I would like to raise the question of the effect of the way much of this money has been spent over the years. As Darren Millar pointed out, in fact in Wales we've gone backwards in the last 20 years in terms of relative prosperity. In 1998, the average gross value added in Wales was 74.8 per cent of the UK average, and in 2016 it was 72.7 per cent, so we've actually, relatively speaking, gone backwards. And, of course, we do have two of the poorest parts of Europe within our country. The Gwent Valleys is second from bottom with an average income of £14,700-odd, 56 per cent of the UK average; Anglesey is even worse, with an average income of only £13,600-odd, 52 per cent of the UK average. We've had significant sums of money spent on regional policy over the years, but they don't seem to have done a great deal to disturb the relativities.

Therefore, I'm not sure that it's the correct approach to ring-fence this money  that we will have the right to administer after Brexit, and I'm not an admirer, generally, of hypothecation of revenues, because priorities change from year to year and new needs appear, and the relativities between different needs also change. So, I think if the Welsh Government was to commit for a significant period to maintaining the importance of the regional aid budget within Wales, then it might be closing its eyes to other opportunities as to how it might spend the money in a more productive way to achieve the social objectives and economic objectives that the Government has.

The statement goes on to say towards the end that  

'It will also see us develop arrangements to deliver economic growth and reduce regional inequalities.'

We can all support that objective, but there are other ways in which, perhaps, that can be achieved, and I would like the Government to be more imaginative than it has been able to be in the past.

I'm fully in sympathy with the Cabinet Secretary in wanting to get on with the job, and not waiting for the UK Government in its wisdom to hand down tablets of stone whenever it feels convenient to do so. Theresa May has given a whole new meaning to the word 'torpidity', I think, since she has been Prime Minister, and the conduct of the Brexit negotiations, if we can exalt them with that description, is proof positive of that, as she persists in her unthinking, Sisyphean relentlessness in pushing boulders to the tops of hills, only to have them rolled down back on top of her and ultimately, I believe, to flatten her. But I think it is right that the Welsh Government should take the lead and put more pressure by taking positive action to force, if they can, the UK Government to get on with taking rational decisions as to how the future for Wales might be best administered. It's a mystery to me that the UK Government cannot simply say, 'Yes, you will get your £370 million a year', because the money is there—we will be getting it back from Brussels, and the United Kingdom Government, I think, has no moral right to say that there is some doubt about this. It's creating uncertainty not just for Wales, but also an unnecessary uncertainty, I think, in the minds even of Conservative Members elsewhere in the United Kingdom. The Government cannot simply remove levels of uncertainty that could be removed without any damage whatever to the Government's overall objective, whatever that might be, in the course of the Brexit negotiations.     

One of the ways in which we could perhaps spend some of the money that is currently allocated to regional policy better is on energy prices, reducing the impact on specific industries of energy prices. We know that, for example, the steel industry, in effect, has got 85 per cent of the burden of the extra charges imposed as a result of climate change policies on its back, and without that rebate, then the steel industry in the whole of the United Kingdom would be flat on its back. So, there are unintended consequences of some policies that could be addressed as a result of considering other ways of spending this money. I can't go into it in any more detail now, but I wonder if the Cabinet Secretary, bearing in mind that we all have the same ultimate objectives here—that we share the desire for Wales to be much more prosperous than it has been in the past and, even within Wales, for inequalities to be addressed—. But that I think requires us to be as flexible as possible in funding arrangements post Brexit, when we have the levers of power in our own hands.