Nicola Sturgeon’s decision to force Scotland’s secondary school children to wear face masks was “totally political” and “not based on medical advice”, Sir Patrick Vallance wrote in his Covid diary.
Sir Patrick, who was the UK Government’s chief scientific adviser during the pandemic, noted in August 2020 that “Scotland breaks ranks on face coverings and schools”.
In extracts published by the UK Covid Inquiry, he said this was despite the four chief medical officers (CMOs) from the home nations issuing a statement the previous day on the risks to children that made no mention of the need for masks.
The statement concluded: “Very few, if any, children or teenagers will come to long-term harm from Covid-19 due solely to attending school. This has to be set against a certainty of long-term harm to many children and young people from not attending school.”
In his notebook, he recorded: "that Scotland decision was not based on medical advice (ie it was totally political)"
Sir Patrick’s diary extracts also addressed Ms Sturgeon’s controversial Covid “elimination” strategy, claiming it had been abandoned by Sept 2020 despite public claims to the contrary.
He noted SNP ministers were “trying to manage numbers like we are!” and “any talk of elimination is long gone”.
The excerpts were published in the Telegraph this morning, after Ms Sturgeon’s marathon evidence session before the inquiry in January, during which she was accused of letting her “burning desire” for independence drive her response to the pandemic.
The inquiry also heard accusations that Ms Sturgeon had pursued a doomed “zero Covid” strategy that ignored expert advice as she wanted to be “the person that drove Covid out of Scotland”.
Ms Sturgeon denied the allegations, saying she had listened to a wide range of advisers and was “motivated solely by trying to do the best we could to keep people as safe as possible”.