Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, let me make myself utterly clear. If we had a statutory duty to discuss and if a devolved Minister were, for any particular reason, unavailable—my noble friend Lord German made my point here—our progress could be slowed. That unavailability could, potentially, be deliberate. We do not want another problem to negotiate when we already have a formal set of agreements on how we relate to devolved Administrations. We are sticking to those and we are talking regularly and informally on how best to get this through.