UK government Covid surveys included questions on union

The UK government asked questions about attitudes to the union as part of publicly-funded Covid-19 surveys.

The move was revealed during a recent court case where the government was found to have acted unlawfully in the award of a £560,000 research contract.

Market research agency Public First, run by former colleagues of Michael Gove, was paid to look into public understanding of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It was also told to ask questions about attitudes towards the UK union.

A government official told the court she believed this research could be done under the same contract as the pandemic surveys as it "had some links to Covid-19".

But the SNP claimed it was a "scandal" that emergency contracts had been used to carry out constitutional research, and called for a public inquiry.

• Government acted unlawfully over Covid contract

The UK government denied that any favouritism had been shown to Public First, which is run by former colleagues of Cabinet Office minister Mr Gove and Dominic Cummings, the former senior advisor to Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

However a judge said a failure to consider other firms for the contract could be seen as suggesting a "real danger" of bias.

Public First was initially taken on to run focus groups about the pandemic and the government's plans for economic recovery.

However this was extended in July 2020 to cover themes including "EU exit" and "attitudes to the UK union".

Court papers identified £98,000 having been spent on focus groups that month in various parts of the country - including Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness as well as Newcastle, Bristol and Manchester - to ask questions "relating to the government's post-coronavirus economic renewal work and matters relating to the UK union".

Michael Gove had asked for research to be carried out about attitudes to the union

In a witness statement published online, Catherine Hunt - who is "head of insight and evaluation" for the prime minister's office and Cabinet Office communications team - detailed how Public First was commissioned to run focus groups about "the core policy areas that are linked to the Covid Renewal programme".

She said that around the same time, she had received a separate but "urgent" request for "union-related research" from Mr Gove's office, and decided to ask Public First to do this work too.

She said "there was an element of Covid-19 to this testing which at the time we considered was sufficient to enable us to use the existing contract" at least initially, adding: "We as a team thought we could use them to start the work before returning to the procurement."

'Political research'

The Scottish government's own polling on attitudes to coronavirus included "rating of government" questions, where people were invited to compare whether the Scottish and UK administrations were doing a good or a bad job in dealing with the pandemic.

The Public First case was raised with Mr Johnson at his weekly Commons question session by SNP group leader Ian Blackford, who called for a "full public inquiry" into what he called a "gross misuse of public funds".

The MP said: "These emergency Covid contracts were supposed to be used for things like PPE for our brave doctors and for nurses fighting Covid.

"Instead, during the height of this deadly pandemic the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster used these emergency contracts to commission political research on attitudes to the UK union."

Mr Johnson replied: "I can't think of a better use of public funds than making sure that the whole of the UK fights the Covid pandemic together.

"I believe that the story of these last two years has shown the incalculable value of our union and the strength of our union, and we are better together."