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Government of Wales Bill

moved Amendment No. 93:"Before Clause 117, insert the following new clause—" ““ALLOCATION OF FUNDS (1)   The Secretary of State shall appoint a panel of not fewer than four and not more than six experts to recommend the sums of money to be allocated to the Welsh Consolidated Fund. (2)   The Secretary of State shall publish in full the terms of any recommendations made under subsection (1). (3)   The panel shall have regard to— (a)   fairness, (b)   transparency, and (c)   the particular needs of Wales.”” The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 93 inserts a new clause before Clause 117, which relates to grants. It concerns the allocation of funds. Subsection (1) of the new clause requires the Secretary of State to:"““appoint a panel of not fewer than four and not more than six experts to recommend the sums of money to be allocated to the Welsh Consolidated Fund””." Subsection (2) requires the Secretary of State to publish the recommendations and subsection (3) requires the panel to,"““have regard to fairness . . . transparency, and—" most importantly—"““the particular needs of Wales””." The question is whether Wales is getting fair play in financial terms. All the evidence is that it is not. In fact even the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, admits that the Barnett formula is in need of an amendment—indeed, I have heard him say that it needs replacing with another formula. We want to right a number of wrongs in this fair distribution. Since the Assembly was formed the GDP per head has stubbornly remained at around 80 per cent of UK averages. The consequence is that there is still much poverty and deprivation in parts of Wales. The needs of Wales are very great indeed. In terms of demography there is no doubt that we have a higher than average percentage of elderly and pensioners than most of the rest of the United Kingdom. We have a lot of people on low incomes, which is a consequence of the low GDP, and many people are on state pensions only. At the same time young people are leaving Wales and being replaced by pensioners in a population exchange which does not necessarily assist the economic needs of Wales. That is compounded by health needs where we have many former manual workers who are not on the whole in very good health because of their lifetime work experience. That, combined with a number of older people, means that there is great pressure, for example, on the health service. Certainly about two months ago, there was a £93 million deficit in health funding in Wales. There is no doubt that there is a shortfall in the Barnett formula in the funding of health in that fraction of the block grant to Wales. There are other questions which are very important in rural Wales: for example, the population scarcity and an inadequate formula for funding sparsely populated areas. I know quite a lot about that as I live in an area with the lowest population density south of the Highland line. We have been subjected to reductions in funding by the watering down of the formula. We have a lack of transport links in many places and accessibility to services is very difficult indeed. It is absolutely vital that this amendment is given sympathetic consideration to meet the needs of Wales and its people. This is not a fair situation at the present time. Wales lags 17 per cent behind the GDP of Scotland and gets 10 per cent less of the Barnett formula award in comparison with Scotland. Fairness in relation to needs is absolutely vital and it must be a fundamental principle. We believe that this can be ironed out with an amendment, which is perhaps not precisely the same but certainly similar, because we need to put these wrongs right and, indeed, this is an ideal opportunity to do so. I beg to move