Billions for Scots as PM bids to save Union

Transport, education and PR war at centre of Johnson’s blueprint to thwart Sturgeon

BORIS JOHNSON is planning to spend billions of pounds on new road and rail links and treating Scottish patients on English NHS beds in a desperate counter offensive against Nicola Sturgeon.

The blueprint to save the Union, the first steps of which will be activated days after a feared SNP landslide this week, will also offer student exchanges between UK nations and see diplomats ordered to make the case against Scottish independence in foreign capitals.

Whitehall lawyers have also been ordered to sharpen their pens to fight in court any attempt by the SNP to call a referendum without the consent of the UK Government amid fears that nationalists could win a Scottish parliament majority this week.

Mr Johnson will chair a Downing Street meeting of senior Cabinet ministers including Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, and Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, this week, along with the secretaries of state for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, to finalise their cross-government response plan to Thursday’s vote.

While the Tories are expected to do well in the English local elections, and even clinch an historic victory over Labour in the Hartlepool by-election, there are real fears of big gains for the SNP in Scotland and for Plaid Cymru in Wales.

Several Cabinet ministers and senior figures close to Mr Johnson this weekend privately expressed their grave fears at the prospect of a big win for Ms Sturgeon who – Downing St sources fear – could try to order a new independence referendum as soon as the result is announced.

One senior source said that the result was likely to be “bloody awful” in Scotland. One minister said that the SNP was viewing Thursday’s vote as “a referendum on a referendum”.

“There is no room for complacency. We are in a bare knuckle fight,” the source said. Another Cabinet minister privately advocated voting for other unionist parties than the Conservatives to see off the SNP threat. They said people should “vote for parties that will save the union and avoid Scotland going into the chaos of economic uncertainty at a time when we have to build back better under Covid”.

The hope is that if the SNP fails to win a majority of the votes, it will stop calls for a second referendum in their tracks. The minister said: “If you have a combined Lib-Lab-Con vote of over 50 per cent, then that is very significant.”

Mr Gove’s team at the Cabinet Office, working with the Cabinet ministers in charge of the devolved regions of the UK, has been working on plans to strengthen the Union.

The strategy is currently to brazen out an SNP win and focus on fighting the pandemic by not wielding what one minister described as a “clunking fist”.

Instead the blueprint will use powers given to London in the UK Internal Market Act to spend billions of pounds on road, rail and other transport infrastructure.

A “Union connectivity review” by Sir Peter Hendy, the Network Rail chairman – to be published by July – is likely to recommend higher capacity and better journey times on train journeys between England and Scotland, and major improvements to the A1(M).

It is also likely to recommend better connections for passengers from the new HS2 line to Scotland and North Wales.

The Hendy review will also assess the feasibility of a “fixed link” – a bridge or more probably a tunnel – between Scotland and Northern Ireland.

As part of this cross-government approach, Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, has ordered diplomats to make the case for the UK overseas.

Ministers are also looking at using the new Turing scheme – which

replaced the European Union’s Erasmus programme – to pay for students to study in different parts of the UK.

Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, is working on plans to help the NHS in Scotland with a backlog caused by the Covid crisis to treat patients in English hospitals.

A rumoured new Act of Union, making it explicit that the Government in London must agree to an independence referendum, will now not be in next week’s Queen’s Speech.

The Government’s legal hand was strengthened last week when Appeal Court judges refused a legal bid by a campaigner seeking a decision on whether Scotland can hold a second independence referendum without Westminster’s consent.

The long-running case had seen Martin Keatings ask the court to declare that the Scottish parliament has the power to legislate for another vote.

Number 10 sources said the blueprint was based on plans set out by Oliver Lewis, the former Vote Leave campaigner forced out of Downing Street in February just two weeks after taking over Number 10’s Union unit.

Mr Johnson is this week expected to say that whatever the result in the elections, it is the wrong time to prepare the ground for another independence referendum. A government source told The Sunday Telegraph: “It would be completely reckless to have a referendum in the midst of a global pandemic and the inevitable long road to recovery.

“Scotland is vital to the UK’s recovery as a whole. Families aren’t sitting at home worrying about the constitution. They’re worried about how their kids can catch up on months of lost learning.”

News of the details of the blueprint will calm fears that Number 10 did not have a plan to tackle the SNP in the event of a strong performance by the separatist party.

One source familiar with the workings of Whitehall had told The Sunday Telegraph had complained that there was “there is no central coordinating function for the Union”.

The source added: “All you ever hear is that ‘Michael Gove is handling it’. Michael is extremely capable but it is like saying in World War Two ‘we don’t have an army, we don’t have any spy networks, we don’t have any resources but don’t worry Winston has got this’.”

“If you are going to fight to preserve the union you have got to recognise that you are in competition with an organised adversary in the SNP and the Scottish government.”