FORMER Scottish health secretary Jeanne Freeman told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry today that she will regret Covid deaths “for the rest of her life.”

She made the remarks while giving evidence in the final week of the inquiry’s residence in Edinburgh, focusing on the actions of Scottish government during the pandemic.

Inquiry counsel Jamie Dawson KC confronted Ms Freeman with the notes of senior civil servant Derek Grieve, who described the UK government as “fully engaged and mobilised” while the Scottish government “simply isn’t,” adding that the health directorate had spent “20 minutes discussing internal Scottish government communications.”

Ms Freeman accepted this, saying: “I think he was reasonably frustrated.”

She was then quizzed on the Scottish government’s handling of social care in general and of the release of thousands of untested patients from hospitals into care homes, leading to 348 outbreaks of the virus.

Ms Freeman said she would “regret very much, and will do for the rest of my life, any deaths that occurred there because of action that the Scottish government didn’t take or did take but could have done better.”

But she added: “You cannot magic out of thin air appropriate buildings, appropriate kit and skilled individuals.

“I believe we moved as quickly as we could to increase our testing capacity.”

Ms Freeman’s appearance followed that of Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove — cabinet office minister at the time of the crisis — who answered questions on the interaction between the UK and Scottish governments.

In reference to WhatsApp messages, in which the then first minister Nicola Sturgeon described her UK counterpart Boris Johnson as a “f****** clown,” Mr Gove said they were “not soulmates.”

He said: “They are both skilled politicians fired by passion, but they are also people who knew at a moment of crisis the importance … of respecting each other’s positions and working together.”

While paying tribute to Ms Sturgeon’s “energy and hard work” during the pandemic, Mr Gove said that the language of other WhatsApp exchanges in which her chief of staff called for a “good old-fashioned rammy [bust-up]” with the UK government “now does lead me to believe that at that point, there was a desire to pursue differentiation for the sake of advancing a political agenda.”

The UK Covid-19 Inquiry continues.