Aberdeen City Council Co-Leaders write to the First Minister regarding Covid measures

Aberdeen City Council Leaders have today written to the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, asking for a copy of the Greater Glasgow Health Board’s Incident Management Team findings and recommendations following the outbreak of Covid-19 in Glasgow and surrounding areas.

They believe that Aberdeen City and other council areas being penalised unfairly.

They want to know why measures have been imposed across the country, despite different areas having varying success with suppressing the virus.

Councillor Jenny Laing Co-Leader Aberdeen City Council said “We are disappointed that the First Minister’s blanket lockdown measures across Scotland are having a disproportionate effect on Aberdeen following the already damaging statutory lockdown imposed on Aberdeen by the Scottish Government. The First Minister needs to share the Incident Management Team report and recommendations from the Greater Glasgow Health Board and explain why she chose not to impose a statutory lockdown on Glasgow and surrounding areas given her course of action has resulted in a huge outbreak of covid-19 right across Scotland.”

Councillor Jenny Laing added “The health and wellbeing of our citizens must always come first and that is why we supported the statutory restrictions imposed on Aberdeen by the Scottish Government back in August 2020, however this was based on known facts. The First Minister’s failure to consult or provide information to Aberdeen City Council on why her approach to Aberdeen was different from Glasgow is unacceptable. We believe the First Minister should have adopted a regional approach to deal with the outbreak in Glasgow, which would have minimised the impact on Aberdeen, but she chose to adopted a position which appears to have been based on political motives rather than clinical evidence and now the whole of Scotland is paying the price”.

Councillor Douglas Lumsden Co-Leader Aberdeen City Council said “The First Minister’s decisions without consultation with councils and her inability to share the Greater Glasgow Health Board Incident Management Team report and recommendations with citizens of Scotland shows that the First Ministers inability to deal with Covid-19 in Glasgow and the surrounding area has impacted on the rest of Scotland. If the First Minister had lockdown Glasgow like she lockdown Aberdeen, citizens in Scotland would in all probability not have to share the pain of a total Scotland lockdown."

Councillor Lumsden added “The citizens of Aberdeen are frustrated that once again they are being denied privileges of seeing loved ones for the next three weeks and maybe longer because the First Minister did not lockdown Glasgow. Aberdeen citizens deserve better from the First Minister and she should at the very least provide the clinical evidence to support her position of a total Scotland lockdown otherwise citizens will conclude that her decision not to lockdown Glasgow as political."