Boris Johnson is going to be “front and centre” of efforts to save the Union, the Prime Minister’s top civil servant has said.
Covid and Brexit have ensured that keeping the Union together is now “at the forefront of policy making in Whitehall”, according to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case.
Case, who works day to day with Boris Johnson said the Prime Minister was “first and foremost...responsible for thinking through Union matters”.
He added: “The reality is that you are going to see the Prime Minister front and centre of maintaining the integrity of the Union and actually more importantly, getting all of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom operating fully together for the benefit of everybody who lives and works inside the United Kingdom.”
Case told a House of Lords committee that “the world of devolve and forget” and that the civil service machine had been changed by the covid pandemic to work more closely with devolved governments.
The top mandarin said: “If you’d asked me only a few years ago did I think that devolution or the Union was at the forefront of policymaking in Whitehall I would have said probably not.
“But actually, I think the experience of both Brexit and obviously more recently Covid means that so much more of government, so much more of policy, involves consideration of devolution or union questions much earlier in the process.
“In everything that we do we should be thinking about how it impacts on the Union.”
Case welcomed the recommendations put forward by the Dunlop Review but rejected calls for a constitutional affairs minister, to head up Union strategy.
Case also told the Lords constitution committee he rejected the idea of a separate Scottish civil service.
He said: “This government’s position is very clear, we are best operating as one UK civil service across Westminster, UK Government, as well as Scotland and Wales.
“In talking to colleagues currently working in Scotland and Wales and elsewhere there’s certainly no clamour from civil servants for this, they think they benefit from being part of the wider UK civil service.”
