Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:07 pm on 14 November 2018.
I agree. And, yes, there are some assumptions that can be made, but, of course, as Julie Morgan pointed out, with the news today as to what's happening in Cabinet right now, all those assumptions could be thrown in the air and discarded, because we just haven't got a clue. And that's the biggest problem: there is no commitment to any aspect of this. The high-level abstract definitions say absolutely nothing. And Julie's also highlighted the concern that we've also had in the past—and we've raised this with the Cabinet Secretary on other aspects of Brexit—is the engagement with the Welsh Government. Julie highlighted the fact that there was a meeting last week, preparatory to the consultation, but it was organised through the Welsh Office, not the Welsh Government, and George Hollingbery came to our committee to talk about trade and he was having exploratory discussions with stakeholders, so he said, organised through the Welsh Office, not the Welsh Government, on aspects of business in Wales. It is clear that the engagement with devolved institutions is atrocious, and it's something that really needs to be taken up at a much higher level— if you can, Nick, if you've got any influence at No. 10, please tell them that they need to engage with the Welsh institutions. [Interruption.] It's very important. They could tell us as well, yes.
Now, the report does highlight, once again, that lack of engagement, and I think we need to address that because we have representation for communities, deprived areas. Those communities benefit from European funding. They're going to lose out, and yet the UK Government doesn't seem to have an interest in helping us help them. We do know that Wales will lose funding; we do know that some of our most deprived communities will no longer get the opportunity to have financial investment and support; we do know, to date, that there are no identified replacement programmes. It's time for the UK Government to move ahead with the promises to the Welsh people of no loss of funding now or in the future.