Llywydd, it is certainly utterly bereft of truth on this occasion, because that funding formula is not a formula of the Welsh Government: it is a formula signed off every year by an expert group and then by Welsh local authorities themselves, including leaders of north Wales authorities, who were round the table in the meeting where that formula was agreed. 

Let me try and rescue a small number of points from what the Member had to say. Indeed, had he been listening he would have found that they were answered already, because one of the things that we will be able to do with funding the other side of the European Union is to make better, more flexible use of it. The geographical constraints that inevitably come with European funding will not be there to that extent in the future, and it is one of the advantages we will be able to put to work.

I agree with what he said about local decision making featuring as much as possible in the future deployment of European funds. I believe there will still be some national priorities that we will wish to set, but there will be regional working very importantly at the heart of the way we use these funds, and there will be more room for decisions to be made at a very local level, often drawing on the experience of the LEADER programme, for example, which the European Union has helped us to develop here in Wales. Far from being more of the same, Llywydd, the whole exercise is designed to learn the positive lessons from the programme so far and then to take advantage of new possibilities that we will have for regional investment, provided the money comes to Wales and the decisions are made here in Wales.