The Shared Prosperity Fund

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:17 pm on 26 April 2022.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:17, 26 April 2022

(Translated)

Well, Llywydd, thank you very much to Cefin Campbell for those supplementary questions. May I say this to him? When I speak to the Government in Westminster, I am not content just to have a voice in the decisions that they're going to be making. That doesn't reflect devolution here in Wales, the powers of the Senedd, or the fact that it is the Government here in Wales that is responsible for the subjects that we're talking about. What I want to see is collaboration together to make those decisions; not just having a voice, but powers here for us to use.

Now, I am willing to continue to have those conversations with the United Kingdom Government, but at the end of the day, before they had announced everything about the fund, we hadn't agreed on how that could be implemented and put in place. It just isn't adequate and sufficient for this Senedd to be just a part of the things, one of the bodies that the UK Government just hears what we have to say. That doesn't reflect what has happened over the period of devolution as a whole.

On the other point, about filling the gaps, it's important for me to state clearly, Llywydd, that we don't have the money as a Government to fill every gap that the decisions in Westminster are going to create. We're doing everything that we can do to use the programmes that we already have, to work with local authorities and so on, but when Wales is to lose out to the tune of more than £1 billion, it's impossible to think that the Government here in Wales can just find the money at that level.