Four-nation summit on Covid-19 recovery postponed

The meeting had been due to include UK PM Boris Johnson, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford

A four-nation summit on Covid-19 recovery has been postponed amid a row between the Scottish, Welsh and UK governments.

Talks between the prime minister and the leaders of the devolved administrations were due on Thursday.

But Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford wrote to Boris Johnson asking for more clarity around the agenda, saying the discussion must be "meaningful".

A UK government spokesman said the delay to the talks was "disappointing".

The summit is to be rescheduled "as soon as possible", but no date has been set - with both sides blaming the other for not being sufficiently prepared.

• PM calls Covid recovery summit after SNP victory

Mr Johnson called the summit in the wake of the election results earlier this month, which saw Ms Sturgeon's SNP returned to government in Scotland and Mr Drakeford's Labour triumph in Wales.

The prime minister called for a "spirit of unity and cooperation" in building back from the Covid-19 crisis, and both first ministers said they would be happy to take part in the talks.

However there has been a row over the substance of the summit, with Ms Sturgeon and Mr Drakeford penning a joint letter to Mr Johnson criticising his office for sending a "very rough agenda".

In the letter - copied to Arlene Foster and Michelle O'Neill, the first and deputy first ministers of Northern Ireland - they made the case for "further discussion" to take place to make sure the talks could be "a meaningful discussion with substantive outcomes".

Mr Johnson's spokesman said it was "disappointing that the Scottish government and the Welsh government would prefer to delay this meeting so they have more time to prepare, especially given the scale of the challenge".

A spokesman for Ms Sturgeon hit back that "the summit would be going ahead tomorrow if the UK government were remotely prepared for it".

The row comes as Mr Johnson's former chief advisor, Dominic Cummings, told MPs that senior ministers and officials had "fallen disastrously short of the standards that the public has a right to expect of its government in a crisis like this".

Pressed on this at prime minister's questions, Mr Johnson said: "None of the decisions have been easy - to go into lockdown is a traumatic thing for a country. We have at every stage tried to minimise the loss of life."