European Union Funding for Wales

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:37 pm on 7 May 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:37, 7 May 2019

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.