EU Structural Funding

Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance – in the Senedd at 1:40 pm on 20 June 2018.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:40, 20 June 2018

Well, I thank David Melding for that. I am familiar with the Reid review and with the conclusions that it draws. David Melding is absolutely right to highlight the fact that that review and others have shone a spotlight on Horizon 2020 funding from the European Union, in which Wales punches well above our weight. We get a considerably higher return through Horizon 2020 projects than you would expect for a higher education sector of our size, and that means that securing ongoing access to programmes of that sort beyond our membership of the European Union is vitally important for our research community. They do need, as Reid says, to go on increasing their capture of grants from major funders, such as the Medical Research Council and other UK councils, but the capture that they have, working with colleagues right across Europe from Horizon 2020, means that its successor programme and our ability in Wales to have access to it is especially important to research bodies here in Wales.