National Clinical Director WhatsApp messages during the COVID-19 pandemic: FOI release

Information requested

The WhatsApp messages of Professor Jason Leitch, then National Clinical Director, during the Covid-19 pandemic, which for practical purposes we have interpreted as the period from 21 January 2020, the date on which the WHO published its ‘Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Situation Report’, to 30 April 2022, the date on which remaining Covid-19 restrictions were lifted in Scotland.

Response

I enclose a copy of some of the information you have requested.

The Scottish Government holds a copy of a WhatsApp conversation between Professor Leitch and Kate Forbes MSP. This document has been published in full by the UK Covid-19 Inquiry (UKI). Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. However, if you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the UKI website, please let us know and we can arrange to supply it in a different format.

The SG also holds a copy of a WhatsApp conversation between Professor Leitch and Humza Yousaf MSP. A significant portion of this conversation has been published by the UKI, so again, we have not enclosed the published information here as per section 25(1) of FOISA because it is already reasonably accessible to you. For the sections that have not been published by the UKI (i.e. the parts of the conversation that occurred before or after the date range of the published section), I have enclosed a copy of some of the information requested. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because exemptions under sections 25(1), 30(b), 36(1), 37(1)(b)(i) and 38(1)(b) of FOISA apply to that information. Further explanations of these exemptions are provided in the annex supplied alongside this letter.

I should note that the copies of these messages held by the Scottish Government comprise text only and do not include other media such as images. The copies held also include existing redactions of sensitive personal data, marked in black.

The SG also holds a copy of a short WhatsApp conversation between Professor Leitch and Maree Todd MSP. However, as you have already been provided with this as part of the response to your previous request ref. 202400405863, it has not been re-supplied here, again because under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to provide information that is already reasonably accessible to you.

The SG holds a copy of a conversation between Professor Leitch and Malcolm Wright, former Director-General Health and Social Care. We have been unable to provide some of the information requested because exemptions under sections 37(1)(b)(i) and 38(1)(b) of FOISA apply to that information (brief personal exchanges, in both cases). Explanations of these exemptions are provided in the annex. Professor Leitch was also a participant in three group discussions with colleagues which the UKI has not published in full or in part at the time of writing. I have therefore provided copies of these to supply some of the information you have requested. As before, we have been unable to provide some of the information requested because exemptions under sections 28(1), 30(b) and (c), 36(1), 37(1)(b) and 38(1)(b) of FOISA apply to that information (see annex for further detail).

Professor Leitch was also a member of three additional WhatsApp group chats with other officials, extracts of which can be found on the UKI website under the names Group B1617.2, Covid Outbreak Group and Star Chamber. The SG has been supplied with reference copies of these three group conversations in confidence by the UKI as a core participant of the public inquiry. Please note that this material is subject to the UKI’s general restriction order of 23 February 2024. We are unable to provide this information because an exemption under section 37(1)(b)(ii) of FOISA applies to documents created by a person conducting an inquiry or arbitration for the purposes of that inquiry or arbitration.

This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. In relation to the published extracts of these three group conversations, under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. As before, if you are unable to access the extracts online, please let us know.

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FOI 202400422234 - Information Released - Annex A

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2 page PDF

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63.7 kB

FOI 202400422234 - Information Released - Annex B

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PDF

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1.6 MB