2. What provision is the Welsh Government making for cross-border co-operation within Britain post-Brexit? OAQ54780

The Welsh Government already encourages cross-border working, for example through the Mersey-Dee Alliance, and we will continue to support cross-border co-operation post Brexit. We strongly believe in nurturing existing economic links within and beyond Britain, and regret the way in which the outgoing UK Government has put ideology before Wales's economic interests.   

You can't resist it, can you? As you know, the UK European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which secured legislative consent from this Chamber, is developing frameworks to ensure that, whatever happens post Brexit, there is a UK single market so we don't have internal barriers between the nations of the UK. Clearly, framework negotiations are paused at the moment until the outcome of the general election is known and we have a new UK Government in place, but what proposals, if we reach that position, does the Welsh Government have for a body to have oversight and, if necessary, enforcement, where the framework for environment, animal safety, food standards and so on is breached? 

Thank you very much for that question, and he highlights, and I'm grateful to him for doing so, the important work that has been going on between Governments in the UK in relation to common frameworks on policy areas that touch upon the internal market if we leave the European Union. There is a subset of that that is specifically about the internal market, which deals with the sorts of issues that are currently dealt with on a regulatory basis as part of the EU single market. The priorities of the Welsh Government in relation to those arrangements are to ensure that Welsh businesses can continue to trade with businesses across the UK, which is a very, very significant market, as he obviously understands, for Welsh businesses, and to ensure that in doing so we are able to maintain the high standards that we would wish to see here for labour rights, social and environmental rights, for example, and also to ensure that the devolution settlement is absolutely protected in those arrangements.

As part of the common frameworks work overall, I have asked officials to look at whether statements by the UK Government that suggest a much, much more deregulatory approach than I'm sure any of us here would be comfortable with are capable of being managed within those existing and planned common frameworks.

On the question of a regulatory body, which his question asks me directly about, it isn't clear at this point whether that is going to be necessary. He will know that our preference has been to ensure that there are inter-governmental relationships, leading ultimately to a council of Ministers across the UK, which are able to manage relationships between the UK Governments, enabling policy divergence to be done on a managed basis. So, that is where the discussion is at this point in time. Obviously, I plan to update the Senedd on developments in this area over the coming weeks and months.

One of the key areas of cross-border co-operation post Brexit, but actually post general election, is going to be the extent of engagement between Welsh Government, Wales Office Ministers and also Whitehall departments on the issue of funding streams that have a Wales and UK bite. Now, of course, we have scant details at the moment on the UK shared prosperity fund and, during the course of the election and before, it seems to have gone into hiding in some ways, but the results of the issue of investment in research and innovation that comes from a UK level and also previously from an EU level as well—there is the future of Erasmus and Horizon 2020, there is Whitehall department from business, from energy, from infrastructure that flows and could be flowing into Wales.

So, I'd like to ask the Minister: after the general election is out of the way, will he be immediately knocking on the doors not only of the Wales Office just down the road here, but also in Whitehall departments, to get certainty, and not least, I have to say, over the £370 million per annum that is at risk from the loss of the EU fund at the moment, which we're told will be in the UK shared prosperity funding, but, as the Government has said quite clearly, it's not only the question of making sure that money is available to Wales, but that it's given to Wales and that decisions will be made in Wales in line with the policy framework that we have? But that and other aspects need to be bolted down, because this continuing uncertainty—. Whilst the group that I'm chairing is trying to develop this framework on a national and regional level of future funding within Wales, we really need clarity from the UK Government about what they bring to the table. 

Well, I'll thank the Member, if I may, for that question and also for his work chairing the group to which he referred in his question, which is doing very innovative and creative work, I think, in identifying, not least on the basis of international best practice, how we can best deploy regional investment funds into the future. He talks about relationships between the Welsh Government and various departments of the UK Government. It is my experience that, in relation to the areas that he has specified in his question, those discussions have been—to the extent they've been productive at all—more productive in direct discussions with the relevant departments concerned.

He talks about research and innovation, and he will know, I know, how dependent, for example, our higher education sector is on funds from Horizon 2020. It is absolutely the case that we have insisted at every opportunity with the UK Government that we must have full replacement for the funds that we will lose if we leave the European Union. He will, perhaps, have seen observations in the Conservative manifesto that, whilst repeating the broad assertion that we've heard routinely from the UK Government without any substance to date, also implies within it that control of those funds could operate on a UK-wide level. And I know that he shares with me and with most Members in this Chamber an absolute aversion to that way of dealing into the future. It is essential, both from democratic and a devolution point of view, but also from the point of view of effective investment in priorities across Wales, that those decisions in relation to how that funding is spent are done by the Welsh Government, based upon the sort of advice that I know will emerge from the work that his committee is doing.