The Levelling-up Fund

Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution – in the Senedd at 3:00 pm on 9 February 2022.

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Photo of Mick Antoniw Mick Antoniw Labour 3:00, 9 February 2022

Thank you. I can tell you that Welsh Government officials have had no engagement from the UK Government on the levelling-up White Paper, despite economic development actually being a devolved competence. Our experience of this sort of inter-governmental partnership working on these particular matters has been, I would say, wholly unacceptable.

Delivering the levelling-up agenda in Wales without any partnership with the Welsh Government not only disrespects the devolution settlement, but it also badly weakens the potential of any investment programme. It is recognised, the need to actually respect devolved Governments in terms of the implementation of the use of funding. The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee noted:

'the apparent absence of any meaningful strategic engagement with the devolved administrations around the levelling up agenda, amplifies the lack of clarity and focus around this major policy.'

And don't forget: the UK Government commissioned the Dunlop review to actually look into these issues and so on. The Dunlop review noted that

'funding by the UK Government in devolved areas must not replace core funding and must be applied with the support of the devolved governments.'

I can only say that, so far, there has been a total failure in that particular respect, and we've seen that also by the examples of the use of levelling-up funding. The fact that we are certainly not receiving the level of funding that we were promised: the Welsh budget is set to be nearly £1 billion worse off by 2024 as a result of the UK Government's failure to honour its commitment that Wales would not lose a single penny as a result of the UK leaving the European Union.