Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for European Transition (in respect of his European Transition responsibilities) – in the Senedd at 2:44 pm on 9 December 2020.
Well, I hope the Member won't have read any confidence into my statement, because the experience of trying to gain information about the thinking behind the shared prosperity fund has unfortunately been one where that hasn't been forthcoming. We have tried, as a Government, as I think his question implicitly acknowledges, to devise successor arrangements in collaboration with people in Wales, and, as a consequence of that, given how important they are, there is a broad base of support for the approach that we are promoting. I myself think that, when the UK Government is able to read and analyse the provisions and the proposals in that framework that they will struggle, quite honestly, to find in there proposals that they wouldn't wish to support because the focus of them is on encouraging productive businesses, supporting employment, and so on, and I know that is on their list of priorities as well. So I would say that the UK Government ought to engage with us about how we can, even at this late hour, make sure that the people in Wales have the promises they were made kept, both with regard to how the funds are spent, but also crucially what those funds are. As we stand here today, those promises have been broken, but it's not too late to relent on that and to put in place arrangements that meet the commitments made to people in Wales.