Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:57 pm on 25 May 2022.
I have hardly started—[Laughter.]—hardly started. So, I want to touch on a couple of the challenges that have already been flagged on the forum. One is the additional burden that it adds to local authorities, because they have to manage the competitive bid process. Secondly, the tight timescale, they have between now and August to bring forward and to negotiate between different local authorities on what are the best bids, and to do all the stuff that we could have done in much more managed way there. We also have, I have to say, the challenges as well of looking at what is best within a regional structure. The good thing is that the collaborations that we have built over many years in Wales stand us quite strongly in that, because I'm not picking up an appetite from local authorities to beggar the hindmost, they actually want to build on what we were doing already in Wales and work together. But this carries lots of risks.
So, in this debate today, I would say to people, go and look—. If you want an impartial, balanced view of what stakeholders are genuinely saying about this process, including their analysis of the Welsh Government's points on the fact that we are, at this moment, short of money, that we have been shortchanged, and we're looking to see how that is going to be made up, then go and look at the minutes of those three meetings we've had already, the fourth to be published shortly. I hope, Minister, that what we will have is a maturing from this position, where we genuinely have the UK Government reaching out, and the Welsh Government reaching out to them as well, to say, 'Let's make this work for Wales.' Because we've been in a dark tunnel for a long, long time, I have to say, and I'm not sure that we're out of it. And I do worry that this transition between where we were with that EU funding and where we're heading is not being managed as effectively as it could be.