Public Service Delivery: Devolved Governments

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I know that my noble friend Lady Merron looks forward to debating the issue that the noble Baroness raises, and I shall feed it back to those taking part in the discussions later this week. We want things to be interoperable across borders. There are some really good examples of where the UK Government have worked effectively with devolved counterparts, but this can always be improved on. At the heart of how we approach this must be the end user or, in this case, patients who require that cross-border co-operation.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

Among the useful tools that we used to have for assessing how intergovernmental relations were going were the annual and quarterly reports that were published. The last annual report, for the year 2023, was published in April 2024. The last quarterly report, for the fourth quarter of 2025, was published shortly after that. Will those reports be restarted? They are extremely useful for us to be able to see what intergovernmental relationships are going on and in which departments.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I will write to the noble Earl on his question and on what sound like very interesting reports.