2. Will the First Minister make a statement on EU funding for Wales? OAQ53823

I thank the Member for that question. Wales has been a long-term beneficiary of European Union funding. That continues to the present day, when over 90 per cent of our current structural funds allocation has now been invested in skills and infrastructure measures, including highly successful examples in the Member's own constituency. 

Thank you, First Minister, and we can look around many constituencies where we see very important infrastructure and other projects that benefited the people of Wales as a result of EU funding. Funding is worth around £650 million a year to Wales. That means that, over a five-year-term, £3.25 billion comes into Wales. And, as yet, we have no long-term guarantee from the Tories. The Wales Office is silent, the UK Government remains silent, and the Welsh Tories remain silent. First Minister, what are the consequences of the Tories failing to deliver on those promises that Wales would not suffer a penny less as a result of Brexit?

Llywydd, the Conservative Party and the Secretary of State may be silent now on a long-term guarantee, but they were anything but silent in the run-up to the referendum in 2016, when it was the then leader of the Conservative party here in Wales who offered an absolute guarantee—that's his term—an absolute guarantee that Wales would not be a penny worse off as a result of leaving the European Union. That is why it is absolutely right that we hold the Conservative Party and the Conservative Government at the UK level to those promises. The money that Wales gets from the European Union comes to Wales because we qualify for it on the basis of our needs. Those needs will not have gone away the day after the United Kingdom leaves the European Union, if that is what takes place. And the money to respond to those needs must come in future from the UK Government. It would be a very strange message indeed, Llywydd, wouldn't it, to people who voted to leave the European Union that they were worse off as a result of their membership of the United Kingdom than they had been as a result of their membership of the European Union. That's for the UK Government to address. The money must come to Wales, not a penny less, and not a power lost either, Llywydd, because the decision as how to use that money, as Mick Antoniw has said, needs to rest here in this National Assembly for Wales, where it has ever since the start of devolution.

First Minister, we hear a lot of crowing on the Labour benches about European money post Brexit, but, of course, the reality is that it's not European money, it's our money that has been sent to the European Union and is being sent back to this country having had a slice of it taken away. Do you accept that, post Brexit, Wales has the opportunity to be able to invest in areas that are currently outside of the European funding programme because of their location and yet deserve some investment? So, do you welcome the opportunities that could be presented to Wales as a result of a UK shared prosperity fund, so that those deprived communities outside of west Wales and the Valleys can receive the support that they also deserve?

I'm not as sanguine as the Member about the UK prosperity fund because we know next to nothing about what that fund proposes. We know next to nothing about the money. The chair of the Finance Committee is pointing out to me that when the Secretary of State for Wales has been invited to give evidence to Assembly committees so that we can have the detail that we need, he refuses to come here to answer those questions. So, I am by no means as sanguine as the Member is. Let me say this: we are working hard inside the Welsh Government, and through a group involving people beyond the Welsh Government, chaired by Huw Irranca-Davies, to make sure that we are prepared for the day in which that money continues to come to Wales, and where there are opportunities, if there are, to use that money in new and more flexible and more effective ways, of course, we will be ready to take those opportunities. But we know nothing about the money, we know nothing about where the powers lie, and it's the UK Government's responsibility to make sure that both of those things flow to Wales and remain in Wales in the future.