BORIS Johnson's top civil servant has said that preserving the Union is now at the "forefront" of UK Government policymaking.
Simon Case, the head of the civil service and Cabinet Secretary, told a House of Lords committee that Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic have pushed keeping the Union together to be a much more important issue.
Case told the Lords' Constitution Committee that “the world of devolve and forget” that Westminster had been using has now ended.
He said: “If you’d asked me only a few years ago did I think that devolution or the Union was at the forefront of policymaking in Whitehall I would have said probably not.
“But actually, I think the experience of both Brexit and obviously more recently Covid means that so much more of government, so much more of policy, involves consideration of devolution or Union questions so much earlier in the process.
“In everything that we do we should be thinking about how it impacts on the Union.”
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Case previously served as Boris Johnson's permanent secretary until taking up the role of Cabinet Secretary in September 2020.
He went on to reject the idea that there needs to be a government minister for the constitution, as the Prime Minister - who appointed himself as Minister for the Union - is responsible for "thinking through Union matters".
He added: “The reality is that you are going to see the Prime Minister front and centre of maintaining the integrity of the Union and actually more importantly, getting all of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom operating fully together for the benefit of everybody who lives and works inside the United Kingdom.”
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Case also told the committee that he feels there is "great value" in having a single UK civil service for devolved governments and rejected the idea of a Scottish civil service.
He said: “This government’s position is very clear, we are best operating as one UK civil service across Westminster, UK Government, as well as Scotland and Wales.
“In talking to colleagues currently working in Scotland and Wales and elsewhere there’s certainly no clamour from civil servants for this, they think they benefit from being part of the wider UK civil service.”
During the same evidence session, Case also defended Johnson "marking his own homework" in relation to renovations of the Downing Street flat.
Critics have said that Johnson's role as the ultimate arbitrator of the ministerial code means he can make the decision on whether he broke it.
It comes as the Prime Minister’s ministerial standards adviser, Lord Geidt, is in the process of undertaking an investigation into how renovations on 11 Downing Street, where Johnson lives with his fiancee Carrie Symonds, were funded.
The cost of the work was reportedly £200,000.
Case argued that Britain’s unwritten constitution set out that “hiring and firing” powers in Government must rest with the Prime Minister, even in situations where that might appear “odd”.
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Case, when put to him that the current set-up allowed the Tory leader to “mark his own homework”, told the committee: “The role of ministers derives from a fundamental constitutional principle which is that ministers are appointed by the sovereign on the advice of the Prime Minister by the use of prerogative powers.
“So while we have now the distinguished Lord Geidt in the role of independent adviser – other people can get involved in the role of adviser, as the title makes clear – but under our constitutional settlement, the decision, the hiring and firing of ministers is an act by the sovereign on the advice of the Prime Minister.
“That is just one of our basic constitutional principles and sometimes people find that odd but that’s just the basics of our constitutional settlement.”
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