Contacts defaulting to iPhone and not iCloud

Hello,

my iPhone keeps defaulting to iPhone contacts and not iCloud contacts and I can't find a resolution. It began a few months ago.

In the image the iPhone contacts are empty because I have just transferred them to iCloud. Unlikely to be a hardware issue as I have just upgraded handsets and the problem persists on the device.

I have turned off and on iCloud syncing, done restarts, ensured that default account was only set to iCloud.

I'm hoping someone has an answer. Thank you.