Our leaders MUST work together. Or else they’re playing politics with lives

WITH the aviation industry on its knees, Boris Johnson is under pressure to embrace airport testing. Screening arrivals is thought more effective than the current policy: a blanket requirement to self-quarantine for 14 days.

Airline and tourism chiefs warn this is crippling their sectors and putting thousands of jobs at risk.

The Scottish Conservatives want the Scottish Government, which holds the relevant powers, to back airport screening north of the Border. But you can be sure that, should the Prime Minister relent and roll out an airport swabbing programme, Nicola Sturgeon will announce it is wrong for Scotland and refuse to follow suit. A week or so later, she will follow the Prime Minister’s lead while demanding credit for her caution.

Whether on air bridges or reopening pubs or ‘Stay Alert’ messaging, that has been Miss Sturgeon’s modus operandi. As UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps pointed out on Friday, the different travel restriction regimes are ‘confusing’ for tourists, adding that it didn’t ‘make the overall message any clearer’ when the Scottish Government ‘jumped the gun’ and added Greece to its quarantine list.

Strategy

Boris Johnson opted to give Holyrood further emergency powers at the outset of the pandemic, rather than pursue a unified national strategy. While the fournations approach appeared sensible at first, it was only as good as the faith of those running it, and in the case of Miss Sturgeon, her divisive, tribal instincts got the better of her soon enough.

The leeway that devolution granted the SNP to take different choices in Scotland appears to have become a strategy to take different choices for the sake of it, and for political purposes.

Shunting elderly people into care homes, fully aware of the potential consequences, may be the most morally indefensible aspect of her Government’s response to Covid-19, but the refusal to rule out quarantining English people coming to Scotland remains the primary political outrage.

At a time when national unity was called for, when it was essential that no one group of people be stigmatised, Miss Sturgeon failed to rise above partisanship and pandering. The lack of co-ordination, the confusion, the harm to the economy, and the opportunism of political pot-stirrers make the case for a better way of handling this and future emergency scenarios. The UK Parliament should consider legislating for the co-ordination of government in times like these.

This would involve Parliament and UK ministers taking temporary control of relevant devolved competencies to ensure a coherent and effective response to a national emergency. These might include epidemics and pandemics; terrorism and war; catastrophic weather events and major industrial disputes; disruption to transport and to food, fuel and medicine supply chains.

In the current fight against Covid-19, it could mean ministers setting policy on areas such as airport screening and testing in general; air bridges and internal border crossings; the scope and timing of lockdown measures; infection control protocols; and statistics and data. Ministers may also require the power to issue regulations, directions and guidance to NHS Scotland, NHS Wales and Health and Social Care Northern Ireland.

The overriding objective would be to remove all barriers to swift and straightforward management of coronavirus and similar outbreaks. UK ministers would be able to take targeted action within a single framework. No more political games, no more playing Scotland and England off against one another. This would not be an encroachment on devolved powers, but rather a recognition that some situations simply require a single government to be in charge. Airport testing, for example, will struggle to operate effectively if only some UK airports are using it. There are already structures that nominally allow ministers from the four governments to co-operate. The Joint Ministerial Committee seldom meets but during the pandemic devolved ministers have attended Cobra (the Civil Contingencies Committee) meetings and Ministerial Implementation Groups, though the Institute for Government notes that both have since fallen by the wayside.

National emergency legislation should be accompanied by the creation of a National Emergency Committee, chaired by the Prime Minister. Unlike Cobra, it would meet regularly in non-emergency times to plan, prepare, advise, share information, organise training drills and establish relationships for future incidents. Those attending would include ministers from the devolved governments, as well as representatives from the police, fire and health services.

Consensus

When an emergency situation did arise, the committee would co-ordinate the implementation of government decisions in each nation. Ultimately, the Prime Minister would decide but the committee could help to ensure there was consensus and compromise. UK ministers would be forbidden from using a crisis as a pretext to legislate or issue directives in areas not relevant to the emergency at hand.

Temporarily transferring powers to the UK Parliament would take the constitutional politics out of coronavirus, a matter that should never have been allowed to become politicised in the first place.

National emergencies demand a national response, and Covid-19 more than qualifies. Four governments pursuing four different strategies, and with ill-motivated actors determined to use this moment for divisiveness, clearly does not work. The question of airport testing amply demonstrates how a one-nation approach could function, giving airlines and the tourism industry the clarity and confidence they need to get through what is, for them, an existential crisis.

The next time we face an emergency like this, we should face it as one nation. Our response will be all the better for it.