Boris Johnson to chair four-nation Covid recovery summit

Boris Johnson will chair a coronavirus recovery summit with the leaders of the devolved nations on Thursday afternoon.

The rearranged meeting was due to take place last week but was postponed after the first ministers of Wales and Scotland pulled out because they wanted it to be a “meaningful discussion with substantive outcomes”.

Both Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford subsequently wrote to the Prime Minister asking for more substance and clarity about the summit.

Johnson called for the meeting in the wake of the Welsh and Scottish parliamentary elections last month as he called for a united approach “to overcome the significant challenges of the Covid recovery”.

Ahead of the summit, Sturgeon called on the UK Government to “extend furlough, rule out a return to austerity and prioritise a just recovery from the pandemic, ensuring that pre-existing inequalities are not further exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis”.

The First Minister said: “We have done everything we can with the limited powers we have to tackle inequality and mitigate the impact the pandemic has had on peoples’ livelihoods, but we cannot allow that to be eroded as we enter the next phase of living with the virus.

“A return to the pre-pandemic austerity would be disastrous for jobs, for public services and for people and families across Scotland.

“As the UK Government hold the key financial levers to help us recover from this, I will be calling on it to commit to maintain public spending during the period of recovery, and to extend the furlough scheme for as long as it is needed to protect businesses and people who have been required to stop working to protect others, and I will be emphasising that it is managed sensitively in a way that supports longer-term recovery.

“I’ve been given assurances that this will be a meaningful discussion, and it must be. Working to recover from Covid cannot be a PR exercise – it must be a collaborative process that properly respects the devolution settlement.”

The virtual summit is due to be attended by the four nations’ first ministers and deputy first ministers, as well as chancellor Rishi Sunak, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove and the UK Government’s secretaries of state for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Gove said: “I am delighted that the leaders of the devolved administrations all responded positively to the Prime Minister’s invitation to join this important meeting on Covid recovery.

“Throughout the pandemic, we have worked together to stop the spread of the virus and to roll out life-saving vaccines.

“Our joint success has shown the world what we can achieve as a United Kingdom. We must take the same approach to the difficult challenge of rebuilding our economy and public services from the damaging impact of Covid-19.

“It will not be a quick or easy job, but we will all do better if we face the challenge together.”

Following the meeting’s postponement last week, a spokesman for the Scottish First Minister said: “The summit would be going ahead tomorrow if the UK Government were remotely prepared for it.

“As we and the Welsh Government made clear in our letter to the Prime Minister, what they had suggested was simply a PR exercise without proper substance.

“We have asked for a detailed agenda to be prepared for a serious meeting, which is what this subject deserves.”