The Shared Prosperity Fund

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:41 pm on 2 February 2021.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:41, 2 February 2021

Well, Llywydd, I just don't agree that it's a matter of a difference of opinion. It is a difference of straightforward fact: Wales gets £375 million a year, in the last round of European funding; the shared prosperity fund next year will have £220 million in it for the whole of the United Kingdom. That is not a difference of opinion. That is a difference of £150 million. If Wales got the whole of the UK shared prosperity fund, we would be £150 million worse off than we would otherwise have been. And that's why, when Alun Davies asked his supplementary question, he said this is a betrayal of everything that people in Wales were told would happen after we left the European Union.

I'm afraid there isn't a great deal of engagement at official level, because every time we ask the question we are simply told that there are no further details that can be shared with us. And that's the same answer we've had now since 2017, when this idea was first suggested by the UK Government—2017 to 2021, in which there are no further details that can be shared with us. Little surprise that not just the Welsh Government but those communities who depend upon this investment to create the sort of economic futures that we need for them have lost patience and confidence in what this UK Government is likely to deliver.