Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:10 pm on 8 November 2022.
You're right; we're certainly facing a significant loss—over £1.1 billion—in unreplaced EU funding between 2021 and 2025. You mentioned levelling-up funding. Obviously, the Welsh Government has been denied access to the shared prosperity fund or any sort of decision role in how the funds are going to be allocated here in Wales. I think it's fair to say it's an abject failure as a replacement for EU funding. We haven't received any money, whereas if we'd still been in the European Union we would have had funding almost two years ago now, in that period I just mentioned, 2021-25. I also think devolution has been bypassed, so it clearly is a huge concern for us. As you say, we're in very turbulent financial times, so what we're having to do is have discussions with our partners to see how we can make sure that we don't lose these amazing schemes that are already in place.