Scotland will soon catch up, says Jack

Scottish Secretary Alister Jack is confident Scotland will “catch up” with the lockdown-easing measures in England in the days and weeks ahead.

The comment came as Mr Jack, a close confidant of Boris Johnson, admitted to MPS that the UK Government’s weekend message shift from Stay Home to Stay Alert had “caused some confusion”.

“The first minister said she hadn’t been consulted on the message and that’s correct. Many government departments weren’t consulted on the message because the message was for the communications experts to bring forward”, he told the Scottish Affairs Committee.

SNP shadow Scottish secretary Mhairi Black said: “Tackling the coronavirus crisis is difficult for all governments and mistakes will be made but it is vital that the devolved governments are properly consulted on future changes, and that the UK Government makes it crystal clear when its announcements only apply to England.”

Asked why the message was changed, Mr Jack said the decision had been taken “to get people thinking about going back to work”.

The comment came as it was announced 428 people had died with

Covid-19 in the UK in the last 24 hours, taking the total to 33,614.

Mr Jack said: “Scotland is only a few days behind. I’ve seen the (infection rate) numbers across the whole of the UK by nation and by region, I would say certainly within less than a few weeks Scotland can catch up and we can hopefully all move forward with the same messaging and the same guidelines across the UK.”

Mr Jack said: “It’s very possible that within Scotland the first minister may take a different approach to the pace of coming out of lockdown in the Highlands or south of Scotland to say Glasgow or Dundee.”

Mr Jack, who was appearing before MPS via video-link, dismissed suggestions by Western Isles MP Angus Macneil that police should man the England-scotland border to stop “people in England (who) think they can go everywhere”.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, on a call to Welsh party members yesterday, said the break in messaging between the four nations had been a “mistake”.

He said: “It would be far better if the prime minister had been able to get all four nations to agree to a plan instead of doing what he did, which was to do a speech on Sunday and try to put the plan together afterwards.”