Dear Oliver…
Will Dumfriesshire MSP email be final blow against masking children?
Dear Oliver,
I am writing to bring to your attention official confirmation that there was no authority to mask children during the Covid-19 pandemic, and also a significant dereliction of duty by leader of Dumfries & Galloway Council, Gail MacGregor.
Please find attached a PDF copy of a poster (originally A1) titled ‘Other People’s Children’, which outlines the Declaration of Dumfries campaign that compelled DGC to acknowledge they had no authority to mask children during the COVID-19 pandemic. You may note with some bewilderment that DGC’s FOI team even denied that any such enforcement took place.
(FYI, the poster was displayed at The Scottish People’s Covid-19 Inquiry on February 22nd in Edinburgh)
Gail was informed of this fact in August 2023, but it has recently come to light that she failed to disseminate the information to relevant parties within the council, such as the education department and headteachers. Instead, she merely filed the letter with the FOI Team and the Comments & Complaints section, ensuring that it went nowhere.
More recently, we were informed by an inside source that teachers were discussing ‘the need to start masking children again’. When Gail was contacted about this she reached out to the Education department and received a somewhat nonchalant response, the tone of which suggested that mask enforcement would happen all over again if and when government guidance was reintroduced.
When questioned about this, Gail dismissed the matter by stating that “responsibility for the matter you raised sits with the Scottish Government and Public Health Scotland”.
So we contacted both SG and PHS. PHS suggested we contact SG.
The Scottish Government’s response (also attached) could not be clearer:
“The Scottish Government did not grant local authorities in Scotland the authority to enforce mask-wearing or face covering in schools without parental or child consent.”
It further states:
“The Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights… establishes informed consent as a fundamental principle in bioethics. Article 6 emphasises the importance of respecting individual autonomy in medical interventions”
The question remains as to why those responsible for coercing and bullying pupils into masks have not been held accountable for children’s rights violations, as well as those responsible for neglecting to consider potential masking harms within DGC’s risk assessments (aka child neglect) but now that the relevant parties such as headteachers have been informed—via this email, given Gail MacGregor’s wilful neglect of duty—we would be grateful if you would lend your support to ensure the atrocity of enforcing masks without consent does not recur within Dumfries & Galloway’s schools.
It is imperative that we acknowledge the rights violations and harms caused, and to that end, we request that the rights of children and parents will be fully respected in future.
We would ask you to confirm your support to our initiative exposing DGC’s lack of authority and your commitment to upholding these rights.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Kind regards,
MJ Sutherland
Founder of DoD