Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:52 pm on 25 May 2022.
I'm going to try today not to make any political points whatsoever. The only thing I will do, when I intervened on you earlier, Paul—. It is interesting the approach that has been taken, in that the only people excluded to a high degree from this are the Members of this Senedd, because MPs are specifically mentioned within the need to actually take this forward. So, not Members of this Senedd, this Welsh Parliament—yourself, me included—but also engagement with the Welsh Government and the policy framework. Not that the Welsh Government should do this, but that, actually, they should be a fully embedded partner within it. Now, the reason I mention that is because we spent three years—three years of my life. It hasn't been wasted, I'm glad to see, because some of it has worked its way into the way forward now. It actually has; it's permeated it, when we actually spent three years bringing forward the framework for regional investment in Wales. That was co-produced by the CBI, FSB, the third sector, higher education, further education, academia, everybody, and it was based on the very best OECD models. We were worried that that was going to be chucked out. It's been put partly to one side, but I'm happy to say, in the flurry of the fortnight before the announcement was made, on 13 April, I think it was, with the announcement on the SFP being brought forward—there was a flurry of two weeks of intense negotiations after nothing for months, but there was a flurry of a fortnight. In that fortnight, one of the concessions brought forward was actually to acknowledge that, in Wales, we collaborate. In Wales, there is a framework of partnerships—regional partnerships, local authorities working together, with the third sector, with others—and this somehow has somehow found its way into it with a protest of that last fortnight—. But the disappointing thing, Darren—and I'll happily take an intervention—is, out of all of that collaboration, all of that partnership, all that work that was done over three years, some of which has found its way in, the one missing partner is us, and I just can't understand it.