The civil servant who urged Scottish government colleagues to delete WhatsApp messages during the Covid pandemic received a pension worth over £1m on his retirement.
At the UK Covid inquiry it emerged that Ken Thomson, the former director general for Strategy and External Affairs, had said in a group chat, "Just to remind you (seriously) this is discoverable under FOI. Know where the 'clear chat' button is" and described his middle names as "plausible deniability".
Mr Thomson retired from the civil service in November 2023 and, as reported by the Daily Record, received a pension of £1.4m, estimated to be worth around £70,000 per year.
Read More:
-
Ex-Holyrood official who told colleagues to delete WhatsApps quits job over outcry
-
Sturgeon insists chat about officials ducking FoI was 'light-hearted'
-
SNP minister for transparency sets WhatsApps messages to autodelete after 24 hours
The former civil servant insisted at the Covid inquiry that he was not telling colleagues to delete messages in order to get around Freedom of Information requests.
He said: "I'm reminding my colleagues that this channel is discoverable under FOI, which I think is correct, and then I'm saying in an informal way that my understanding of our approach to these groups is that messages should not be kept -- other than in relation to salient points, as we've just discussed, these messages should not be kept and should therefore be deleted.”
Mr Thomson was given a CBE in the New Year's Honours list, and is an honorary professor at the University of Glasgow.
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton told the Record: "Families of the covid bereaved are still desperately searching for answers because people like Ken Thomson deleted their messages.
"While he enjoys a comfortable retirement, the families may be forever waiting to learn what happened to their loved ones.”
Murdo Fraser of the Scottish Conservatives said: "This news will come as a slap in the face to those who tragically lost loved ones during the pandemic.
"The SNP should be focused on giving Covid bereaved families the answers they deserve rather than lining the pockets of those who helped ministers hide the truth from the public.”
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “The pay and pensions framework for Senior Civil Servants is reserved to the UK Government.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel