Jeane Freeman: I'd have hated not being in the middle of Covid

"If I am completely honest I would have hated not to be in the middle of this pandemic."

For many, being health secretary at the onset of Covid-19 might sound like the worst job in the world - but not Jeane Freeman.

"Some people call it arrogance, and it may well be a bit," she said. "But there's a part of me that thinks 'I want to be right in amongst that', because I think I can make a difference."

The former health secretary was speaking with BBC Scotland's Podlitical podcast in her first interview since stepping down as an MSP at May's Holyrood election.

She does not miss working "knackering" 14-hour days, juggling the constantly-shifting problem of the pandemic and its devastating consequences.

But Ms Freeman says that she "can't regret being part of it all".

Looking back at the start of the pandemic in February and March of 2020, Ms Freeman says there was a "growing realisation" in government of how serious the situation was, and that "we didn't know what the endgame was".

"You were constantly aware of the enormity of it," she said. "You had to make decisions - you couldn't sit there and go 'this is so serious and so big and we've never done it before, we can't do anything', that was not a choice.

"We had to make decisions but always in the back of my mind constantly was the thought, did we get that right, do we need to change that, what do we do next?"

The whole of the UK went into lockdown in lockstep that March, with the UK and devolved governments moving in unison in what became known as the "four nation" approach.

Ms Freeman said there was "absolute necessity" for this in the early days of the pandemic, in order to lay the foundations for a lockdown that could be sustained through public trust.

She added: "You need to be able to explain the situation to the public because you want their voluntary cooperation, and you're asking a huge amount of them."

There have been accusations of "groupthink" within government circles, but Ms Freeman insists that there was sufficient challenge to advice and plans.

She said: "There was challenge - if I just think personally, there was challenge in my own head about all the ways in which it could go wrong and wouldn't work.

"The reality was that if you lost the public in that first lockdown, then we were in serious trouble about anything else we thought we might need to do."

Ms Freeman believes the UK as a whole was slow to appreciate some of the issues around dealing with a global pandemic - saying the collective thinking about travel restrictions and attempts to stop the virus entering the UK was "a bit too two-dimensional".

She said there were early talks about how to deal with flights coming directly from Wuhan - but "an unwillingness to have a discussion about the reality of how people travel", via hub airports in places like Amsterdam and Dubai.

The former health secretary also regrets that government did not grasp the issue of care homes more quickly, with patients discharged from hospitals into homes without being tested in the rush to free up capacity.

She said: "We didn't pay enough attention to understanding early on what the situation was in care homes.

"We quickly understood that much better and paid a lot of attention to it, probably from about March onwards, but before that our focus was primarily on the NHS because that's the direction that all the analysis and the numbers was pointing us towards."

With the rise of the new Omicron variant, there are again fears that the UK could be facing fresh restrictions on the eve of the festive period.

In 2020, governments across the UK agreed to ease restrictions to allow people to see their families over Christmas - only to then end up imposing a new lockdown as the "Kent variant" rapidly spread around the country.

Ms Freeman said she understands concerns that history could be repeating itself, but insisted the country is in a very different position now thanks to strong uptake of Covid vaccines.

She said the Scottish government did not share the optimism of the UK government about easing restrictions in 2020, but said the "nervousness" of ministers was not enough to avoid going along with UK-wide plans.

She added: "There wasn't sufficient evidence for us to go down a different route. It would be a bit difficult to say that south of Berwick Christmas is on, and north of Berwick, no it's not.

"You have to have really good reasons for that, really good grounds to stand on and you need to be confident that that decision will be followed by the majority of citizens.

"Nervousness is not enough of a basis for doing that."

Ms Freeman did not leave a written note for her successor as health secretary, Humza Yousaf, but says she is still in touch with a number of former colleagues in government.

And while she still has "a very strong fix-it drive", she accepts that she has walked away from the front line - for now.

She said: "I do want to help and make things better wherever I can, but I'm very conscious that I voluntarily stood down from elected office - and those who stood and won their positions need to be allowed to get on with the job."