We move on now to item 9, the debate on the External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee’s report, ‘Inquiry into the future of regional policy—what next for Wales?’ I therefore call on the Chair of the committee to move that motion, David Rees.

Motion NDM6514 David Rees

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

Notes the report of the External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee on its ‘Inquiry into the future of regional policy—what next for Wales?’ which was laid in the Table Office on 22 June 2017.

Motion moved.

Diolch, Gadeirydd. It’s a privilege to move today’s motion and to bring forward this opportunity for the National Assembly to debate our report on the future of regional policy—where next for Wales. Before I go into the discussion on the report, I would like to express our thanks to the witnesses who came to the committee, to the clerking team, who provided the excellent support, particularly Nia Moss, who obviously is our link to the EU and who underpins everything we’re doing at the moment, but also to Members for their contributions through the whole report process.

Following the referendum decision to leave the EU, which was agreed on 23 June 2016, this Assembly charged the External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee with the task of examining the implications for Wales of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, and to scrutinise the Welsh Government’s actions so that this Assembly can be assured that Welsh interests are safeguarded during that withdrawal process. Given that, every year, Wales receives £370 million from European structural and investment funds for the purpose of regional economic development, it was clear to us early on that we would need to look at these issues in more detail. And whilst we’re talking about regional policy, it’s important to remember that though the report does highlight regional policy, it cannot be delivered without the support of funding behind that being available. The loss of access to these funds could result in a funding black hole, possibly, for a number of investments in areas such as skills and apprenticeships, research collaboration and excellence, infrastructure and innovation. Indeed, we stand to lose more money than any other nation in the UK if European structural funds are not replaced.

Our inquiry found that on a per capita basis, the Welsh funding allocation from the EU was 458 per cent of the UK average. The next highest was Northern Ireland at 197 per cent, way behind Welsh needs. The principles that underpin the current system of support from the EU to the member states are based on fairness and need. Regions that have a per capita GDP of less than 75 per cent of the EU average qualify for the maximum level of support. And there are two areas in the UK that manage that—one is Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, the other is west Wales and the Valleys. Cadeirydd, our report makes a total of 17 recommendations, and we are very pleased that the Cabinet Secretary has responded positively, and in detail, to them. This afternoon, I will only cover some of the recommendations and the Cabinet Secretary’s response in more detail, though every one of those recommendations is important for the future funding of our communities.

The Deputy Presiding Officer took the Chair.

Our first set of recommendations looked at the immediate challenges for the current funding round. Members will be aware that in autumn 2016, the Chancellor of the Exchequer guaranteed funding for projects until 2020, and we as a committee were unequivocal in our support for this. The picture is less certain, however, when it comes to threats posed by currency fluctuations post Brexit. Whilst it was heartening to hear that the Welsh Government, working with the Welsh European Funding Office, has been able to mitigate some of the risk posed by currency fluctuations, we believe it is incumbent upon the Welsh Government to ensure that the risks posed by this are constantly monitored and assessed, as we already know that currency goes up and down quite easily, and is, at the moment, down.

During our inquiry we looked at the case for a new regional policy after Brexit. The available data paints a sobering picture and shows us that the United Kingdom is the most unequal country in the European Union. We believe that the case for a future regional policy for Wales, with funding made available to us on the basis of objective need, is unequivocal. One of the many areas that we all agreed upon is that Wales should not be any worse off as a consequence of leaving the European Union than we would have been if we had remained in the EU. However, the big question is: how do we achieve that? Not only should those who were on the ‘leave’ side of the referendum campaign make good on their promise of new funding for Wales after we leave, but politicians from all sides and from all nations of the UK must come together to agree a new needs-based formula for the allocation of funding for the purpose of regional policy. We believe that this is the best guarantor of equity, equality and fairness between the UK’s constituent parts.

The Cabinet Secretary, in his response to us, alludes to the work that is being undertaken behind the scenes to press the UK Government on a replacement for funding after we leave the EU. Perhaps he could shed light on how those discussions are actually progressing when he rises to speak in this debate afterwards.

Recommendations 7, 8, 9 and 10 all looked at how we evaluate the effectiveness of past experience in order to inform the future. As a committee, we felt that it is critically important—that we make the most of the opportunities to design future policy in ways that maximise the benefits for the people of Wales. We recognised that, in the three tranches we’ve had so far, we have seen different levels of success. This does include also looking at a broader range of indicators than solely economic indicators. It also means that we can look across the globe for best practice. And it was heartening to see that, in his formal response to our report, the Cabinet Secretary is amenable to this concept and open to adopting experimental approaches.

The Cabinet Secretary also makes reference throughout his submission to the Welsh Government’s forthcoming paper on the future of regional policy. I would therefore ask whether the Cabinet Secretary can give us an idea of the timescales for the publication of this work, because his response indicated ‘in the autumn’, and I would be grateful for further clarification on that particular point.

We heard concerns during the inquiry about the complexity of the landscape for the delivery of regional policy, and recommendations 11 and 12 relate to this. Brexit gives us an opportunity to look again at the delivery models for regional economic development. The current landscape, described as a ‘spaghetti junction of layers’ by one witness, in our view must be simplified after Brexit. And whilst, in recommendation 13, we agree that the Welsh Government retains strategic oversight for this future policy, it is essential that future policy is responsive to local needs as much as possible. This should include ensuring that rural areas, not covered by the recent introduction of the city deals, are given a role in shaping policy in the future.

In terms of future approaches, we heard about the importance of productivity and innovation. The past performance of the Welsh economy in this area has been stubbornly weak. We therefore recommend that the Welsh Government addresses this in a number of ways, including through looking at the overall strategy for innovation, and through maximising opportunities through procurement policy.

Our seventeenth and final recommendation was a broad one, setting out some of our priority areas for the future. These include support for skills and human capital—and that term, ‘human capital’, was repeated several times throughout the witness evidence—investment in infrastructure and, importantly, engagement with the private sector wherever possible. That is something that I know was moving forward within the EU, but we need to make sure that that goes further. To that end, the Welsh Government should redouble its efforts to break down the barriers to collaboration between the public and private sectors.

Dirprwy Lywydd, before concluding, I want to say a little bit more about the sense of disappointment that we felt with the evidence we received from some witnesses during the inquiry. We heard very little ambition or constructive challenge from some quarters, and perhaps even less appetite to seize the opportunities that looking again at regional policy could bring. We felt very much that we heard that more of the same was the way forward. Things cannot and should not continue in the same vein. More of the same is not acceptable in the way we move ahead. And in a week where we are marking the twentieth anniversary of the devolution referendum, which was last week, we should take stock, look ahead to the next 20 years, with our sights set firmly on opportunities for forming a new regional development policy focused on the innovation, collaboration and, above all, excellence that all those opportunities can bring to the Welsh economy.

I look forward to discussing and hearing the Members’ contributions this afternoon, but our focus must be on taking Wales forward at the point we leave the EU.

I wholeheartedly concur with that last sentiment expressed by the Chair of our committee. Can I thank everyone who was involved in this inquiry and, in particular, our witnesses, who might actually be surprised by some of the comments in this report? Wales, as we’ve heard, has received far more per capita in terms of economic development money than other parts of the UK, but even so, it was accepted by some witnesses that even this augmented sum of money has not been transformational. That’s not to say that it hasn’t been useful, but it confirmed a long-held view of some of us that the investment has not always been value for money. I don’t just mean economic levering, but levering of social capital and well-being too. I’m pleased that the Welsh Government has agreed that, whatever the future policy looks like, it will need to be measured on indicators other than quantitative economic key performance indicators.

Even though this wasn’t the focus of our inquiry, we heard a number of explanations for why EU structural funding had not been transformational, as popularly expected. One was that, in the scheme of things, it’s not actually that much money. The value of these funds is less than 1 per cent of economic activity in Wales, although I think that, perhaps, listening to some debates we have had in this Chamber in recent years, we could be forgiven for thinking that they played a more important role. Another was that structural funds come with conditions that affect how they are targeted and on what they can be spent. While this wasn’t always an issue, it was raised with us to help us understand why, whatever a future policy looks like, we all need to be careful that the need for strong accountability doesn’t replicate the disconnected and voluminous reporting requirements they currently have to manage.

A number of thoughts occurred to me on the back of this. As David indicated, we don’t have to stick with plan A. It’s not working. The Welsh Government response to the report recognises this and makes some welcome points about reducing bureaucracy and losing those geographical limitations that accompany funding at the moment. But if it isn’t to be business as usual, it will be interesting to see exactly what scoping or scenario planning or even just blue-sky thinking, which is what I think you said, Cabinet Secretary, in your response—experimental ways of thinking—that you will be able to reveal in the forthcoming policy document, as there was some nervousness in the committee about how much work had been done on this. We accept, of course, that there can be no concrete plans until we know the terms on which we leave the EU, but it isn’t acceptable either to fail to plan, so we do look forward to that paper.

Secondly, while insisting upon commitments made by the UK Government on continued funding for regional development, which I support, Wales still needs to get more bang from every buck it spends on regional policy. We serve no-one by insisting that we get every penny we would have had from structural funds had we remained in the EU, if that money is not better spent in getting Wales, down the line, to a position where, in the old world, we would no longer have qualified for less-developed region status.

Thirdly, some witnesses didn’t seem, as David Rees indicated, to have moved on from plan A and aren’t mentally ready for this brave new world. It’s not wholly surprising, as a devolved Wales has developed with its eye on EU structures. It’s what everyone is used to; the only thing is, we can’t stay used to it. We are the most unequal nation in Europe. That is absolutely nothing to be proud of. If we are, on other fronts, becoming a co-productive nation, we can’t constantly ask the public sector to come up with all the ideas and predicate funding to the third sector on delivering those ideas without seeing what others outside those sectors can do for themselves as well.

There are recommendations that relate to the private sector in this report—which includes social enterprise, of course—and they’ve been accepted by Welsh Government, who agree with us, then, that sustained private sector engagement, wherever possible, has to be part of future regional development policy. With notable exceptions in infrastructure construction and maybe some training, I think we even found, didn’t we—you mentioned it David—that R&D is proving stubbornly weak? I think those were the words you used. It’s difficult to argue, I think, that EU structural funds have been felt in developing the Welsh economy—partly, I suspect, because of the strict rules about public authorities holding the purse strings. In future policy, I think Welsh Government should be expecting more from the private sector, but even now, with the Swansea bay city deal, it’s still looking a bit top-heavy on council control of structure and financing, which is not particularly encouraging.

Sustained private sector engagement is very difficult in a nation of SMEs. I get that. They’re small, they are very busy, and they’re not always aware of the role that they could have. But in future regional policy, I think the Welsh Government really has to crack this to get anywhere near achieving the co-productive aims of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and to help Wales rise above its less-developed nation status, and look forward with ambition, as the Chair said. Thank you.

I’d like to echo the previous speakers in thanking all those who gave evidence, and to put on record my thanks to the Chair as well for the way that he has conducted this inquiry in particular. I think all Members are going to be echoing the same point—that one of the disappointing parts of our inquiry was to see that there was almost a hope for business as usual among those that we took evidence from, rather than a hope that this very difficult situation we find ourselves in might yield different ideas that yield better results for our citizens.

But I think having this inquiry on regional policy was of course wholly appropriate for a committee of the National Assembly for Wales. One of the central promises during the referendum campaign was that Wales would not be one penny worse off, and structural funds were one of those areas cited by the ‘leave’ campaign repeatedly. It may not have been emblazoned on a big red bus, but it was a promise that was repeated to the people of this country. I think, in looking at the evidence that we received, we were all, I think, in agreement that the Welsh Government/Plaid Cymru position in the joint White Paper ‘Securing Wales’ Future’ was the right premise, i.e. that the Treasury should replace funding that Wales would rightly have expected to receive from the EU had we remained a member, but that the Welsh Assembly and the Welsh Government should have full autonomy in implementing its own regional policy. I’m pleased that, in the Government’s response, it has reaffirmed that position.

This is really important in terms of regional policy, for a variety of reasons, because it was notable when we were taking evidence on regional policy from a variety of sources that defining regions meant different things to almost every single person and organisation we had evidence from. So, some referred to west Wales and the Valleys and east Wales, the EU regions, some referred to the city regions, others to distinct geographic locations that most people might identify with, such as north Wales or the Valleys, and others saw Wales itself as the region in a wider context of UK regional policy. This inconsistency is understandable because we haven’t had a substantial clarification from Welsh Government yet about what exactly it sees as Wales’s future in terms of regional policy, notwithstanding that we’re anticipating a paper this autumn to set out some principles. So, we support the principle, here on the Plaid Cymru benches, that Wales should decide, but what we need now from Welsh Government is a vision for regional policy that goes beyond the transition period. What will regional policy look like? What will the Welsh regions be? What will the funding mechanisms be? What will the thresholds for qualifications be? What would be the balance between skills and economic development on the one hand and then on the other hand microcommunity projects and regenerations?

Just as a proponent of economic spatial planning myself, I would implore the Cabinet Secretary to think very carefully about the boundaries of those regions. I know he’s had boundaries on his mind for a while since taking his current portfolio, but I have a great fear that if the city deal regions form the basis for regional policy, there will be consequences for the poorest in our communities. You can imagine—at the moment, the Gwent Valleys are in west Wales and the Valleys, one of the poorest regions, sadly, in the whole of Europe, and then if we all of a sudden have as the model for a new regional policy the Cardiff capital region, without a single penny being added to the value of the economy or an uplift in wages or anything, we’ll be in the most prosperous region in Wales. I think that will have a knock-on effect. Then we have, of course, legitimate questions about those parts of Wales that are not covered by city regions at all, particularly rural communities who have very real challenges when it comes to overcoming deep-rooted poverty. So, there needs to be a local buy-in—that was clear in the evidence that we received—and I think, partly, getting local buy-in is down to people being able to identify with the regions. I’ll just make the point again, in terms of how we define those regions: the Government published its ‘Our Valleys, Our Future’ publication in the summer, and I was there waiting with baited anticipation for this master economic plan that was going to overturn the fortunes of the south Wales Valleys—only three mentions to the European Union or Brexit, in an area that is absolutely among those that is most dependent upon European funding. So, I’d ask the Cabinet Secretary, not just in his paper on future regional policy but actively in Cabinet meetings from now on, to implore colleagues about the need to prepare every department and every community in our country for post-transition Wales, and that means getting every community Brexit prepared. Diolch yn fawr.

To a large extent, the UK’s regional policy over the last few decades has been shaped and driven by the European Union, and substantial funding has transformed some of our most deprived communities. Over 200,000 people have benefitted from training thanks to EU funding and more than £2 billion will be funnelled into poor areas between 2014 and 2020. But the fact is, we all know that problems in these communities are unlikely to be overcome entirely by 2020 and there will therefore need to be continued substantial support.

This morning in Finance Committee we learnt that economic development spending at the local government level has reduced 66 per cent over the past six years, and cuts to planning in local authorities have meant a 45 per cent reduction. Both are key areas where we hope and expect wealth generation to come from. We’ve been able to bear these cuts to an extent because of the fact that we have these various EU funding pots, but beyond 2020 there are absolutely no guarantees.

Now, the Welsh Government suggested in its White Paper that they’d like to see a one-off adjustment to the block grant to make up for European funding losses to Wales. Whilst this, in principle, was something that should be considered, we in the committee were concerned, I think, that this approach may pose risks in the longer term and that there is a need to futureproof any adjustments to the block grant made at this point so that we don’t lose out in the longer term.

We published this report in June, which was too late for us to consider the proposals made in the Conservative Party manifesto in May for the establishment of a shared prosperity fund, which would be, they suggested, established for the whole of the UK. I note in the Minister’s response to our report the rejection of such an approach. But if that’s what the UK Tory Government’s intention is, it would be useful to know if the Cabinet Secretary will simply not engage with this discussion, in which case there’s a risk that Wales will be presented with a fait accompli that we will not have influenced, or whether the Minister has had any discussions on this proposal, whether the idea proposed by the UK Government is based on an objective needs-based formula, and whether this is a proposal that will have to be approved and agreed by all of the nations in the UK, as we suggested in our report.

I think we’d be concerned that, if the Welsh Government does not have to approve the shared prosperity fund criteria, then the criteria may not be drawn up in a way that would benefit Wales. Our unemployment figures, for example, are relatively low compared to many other regions in the UK, but our gross domestic product in some areas lags significantly behind. So, to what extent are you going to engage in that shared prosperity discussion?

One of the great advantages of the European structural funds is that they allow the Welsh Government, public authorities and other interested parties to plan on a multi-annual basis. The committee was very keen to ensure that this should also feature in any future regional model of economic development. I think it is worth re-emphasising the point that other members of the committee have said, including Steffan, about the fact that actually we were quite disappointed with the lack of imagination and creativity, this desire for more of the same, from a lot of people who are currently benefitting from European regional funds. I do think we’re going to have to think very radically and in a new way in terms of how we engage with regional developments in future.

I’d also like to highlight the fact that we received evidence from many witnesses who agreed that, whilst the Welsh Government should have its hand on the tiller in relation to regional policy, it’s imperative that sub-regional structures in Wales are established. The area I’m specifically concerned about is the need to develop a sub-regional rural area of economic development, which will not be imposed from Cardiff, but will respond to the unique needs of rural communities. I’m delighted to say, once again, that the WLGA confirmed at its rural meeting on Friday that they will now proceed to develop a sub- regional place-based plan for economic development in rural Wales. I’m glad that the Welsh Government has agreed to this particular recommendation in the report, but I do hope that the Welsh Government will engage actively with this new local government grouping to live up to its promise, made here, to ensure that rural priorities are given sufficient emphasis in the design of regional policy.

I’d just finally like to thank the Cabinet Secretary for agreeing to all of the recommendations in this report; that’s the kind of engagement that we like to see. But we will take an active interest and follow up to make sure that the Welsh Government does indeed follow through on their promises.

Thank you. I now call on the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, Mark Drakeford.

Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. Thank you to all those who have taken part in what’s been a really interesting discussion of a very important report. So, thank you to the committee for putting the time and the effort into making what I think is a constructive and significant contribution to this very important area of public policy. Dirprwy Lywydd, there are only three things, really, that are at stake in trying to devise a future regional policy here in Wales. We’ve heard them all during the discussion: we need the money, we need the autonomy, and then we need to have the creativity to be able to design a set of policy proposals that meet the challenges of the future. So, I’m going to say something briefly about the first two and then focus a little more on the third.

As far as the money is concerned, well, David Rees in introducing the report made that point on behalf of the whole of the committee that the UK Government must live up to the commitments made during the referendum that Wales will not be a penny worse off as a result of the decision to leave the European Union. I repeat the positive welcome that the Welsh Government gave to the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s early decisions on the funding of European Union obligations in this area, but the time has come to move beyond those original guarantees to making sure that Wales has, in the long term, the resources that we will need to put our policy proposals into practice.

That takes me to autonomy, and that’s a point that was made very directly by Steffan Lewis, but taken up by Eluned Morgan as well, because a shared prosperity fund—if we are not careful—is a Trojan horse for a further rollback in the devolved powers of this institution, above and beyond those we are already struggling with through the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. Have we had any discussions with UK Ministers? Not that I am aware of. I see this fund in headlines. As far as I’m aware, the Welsh Government has had no discussion with the UK Government as to what it means by such a fund.

How might such a fund be devised? Well, all too easily in a way that would cut against Welsh interests. What if, as Eluned said, unemployment was to be a basic criteria for access to the fund? What if reductions in economic inactivity, where Wales has outstripped the rest of the United Kingdom altogether, was to be a criteria for access to such a fund? Wales has benefited enormously from European funding and we know that there are other parts of the United Kingdom that look jealously at that and see this as an opportunity to share in some of the resource that has come to Wales because our needs are greatest. It’s really important to put on record again, Dirprwy Lywydd, that the money we get through the European Union—I know that sometimes, in a way, people find it a sclerotic and complex rulebook, but it’s the only money we get where there is a rulebook, where the reason we qualify is because there are criteria laid down and we benefit from it, and where there are disputes there is a rulebook you can go to to get an arbitration on those points. The Barnett formula, as we have found in the DUP deal, has none of those essential characteristics. And that’s why, while I understand the points raised in recommendation 4 of the report—and the Government has accepted all the recommendations in principle where they rely on actions by the UK Government, and wholly where they are entirely in our hands—why, in our commentary on recommendation 4, we make the point that while we are absolutely committed to a truly needs-based formula for funding in this area, the open and transparent EU approach to allocating funds has served us well, and the simplest way of guaranteeing Welsh interests in this field is through full replacement funding in the baseline of the Welsh Government, giving us a permanent uplift to the annual core budget and then the autonomy, in the way that Steffan Lewis set out, to be able to deploy those funds in the way that will work best here in Wales.

That brings me then to the third point that I started off with. If we’ve got the money and we’ve got the autonomy, then we need to be able to demonstrate that we have the policy capacity and the policy imagination to be able to design a regional policy that will be fit for the future.

The sixth recommendation in the committee’s report encourages us to develop such a vision and purpose for regional policy in consultation with partners, and that’s been an important part of the way we try to go about this and why our policy paper, which will be produced in the autumn, is still in the final stages of gestation, partly because we wanted to make sure we were able to take full account of the committee’s own report and the debate that we’re having here this afternoon, but also because we wish to continue to discuss it in our European advisory group, with our partners at the programme monitoring committee that Julie Morgan chairs.

Will you take an intervention?

Yes, of course.

I’m very grateful to you for taking the intervention. I wonder if you can just give us a flavour of who those partners are. I’m not expecting a long list, but perhaps just one or two examples.

Well, Suzy, I wanted to say—I was about to say—that we are very keen that the strong sense of partnership, which we think has been a strength of the way that European funding has been deployed in Wales so far, that we need a partnership that reaches beyond those most easily able to take part, which I think is the point you made earlier in your contribution. We need to make sure that we have partners from local government, from the universities, from the third sector, from the private sector, but not just the people who are able to turn up already. We’ve got to be able to move beyond that if we are going to be able to, as the committee in its recommendation 17 suggests, create a policy framework for the future of regional policy in Wales that has simplification, responsiveness, innovation and is able to hold the tension between investment in places—that’s to say, infrastructure investment—and investment in people, the human capital that a number of contributors have emphasised here this afternoon. In doing that, we want to be able to draw on ideas in Wales, but beyond Wales as well, and that was an important part of the committee’s report, encouraging us to be innovative and looking to models beyond the United Kingdom to open up a wider range of options.

At the root of all of this, Dirprwy Lywydd, in responding to new opportunities, opportunities that build from the strengths that we have created during the period that we’ve benefited from European funds, but recognise that now is the point at which we have to be able to look forward to Wales beyond the European Union, to use the funds we will have, to use the powers at our disposal, and then to apply that policy imagination to make sure that we have a regional policy that will work for all parts of Wales.

Thank you. And I now call on the Chair of the committee, David Rees, to reply to the debate.

Diolch, Dirprwy Llywydd. Can I thank all Members who’ve taken part this afternoon for their contribution, and the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government for setting out the Government’s response to our work in a little more detail this afternoon? I wish to go ahead with a couple of points. As Suzy highlighted, one thing that was mentioned to us was that it was not transformational, and that was told to us several times, but they also, as you rightly pointed out, highlighted the fact that percentage-wise the funding wasn’t perhaps huge enough to create transformational change. But what they also did say was that it might have meant things didn’t happen that could have happened otherwise, in the sense that we may have gone backwards as a consequence rather than standing still, perhaps. So, maybe not transformational, but it has meant that we haven’t lost ground; that was, I think, an important point. But you also highlighted the fact that we rely too much, perhaps, on the EU pot of funding sometimes in our public areas and that we should address this, and this is what we’re talking about: more creative thinking and more sector involvement.

Steffan highlighted the NUTS 2 regions that are in Wales, and I fully agree with him that we need to define regions. One of the questions that was raised was: what does a region mean in Wales? Are we still talking about the two regions that were originally part of the EU funding? How do other parts of Wales fit into all of this? How could it work better? And it is important that the Welsh Government perhaps looks at those specific questions as to what the regions are, and they might not be the same as the local government combinations. They might be different as a consequence. We do need to look at the region for economic development on that side of things and how we can support those policies—the regional policies—and then funding the needs that are local needs, perhaps, and they’ll be different. That worries me a little bit about some of the criteria you place on them, because the criteria will be different in different areas.

And, yes, we definitely need to be Brexit-prepared. But you raised several important questions to the Cabinet Secretary. I think, actually, when you scratch the surface, there’s a lot more to it than that, and I think that showed the complexities that arise and the need to replace regional policy. But we need to replace them quickly. We can’t take our time whilst this process is ongoing. We know the clock is counting; we’ve been told that enough times by everybody—by UK Government, EU negotiators. We need to move forward to a point where we’ve got some position.

Eluned highlighted the fact that regional structures, particularly in the rural areas, are important. We can’t forget that, and it is important that we address those things, but she also highlighted the fact that there seems to be a breakdown, once again, in intergovernmental relationships. I was disappointed, Cabinet Secretary, to hear that the UK Government have not been in discussions with you regarding this shared prosperity fund. Perhaps it reflects the UK Government’s whole approach to Brexit, because every time we ask you about the Joint Ministerial Committee and everything else, we seem to get a response that they’re not really listening. I think it’s about time the UK Government listened to the people, not just in Wales but across the UK, because we are approaching an edge very quickly, and unless we get some answers and things in place, we’re going to fall off with a big bump. So, that does worry me.

On the multi-annual funds, again, it’s been very beneficial, not just for the EU ones; it’s been beneficial for the people running the programmes because they’ve known the timescales they’ve had and the funding they’ve had for that. Perhaps the Cabinet Secretary will—because he didn’t answer this today—look at the multi-annual funds concept in any future regional policy. Cabinet Secretary, I totally agree with you: money, autonomy, creativity are very important for us to actually deliver a regional policy that is fit for Wales, and we need to ensure that that goes forward.

The report and today’s debate show us there’s much to discuss. In the debate, we face a future outside the EU and, in laying this report, we hope to make an initial contribution to this debate. It’s going to be an ongoing debate about our economic future after Brexit, but we must ensure it’s always evidence based as well. We look forward to further contributions, and I remind everyone in this Chamber that this will affect every single one of us—my constituents and the constituents of all of us, whether we’re constituency AMs or regional AMs; everyone will be affected by this process. We need to safeguard the interests of the people of Wales in the years ahead and we need to make sure this is achieved. Thank you.

Thank you very much. The proposal is to note the committee’s report. Does any Member object? No. Therefore the motion is agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.