Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 1:44 pm on 9 October 2019.
So, five years later, you're not sure; you don't know. Maybe that suggests that somebody needs to do a piece of work looking at the use of that particular money, because farmers were, of course, told, at the time, that the money taken out from their direct payments would actually come back to them through the rural development programme. The reality, of course, is very different, because we've seen how the programme budget reduced significantly in 2016, from £956 million, as a result of amending the rate of domestic co-financing provided by the Welsh Government, to what is now a total budget of £828 million for the programme period, of course, which ends next year.
Now, worse still, as of the end of August this year, you've only spent 41 per cent of the total RDP budget. So, having picked the pockets of Welsh farmers on the premise that that money will be maximised in relation to economic development in rural Wales, can you assure everyone that there will be no further erosion of RDP funds by further reductions of the co-financing rate? And do you acknowledge that there is now, at this late stage, a very real risk that your Government will fail to spend the budget effectively and in full?