Wales: Financial Powers

Lord Morris of Aberavon Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson]

I thank the noble Lord for his Question. Undoubtedly the continued interest in this issue from all sides of the House and well beyond it will have had an influence on ensuring that we had a positive response to the Silk commission’s first report. The Silk commission made 33 recommendations but the announcement on Friday did not go into detail on many of those. A full response to the Silk report will be issued in the next couple of months so that we will be able to deal with this by the end of the year. The intention is that a draft Wales Bill will incorporate Silk recommendations that the Government have accepted, where legislation is necessary. The Government intend to pursue that, if possible, in the fourth Session of this Parliament.

[Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)]

My Lords, I was glad to hear the Prime Minister say on Friday that he believed in devolution. I was hoping for the Welsh Secretary to say something on his visit too. Does he also believe in devolution? In the absence of a more equitable allocation of financial resources by Westminster to Wales, do the Prime Minister’s proposals mean that to fund matters such as a Newport road development, Wales will be expected to pay for them out of new Welsh taxes?

[Baroness Randerson]

The noble Lord has asked two essential questions. My colleague the Secretary of State for Wales has worked extremely hard to ensure that this report has had a positive response from the UK Government. I remind the noble Lord that there was an agreement in October 2012 between the Welsh Government and the UK Government on the future of the Barnett formula. The agreement was that there would be a review process at each spending review, and that if there was future convergence—if that started again—then it would be dealt with by the two Governments working together.