FORMER Welsh secretary John Redwood has defended Boris Johnson’s claims that devolution in Scotland has been a “disaster”, insisting he was “just stating the facts”.

The Tory MP for Wokingham spoke to Radio 5 live this morning, where he was asked if the Prime Minister’s comment made “a potent line for the next SNP manifesto”.

During the interview Redwood also insisted that how Scotland voted on Brexit was “irrelevant”.

The Brexiteer backed up the PM’s comment – which some Tories have been trying to distance themselves from this morning – and insisted Johnson is actually delivering more powers to the Scottish Parliament.

READ MORE: Boris Johnson slammed for claim devolution is 'disaster north of Border'

Referring to the 1997 devolution vote, Redwood told the programme: “The Conservative Party, in government, has fully accepted the result of that long-ago referendum, and we have been keen advocates of devolution ever since that was the clearly expressed view of the Scottish people and we’ve recently been expanding the powers of the devolved Scottish Parliament as we get powers back from Brussels.

“But the Prime Minister was quite right that Labour sold devolution as a way of getting rid of the nationalist threat as he saw it then and the opposite happened, it destroyed Labour as the governing party of Scotland and it gave the SNP a great platform. The Prime Minister was just stating the facts.”

Redwood was challenged on his position, with the presenter telling him: “It’s called self-determination, John Redwood.”

“I’m in favour of self-determination,” the MP insisted. “And that’s why we then granted the people of Scotland a referendum to see whether they really did want independence. We had a good long debate and they decided by quite a decent margin that they wished to stay part of the United Kingdom, that is the democratic way to proceed.”

The National:

The former minister was told his phrasing – that “we granted” the referendum in 2014 – had a “touch of the Marie Antoinettes about it”. Campbell added "people may find that haughty".

Redwood repeated the Tory catchphrase about the vote being once-in-a-generation, before being reminded that Brexit “changed that”.

His answer stunned Campbell. “No I don’t agree at all other than giving more powers to the devolved parliaments and assemblies of the United Kingdom, because we are taking back control as a United Kingdom,” the MP told listeners.

“The truth is the SNP are very cross because they’ve lost two referendums. They claim to like referendums but they lost the one on Scottish independence and then they lost the one on staying in the European Union.”

Campbell was taken aback. “They lost the one? They voted in Scotland .. in Scotland they voted to stay ..”

Redwood interrupted: “But that’s irrelevant to this purpose because it has to be a decision of the whole United Kingdom if Scotland had wanted to make their own arrangements in Europe they would have voted to have left the United Kingdom on that referendum.”

In 2016 Scotland voted to stay in the European Union, with 62% of people backing Remain. A poll carried out by Business for Scotland in the summer found that 63% of Scots support returning to the EU if they were offered the option in a referendum.

Meanwhile, Redwood’s insistence that independence is a settled matter comes after 14 consecutive polls put support for Yes ahead of No.

Reacting to the interview this morning, the Banff & Macduff SNP group wrote on Twitter: “Sir John Redwood MP (Con) holding Scottish voters in utter contempt this morning on the radio. He’s living in the wrong century.”

Meanwhile Welsh independence supporter @JeremyBrookman2 said the comments “sum up the attitude Westminster has to Scotland and Wales”, pointing to his use of words like “granted” when referring to devolution “like England owns us”.

Others agreed that Redwood’s language had come across as “haughty” as Campbell suggested on-air.