The Covid Inquiry in England is hitting headlines. It has been said that the then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, believed that the pandemic was the way nature was dealing with the elderly. The messages that have been leaked before have shown the UK response to the pandemic, but it seems that politicians based in England are no longer the only ones under scrutiny. It begs the question, are there politicians that are left we can trust, or at each corner, will the scrutiny change to another member?
It has been seen that whilst WhatsApp was a key communication method for Scotland, but many messages may not have been kept. The BBC have stated that the Scottish government guidance was that messages should be deleted after a month. This policy may have an ultimately damaging impact on the Inquiry. How much will we ever be able to know if messages have been lost?
During the pandemic, I always felt safe when I listened to Scottish politicians. I don’t think that there was any particular reason as to why, maybe because they didn’t present themselves the same was as those in Westminster. It didn’t feel that they were changing their policies and minds every five minutes. Seeing the headline that 14,000 messages were to be handed over made me feel scared. What if these messages don’t show them in a great light? What if they have said similar things to their English counterparts?
The question is now, what will the messages show, and has anyone deleted them? First Minister at the time, Nicola Sturgeon, has stated that she wasn’t in any Covid WhatsApp groups and that WhatsApp wasn’t used for the Scottish response to the pandemic. There has been speculation over who has messages and who hasn’t. I am eagerly awaiting for the release of the messages in the inquiry in order to see them. But, I could be jumping the gun. They could be innocent, and not like the ones seen from the Tories. But, again, they might not be.
What will society learn from this? It seems that people may start deleting their WhatsApp messages in order for them to never be seen. Future investigations, not just relating to Covid may be impacted by this.
Ultimately, the Covid inquiry highlights the importance of messages, as well as the showing how the future of communications may change. Incidents in the future may mean that we won’t see the inside workings and messages. Politicians, and people more generally, have seen careers been destroyed by this Inquiry, and they won’t want to follow the same fate.
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