Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Randerson

Committee stage
Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I start by apologising to the House, as I wrongly said previously that nursing associates are not regulated. Actually, the Nursing and Midwifery Council now holds the register of those who meet those criteria.

In moving Amendment 56A, I am grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd for his support. We have already had a discussion about exactly which regulators are affected by this Bill. There are two regulating bodies based in Wales that this legislation would affect: the Education Workforce Council and Social Care Wales. There is no valid reason whatever that the Westminster Government should have a say over these bodies, as they operate in wholly devolved areas.

The letter previously referred to, which was sent by the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, to the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town and Lady Noakes, concerning the professions and regulators within scope of the Bill, exemplifies a key concern that my amendment tries to address. The letter failed to clarify that the Education Workforce Council is a Wales-only regulator, but also failed even to mention Social Care Wales. This was clearly a mistake, as we have now heard, and I hope it has been corrected, but it also flags a wider issue: Wales and Welsh bodies are clearly an afterthought for this Government when considering this Bill.

In its current state, I fail to see how the Welsh Government would recommend that the Senedd consent to the Bill, unless a number of issues are satisfactorily resolved. Clauses 1, 3 to 6, 8 and 10 confer various regulation-making powers for different purposes on the “appropriate national authority”. Of particular and cross-cutting concern to all these clauses is the way “appropriate national authority” has been defined by Clause 14. This means that the powers of the Welsh Ministers, along with those of the other devolved Governments, are exercisable concurrently by the Secretary of State or Lord Chancellor. Hence, the Secretary of State or Lord Chancellor could make provision, through regulations, on matters that fall within devolved competence.

In addition, as we have heard, Clause 13 contains provisions that mean that the powers to make regulations, conferred by Clauses 1 to 6, include powers to modify primary legislation, such as UK Acts of Parliament and Senedd Acts, as well as secondary legislation. The combination of concurrent functions and Henry VIII powers means that the Secretary of State could exercise these regulation-making powers to amend Senedd Acts and regulations made by Welsh Ministers. While Ministers may claim they do not intend to use these concurrent powers in areas of devolved competence, the wording of the Bill does not reflect this sentiment. The Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor would be able to exercise these powers in devolved areas without requiring any consultation with, or consent from, Welsh Ministers. That is clearly unacceptable.

Clause 14(5) requires Welsh Ministers, when exercising the regulation-making powers in the Bill, to obtain the consent of a Minister of the Crown when such regulations would, if made in an Act of the Senedd, require the Minister of the Crown to consent under Schedule 7B to the Government of Wales Act 2006. This effectively imports the restrictions imposed by paragraphs 8 to 11 of Schedule 7B to the 2006 Act into the regulation-making process. This restriction is unique to Welsh Ministers’ powers; Scottish and Northern Ireland Ministers are not subject to a corresponding restriction. However, it is not without precedent—a similar restriction was imposed by the Fisheries Act 2020.

What does this mean in practice? It means that the Welsh Ministers would, when making regulations using the powers conferred by this Bill, need to obtain the consent of a Minister of the Crown in certain circumstances, including where, for example, the regulations modified or removed a function exercisable by a reserved authority. Further, the removal of this provision via a future Act of the Senedd would also engage the Minister of the Crown’s consent requirements. Again, this is not a suitable state of affairs. Therefore, I must question whether some of these powers are even necessary.

For example, the power conferred by Clause 1 enables the “appropriate national authority” to make regulations that require specified regulators to consider and assess whether qualifications and experience gained outside the UK should be treated as if they were specified UK qualifications for the purposes of practising that profession in the UK. Both the Education Workforce Council and Social Care Wales already have powers enshrined by Welsh Ministers in Welsh legislation to recognise international qualifications and determine whether they are equivalent to UK qualifications, so I ask the Minister why the Bill now gives powers to override this. The solution, I suggest, is simply to accept my amendment.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. I shall take a moment to express my concern about the chaotic state of this Bill. I will not waste more of the time of this House by repeating what the noble Baroness said, but the omission of the social care regulator from the Minister’s letter was such an obvious error. I cannot help thinking that a lot of work still needs to be done to make this Bill ready to pass into legislation.

As the noble Baroness has said, as the Bill is drafted, the regulator confers a suite of regulation-making powers on the appropriate national authority. Welsh Ministers are that authority for the devolved professions and have a right to be fully recognised as that, not to have to ask for permission from the UK Government nor to have their existing powers overridden by this legislation. According to the Bill, those powers are to be exercised concurrently with the Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor, who could legislate in devolved areas and, as the Bill stands, would not need the consent of Welsh Ministers on those regulations.

It is worth adding that the situation in Wales is always slightly more complex, because of the nature of Welsh devolution; it started from a bad place, has moved forward significantly in gaining clarity and logic, but is not 100% there yet. There are areas where Welsh Ministers have some Executive powers that are not reflected in the legislative powers of the Senedd, and that has to be recognised.

The reassurance that we received from the noble Lord the Minister—I realise that the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist, will respond to this group of amendments—that the power to override Welsh Ministers would not normally be taken is of no great reassurance to us, because the UK Government have said that in the past and then overridden the decision of the Senedd or the wishes of Welsh government Ministers.

This is a serious issue for the Government and this Bill. I warn them that, as the Bill stands, the Government will not get consent from the devolved Administrations or the Senedd in Wales. They have to take that into account as, to get this on to the statute book, they must start by overriding Welsh Ministers and Senedd powers.

Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Randerson

Committee stage
Wednesday 9th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, this is a very interesting group of amendments because, as far as I can see, it is about addressing the domestic skills shortage. I do not think anyone should be under any illusion about the extent to which there now is a skills shortage. I am going to address this purely across health and social care, which is the area that I know about. I am not going to touch on law and so on.

There is a skills shortage now, particularly among clinical scientists. These are not qualified doctors; they are scientists who are now working in the clinical arena, often carrying a great deal of clinical responsibility. As medicine progresses, and as clinical sciences progress, there will be more of these people coming forward who have very narrow but highly specialised skills. I have already mentioned the physician assistants and anaesthesia assistants. Anaesthesia—and I say this having trained for a time in anaesthetics myself—is not a straightforward discipline. Things can go wrong very rapidly, and the responsibility carried by somebody with this skill set is enormous, because somebody’s life depends on it. They need to know what they are doing all the time. Currently, this group of assistants are not registered. I use that as an example because there will be others, including people working in fields such as cardiology and radiology—in all kinds of interventional areas. Then there are those working in the diagnostic fields who are clinical scientists. If they get something wrong, the diagnostic label attached to a patient will be wrong, the treatment will be wrong, and that patient’s life may be not only damaged but lost. If that original diagnostic test is not properly conducted, the mistake is repeated all down the line. I have a major concern, therefore, about the domestic shortage of clinical scientists. We used to have a good supply of people who wanted to come here from Europe. Now, those from Europe have been returning to Europe, but people from Europe no longer want to apply to come to the UK. That is aggravating the existing gaps in the service.

I have added my name to Amendments 20 and 21, and I fully support the requirement for others to be consulted. In all these fields, there is increasing interdisciplinary working. Although the registration of doctors is held separately to that of nurses, midwives, physios and so on, they must in fact work as a team and there must be cross-fertilisation of skills and competencies. We need to invest in UK training to upskill our own professionals—hence Amendment 21. Amendment 21 may lead the way to credentialling, which has been suggested as a way forward across the different healthcare disciplines, whereby people develop highly specialised skills and are credentialled in one particular area, rather than having to go back to their baseline qualification to apply for a post. I also wonder whether the Bill itself has been drafted as it has to push forward credentialling. I would be grateful if the Minister was able to clarify whether that has been behind some of the drafting, particularly in Clause 2.

Amendment 26 stresses the autonomy of the regulator. I would have thought, from the comments we have heard about the Government’s respect for the autonomy of the regulator, that they would wish to accept that amendment, although I do not have my name on it—it is in the name of other noble Lords.

On Amendment 28, again I would hope that the reciprocal arrangements between regulators would be in the Bill itself, to ensure that there is cross-disciplinary working and an interchange of standards. It would be a real mistake to have standards for a certain procedure, or way of doing things, that vary depending on the background—the initial qualification, possibly decades old—of that professional. That would mean that, if they came up through a nursing background they would somehow be expected to operate at a lower standard when they are, as a sole operator, doing a diagnostic procedure such as a gastrostomy, and that the skills and competencies required of them to do that procedure would be different from those required of someone with a medical degree. They should not be: there should be one standard for the procedure—for the patient—and, if it is complicated, it may well be that it gets handed on to the person with the medical degree.

This is, therefore, a very important set of amendments, and I am most interested to hear the Government’s response to them.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister emphasised that the UK wanted to retain mutual recognition of EEA qualifications, and my noble friend Lord Purvis disputed some of that. Whatever led us to the current situation, shortages are a real problem. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, just mentioned, the impact of the lack of recognition is very serious in some professions.

I shall give noble Lords an example: there are around 22,000 EEA-qualified doctors licensed to practise in the UK, although a significant number of them will have returned home, or at least left the UK, in recent months and years. Nurses, in particular, have gone home in large numbers. In contrast to those 22,000 doctors, only about 2,000 UK doctors are licensed to practise in the EEA, so the impact of that decision not to have mutual recognition falls much more heavily on the UK than on the EEA. We are one country with an impact of 22,000, versus 28 countries with an impact of only 2,000 UK-trained doctors.

However, I am pleased to have the opportunity as a result of these amendments to emphasise that the Government have to get a grip on workforce planning generally. There are amendments in this group that refer to the importance of working far beyond reliance on foreign-trained doctors and professionals generally. The Government have to fund an expansion of university and medical school places and increase the number of places on training courses in a wide range of professions where there are shortages.

Judging by statements in the impact assessment, the Government’s purposes seem to waiver. They seem not to have made up their mind about whether regulators can continue to operate independently and autonomously or should be part of a co-operative effort to address skills shortages. This will partly be addressed by international trade agreements. This group of amendments incorporates some ideas that offer the opportunity for greater clarity. Amendment 20, which I support, ensures consultation with regulators, so that it is not the job of the Government alone to decide whether there is a shortage.

One example is from the information that I received in preparation for these debates. The British Dental Association makes the point that in healthcare professions, patient protection must remain the overarching aim. It points out that the current barriers to work in the UK for overseas-qualified dentists include the need, once they are registered, to undertake up to one year of additional training in dental practices. I know this, in part, from my experience of regularly going to the trainee doing one year’s practice at my local dental practice. These opportunities are apparently very rare and difficult to obtain because they involve costs to the practice hosting the training dentist and costs to the new dentists themselves, so any supposed shortage of new dentists in this country would not be resolved by the simple measure of encouraging more registrants. That is the point of the BDA’s comments.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Randerson

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 2nd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, I will be very brief. I have added my name to his amendments, which simply reiterate the need for the CMA to consult the devolved Administrations, as well as the Secretary of State, and to obtain consent. They emphasise the importance of respecting devolution. I say to the Government that small things count. They guarantee good and fair government. It is important that the Government take note of the tone of the debates this evening and pay that respect to devolution in the terms in which the CMA operates in the future.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB) [V]]

My Lords, these amendments are part and parcel of the approach that my noble and learned friend Lord Thomas and I, and indeed the Welsh Government, have advocated. It seems essential to ensure that the office for the internal market is genuinely independent and accountable, on a basis of equality, to institutions in all four parts of the UK.

I want to take this opportunity to seek clarification on some of the powers that the Government propose to give the office. I understand that it would be able to compel persons to provide information and impose financial penalties on those who do not. I can see why these powers are necessary for the Competition and Markets Authority when it investigates matters of anti-competitive practices which possibly violate the criminal law. However, can the Minister please explain why the powers are necessary in the very different circumstances of providing independent advice on the potential internal market implications of measures proposed by a Government?

More specifically, one point in particular needs clarification. It is my understanding that devolved Ministers could not be compelled to provide such information, as, like UK Ministers, they are covered by Crown immunity. However, I am informed that such immunity does not extend to the devolved legislatures, meaning that the Senedd Commission could be compelled to provide information and fined if it did not. This seems wholly unacceptable, and I seek clarification.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Randerson

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, for his words in support of this amendment, which has my name attached to it. I reiterate the words of my noble and learned friend Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, who has made it clear that we are seeking to persuade the Government to think again.

I want to respond to some of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport. Our amendment is not prescriptive; it simply requires that if there is a forum, it should meet regularly, but it does not stipulate how often it should meet. Meeting means face-to-face discussion, and the forum is there to discuss the means of mitigating the impact on the constituent parts of the United Kingdom of the economic and security aspects envisaged in the future relationship. It is to avoid problems arising in the future.

We have already heard that negotiations with the EU are likely to result in agreements that have a very direct impact on many aspects of devolved competence. I would like to highlight just a few of these, some of which are very close to my heart.

The first is the capacity of Welsh universities to access EU research funds and collaborative projects in the future. Over the last 20 years, access to these funds, and to the networks they have generated, has proved critical to boosting the research capacity of Welsh higher education institutions, including medical research. Indeed, a finding from Cardiff University made headlines yesterday about new ways to manage cancers. We have been reliant on, and have built on, the funds we have accessed. The interaction between projects funded by research and development framework programmes and those funded by structural funds has been particularly important, as the Welsh Government have demonstrated in their publication on research and development after Brexit. Whether and how the UK, and therefore Wales, can access these funds will be determined by the negotiations with the EU.

The second aspect—whether there will be any reciprocal arrangements in future between the EU and the UK to access health services—is again a matter for the negotiations. I would support such arrangements, but it needs to be recognised that if such commitments are made by the UK Government, it is the Welsh NHS that will have to pick up the cost of treatment provided in Wales.

The third issue is procurement rules. Procurement is a devolved matter, and the Welsh Government are certainly interested in strengthening the way in which procurement can support, rather than undermine, local purchasing. But we know that the EU, as part of the insistence on maintaining a level playing field, will start from the position that its approach to procurement must continue even post Brexit. Wales needs to have a voice in the discussion within the UK negotiating team about any trade-off between flexibility on procurement and unfettered access to the EU market.

I could give many more examples: the future of state aid rules governing the assistance which the Welsh Government may give to Welsh businesses; access to European markets for Welsh agri-food products, such as lamb, beef and seafood; and whether or not Welsh students and pupils will have access to the Erasmus+ programme of student exchanges—to name but a few.

The key point is that the Welsh Government and the Senedd will be bound by the outcomes of the negotiations, which will begin in only a few weeks. We have already heard that Ministers of the Crown have the powers to force the devolved institutions to comply if they disagree with these outcomes. In these circumstances, it surely makes sense for the Government to start from the position where the default is to reach agreement with the devolved Administrations in the approach to negotiations. Otherwise, I fear that the result will be bitter and very prolonged conflict between the devolved institutions and the Government, which would seriously threaten the union itself.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendment and respectfully disagree with some of the sentiments expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. The Government can no longer afford the luxury of an underdeveloped and informal arrangement with the devolved Administrations. The proposed JMC needs to function properly and to meet regularly—ideally, frequently—to deal with the details of EU negotiations and future relationships with the EU.

If the Government want to maintain the union, which I believe they strongly do, they will need to treat the devolved Administrations with the respect that they deserve. Not least it is an issue of common sense. It is often not obvious to civil servants and Ministers here what impact their negotiations will have on the devolved Administrations. Very often it is simply a sin of omission: a failure to understand the full detail and significance of devolved powers and their impact on the countries concerned. That is understandable; after all, no one can be an expert in everything.

I have argued for years that the EU, as the origin of many rules and regulations and a source of funding, has taken the party-political edge off decisions it makes. As they are made on an EU-wide basis, they are not regarded as having party-political significance. Once that ends, I believe that the party politics will become quite vicious if we do not provide for proper channels of negotiation and discussion. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has laid out that issue very ably. She also talked about the impact on many aspects of life in Wales. She referred in some detail to universities. I declare an interest as chancellor of Cardiff University, but I am aware that it looks constantly and in detail at the impact of each negotiation on the life of that university, on research funding and on research partnerships with institutions in Europe.

There is also the impact on Wales of the proposed, and rather confused, arrangements for Northern Ireland. As that agreement works its way through—I point out to noble Lords that the Government seem to have no understanding of what it means—it is bound to have a strong impact on Wales. The Minister will know that I am not given to flights of nationalist fantasy, nor is there any sympathy on these Benches for independence, either in Scotland or in Wales. However, bearing in mind again the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, I urge the Government to be careful what they wish for. I am well aware that there are many, both at official and at ministerial level, who still regard devolution as a bit of nuisance, yet another hurdle to be overcome and an unnecessary level of complexity, but it is well established and in Scotland nationalist sympathies are very strong. They could grow stronger in Wales if this is not sorted neatly and effectively.

At the very least, officials and Ministers here often do not understand the full implications of the decisions they make. That is what is behind this attempt by the Government to write the devolved Administrations out of the picture. It is easier to ignore them than to pay them particular attention. I say to the Government that if they succeed in ignoring the devolved Administrations, they may well live to regret it.

Human Transplantation (Wales) Act 2013 (Consequential Provision) Order 2015

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Randerson

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Wales Office (Baroness Randerson) (LD)]

My Lords, the order was laid before this House on 21 January 2015 and is made under Section 150 of the Government of Wales Act 2006, which allows for amendments to be made to primary and secondary legislation in consequence of provisions made by an Assembly Act. The order is made as a consequence of the Welsh Government’s Human Transplantation (Wales) Act 2013, which was passed by the National Assembly for Wales on 2 July 2013. I shall refer to this as the 2013 Act.

The 2013 Act changed the way in which consent for the purposes of transplantation is to be given for the donation of organs and tissue in Wales. From 1 December 2015, after death, a person’s consent will be deemed to have been given in most cases, unless they had expressed a wish for or against donation. The notion of “appropriate consent” from the Human Tissue Act 2004, which I shall refer to as the 2004 Act, is therefore replaced by two concepts in Wales: “express consent” and “deemed consent”.

The order makes provision to amend the 2004 Act to allow for organs and tissue donated in Wales under the deemed consent regime of the 2013 Act to be used in transplantation procedures undertaken in England and Northern Ireland. It will also ensure that a person appointed to act as a representative for the deceased, under either the 2013 Act or the 2004 Act, will be recognised whether the transplantation activity takes places in Wales, England or Northern Ireland. Finally, the order also amends the Quality and Safety of Organs Intended for Transplantation Regulations 2012, to make reference to the deemed and express forms of consent that will soon take place in Wales.

In preparing the order, the Wales Office has worked closely with the Department of Health as well as the Welsh Government. We are all agreed that the provisions in this order are necessary to ensure that the new Welsh organ donation regime interacts with the existing regime in other parts of the UK. The order is therefore important to the UK. Without the order, when the deemed consent system comes into force in Wales at the end of this year, it would not be possible to use organs, tissue and cells donated under deemed consent in Wales for the benefit of patients in England and Northern Ireland. The order does not extend to Scotland. The Scottish Government have confirmed that no amendments are required to Scottish legislation for organs, tissue and cells taken under the deemed consent regime of the 2013 Act to be transplanted in Scotland. Deemed consent is not being introduced in England or Northern Ireland as a result of this order.

The order demonstrates the UK Government’s continued commitment to work with the Welsh Government in order to make the devolution settlement work. I hope noble Lords will agree that the order is a sensible use of the powers in the Government of Wales Act 2006 and that the practical result is something to be welcomed. I commend the order to the Committee.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for the way that she succinctly introduced this important order.

I must declare an interest as president of the BMA. Since 1999, it has been BMA policy that we should move to what is often called an opt-out or deemed consent process. Indeed, I was also part of the move to create the opportunity for preferential donation to a relative in the event of there being a family member in need of an organ when there was a tragedy within that family. I understand from NHS Blood and Transplant that that is now being used approximately three or four times a year and actually working very well. My other interest is that I tried to introduce a Bill for a single kidney deemed consent, which did not get anywhere but did, I think, push the process further down the road.

The order is obviously important. We know that, every day in the UK, three people die waiting for a donated organ. The change under the 2013 Act should hopefully change the situation in Wales. But of course there is concern that Wales may become, if you like, a net donor of organs to the rest of the UK. My questions relate to that possibility.

First, what steps are the Government taking to increase the number of donors in England? Secondly, are the Government planning to review the Human Tissue Act 2004? Given that we now have these developments in the legislation in Wales, are the Government willing to facilitate an informed public debate about opt-out in England?

My other concern relates specifically to the cost, which will be borne by Wales. For the 2013 Act in Wales to work well, it will increase pressure on intensive care beds and it has been predicted that there will be a need to increase intensive care provision as a result of pushing up the number of donors and holding patients while the processes are gone through. That cost will be borne by NHS Wales. Is that increased cost going to be considered by NHS England and reimbursed in some way to NHS Wales? The cost-saving of somebody receiving an organ for transplant will be a cost-saving to NHS England, not NHS Wales. We know that there are significant cost-savings, quite apart from quality of life and life expectancy, if there is a successful transplant. I am grateful to the Minister for having met me and discussed this previously and understand that the cost of restructuring the donor register will be shared between England and Wales. But that is a one-off cost and will be quite small, whereas the relative cost to Wales for organs may be much higher and ongoing over many years, until such time as England and Northern Ireland follow suit.

Can the Minister also confirm that there will be no adverse effect on the use of organs donated in England, Northern Ireland or Scotland for patients in Wales if there is a very good match? Will the fact that we will have a different consent procedure, which will allow organs to go from Wales, also allow organs to come into Wales? That will become particularly important in paediatrics, where the size of the organ is important, as well as the tissue match of the organ.

Finally, last week I was privileged to host the signing of a memorandum of understanding between NHSBT and the MOHAN Foundation from India. The MOHAN Foundation has been working to push up the consent rate when families are approached and has done it very successfully. It has consent rates consistently over 60%, whereas in the black and minority ethnic community, particularly the Asian community—which has a very high demand for organs because of damage from diabetes; there are a lot of Asians on the transplant register awaiting transplant—the number of organs donated is remarkably low and at best hits 40% at times of agreement; in many areas it is much lower than that. Will the lessons that have been learnt over recruitment be supported and actively rolled out in a campaign aimed at those communities in England and Northern Ireland, but particularly in England, where the majority of those communities are, to make sure that the consent rate within those communities, where the genetic match would be much better, does go up, at least to equal the consent rate in the rest of England?

Wales: Commission on Devolution in Wales

Debate between Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Baroness Randerson

Monday 18th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson]

I know that the noble Lord is very conversant with the problems of the M4, and in the Newport area in particular. I am glad that he has welcomed the contribution that these changes will make to alleviating them.

The early part of the Statement set out the contribution that the UK Government have made to infrastructure in Wales, in particular railway infrastructure. The noble Lord needs to bear in mind that when an issue has been devolved the funding is devolved as well. If there are flaws in the devolution settlement in Wales, we have to look back to the Government of Wales Act 2006 and the original devolution settlement at the end of the last century. It has possibly been difficult in the past for the Welsh Government to deal with major infrastructure projects, which is exactly why we say that, as well as devolution of minor taxes, there needs to be a referendum to offer the people of Wales the opportunities given by the devolution of a portion of income tax.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

Given that the current settlement has been recognised as inadequately taking into account the high number of older people in Wales who are not economically active and the demands that those with multiple comorbidities put on health and social care, and given the widely acknowledged poverty of infrastructure of roads and other forms of communication, particularly IT and telephones, will the Government undertake to review the funding settlement that followed the Act so that, during the transition phase, there can be some correction in the perceived deficit in core funding to Wales?

[Baroness Randerson]

I remind the noble Baroness of the October 2012 joint statement in which the Welsh and UK Governments acknowledged the procedure that would be followed in future if Welsh funding were again to become unfair in terms of further convergence. The settlement has been set out very clearly in that joint statement, so it is important that she bears that in mind for future reference.