Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:15 pm on 30 November 2022.
It highlights the complexity and the emotive matters that we have been discussing this afternoon. Just briefly, a few comments on the speakers. Peter, to start with, talked about that lack of engagement and that complexity of not talking to each other. Mike, then—one point to make is that Simon Hart didn't send us the workings, but Robert Buckland did, so we did have some of that information. But, I think you have designed our new motto as a committee, 'Show your working'. I think that keeps coming up every time, so to any Minister listening or anybody coming to speak to us in future, then 'Show your working' would be a very important thing.
Llyr talked, again, about there being a long way to go to deliver on the promises made. Thanks to Rhianon and Jane, also, for talking about the promises that were made. Alun and Huw talked about the long-term funding arrangements and the long-term planning, and there were kind words from Huw there about the report itself and, obviously, the other report that started some of this process. I know that other committees are looking to take this work on and look at this further. I believe that the economy committee is going to start some work on this next year as well to keep this conversation going and to keep this dialogue going. This investigation that we did was a deep dive—an initial look at this—and it needs further investigation.
Then, thank you to the Minister for her comments, highlighting again some of the inflexibility that I talked about in some of these funds and that dialogue between the two Governments not happening. The one thing that we need to bear in mind is that it's our communities—our most vulnerable communities—that are affected by all of this, and it's those people whom we see out there in the real world, as it were, who are affected by the bun fight, if you like, on who's paying for what and what money is going where. So, we need to have better communications.