MICHAEL Gove is keeping Scotland in the dark as he again refuses to let MPs see Westminster’s long-delayed report on devolution, it is claimed.
Ministers have been sitting on the Dunlop Review since autumn 2019.
It was ordered by then-prime minister Theresa May in July that year after relationships between governments became increasingly difficult.
Former Scotland Office minister Lord Andrew Dunlop was asked to determine “whether UK Government structures are configured in such a way as to strengthen the working of the Union and to recommend changes where appropriate”.
Last summer a leak suggested the paper contained as many as 40 recommendations, including the suggestion that parts of Whitehall should move to the devolved nations and a “Union tsar” should be put in place.
In late 2020 UK ministers said the material would be published before the end of the year. It remains unpublished but claims have now surfaced that Boris Johnson may set up a Royal Commission on the UK constitution, including Scotland’s place in the Union.
READ MORE: MPs unite to demand Michael Gove publish secret Union review
The chairs of four key parliamentary committees – Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs (PACAC), Scottish Affairs, Welsh Affairs and Northern Ireland Affairs – wrote to Gove, the Cabinet Office Minister, earlier this month asking him to “confirm that the Government will be publishing the [Dunlop] Review and the response” in time for a joint evidence session on intergovernmental relations.
The MPs invited Gove to attend the session next week, and asked for an “alternative timescale” if he would not release the review.
In his official response, Gove told Pete Wishart, Simon Hoare, Stephen Crabbe and William Wragg he is “unable to commit to your proposed timeline”, adding: “We will publish the Dunlop Review in due course and ensure your committees have the appropriate time to consider before the joint session.”
Responding, PACAC member Ronnie Cowan, the SNP MP for Inverclyde, told the Sunday National: “Boris Johnson has no appetite for entering into any discussion that could possibly shine a light on the democratic deficit that exists between Westminster and the devolved parliaments.
“The delay in the publication of the Dunlop Review is just another example of the Tories’ contempt for Scotland.”
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