Like everybody else, I welcome the statement as far as it goes, which isn’t very far. I think there’s widespread agreement across the floor here and that the important questions have already been asked. I endorse what Adam Price said and what Nick Ramsay said. The statement is very self-congratulatory, of course, and expresses the extent to which these funds have helped shape the development of Wales’s economic fortunes, in the words of the statement. But, as I pointed out in questions to the First Minister today, these increases in employment have gone hand in hand with a relative falling away of wages compared with other parts of the United Kingdom. I was very interested to hear what Adam Price said about GVA compared with other parts of Europe that are in a similar condition to west Wales and the Valleys. It seems to me that this programme has not actually performed as well as it might have done.

I welcome, of course, the fact that the United Kingdom Government has guaranteed the spending decisions that have been made and will be made by the Welsh Government in this funding period, and I certainly endorse what Mr Cabinet Secretary has just said about the reversion of competence to this Chamber and to the Welsh Government, following our leaving the EU, of various matters that currently are out of our hands. Obviously, for the time being, the spending decisions that have been made remain subject to EU rules, but we have to remember that it’s all British taxpayers’ money, fundamentally, even though it comes via the prism of the EU. Once we leave the EU, the opportunity will be ours and ours alone to decide on our priorities and to make our own rules as to how this money will be spent, subject, of course, to what the UK Government provides for us through the Barnett formula, which is something else that we need to revisit, I think, considering the relativities of income that I set out earlier on today, and which were mentioned by Adam Price.

So, I don’t really have a great deal to add to what has been said already. As regards the programme monitoring committee, of course, I’m delighted to welcome Julie Morgan as the chair of it. As we see the stratospheric rise of another ex-First Lady across the Atlantic, who knows where her political career may go from here? Wales may have, in due course, a female First Minister and the sooner the better, I would say, in that respect.

I think the statement was rather ungenerous in not paying tribute to Jenny Rathbone for her conscientious commitment to the role when she was the chairman of this committee, and I wonder whether that has anything to do with her statement that her sacking was the result of a culture at the top of the Welsh Government that doesn’t allow for rigorous debate or reflection on the best use of public funds.