Michael Gove has refused to rule out a legal challenge to a second independence referendum but said it would “suck oxygen out of the room” when the focus should be on recovery.
The UK Cabinet Minister said that priority for both the Scottish and UK Government should be on a joint effort to get over the covid pandemic.
Speaking in Glasgow, where he has opened a satellite Cabinet Office outpost, Gove laid out the Tory government strategy of talking up co-operation and talking down the constitutional row in response to the SNP election victory.
He said: “I’m not getting into the whole question of courts and litigation and all the rest of it, because if we start theorising in that area we’re sucking oxygen out of the room where we should all be concentrating on recovery.”
Gove added: “ “Other people will want to speculate or theorise about these questions but to my mind every second spent asking questions about the Supreme Court is a second wasted when it comes to concentration on the issues that matter.”
Pressed repeatedly by reporters to comment on the possibility of a legal challenge against a planned referendum bill the Minister deflected from the questions.
He said: “I’m not thinking about it, I’m not going there. We’re concentrating on recovery in the NHS, recovery, and the economy recovery in education, recovery in the criminal justice system. That is our focus.”
With a renewed mandate in the Scottish parliament Nicola Sturgeon has signalled that the SNP will introduce a referendum bill as early as next Spring to set up a second vote.
However the powers to run a referendum are reserved at Westminster and there could be a court challenge to the bill that could end up in the UK Supreme Court.
Sturgeon has made it clear that covid recovery is her task for the first one hundred days of the new parliament but in a congratulatory phone call with Boris Johnson she made it clear to the Prime Minister that a referendum is a case of “when, not if”.
Gove said he detected no urgent demand for a second referendum when he went out and about shopping in Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street on Sunday afternoon.
He said : “A very nice guy stopped his car, got out when I was on the phone. I was worried he was going to upbraid me but he came over and he congratulated the Tories on their result and said that he didn’t want referendum anytime soon.”
Gove placed heavy emphasis on intergovernmental co-operation and UK government plans to start direct financing of infrastructure projects in Scotland using the UK replacement for EU funding in a move the SNP claim is bypassing devolution.
Gove insisted more cooperation, the so-called "love bomb" strategy, would respect devolution.
He said: “Without undermining the devolution settlement, working together in a more proactive way and working with civil society is a critical point. If people see the politicians they elect to different institutions working together,then that is an example of the spirit of cooperation that’s at the heart of the Union being demonstrated.”
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