---

Liaison Committee

My Lords, I offer my thanks to the Lord Chairman and members of the Liaison Committee for agreeing to my request that there should be an ad hoc committee to review the Barnett formula. It will be known that I have been pursuing this for quite a long time so I am naturally rather pleased at the decision. I am confident that the Select Committee will in due course provide a historic report of enormous value in making a sensible decision in this case and help prevent the break up of the United Kingdom, which I assume none of us wants to see but which was a danger without some review of this formula. Obviously, I could not be a member of a committee to review my own formula. I wish the committee well—unless it is thought that I should be a member. I should be happy to be but it would be wrong to review my own formula. That should be done by others and I am happy to leave it in their most capable hands. I strongly support the recommendation of the Liaison Committee and recommend it to the House.