I thank David Rees for those questions. He's right to say at the start of his questions that, effective though the use of these funds has been, the broader context of austerity is one within which we are all operating. One can't expect any level of intervention of this kind to make up for the impact, the adverse impact, that that will have on the communities that many of us represent.

It's exactly the kind of detail around multi-annual funding and the central availability of that that we are still uncertain about. I think his question goes to the heart of it. The programmes that we have currently are, obviously, available on a multi-annual basis. So, being able to continue providing support on that basis is essential.

I will also say that there will be programmes that one would expect to qualify under the existing programmes and future programmes, and, typically, there's an overlap in those programme years so that there can be smooth transition from one programme to the next. So, that's another concern—that we make sure that replacement arrangements and replacement funding are in place in good time for that to be possible in relation to some of these programmes as well.

In relation to the consultation in March, that will be a public consultation. It will describe the output of the steering group and it will describe the principles and the broad frameworks and so on, but that will be available for public consultation. He is right to mention the fact that the final report of the OECD won't be available until the end of the year. This is a programme that the OECD has been working with us on for two years, and there have been some interim outputs from the work of the OECD, including visits to Wales during the last year and a stakeholder meeting, as I said, in November of last year. That has given a sense of some of the direction of travel from their reflections on best practice as well.

There are a number of questions involved here. One is around the frameworks, the priorities, the governance and then the delivery mechanisms. Some of that will be available only at the end of the year from the OECD, but, in relation to the frameworks, the governance, the principles and so on, we will want those to be consulted upon sooner than that.

It's important for us to be in a position to have replacement funding arrangements in place as soon as possible next year so that we can maximise that smooth transition between one set of EU-funded programmes and the UK-wide funded programmes after that.