumstances, and they were absolutely right to treat me no differently to any other citizen. I explained that the error was inadvertent and the police have confirmed that the matter is closed.
‘While the law no longer requires face coverings to be worn, I will continue to do so in circumstances where this can help reduce the risk of infection, and I encourage everyone to do likewise.’
Barber Tony Cairney yesterday claimed that the response to the footage had ‘got silly’.
From his home in East Kilbride, Mr Cairney, 42, said: ‘I think it is a big fuss over nothing. It was just a bit of fun and it has got silly.’
Earlier, Mr Yousaf told STV News: ‘Look, these things happen.
‘But I think anybody trying to make too much political capital out of this is probably trying to deflect away, the way the Tories are trying to do, from what Boris Johnson and those in Westminster have done, which is a far more flagrant breach, of course, and a deliberate breach of the rules, in comparison to anything that the First Minister has done.’
Amid public anger at the rule breach yesterday, leisure tycoon and former Dragon’s Den star Duncan Bannatyne urged Miss Sturgeon to ‘do the right thing and show by example by resigning first thing tomorrow morning’.
Professor Leitch, who must maintain political neutrality as a civil servant, was yesterday sent out to answer media questions as legally binding face mask rules were scrapped yesterday.
Asked about the footage of the First Minister on BBC Good Morning Scotland, he said: ‘I haven’t spoken to the First Minister today,
‘A very clear rule breach’ ‘A mockery of any laws’
imagine I’ll speak to her later. My understanding is it was a matter of seconds. She realises the place is crowded, puts her face covering on, which is actually what we’re asking people to do.’
The Scottish Tories said it is ‘inappropriate’ for a civil servant to defend Miss Sturgeon and accused him of ‘blurring the lines between ministers and government officials’ and ‘misrepresenting’ the Covid laws.
A Government spokesman said: ‘In response to a question put to him by the interviewer, Professor Leitch provided a factual reply.’
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said he could ‘understand people’s frustration and anger’ over the footage, but said that ‘mistakes do happen’.
JASON Leitch has been ubiquitous during the pandemic – exhorting us all to wash our hands and wear a mask. You might dimly recall that in the early days of Covid, he said face-coverings weren’t needed for the general population, as it wasn’t an airborne virus.
Well, everyone makes mistakes – including his boss, Nicola Sturgeon, who was pictured maskless while indoors the other day.
But Professor Leitch, the national clinical director, has a dual role – from time to time, he’s also a useful human shield for the First Minister.
Yesterday he was sent over the top to defend her momentary and entirely inadvertent mask lapse, otherwise known as an apparent breach of Covid law.
Police were called in and later announced that officers had spoken to Miss Sturgeon about the importance of wearing a face-covering ‘where there is a legal requirement to do so’, but no further action was necessary.
Yet hours before the police disclosed that they’d had a word with the SNP leader, Professor Leitch had stepped in to speak up for her on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme – becoming her de facto spokesman, albeit on a temporary basis.
Professor Leitch’s enthusiastic backing for Miss Sturgeon will not come as much of a surprise for anyone who’s been paying attention to the behaviour of the SNP Government and its Covid gurus since March 2020.
When the former chief medical officer, Dr Catherine Calderwood, was caught flouting lockdown back in April 2020, Professor Leitch performed a similar role trying to save her skin.
The First Minister also tried to minimise the infraction but within hours the ramshackle defence, such as it was, had crumbled, and Dr Calderwood quit.
But this latest episode of non-compliance with Covid law raises an important question: is the top tier of the Government’s pandemic response team made up of medics or merely spin doctors?
The politicisation of its senior ranks is now impossible to ignore as one supposedly independent expert after another risks sacrificing their credibility in the name of protecting Miss Sturgeon from incoming fire.
Professor Devi Sridhar, an academic and government adviser, is about to publish a book about how to deal with another pandemic, in which she writes that ‘it would have been easier if Scotland had been an island in the North Sea that could manage its own affairs lightly’.
It’s not the first time that she’s made similar politically charged statements.
If only we had been able to free ourselves from the shackles of the UK state, and the tyranny of its, er, life-saving vaccines and furlough scheme…
Influential
In an interview, Professor Sridhar disclosed that she’s training to be a personal fitness instructor – and Miss Sturgeon will be her first client.
An influential figure, Professor Sridhar helped to shape the short-lived ‘zero Covid’ strategy, briefly championed by Miss Sturgeon before case numbers took off again (Professor Sridhar said ‘maximum suppression’ didn’t work because Scotland lacked complete control over pandemic policy).
Can an adviser with such an apparently cosy relationship with the country’s most powerful politician simultaneously occupy the role of fearless interrogator of government policy?
You might well wonder whether any senior adviser would get anywhere close to Miss Sturgeon’s inner sanctum, maskless or otherwise, unless they were prepared to provide political backing for her in times of crisis.
Naturally, no one would deny that these are highly trained experts who have devoted their time and energy to keeping people safe during a major public health emergency. But it is undeniable that boundaries have become dangerously blurred after more than two years of politicians working at close quarters with top medics.
In another example of the phenomenon, back in February Scotland’s chief medical officer apologised after sharing an SNP political attack on Boris Johnson.
Professor Sir Gregor Smith retweeted a post from Humza Yousaf that claimed the Prime Minister was using the Covid pandemic to ‘deflect scrutiny’ over his ‘behaviour’.
The Health Secretary’s tweet was in response to Mr Johnson’s announcement that he planned to axe all coronavirus restrictions in England by the end of February.
Sir Gregor deleted his retweet and apologised. Writing on Twitter, he said it had been ‘an attempt to contribute to the debate on the isolation period’.
But he added: ‘On reflection it is clear this contained political messaging alongside the public health info.
‘I have therefore withdrawn the RT [retweet] and apologise for passing it on.’
The Scottish Tories complained to Permanent Secretary John-Paul Marks about the tweet, while MSP Sue Webber urged him to investigate whether Sir Gregor had breached the Civil Servant Code of Conduct on impartiality.
Perhaps it was just another momentary lapse, like the one which afflicted the Green MSPs who were pictured enjoying a drink in an Edinburgh pub in breach of lockdown limits on the number of people who could gather in a public place, back in May 2021.
The Greens are now in government with the SNP, so it did them no harm – a reward for years of slavish, unquestioning loyalty to the First Minister.
In the revisionist Nationalist imagination, these transgressions were honest mistakes – if a Tory was guilty of similar behaviour, Miss Sturgeon would be among the first to demand their resignation.
Inevitably, her self-righteous indignation at the Prime Minister’s Partygate conduct carries less weight now that she has been caught out.
But then maybe she has always believed that the rules for which she was responsible didn’t always apply to her.
Defending his boss yesterday, before the police tweeted that officers had spoken to her, Professor Leitch claimed that she had done the right thing by wearing a mask when she ‘realised’ that the barber shop she was in was relatively busy.
Optional
Perhaps a different set of guidelines are in place for government ministers, as the rest of us hadn’t realised that (prior to yesterday, when the rules changed) wearing a facecovering was optional, based on an individual’s subjective judgment of risk.
The First Minister has form for ignoring her own advice, of course, evidenced by her failure to wear a mask at a funeral back in December 2020.
And she was pictured at Prince Philip’s memorial service in London last month without a face-covering – not breaking the law, certainly, but it demonstrated that even she felt the measure was unnecessary in a crowded indoor space, while insisting at the time that everyone else wore one.
This matters because these restrictions have dominated every day of our lives for more than two years, with profound repercussions for businesses and families.
Preaching from their podiums, doom-laden Miss Sturgeon and her lieutenants sermonised about the importance of keeping the virus at bay, but in the case of the First Minister, and Dr Calderwood, it was clearly a case of ‘do as I say’.
Once again, the mask has slipped – and the real danger is that next time around, if there’s a new variant, or another pandemic, it will be much harder, if not impossible, to take Miss Sturgeon or any of her top advisers seriously.