A senior Conservative has urged Boris Johnson to strip Wales and Scotland of the powers to set distinct policies in areas like Covid lockdown rules.
David Frost said the ability of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to make their own rules on healthcare should be scrapped to encourage a sense of a "common national endeavour, with an understanding that 'we are all in this together'."
The former Brexit negotiator who is now sitting in the House of Lords, was writing in The Telegraph where he has just joined as a columnist. In his first piece he set out what he called "a three point action plan" to rebuild support for the government. And firstly, he said that Boris Johnson's administration should "rebuild the UK nation state as a collective endeavour for everyone within it".
Baron Frost wrote: “We should put an end to ‘devolve and forget’ in Scotland and Wales. Local decision-making is fine, but it should come within a sensible national framework. The pandemic made clear the nonsense of having four different travel and public health policies.”
He went on to talk about Northern Ireland, in what could be interpreted as a contradictory statement to his point on devolution he said a country with self-respect cannot have its laws set by others” and that we “should be supportive of the institutions that underpin our democracy.
Baron Frost also said that though Boris Johnson's Government was at risk of being unsuccessful, they should be credited for “Merry England” being one of “the freest countries in the world”.
He said: “Unsuccessful governments fail to do some or all of these things. As a result, they lose the confidence of the electorate long before they actually lose office. Boris Johnson’s administration risks going down this road.
“Admittedly, it has two huge achievements to its credit: getting us out of the EU, and delivering an exit from the pandemic without the coercive measures we have seen elsewhere. Merry England is one of the freest countries in the world.”
In 1999 the people of Wales voted narrowly in a referendum to start directly managing many of their own affairs. In 2011, a far larger percentage of Wales voted to extend these powers to the Welsh Parliament (then called the Assembly). In last year's Welsh Parliamentary elections anti devolution parties were wiped out and Labour won a working majority on a massively pro devolution agenda.
Since devolution, Westminster has generally not interfered in the areas that are devolved to Wales and the two governments have clashed in the Supreme Court over their respective powers.
