The Shared Prosperity Fund

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:32 pm on 26 April 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:32, 26 April 2022

Well, Llywydd, Vikki Howells makes an important supplementary point about the way in which the reduced amounts that will come to Wales are, in any case, being top-sliced by the UK Government for its own projects, which it will seek to run here in Wales. So, the Multiply programme will be the most obvious example of that—over £100 million that should be in the hands of Welsh decision-makers instead being decided by UK Government Ministers in Wales. The Multiply programme—let me explain to the leader of the opposition—the Multiply programme is not in the hands of local government leaders at all. It is a scheme devised by the UK Government; made in Whitehall; no reference to Wales whatsoever; not a single sentence from any UK Minister before it was announced; no sense at all that it understands the Welsh context in which it will seek to operate. If you look at the menu of choices that local authorities are said to have to operate within, they are entirely—entirely—Anglocentric. They reflect only the landscape that there is in Wales. Not a singe reference to the adult learning network here in Wales, not a single reference to further education provision in Wales, not a single reference to the Hwb platform, which provides the majority of resources that will be necessary for any effective programme here in Wales. The objection, Llywydd, is not, of course, to money being spent in numeracy; it is money being ineffectively spent, money that will now risk duplication of provision here in Wales, that will be spent in ways that bear no relationship to the context in which it is being spent, and which will, I'm afraid, simply mean that that money, which could have been used much more effectively, could have been used in ways that work with the grain of the landscape here in Wales instead of entirely ignoring it, will simply not deliver the outcomes that it would have delivered had it been spent in ways that respected the devolution settlement and respected the way in which decisions ought to be made here in Wales.