Is authority split between the UK government and devolved “nations” helping or hindering the management of the pandemic?

Has the management of the pandemic further weakened the Union or behind the political noise, proved that Westminster and the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are essentially working well together?  No doubt an only partly suppressed competition to win credit with the voters at the end of the day is being waged. But cooperation is to an extent made more difficult because the division of responsibilities isn’t always clear. The devolved governments run for example health and education and most of law and order, but the UK government is finally responsible for national emergencies, dominates funding and can command  greater expertise. (By the way I’m not clear  that all the UK’s expertise is made totally available at source to the devolved governments and their experts. This should be cleared up).

It’s argued with some force that divergences over the pace of easing lockdown have been decided not out of nationalist contrariness but because of  different epidemiological conditions applying in different parts of the UK.  With localised restrictions in prospect to deter second spikes in England, elected mayors in large conurbations such as Manchester are calling for similar powers without fundamental constitutional implications.

Two recent analyses have given a proper airing to the themes. One is by Jim Gallagher a former senior civil servant with the Scottish government and a declared opponent of Scottish secession. In his examination of how the UK- devolved nations relationship is changing, Akash Paun of the Institute for Government  concludes that the unionist –nationalist struggle has been postponed by Covid  but the stand-off over the next phase of Brexit it will revive it, with results that are hard to predict.

Extracts

The UK and devolved governments can work together – at least in a crisis

Given the many disputes over Brexit, the Union and other matters in recent years, and the underlying weaknesses of the UK’s system of intergovernmental relations, it was far from a foregone conclusion that the different administrations would be able to cooperate at all.

But credit should be given where it is due. In early March, the UK and devolved governments published a joint Coronavirus Action Plan – a rare sighting of a government policy paper that was co-branded by the four administrations.

 More recently, however, it appears that the trust and close relationships that underpinned that cooperation may have begun to dissipate…

. It may be that only under the red hot pressure of a crisis can joint working between governments become the norm, in which case a return to a more competitive relationship was inevitable. Nonetheless, lessons can be learnt – by the respective governments and those seeking to hold them to account – about what has worked well in facilitating cooperation. 

 Devolution inevitably leads to policy divergence – but within constraints

Governments naturally wish to avoid the charge that they are ‘playing politics’ amidst a health crisis, but the reality is that evidence can inform but not determine policy choices, especially when there is substantial uncertainty about the consequences of particular decisions, such as allowing schools to reopen in June (as in England) rather than August (as in Scotland). There is, in other words, scope for legitimate political judgement, for which ministers can be held to account.

Another relevant factor is public opinion. In what is sometimes termed the ‘devolution paradox’, voters often simultaneously express support for the principle of devolved decision-making, and resistance to the reality of different rules and rights applying in different parts of the country. This may create political pressures for convergence of lockdown rules.

Coronavirus has led to a substantial rise in public spending – by both UK and devolved governments

A further constraint on divergence comes from fiscal pressures. According to the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe), the Scottish government is expecting to receive some £3.7bn in extra funding via the Barnett Formula, as a result of additional spending in England on the NHS, and support for small businesses, rail providers and charities. Wales and Northern Ireland will receive similar per capita funding increases. To some extent, this allows the devolved governments to set different priorities in responding to coronavirus – as Scotland did, for instance, when it moved more quickly to offer support to the fisheries sector. But, as if to underline the devolution paradox, the SPICe analysis finds that Scottish ministers have committed to follow quite closely spending decisions taken for England, for example in creating a similar small business support scheme.

Furthermore, alongside the extra money provided through the Barnett block grant system, the devolved nations are benefitting from UK Treasury-controlled schemes for supporting employers, employees and the self-employed during this period…

 

Coronavirus may create new opportunities for unionists – and nationalists too

 At the start of the coronavirus crisis, the Scottish government officially dropped its plan to hold a second Scottish independence referendum in 2020. But with elections to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments less than a year away, the debate over the future of the Union has just been put on temporary hold and seems likely to reignite as May 2021 approaches, a period in which the ever-divisive issue of Brexit will also return to the top of the agenda.

 The resumption of arguments over the UK-EU relationship may also reopen divisions in Northern Ireland, potentially sparking further talk of a ‘border poll’ on Irish reunification.

 How the constitutional debate plays out is impossible to predict. But one can already identify certain effects that coronavirus might have on the politics of the Union.

 On the one hand, unionists will point to the role the UK government has played – both in providing additional financial resources to all parts of the country, and in coordinating a UK-wide public health response, for instance through creating additional COVID-19 testing capacity – as evidence of the strength of the Union, and the need for strong UK-wide action led from Westminster. Falling global oil prices will also make it harder for the Scottish government to explain how an independent Scotland would balance its books.

 

On the other hand, the crisis has enabled the devolved administrations to demonstrate their own capacity to coordinate much of the coronavirus response within their territories. Data from Ipsos MORI suggests that, in Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon’s performance was viewed far more favourably than that of Boris Johnson, even before the controversy about Number 10 adviser Dominic Cummings. In addition, evidence that the UK may emerge from the pandemic with one of the worst mortality rates in the world may strengthen the nationalist argument that Scotland would be better able to deal with such challenges if it were independent, and therefore had the full panoply of fiscal and other levers available to ministers in Westminster.

  On the island of Ireland, contested reports of a higher coronavirus death rate in the north than the south may similarly help pro-reunification politicians to press their cause.

 Following the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the 2016 EU referendum, and the bruising Brexit battles that followed, coronavirus is the latest black swan event to raise big questions about devolution and the Union. Answering these questions seems set to keep those of us who follow such matters busy for some time to come.

Akash might have given greater weight to the public pressures on the DUP and Sinn Fein to cooperate not only over Covid but on reducing east- west friction over GB-NI trade.  Nor has he appeared to notice or think relevant  that appeals for north-south integration of Covid measures have largely fallen on deaf ears in the south not the north. Over the final withdrawal agreement, any future Dublin government will remain utterly exasperated by British perversity. But they will be equally keen the square the circle of defending the EU single market and achieving minimum friction on the east-west economic border.

Jim Gallagher detects greater political motivation in an impression of wider divergencies than actually exist and urges  the UK and Scottish governments in terms, to  put a sock in it.

Some commentators appear surprised the UK government cannot simply instruct the devolved administrations; others claim the Scottish government is doing better than the UK government and has “attracted commendation from … both at home and abroad”.

Such claims mainly display the preconceptions of those making them. The constitutional allocation of powers cannot just be overridden. Scotland is, however, doing no better than the rest of the UK in controlling the virus. Excess deaths are typical of UK levels; the “reproduction number” is possibly slightly higher than the UK average, and the gap between virus testing in Scotland and England is apparently increasing. It is nevertheless worthwhile reflecting on how coronavirus and the territorial constitution affect one another.

Devolution and Emergencies

Devolution always assumed an integrated UK approach to emergency planning and management.  Government actions were generally taken in lockstep for the first couple of months. Inevitably, the UK government brings more capacity to this work than the devolved administrations do (eg the technical expertise of Porton Down, or fiscal capacity to support furloughs), but critical parts of the response are in devolved control, not just legally, but in practical terms, eg the operation of the NHS, or responsibility for care homes.

How successful this joint approach has been is open to question. UK excess deaths are among the world’s highest, and the emphasis on saving the NHS may have put the vulnerable in care homes more at risk. With the crisis far from over, judgements may be premature. Higher mortality might reflect the openness of the UK economy and society rather than government failures. But the UK government and the devolved administrations share responsibility for the decisions and outcomes.

Political Games?

Some divergences may be driven by different objective circumstances, such as the trajectory of the virus, but others perhaps by the different priorities of political leaders. The UK entered the crisis with mistrust between London and Edinburgh and, despite governments working closely together, relations have strained.

This was mostly about presentation rather than substance. Nicola Sturgeon was perceived to steal a march on the UK government by announcing schools policy before them, and Boris Johnson let the devolved governments find out about policy changes on television.

Maybe not surprising, under great pressure, institutions and people revert to their default behaviours. Whitehall still instinctively regards itself as a unitary UK government, even when it knows it is not (after all, 85% of the UK population is unaffected by devolution). Boris Johnson defaults to studiedly ambiguous communications.  

Nicola Sturgeon reverts to her defaults too. She finds it easy to present in a more orderly way than Johnson (their personae could hardly be more different). But it is also easy for SNP politicians to present Scotland as disempowered or disrespected in the management of the crisis (they would say the UK does that normally) and claim Scotland is doing much better, even though halting epidemic spread, protecting care homes or providing tests in Scotland is a Scottish, not a UK government, responsibility.

The underlying problem

Rattiness between politicians under pressure is to be expected. But the resultant mixed messages are unhelpful in managing an almost insoluble policy problem. Emergency lockdown cannot be sustained indefinitely; public behaviour is changing by itself. No government in the UK has an easy to understand strategy that will command public confidence for returning to anything like normal economic activity while continuing to suppress virus transmission. Divergent approaches will worsen that, and create awkward mismatches between devolved and reserved aspects of policy. Just now, the most important gap is a shared one: having enough testing capacity to run an effective “test, track and isolate” approach, routinely testing those most at risk having and passing on the disease.

Filling that policy gap is critical. We need our political leaders to hammer out a credible joint approach, laying aside any mistrust and resisting the temptation to default to the tropes of normal politics, amidst a medical crisis. Those can come back along with rest of normal life.

Concerns over the persisting gap in understanding between the UK and EU have been expressed  in a report by the Lords Committee on EU affairs 

.. the continued uncertainty could prompt businesses in the rest of the UK to think again about investing in Northern Ireland.

“There is a real danger that businesses based in Great Britain could conclude that it is economically unviable to continue to operate in Northern Ireland, leading in turn to reduced choice and higher costs for Northern Ireland consumers, thus undermining Northern Ireland’s economic model, its future prosperity and, potentially, its political stability,” the peers said.

Northern Irish businesses have also been hampered in their preparations for the new potential trading regime by the impact of coronavirus, the report said.

“The combination of uncertainty, lack of momentum and lack of time, compounded by the shock of the Covid-19 pandemic, is a potent threat to economic prosperity and political stability in Northern Ireland.”

Arlene Foster, Northern Ireland’s first minister, called on Sunday for any checks on goods entering to be as limited as possible.

In the end of the future of constitutional relationships within the UK will be greatly affected by the settled verdict on the performance of the Johnson government, in dealing with the twin crises of Covid and Brexit. We can all agree on that.