I rise to support and endorse what Llyr Gruffydd has just said. I have been increasingly concerned over the past few weeks about the work of this UKRI. I have asked several questions, but unfortunately I haven’t reached the list for oral questions yet. But I did receive a written answer to the question that I had hoped to ask the First Minister today. The response says that the Government and Kirsty Williams as Cabinet Secretary have met with the chief scientific adviser and the responsible Minister in the UK Government to make an application for Wales to be fully represented on the UKRI. I take it that that has taken place. Of course, the LCM before us today does state clearly—or the context states, as Llyr has said—that Wales is not fully represented on that board. So, the Government has asked this—this is the Government’s policy—and having failed to achieve that, it comes to the Assembly to ask it to approve a policy that it hasn’t succeeded in achieving. That’s not good enough in this context as there are genuine risks for Wales, our research councils and for funding in our universities with the establishment of UKRI.

What’s happening is this: all of the research councils are gathered together in one body. Research funding from HEFCE, the council in England, is placed in that pot too, and also innovation funding from the UK Government with regard to England. So, rather than having research councils that look across the United Kingdom—and there are problems with those anyway, as Llyr pointed out—you have a new body that is dominated by the interests of the university sector in England, and it is also under the increased influence of Ministers in England as well, without any direct representation by Wales on that body. The response that I received from the First Minister today goes on to say further that it’s only very recently that we started discussions with the universities with regard to the relationship with his body. Well, again, that’s not good enough. We don’t understand how this body is going to work, the effect it’s going to have on research funding in Wales, and, for those reasons alone, we will oppose this LCM today.

To conclude, may I give one specific example? I’m aware of the work that is happening in IBERS in Aberystwyth, because I live in Aberystwyth and represent the region, but, for many years now, IBERS has been in strategic contact with the BBSRC, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, for expenditure worth £4.5 million a year in Aberystwyth, on a strategic basis, to support IBERS’s work. If it should happen that there’s a change in the priority of the research councils, because there is a restriction on the funding available and because there is a change of priorities because Ministers in the UK intervene in those priorities, then we will be losing significant funding for Aberystwyth. I’m not content to see that happening without there being certainty that there is an allocation and ring-fencing of the research funding that we already have. That’s not part of the agreement that lies behind this LCM, nor is there certainty that there will be representation from Wales on the board that makes these decisions. And, of course, as we deal with Brexit, the exit from the European Union, the work that is done in IBERS to look at pasture and to look at the kind of agriculture that is important in Wales—it’s important in the international context, but not in the UK context—then I’m concerned that it will receive less priority in that context. So, I know that the Cabinet Secretary has been forewarned of the concerns that a number of us have who represent Ceredigion and Aberystwyth about these specific problems. We want certainty and assurance that the research funding will continue, and we want certainty that there will be representation on this body; without that certainty, we can’t support the LCM today.