Those cuts are already happening. Those cuts are guaranteed now by the way the UK Government has published its plans for a levelling-up fund, so called, and for the shared prosperity fund. Wales will miss out on millions and millions and millions of pounds, and communities like Blaenau Gwent will be at the sharp end of that—communities of which this Conservative Government knows little and cares less. In those practical decisions we are going to see, instead of the seven-year funding that we had under structural funds, instead of a partnership approach with players here in Wales at that local level, determining how that money should be spent—we are going to see a random, divisive, bureaucratic and wasteful set of arrangements imposed upon us.

I very much share the anxiety that Alun Davies expressed in his opening supplementary question. We are going to be in the hands of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, a ministry of which the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said, in July 2019, on the local enterprise funds in England, that despite spending £12 billion, that ministry had no understanding of what impact that spending had on local economic growth. The same committee, commenting on the towns fund and decisions made by the Secretary of State Robert Jenrick, said that he had

'risked the Civil Service’s reputation for integrity and impartiality' and that he had acted in ways that 

'fuelled accusations of political bias' when he picked a scheme that was 536 on the list of 541 ranked by his civil servants and decided to fund it. It's little wonder that the conclusions were drawn that that decision was driven by those narrow, partisan and politically motivated ways of conducting business. Now, Wales will be at the same mercy of a UK Government making decisions in Whitehall, bypassing people here in Wales. We will look every day at the way that those decisions are made to make sure that pork-barrel politics of the sort we see by this Tory Government in Whitehall—that we are not polluted by it here in Wales.