Professor Jason Leitch says family visits banned because he can't 'trust the whole population to behave appropriately'
The National Clinical Director for Scotland was interviewed by Ewen Cameron on our stations across Scotland this morning.
Last updated 15th May 2020
Professor Jason Leitch says the lockdown ban on family visits is there because he can't trust an entire nation of five million people to behave appropriately.
The National Clinical Director for Scotland has been speaking to Ewen Cameron this morning on our stations across the country nearly eight weeks into the lockdown in Scotland.
Professor Leitch was asked by a listener why she could stand in a supermarket two metres away from a stranger, but couldn’t do the same with her own family who don’t live in her household.
He said: "We’ve only allowed it in essential travel and we have to because although the individual risk to her and her family is very small, if we release everybody to do that, people die."
Ewen asked him: "Do you not trust people’s common sense?"
Professor Leitch replied: "I don’t trust the whole population to behave appropriately.
"So you have to think about it at a five million person level, not at an individual caller or correspondent level – it’s so hard.”
Professor Jason Leitch also hit back at critics who're attacking his record leading the response to the pandemic.
He said: "The people who just insult you and call you names that doesn’t bother me.
"The bit I really struggle with are the people who attack your integrity, who think that somehow you’re embroiled in some sort of plot to kill the elderly, and that’s just so far from the truth.
"So when I put my head on the pillow at night, I have done my best. I have tried to give the best advice I can. And I’ve tried to translate that advice for the Scottish people in order for us to be as safe as we can. But sometimes, yes, that feels overwhelming.
Yesterday First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she had complete faith in Scotland's Clinical Director after a question at her daily media briefing.
He said: "I’m very grateful that was the answer the First Minister chose to give of course.
"However, you’d rather be in the answers than in the questions at the press conference. So I’d much rather she was in a position to say ‘yes - as Professor Leitch has said on a number of occasions’ - you don’t want to be in the questions if you’re honest.
"I’d much rather be helping with the story rather than creating the story. That’s not where the national clinical director really wants to be."
Talking about his role in helping Scotland through the pandemic, he said: "I have two jobs. My first job along with others is to give the best advice I can from a perspective of science and clinical experience to the decision makers.
"I do that in private - I don’t do that on the radio, I do that in rooms with the First Minister, the Cabinet Secretary for Health, the Deputy First Minister, the Chief Medical Officer and others. And that happens quite rightly in private. And they then make judgements about what they do.
"My second job is when the position is decided, I am then one of the people who come out to the world and try and describe that position to the public. And I think that’s what ive tried to do over the last couple of months, is come on shows like yours. There’s not many people on Off The Ball talking about the R number, but I’m on Off The Ball talking about the R number.”
Professor Leitch says he sometimes is overcome by the situation.
He said: "I have done my best. I have tried to give the best advice I can and I’ve tried to translate that advice for the Scottish people in order for us to be as safe as we can but sometimes, yes, that feels overwhelming.
"Of course ill have made mistakes. But at the time I have said things, they have been the Scottish Government position, and they have been from a point of view of trying to save as many lives as I can.
"This is the 15th May. If you have me back on on the 15th June or the 15th July and say ‘is the advice the same as it was on the 15th may?’ – of course it wasn’t."
Hear all the latest news from across Edinburgh, the Lothians, Fife and Falkirk on Forth 1. Listen on FM, via the Rayo app, on DAB or on your smart speaker.