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.