Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 3:17 pm on 12 November 2025.
Lord Brennan of Canton
Labour
3:17,
12 November 2025
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, for whom I have a great deal of respect, neglected to mention, when he talked about the report A Decade On: Reforming Wales’ Fiscal Framework, recently published by Cardiff University, that it described tax devolution and the extra needs-based formula that was negotiated by Mark Drakeford as Finance and First Minister as an “unequivocal budgetary success”, because it has added £1 billion by 2027-28 to the Welsh budget. However, while making that point, I also emphasise to my noble friend the Minister the need for extra flexibility on borrowing. I very much hope that will come out of these discussions.
An economic mechanism used by the Treasury to adjust automatically the amounts of public expenditure allocated to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, to reflect changes in spending levels allocated to public services in England, England and Wales or Great Britain as a whole.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
