Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:13 pm on 16 October 2018.
Well, Dirprwy Lywydd, I thank the Member for that and thank him for reminding us that the reason why Wales has qualified for European funds over these years is because we have had to deal with the consequences of the Conservative Party's handling of the Welsh economy during the 1980s—their shameful record of de-industrialisation, their shameful record of an assault on the manufacturing industry. Of course they don't know the benefits that European funding has brought because they never go there—they never go to those parts of Wales where their policies laid such waste and where economies and communities are still having to recover from the way in which they discharged their responsibilities, and, indeed, the policies that they continue to pursue here today, the policies of austerity on the one hand and their refusal to live up to the guarantee that was offered to people in Wales that we would not lose a penny from European funding.
The shared prosperity fund, Dirprwy Lywydd, it's a unicorn fund, isn't it? Everybody has heard of it, nobody has ever seen it, and we certainly don't want to see it here in Wales.