Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy – in the Senedd at 1:39 pm on 16 February 2022.
Well, I should congratulate the Member. That is the first time that a Conservative Member in this place has said that it should not be acceptable that Wales loses money from the change from European structural funds. That's a very welcome statement. The trouble is the Chancellor's plan shows that Wales is undeniably going to lose money, moving forward, because the whole UK shared prosperity fund, which the UK Government have been very clear is the successor fund for former EU structural funds, will only be £400 million for the whole of the UK next year. Now, we're never going to get £375 million just for Wales out of that. We have tried on more than one occasion to have direct ministerial conversations about this. Thus far, there has been some engagement between officials, which has improved in the last couple of months, but we're still not at a point where there is a meaningful offer to engage with Welsh Government as decision-making partners in how shared prosperity funds are to be used. The one consistent theme has been that Ministers in Whitehall will make all of the decisions. Now, that can't be right either. There's no way for you and the committee you chair to scrutinise any choice that I make or, indeed, to try to scrutinise a UK Minister for the choices they're making on where moneys will be spent in Wales, and that can't be the right outcome when, in this place, Members of all parties have scrutinised how those funds have been used for 20 years, and I know that the Member, to be fair, Llywydd, has been part of giving advice to the Welsh Government in the past on how to effectively use those moneys to deliver significant change for the benefit of the Welsh economy. I only wish the UK would take on board the advice the Member has given in the past as to how those funds should be properly used, with the direct engagement of this place.