UK Covid Inquiry: How Scottish Government kept up appearances

The Covid-19 pandemic created a profound crisis of governance across the UK.

From early 2020, as institutions of global governance bunkered down and world supply chains slowed to a standstill, national, devolved and regional government were forced to adapt to a deadly novel coronavirus that spread rapidly.

The already creaking structures of the British state were forced, at speed, to adapt to an entirely new mode of crisis management, one that – constitutionally at least – is almost unrivalled in the post-war period.

Thus far, the inquiry has uncovered the organised chaos that characterised the response at Westminster. This week, the UK public inquiry into the pandemic is in Edinburgh.

There has been cautious praise for the response of the SNP-led Scottish Government to the pandemic: opinion polls consistently showed higher levels of trust in Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government compared to Boris Johnson and the UK Government, and Scottish civil society broadly rallied behind Sturgeon’s leadership. Yet, the suspicion remains that the positive impression of the Scottish Government’s response was rooted in comparisons to Westminster.

Over the past year our team of researchers at Glasgow Caledonian University, working as part of the cross-national Endure Project, have sought to understand how governance in Scotland responded to the pandemic, and what lessons might be learned. We found that the prevailing narrative of Scottish exceptionalism during the pandemic disguised a more nuanced reality.

Research has shown that the Scottish Parliament and Westminster adopted similar public health policies, differing primarily in timing. Much of this was down to reliance on the same scientific expertise: Sturgeon justified the introduction of social distancing measures in March 2020 on the basis of ‘scientific advice that all four governments in the UK have received’ and senior health ministers within the Scottish Government have confirmed to us the importance of expert clinical advice from SAGE.

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However, evidence given to the UK’s Covid-19 Inquiry – including by senior civil servant Helen McNamara and Chief Scientific Advisor Patrick Vallance – has criticised the mantra of ‘following the science’, on the basis that this shielded decision-makers from the proper degree of accountability. Placing so much onus on scientific advice allowed ministers to free themselves from democratic oversight and ultimate responsibility.

Ministers frequently have to make judgment calls that go beyond scientific guidance, and assuming there's only one scientific perspective oversimplifies the complexity of the situation: Independent Sage, for example, often gave alternative advice.

For Scottish ministers, the mantra of 'following the science' also deflected attention from a deficit of autonomous decision-making at a Scottish level. This raises pertinent questions about what one Scottish think-tank described to us as the ‘management of accountability’: the tendency of politicians to claim as much of the credit, while deflecting as much of the blame, as possible.

This is not to imply that the Scottish Government could have easily taken a different path without facing significant fiscal and constitutional challenges. However, the perception of Scottish exceptionalism which we have found relied upon a national mythology of technocratic competence. To some degree, this is justified on the basis of the often shambolic response of the Johnson administration at Westminster.

This was used to great effect by the SNP, who followed a path of least resistance to make measured, incremental changes from UK policy when the emergency mood had lifted sufficiently to allow for divergence.

By strategically crafting a narrative which intertwined competence with national distinctiveness, the SNP were able to create the appearance of a divergent ‘Scottish’ response.

The juxtaposition of this narrative of national difference, against a backdrop of close alignment when it comes to real policy, raises questions about the intersection of political messaging and crisis governance.

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Navigating the complexities of pandemic governance, the Scottish Government also encountered challenges similar to those experienced at the UK level. Changes to how government operates have often been described as a process of ‘hollowing out’ the state, with centralised power giving way to collaboration with boards, quangos, NGOs, private companies, transnational actors and more.

Whilst for some this promises an injection of energy and new ideas into government, for others it signifies fragmented policy-making and reduced state capacity, which is ill-equipped to deal with the major issues facing society today.

As the TUC claimed in 2023 and the STUC in 2020, both Westminster and Holyrood governments were initially unprepared for the scale of the economic and social crises that accompanied the health emergency, due to austerity measures that had hollowed-out the capacity of central and local government. Effective governance infrastructure was slow to appear, and representatives of civil society organisations and voluntary groups in Scotland reported massively increased demand for their services.

This reveals that Scotland's pandemic response wasn't as exceptional nor as distinct as initially believed by many. The Scottish Government, by “following the science”, concealed a lack of independent decision-making, leading to a deficit in democratic accountability.

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Additionally, the Scottish Government grappled with challenges akin to those at the UK level due to a 'hollowed-out' state. These insights underscore the need for a more nuanced perspective on Scotland's pandemic governance, recognising its close alignment with UK Government strategy.

They also beg deeper questions about how society ought to be governed during a crisis, and the extent to which democratic accountability has been impacted by outsourcing and technocracy.

Dr Ewan Kerr is a researcher at Glasgow Caledonian University, working as part of the cross-national Endure Project into government responses to Covid.