7. What discussions has the Minister held with the UK Government about the levelling-up fund? OQ56458

Last week, ministerial colleagues and I met with the Secretary of State for Wales and the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, where they reiterated their intent to run a competitive fund from Westminster, contrary to what was announced in the November spending review.

It's astonishing, isn't it? The levelling-up fund is a direct affront to Wales's devolution settlement, Minister, I'm sure you'll agree, and it circumvents our democratic institutions. Not only is the Senedd excluded from decisions that will be taken in Whitehall, but the fund ties the success of community projects to representation made by MPs in Westminster, even as the UK Government cuts the number of Welsh MPs by a fifth. Surely, decisions made for Wales should be made in Wales. Given that England's Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will be overseeing the scheme, what assurances have you received that they will be able to assess accurately Welsh bids, given their complete lack of expertise in devolved areas?

I have absolutely no confidence that the MHCLG department in the UK Government will do a good job of this. I take that view because of the record upon which they stand. The UK Parliament's Public Accounts Committee has released its report on the towns fund in England and found a lack of transparency and accusations of political bias in the selection process, lack of consistent or transparent stakeholder engagement, a lack of capacity at local level to effectively implement those proposals and a potential risk to the civil service's reputation for integrity and impartiality. Under any other Government, that would be absolutely shocking, but this just seems to be run-of-the-mill and accepted behaviour. So, I don't have trust that the UK Government will be able to deliver for Wales.

We've only just seen the criteria upon which the levelling-up fund will work, and we have some real concerns about that in terms of the selection methodologies for the fund. The choice of indicators really does omit things that are important to us here in Wales. They don't look at indices of deprivation, for example, and they're not interested in looking at transport data. All of those things will only serve to disadvantage Wales when we are compared to other regions in terms of the bids that are being made to that fund. So, all we have, I think, at the moment, unfortunately, are reasons to be concerned, rather than optimistic.