I thank David Rees for that question, and I think he is right to say that the internal market Bill is clearly an attempt to give the UK Government powers to deliver parts of the shared prosperity fund, which otherwise it wouldn't be able to do. Though its financial assistance powers are described as being there to work with us, but plainly are there to work around us, and so I share his concern in relation to that.

Whatever one's view, as it where, of the politics of the situation, it is clearly not acceptable that, so near to the end of the point at which we have certainty of our funding, we still don't know what the picture looks like for the period ahead. There will be programmes that will fall by the wayside, loss of talent in our various programmes and interventions that will arise as a consequence of that, which needn't have happened, and wouldn't have happened had there been greater clarity earlier and had the UK Government been clearer sooner about its commitment to the promises it's made in the past.

As he will know, there's been consistent and significant work that we have led in Wales with stakeholders right across Wales to design a framework for successor programmes. I very much hope that the work of stakeholders in all sectors in all parts of Wales will be given the credit and weight that it should by the UK Government in its reflections on this, because they do genuinely offer a very constructive way of taking those programmes forward here in Wales into the future, and I'll be formally updating Members next week, via a written statement, on the progress we've been making in relation to regional investment with our stakeholders right across Wales.