2. What discussions has the First Minister had with the UK Prime Minister regarding the UK Government's proposals for regional investment in Wales? OQ55600

Well, Llywydd, no discussions have been offered by the Prime Minister on this matter. We discuss our plans with other UK Government Ministers, but progress remains slow, despite only three months remaining until EU funding enters its final phase. 

Well, First Minister, I'm disappointed to find that no discussions have gone on at that very top level of Government, but I don't put it at your door whatsoever. In Wales, with our established reserved-powers model of devolution and the spending priorities flowing from clear, legally constituted policy framework underpinned by the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, we can argue in the Senedd over the social and economic and environmental priorities, our success and failures, in an open and accountable and democratic way, and we do. But, I have a worry, First Minister. In England, prior to the last general election, we now know that nine out of 10 of the top beneficiaries of increased education spend were Conservative marginal seats in affluent areas. And the National Audit Office has revealed that some of the most deprived parts of England were left out of a £3.6 billion scheme to regenerate town centres. Sixty-one of those towns were chosen by Ministers led by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Robert Jenrick. All but one were Tory-held seats or targets. 

So, First Minister, do you share my worries that, in the absence of clarity on the UK shared prosperity fund, the absence of engagement by the Prime Minister and the absence of a UK policy framework, there is a clear and present danger that Mr Johnson may be persuaded by those with—[Inaudible.]—and lack of understanding of devolution to view replacement EU funds as an opportunity for party political gerrymandering in Wales? 

Well, Llywydd, I think Huw Irranca-Davies makes a very important point, and he does so with all the authority of someone who has chaired our regional investment steering group, who chairs the European structural funds monitoring committee and chairs our European advisory group. So, the things that he says to the Senedd come with all the authority and the information that he has been able to draw together in those very important jobs.

Now, the plans for future investment in Wales that he has drawn up with those colleagues, a made-in-Wales arrangement reflecting international best practice, meeting the specific needs of different sectors and parts of Wales with greater delegation of decision making to regions, that is an approach that has been endorsed not simply by the Senedd, but by the all-party parliamentary group chaired by our colleague Stephen Kinnock at Westminster, the Welsh Local Government Association, Universities Wales, the Financial Standards Authority, the Confederation of British Industry, the Wales Council for Voluntary Action and independent think tanks like the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The danger is now that, in pursuit of narrow sectional party political advantage, the UK Government is engineering a position where they will take decisions away from the democratically elected Senedd and put them in the hands of an unelected—as far as Wales is concerned—Secretary of State for Wales, and I'm afraid all the warnings that Huw Irranca-Davies has made this afternoon are very likely to turn out to be true unless we can stop those plans in their tracks, and we will be working as hard as we can to achieve exactly that. 

First Minister, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report into the future of regional development and public investment in Wales found that the labour market links between the communities of mid Wales and south-west Wales weren't particularly very strong. That recommendation is of no surprise to me. The report proceeded to recommend that it would be beneficial to separate mid Wales from south-west Wales to create four distinct economic regions, as opposed to the current three. I wonder what considerations you and the Welsh Government have given to this particular recommendation and the other recommendations for regional investment within the OECD report. 

Llywydd, I thank Russell George for that question. He draws attention to the very important OECD report that we commissioned, as part of, as I said earlier, our determination that regional economic development policy in Wales should be informed by international best practice. The report is being considered by the groups chaired by Huw Irranca-Davies, and that will inform our thinking in the Welsh Government and we will respond in full to the OECD's recommendations. But the point I make more generally, Llywydd, is this: that the report gives us in this Senedd—Members here—the opportunity to bring all their experience and local knowledge to bear on the way that these decisions are made in Wales. The idea that these decisions should be taken away from us and made by a person sitting behind a desk in Whitehall, who will know very, very little about mid Wales, south-west Wales or any other parts that need to benefit from our funding in future, I think poses a real danger to us and would mean that, in future, the sorts of questions that Russell George has very properly raised here this afternoon would no longer be part of our considerations or our decision making.