Immigration: Earned Settlement
Lord Davies of Gower Excerpts(6 days, 6 hours ago)
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Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing the Statement to your Lordships’ House this evening and for the opportunity to ask questions on the Statement.
It has been over a year since the Government announced their plans to establish a “fairer pathway to settlement”. The Home Secretary is to be commended for having the courage to stand up to the open borders advocates in her own party and proposing the original earned settlement plans. I applauded those plans when they were announced last year. Although nowhere near strong enough, they were at least a serious recognition of the scale of the problem and what needs to be done to solve it.
When the original policy was released, there were no exemptions to the earned settlement route. Yet today we have heard that the Home Secretary has caved in to pressure from those same open borders left wingers on her Back Benches and in the unions. The result of this climbdown is that now over 250,000 low-wage care workers, and their dependents, will get to stay for a minimum of 10 years, with many getting settlement in five, and almost 75% getting to stay in the country for ever.
The costs of this reversal are significant. The Home Office’s document released last year revealed that the median salaries for care workers on the health and care visa were between £23,000 and £26,000 in the financial year 2023-24, which is significantly below the median full-time salary of £37,000. The OBR estimated that, as a result, they are likely to have a net negative fiscal and economic impact. This is because the amount of tax they will pay will never cover the amount they will take out of the system in NHS costs, education costs if they have children, and welfare claims. It is the British taxpayer who will pay for this policy reversal. That is in no way fair.
We have heard the arguments that this large cohort of migrants has “contributed” to our country, and, as such, they seem to have automatically earned the right to stay. But, of course, many of them have not contributed, at least not fiscally or economically. The Home Office itself has estimated the total cost of exempting care workers to be approximately £10 billion. If these workers intend to keep working in the sector, I would have thought there should be no issue with having to wait 10 to 15 years, like everyone else. It becomes an issue only if they are using that sector as a stepping stone to settlement, and ultimately citizenship, and are frustrated at being made to wait to leave their care job. They responded to economic incentives: they were given the chance to come to the United Kingdom to work and they took it. They are exactly the same as all other people who have come to our country on work visas. If the Government believe it is only fair to require settlement to be earned, it should be earned by everyone. Exempting this subset of people creates a double standard.
This is particularly true given that only 18% of those who responded to the Government’s consultation were British citizens; 73% of respondents were current visa holders. Yet the Government seem to have taken their opinions to be representative of the entire country. Well, of course people who are not British citizens would have negative views of the Government’s original policy, because they are the beneficiaries of the current regime. Unfortunately, we are now in a situation where our country’s immigration policy is being decided based on the views of those who are not even British citizens.
Bizarrely, the Home Secretary even said:
“I know that the people of this country wish to continue welcoming genuine refugees”.
We have a long history of generosity as a nation, whether that be towards Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s or to families fleeing Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine, but I suggest that most people, given the ongoing rate of illegal migration, do not support additional routes through which more refugees will come to Britain. We must get overall migration down before we even consider any loosening of our policy.
It seems to me that there are those in the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties who would have us believe that ever having had a visa ought to give a person the permanent and irrevocable right to stay in the country. This is not how the system works, nor how it ought to work. Being granted a work visa, whether that be a skilled worker or a health and care visa, is a privilege, not a right. Similarly, being granted indefinite leave to remain is a privilege, not a right. Just because a person has been allowed to come to the country, that does not mean they have the automatic right to stay here indefinitely. So I wholeheartedly agreed with the Home Secretary when she said in her Statement:
“Settlement … has therefore been a right accrued with little expectation of responsibility. I do not believe that this represents true fairness”.
The problem, of course, that she has broken her own test with this climbdown, because now the Home Secretary’s test of fairness applies to everyone but care workers, which is not fairness at all.
It says in the A Fairer Pathway to Settlement document that this is not about assimilation. I disagree. Assimilation into British culture should be the minimum prerequisite for any settlement. As my right honourable friend the leader of the Opposition has said, completely correctly, we may be a multiracial country but we should not be a multicultural country. The so-called diversity of cultures is a recipe for disaster.
A healthy society is built on trust. A shared culture is the underlying source of mutual understanding between groups of people who have no other way of relating to one another. It is, in that way, a source of trust. Without a single, common national culture, and without the trust that flourishes from it, we risk undermining our future as a peaceful, harmonious and functioning society.
That is why the debate matters so much. It is not just the fiscal cost of the Government’s surrender on immigration, although that is significant. It is the long-term social and cultural impacts that matter too. On both these tests, the Government have demonstrably failed.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, I too thank the Minister for bringing the Statement to the House. He will know only too well how difficult and complicated issues around migration are, and I certainly saw that during deliberations on a report on immigration being put together by the Justice and Home Affairs Select Committee, which I have the honour to chair. Certainly, not all members agreed with all our final recommendations, but we were of course unanimous, as we are on these Benches, on wanting more action to tackle small boat crossings and the criminal gangs behind them, so we welcome the plans for more safe and legal routes.
On these Benches, and among many members of the committee, one of the greatest concerns about the original proposals from the Government was around plans to retrospectively change the rules for those already in the country. So we welcome some of the announcements about retrospection in the Statement, which row back from earlier plans. Whether they were brought about by our committee’s report or by rebellions on the Back Benches of the Labour Party or within the Cabinet, I suppose we will never know.
It is welcome that some social care workers—those earning £25,000 a year—BNO visa holders, members of the Armed Forces, the Windrush cohort and others will now have no change to the time taken to get to ILR. Other parts of the Statement are welcome: taking family income in the round into account rather than individual incomes, as the committee proposed; taking maternity leave into account so that a dropped income during that period does not lengthen the time to ILR; and allowing children to claim ILR with no rule changes. But there is nevertheless much to be concerned about.
Can the Minister confirm that around half a million people will get settled later than planned—later than they were originally told and promised? Does the Minister accept that many migrants have made significant long-term decisions—about housing, jobs, children’s education and so on—with the expectation of acquiring ILR after five years? Is extending their time retrospectively not a huge broken promise, and one that will make it much harder for people to settle and integrate if their certainty has been removed?
The Select Committee pointed out that the planned income thresholds, which earn a reduction in qualifying time to ILR, are not linked to migrants’ net fiscal impact but instead set at the higher and upper income tax rate thresholds. As a result, some migrants who are net contributors to public finances would still be required to wait 10 years to acquire ILR. We argue that proposals should focus less on income and more on making a positive contribution, and that the income levels that lead to a reduction in ILR pathways should be set not according to income tax thresholds but on the advice of the Migration Advisory Committee. Can the Minister explain why the Select Committee’s advice was ignored? Does he not recognise that sticking with tax thresholds means that somebody in London and somebody in Gateshead can be doing exactly the same job, but one can be on a five-year route and one on a 10-year route? Does the Minister really think that is fair?
There are other concerns about increasing the length to achieve ILR. First, would somebody facing a much longer ILR wait, not least those facing 30 years, do anything other than drop out into the shadow economy and simply stay out of touch with the Home Office? Secondly, what incentives are there to make efforts to integrate into our society? The Statement is absolutely silent about crucial issues around integration. Requiring a higher standard of English is all well and good, and we support it, but what are the Government doing to boost provision of English language tuition, which is in very short supply at the current time? What are they doing about changing the frankly appalling Life in the UK Test of people’s understanding about our country, when its questions in the past have included things such as: what is the height of the London Eye?
Finally, people now have a no-debt requirement, including repaying the cost of their asylum accommodation, which will be capped at £10,000. We know that of those who were employed eight years after the grant, 37% were in full-time work, with a median earning of £23,000, with internal analysis of the published Refugee Integration Outcomes database showing that 40% earned at least the minimum wage. If somebody had a £23,000 income, they could perhaps just about pay £100 a month back to the Government. I doubt that is realistic, but let us assume they could. If they could, it would take them eight years and four months to pay back the £10,000 debt—so their ILR time would be not five years but eight years and four months, and it is very easy to see how much longer it is likely to be. What is the Minister’s answer to those 60% who are not earning even at the minimum wage?
These issues are simply not fair. On these Benches we hope very much that the Government will go away and think again before the final details are published next month.
Refugees: Community Sponsorship
Lord Davies of Gower Excerpts(1 week, 3 days ago)
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Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford for securing this debate. The right reverend Prelate asked what assessment the Government have made of the number of refugees who will be settled annually through community sponsorship. The honest answer so far, from what I can see, is that we do not know. In response to a Written Question that I asked on 5 October, the Minister said:
“The Government expects the total arrivals across the UKRS and the three new community sponsorship routes to number in the low hundreds at first”.
It is the words “at first” that concern me. What timeframe does that cover? Is it a few hundred people in the first year or the first three years? How many people do the Government believe will be able to come to Britain after this undefined initial phase? Do the Government even know how many people they want to bring into the country under these new schemes? The Minister must tell noble Lords how the cap will be set and by whom, whether Parliament will have a say, and what happens if the cap is exceeded. He must also say whether numbers will sit alongside a commitment to reduce overall migration.
Furthermore, in that same Answer, the Minister said:
“The Home Office works closely with the local authorities that volunteer to participate in the UKRS”.
Can I take that to mean that local authorities will have to house these refugees only if they volunteer to do so? If so, can the Minister rule out any local authority being forced to house refugees who enter the country under one of the new schemes if they do not wish to do so, or will we see a repeat of the current situation whereby local authorities have no say over where asylum seekers are housed?
The context matters. We are told that this scheme depends on illegal migration falling, so let us look at where it stands. More than 41,000 people crossed the channel in small boats in 2025. In the 12 months to June this year, around 33,000 did so. The Government point to a fall, and they are right that the number has fallen. However, 33,000 people in a year arriving in dinghies, in defiance of our laws and at the mercy of criminal gangs, is not a problem solved. The Government’s answer to this is to reopen the resettlement scheme, but to open the front door while the back door is still being forced open sends exactly the wrong signal to the people smugglers, the illegal migrants and, indeed, the British people.
What of the cost? The National Audit Office has estimated the cost of asylum accommodation at £15.3 billion over 10 years. Even after recent reductions, around 16,000 asylum seekers remain in hotels, and many thousands more are in other Home Office accommodation. Every one of those places is paid for by the taxpayer. The Government propose additional intakes and say that the sponsors will carry some of the burden. Can the Minister tell us what the total Treasury cost will be? What funding will be given to local authorities for school places, GP registrations and housing when a sponsorship arrangement falls through?
The Government’s policy of dispersing asylum seekers across the country has placed enormous pressure on small towns and rural communities that never asked to be at the centre of a national problem. Residents in places with one GP surgery and one primary school have found hundreds of newcomers placed among them with little warning and even less consultation. Local councillors and police have told us how hard it is to preserve cohesion in those circumstances. Whatever one thinks of the policy, those communities have a right to be heard. The Government are now asking those same communities to take on a further burden through sponsorship, and they are doing so before they have shown that they can manage the problem they already have.
Under these proposals, charities and non-profit organisations will be able to apply to become sponsors, and approved groups will be able to choose the refugees they support and take responsibility for their housing, integration and employment. That is a significant degree of trust to place in an organisation. Let me be plain: there have been a number of cases over many years of charities, mosques and NGOs that have hosted extremist speakers or whose trustees or associates have held views hostile to our way of life. The Charity Commission has opened statutory inquiries into such cases, and we have a duty to ask whether an organisation of that kind could become an approved sponsor with direct responsibility for vulnerable people who may depend on it for their housing, income and daily lives. This is even more important given that we know that the Iranian regime has been sending operatives to Britain on small boats. What is to say that they will not attempt to do so through the community sponsorship routes?
So I have a few specific questions to the Minister. Will every applicant be vetted against Charity Commission records and Security Service advice? Will trustees and key personnel be checked? Will there be ongoing monitoring, and will approval be withdrawn swiftly if concerns arise? Will the Government ensure that no sponsor, of any faith or none, is able to exploit a position of influence over refugees, whether to radicalise, to coerce or to profit?
We need a real assessment of the numbers involved in these schemes. We need a full costing of the policy, including the burden on local authorities. We need proof that the small boat crisis is under control before the legal routes expand. We need a commitment that communities will be consulted, not simply informed, and we need a rigorous, transparent vetting regime for sponsors. I look forward very much to the Minister’s response.
Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules
Lord Davies of Gower Excerpts(1 week, 5 days ago)
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Lord German (LD)
My Lords, I first declare my interest that, like others, I am helped and supported by the RAMP organisation. I thank those who have already spoken. A huge number of remarks and questions have been addressed to the new Minister; in that context, I welcome him. He may not be as happy as he would like in this particular role because this topic of course causes great controversy within our House. An enormous number of issues need to be raised and dealt with, and we expect to find answers from the Home Office which are sometimes lacking.
Having previously spent three years as a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, I am able to recognise an excoriating report when I see one, and this is clearly such a report. It is not often that the committee goes to such lengths to make such important points when it does not get answers from the department concerned. The challenge is that the committee itself will address its concerns back to the Home Office and will get answers from it. If it does not get the answers, that will be mentioned in the report and when it does not find that the answers are sufficient it will mention that, too. This report does that and Members on all sides have said clearly that there are questions to be raised and questions that need to be answered as a result.
I am glad about the changed name. When you merge things, you are perhaps supposed to do the merging in turn, but it was clearly an unsuitable title and I am glad that it has been changed, even though it now presents perhaps the same critique and problems that the original title suggested anyway. One of the challenges we face in addressing this issue in this changed piece of guidance and legislation is whether it is a minor change or a major change. I draw on my musical experience here. Things that are minor are usually sad and things that are major are things that we can judge in a more content manner. Clearly, this is not something which can be treated as being of a minor nature.
Paragraph 10 of the report notes that these words were deleted:
“Where the personal interview is omitted, the applicant and dependents shall be given a reasonable opportunity to submit further information”.
The deletion of that sentence suggests that applicants may not be able to suspend the decision-making process to seek expert advice. The major change here is an operational one, bringing together two systems to try to shorten the process for a small number of cases, so we are assured.
What we do in this country and the way we address people’s individual needs for protection are judged against that background. People are not part of cohorts and not to be treated as part of some system that systemically makes things easier; every case deserves to be looked at on its merits. The individuality of assessments is not just present in this country but across the whole of Europe, though sometimes we have to pull those changes up and look at them in a critical way as well.
When you put together two systems, remove such a sentence and make this operational change, which is of some significance because you are reducing the opportunity of individual assessment, it is right that people around this Room ask: where is the legal aid provision? Where is the advice? Where is the training for those who will support people who are genuinely suffering from trauma and other mental health problems that come with the journeys that they have been on?
People faced with life-or-death decisions leave in a traumatic state. That state does not improve just because they have arrived here. They are nervous and their understanding of what will happen to them needs to be addressed. That is why a personalised assessment is so important. The problem with what we have before us is that there was no consultation, not even with the Government’s own consultative body. That was brought in just with the intent of speeding up the process. There was no impact assessment, because the Government maintain that it a minor change rather than a major one. I maintain that the operational aspects are entirely different from what they were before. For people going through this system, the nature of the operation is now entirely different—before there would be a process by which people’s cases would be individually understood.
Finally, as the report says, and as we have asked for, when the Government make changes to the rules of this sort, they should produce the draft guidance alongside the changes. Then we can judge whether the rules are being adjusted for a purpose that is actually accurate, rather than one of simplicity, which is what I think the original intention was. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us that, in future, when changes are made to the Immigration Rules, which are of a major nature or can be interpreted as being such, the Home Office will do all three things: a consultation exercise, an impact assessment and guidance, which may be in draft but certainly would help us to make decisions about these matters.
I would like to talk about the trouble with shortcuts. If you take a shortcut and get a back lane instead of going down the main road, sometimes that can lead to barbed wire where the roads are closed at the end or where it is a bit dangerous to proceed. Shortcuts should be taken only if you know where the end is and whether the route is clear or not. That is particularly relevant here. This is a shortcut which has not yet determined whether the right end product is there and available.
The problem with changes that allegedly relate to a particular group of people is that, without a definition, we are left blank as to whether these people will be worse off than they were before and whether the cohort decision will blanket their approval or disapproval because of situations that are not of their making. A lot of strong messages have been sent to the Home Office, both in this debate and in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report. I hope that the Minister has listened to and heard them, and that he will act on all those matters.
I want to raise one final matter on the changes to the Immigration Rules. It concerns a case with which I, along with the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, dealt. I have now succeeded in getting the approval of the two people concerned, in order to take this matter forward, but I raise a related question around the Immigration Rules on people with religious occupations.
The case I referred to is that of two nuns from Lesotho who were seeking to come to stay with an order in Humberside. They were being looked after by the same order to which they belonged, of course, and they were going to come and spend time with it. I do not reckon that that was a religious occupation; I reckon that they were building religious certainty and confidence, and were being helped. However, they failed at the border not because they did not have the appropriate visas but because of money: they could not determine how much money they would need to look after themselves in the United Kingdom. The answer, of course, is that holy orders and religious communities, including this particular religious community, have communal funds—that is, worldwide funds, not funds that are communal in the area they are in. So being “treated”—in inverted commas—to a break and a stay with another community of nuns in Merseyside was denied to them because they did not have the money in their pocket.
These two nuns come from Lesotho, which is, as anyone who has been there will know, one of the poorest countries in Africa. I declare my interest as the honorary consul for the Kingdom of Lesotho in Wales. So it is a matter of some importance to me that, when we deal with issues that are related to the Immigration Rules, we see people for what they are: individual people. They need to have their cases looked after properly, and we need to ensure that we do that.
In conclusion, we need—I suspect that everybody in this Room wants this—a fair system in a world where people’s decisions to come to this country for protection are matters of life and death for them. We need to ensure that they are protected properly. I hope that the Minister will take all of these points on board and make sure that the Home Office behaves, as this document says, in the appropriate manner for what I regard as a major change.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, this is the first proper opportunity I have had to welcome the Minister to his new role. I very much look forward to working with him in future. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, for this opportunity to debate the changes to the Immigration Rules, and I am equally grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its careful consideration.
As always, although I respect the concerns that have been expressed, I believe that it is important that we keep sight of the central issue. These changes do not alter the substantive legal tests for refugee status, humanitarian protection or human rights protection—rather, they are a procedural reform designed to make the asylum system operate more efficiently in a small and tightly defined category of cases.
The key change relates to what the Home Office describes as the “merged registration process”. Instead of requiring both a screening interview and a later, more substantive interview, certain claims considered suitable for accelerated handling will be dealt with through a single interview process. The objective is to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy and allow scarce case-working resources to be focused on more complex claims.
The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has highlighted the concerns raised by external organisations that this represents a significant change to asylum procedures and may reduce fairness for applicants. Yet the Home Office has been equally clear that claimants will continue to have the opportunity to explain the basis of their claim, provide evidence, seek legal advice and submit further representations before decisions are taken. It said that where indicators of vulnerability, trafficking, safeguarding concerns or indeed complexity emerge
“the case will be removed from the Merged Registration process and routed into the standard asylum process”.
Renters’ Rights Bill
Lord Davies of Gower ExcerptsTuesday 22nd April 2025
(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Lord Davies of Gower
“unless the tenant holds a rank under Section 13 of the Police Act 1996 when the tenancy is entered into.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would allow fixed term tenancies for all ranks in the police to continue reflecting the fact that the police are often deployed away from their usual place of residence.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register.
There are situations where both tenants and landlords would benefit from a fixed-term tenancy, as the amendments with numerous exemptions set out. Examples include families seeking stability in a school catchment area or workers on long-term contracts. If all parties agree, there should be a legal provision for such tenancies, providing clarity and peace of mind.
This is not about fixed-term tenancies for their own sake; it is about maintaining a legitimate contract that reflects openness and flexibility. Enabling the mobility of working-age adults across the length and breadth of the nation is essential for economic growth. A modern, dynamic workforce needs the freedom to move, to adapt and to pursue opportunities wherever they may arise. Scrapping mutually agreed fixed-term tenancies will hinder that mobility, as has been acknowledged right across your Lordships’ House.
In this amendment, I seek to demonstrate that police officers often need to move right across the country and, like those in many other occupations, would benefit from a fixed-term tenancy. Relocation can provide officers the chance to expand their skills. I was speaking earlier to my noble friend Lady Manzoor, who pointed out that junior doctors and nurses, for example, rotate for specialist training. In respect of police officers, sometimes officers are moved to work on high-profile cases—if they possess particular qualifications, for example. Specialist skills are needed right across the country and need to remain fluid. Officers move to new roles to expand their own personal experience, and we need this mobility. This should apply to police officers of all ranks, of course. I am thinking particularly of provincial officers who come to London, for example, to work on the national units that are based here, such as counterterrorism. I ask the Minister to give due consideration to this amendment, which is vital if we are to maintain a flexible, experienced and, indeed, rounded police service. On that basis, I beg to move.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, Amendment 11 in my name would allow fixed-term tenancies for professional sports athletes to continue. The Minister who has come in to take the Statement knows well that I view all proposed legislation through the lens of somebody passionate about sport and promoting the best interests of sport and recreation. I declare my interests as a former Minister for Sport in another place, as chairman of the British Olympic Association during the run-up to London 2012 and during 2012 and, possibly most importantly, as a Leeds supporter still celebrating the success yesterday of our promotion back into the Premier League.
Mention of Leeds is relevant, because the many professional sports men and women to whom my amendment refers include our professional footballers. They include professional rugby union players, many of whom are on contracts that run, in effect, from July through to the following June, so their housing is critical in that context. Professional athletes and their coaches, and people on the contracts that I mention in my amendment, are concerned about the ending of fixed-term tenancies, due to the potential for disruption and uncertainty in their professional and personal lives. Disruption and uncertainty, to all of us who are keen on sport, are the enemies of performance, and one thing that we really need to do and concentrate on in promoting our professional sports men and women and their interests is to ensure that that is not the case in their domestic arrangements and in their housing.
Fixed-term tenancies provide a degree of stability. They give the mobility often required by sporting careers. Ending these fixed terms, particularly with shorter notice periods, will be challenging for athletes and professional coaches who need to adjust quickly to new locations and potentially face difficulties in finding suitable housing, impacting their overall well-being and their performance. This applies not just to footballers, rugby union players or rugby league players, but to all professional sportsmen, all professional coaches and their entourages. The theory of marginal gains comes to mind: it is very relevant in this context. This is where you get small yet very significant improvements which can lead to substantial results, and one of the key points in that is to have a stable arrangement, a fixed-term tenancy, for housing that lasts throughout that contract; namely, in this case, a year.
In summary, my concerns are, first, about mobility and career. Professional sport is often characterised by frequent moves, and fixed-term tenancies provide a framework for a predictable schedule, allowing athletes and coaches to establish roots and plan their lives in a stable environment. Secondly, there is the uncertainty and disruption. The prospect of ending fixed-term tenancies, especially with potentially shorter notice periods, will create uncertainty and disruption for professional sportsmen, and this can be particularly challenging for athletes and coaches who need to adjust quickly to new locations, potentially facing difficulties finding suitable housing. Thirdly, there are the financial implications. While a fixed-term tenancy may provide a degree of stability, the costs of moving and finding new accommodation can be significant, and the uncertainty of ending fixed-term tenancies could also impact financial planning. Finally, there is the impact on performance, which I have mentioned, where the stress and disruption associated with moving can affect an athlete’s or a coach’s performance. Finding suitable housing, especially in new areas, can require time and effort, potentially impacting training and preparation.
There are clearly benefits from periodic contracts, but in professional sport, such a move can and will be disruptive. I argue that we must protect the unique needs of professional sports men and women. These are the reasons why I have tabled this amendment, which I hope will have the support of the Committee and the Government.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for his contribution on sport and to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester for his remarks on the clergy. I am disappointed, indeed a little surprised, that the Minister does not agree that police officers fall into a particular category, but, for the time being anyway, I shall consider what she said and therefore beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Prime Minister: Meeting with First Ministers
Lord Davies of Gower Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
During the Covid pandemic, the Welsh Labour Government at Cardiff Bay have received substantial additional funding—indeed, billions—through the Barnett formula and other funding. Does the Minister agree that, when they next meet, a discussion of the reluctance on the part of the Welsh Government to spend that money in support of the ailing Welsh national health system and of Welsh businesses would be very appropriate, as well as an additional discussion as to why they are reluctant to hold an inquiry into their performance in dealing with the pandemic in Wales?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, it is important to recognise that through the Barnett formula a considerable amount of money has been made available to all the devolved Governments—some £28.1 billion. We are happy to continue to engage in a productive way with the Welsh First Minister and others on how best to recover.