Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 10:43 am on 15 July 2020.
A number of rural businesses over the years have been receiving business support through the rural development programme, for example, and we saw a recent report from Audit Wales that had highlighted maladministration by the Welsh Government on certain aspects of that—£53 million-worth had been distributed in a way that didn't have measures in place to secure value for money. We received confirmation in the rural development committee last week that there would be disallowance, and that there were negotiations now between the European Commission and the Welsh Government to recoup some, if not all, of those funds.
Would you now accept that it's time for us to have a full review of the way the RDP in Wales had been administered, and has been used, so that we can be confident that we have had the value for money that we should have had for this investment, particularly given that your Government now intends to use the RDP model, and the way that's implemented, as the basis for the plans that you're bringing forward for supporting agriculture and sustainable land management for the future? It's important that we learn lessons.