I'm pleased to contribute to this debate today as a member of the Finance Committee, and to reiterate the views of our new Chair, who actually covered the issues in our report very fully and comprehensively, so I don't need to add much to that. It was clearly an area of enormous importance that we were looking at during our reporting stage.

The issue of how we replace EU funding post the UK's exit from the European Union is something that will affect us all, affect all sectors of the economy. It's an unprecedented situation, and I think we recognised that in the sessions that we had with the Welsh Government. This has not been done before, so you can't expect the Welsh Government to be able to plan everything meticulously ahead, although from the discussions that we did have with officials in the Welsh Government, I think that a lot of good work has been done in a difficult situation.

There is no right way to proceed, so key is recommendation 1, which says that we need the best possible funding deal to ensure that Wales is not a penny worse off post Brexit. We particularly phrased it as 'not a penny worse off', because, let's face it, if we could get some additional money in addition to what we've had—I know that it might be seen as pie in the sky, but if we could get some additional money then that avenue should not be closed down. But the very standard-case scenario that we would want to see would be us getting a pound-for-pound replacement from the new funding arrangements that we get at the moment from Brussels. 

The Conservative manifesto for the 2017 general election committed my party to establishing a UK-wide shared prosperity fund, which the Chair has mentioned, that would avoid some of the costs and the bureaucracy associated with the current funds. And whilst I think we all recognise how much Wales has benefited from structural funds and how much our agricultural industry has benefited from payments from the CAP, I think that all of us would say that it hasn't been a perfect situation and that there have been some administration costs. There are different ways of doing things that this is an opportunity for us to do; we don't have to follow everything as it's been done by Brussels hitherto.  

I appreciate that we haven't seen to many details of this fund, and I'm sure the Cabinet Secretary will make comments on this in his remarks later, but I think it is important that we hit the ground running when that shared prosperity fund is up and running. So, aside from some of the issues about not knowing exactly what the details will be, it's important that the Welsh Government puts in place mechanisms so that as soon as the details of that fund do become clear, we can hit the ground running and get on with using that money as it should be used. David.