Devolved Governments: Public Expenditure

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

The noble Lord raises a very good point. I believe that I will be coming back on Monday to deal with an Urgent Question on this specific subject. I would remind noble Lords that these schemes were stood up at an incredibly fast pace to protect the productive capacity of this country. Yes, the fraud losses are extremely frustrating but, if we had not got that money to the business community as quickly as we did, we would have seen a lot more damage to our economy.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, to what extent do the UK Government make clear in the publicity in the devolved Administrations the amounts of money that come from the UK Government to those Administrations?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My noble and learned friend is right that we need to remind Scottish citizens that a great deal of the funding that goes into Scotland comes from here. We now have a Minister for the Union, Michael Gove, and his job is to keep reminding all the devolved Administrations that we are one union. A very senior civil servant, Sue Gray—of whom some of you may have heard—is the Permanent Secretary for the Union, and we are encouraging engagement at, for example, local authority level on a much more frequent basis.