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One of the key drivers of devolution has been the attempt to find Welsh solutions for Welsh problems - to diverge from the rest of the UK in ways that would benefit Wales.

And yet a poll of 2,016 people has revealed that many do not want this at all.

YouGov research commissioned by Cardiff and Edinburgh universities looked into people's attitudes to the constitutional changes taking place in the UK - and the enormous changes to the union that could result from Brexit.

And it found that the majority of people in Wales valued the union, and wanted the same policies to apply across it.

However many, particularly Brexit supporters, were not concerned about the fate of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

A majority of all Welsh respondents (51%) said the prize of taking back “control” meant Brexit would be “worth it” even if it led to a new Scottish independence referendum which saw a majority vote to leave the UK. This was the case for 88% of those who voted Leave in the 2016 referendum.

The survey also found that 46% of all respondents and 84% of Leave voters that the “unravelling of the peace process in Northern Ireland” would also be worth it for Brexit.

If the Scots vote to leave the UK after Brexit... You Gov

These were the policies that voters in Wales wanted to be the same across the UK

63% said university tuition fees should be the same across the UK.

69% said paying for the care of vulnerable old people should be the same;

70% wanted unemployment benefit to be the same

79% wanted punishment for young offenders to be the same

57% wanted the same prescription charges...

This is despite the fact that prescriptions in Wales are currently free - whereas people in England have to pay £8.80 for every prescription.

Despite a majority of people in Wales voting for Brexit, most people also want to stay in line with the EU on key issues

70% want mobile phone roaming charges and food hygiene standards to be the same between the UK and the EU

69% want the same littering policies

67% want health insurance for holidaymakers to be the same

59% want the same rules on free movement of skilled workers such as doctors,

43% want to stay aligned for “unskilled workers” like farm labourers.

This raises 'really profound questions about the nature of the union'

Cardiff University Professor Richard Wyn Jones said: “It is one thing, in a way, for respondents in England to be so casual because we know from other research that our English respondents tend to be less invested [in] the territorial integrity of the state than I think most of our political leaders might imagine, but you would have thought that in Wales there would be more concern...

"We find overwhelming numbers who say they are willing to see not only the end of the Northern Ireland peace process [but also] a second independence referendum and Scotland become independent – all of which raises really profound questions about the nature of the union and the ties that bind the union.”

The polling was conducted between May 30 and June 8 but is published at a time when the future of the Irish border is proving a key flashpoint in the Brexit negotiations.

Support for independence in Wales is significant but remains only a minority

Nearly a fifth of people (19%) supported independence for both Wales and Scotland – and 17% said England should become an independent country.

When it came to Northern Ireland, 31% of the Welsh respondents wanted to see a united Ireland; 36% wanted it to stay in the UK, while 8% backed an independent Northern Ireland.

Should Wales become an independent country? YouGov

Prime Minister Theresa May has stressed her determination to keep the UK together, but Professor Richard Wyn Jones of Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre said the results showed a lack of commitment to the union among Conservative voters.

The research found that 76% of Welsh and 77% of English Conservative voters considered a vote for Scottish independence a price worth paying for Brexit.

UK is 'most important union of all

Former Conservative Assembly leader Andrew RT Davies stressed the importance of the UK union to his party.

Responding to the findings, he said: “Obviously the Conservative party is the party of the union... What we know is Wales voted to leave the European Union [and] we’re getting on with that job and protecting the most important union of all which is the union of the United Kingdom.”

Here are other key findings from the research:

People think Wales is underfunded

There is strong feeling that Wales is not getting what it deserves when it comes to government spending.

Half (50%) of respondents said Wales did not get its fair share, with only 18% thinking the nation gets what it is entitled to. In contrast, 41% said England gets more than its fair share.

The decline of religion is laid bare

Wales is famed for its history of religious revivals, the hymn-singing that can still break out at rugby matches and its proud nonconformist chapel tradition.

But fewer than one in three people (32%) see themselves as belonging to “any particular religion”. nearly two-thirds (64%) say they do not.

Of those who are part of a religious tradition, nearly half (46%) attended services “almost never” – with just 13% doing so almost every week.

Prof Jones was not surprised by these findings.

He said: “I think there’s probably an explanation around the way that Anglicisation and secularisation have gone hand in hand with each other in Wales... I think that religious life in nonconformist Wales was closely tied to the language and so we’ve seen the decline of the Welsh language and religious observance go hand in hand and the kind of nonconformist hegemony being replaced by a kind of casual secularism.”