5. What action is the Welsh Government taking to develop the Swansea economy? OQ58857

Investment in infrastructure, skills and start-ups are the essential ingredients in Government action to develop our economy. The Swansea bay city deal digital district programme, part-funded by Welsh Government, is an example of how we are working together to support economic development and growth.

On 1 December, I, alongside the First Minister, was at Veeqo's official office opening at Technium 2, following their being taken over by Amazon—a success story of bringing highly paid employment into Swansea. This happened at least in part due to the graduates being produced and the support of the local universities. What further support can the Welsh Government give to the university sector to develop more highly paid jobs in Swansea, and has the First Minister got any comment on Swansea University's warning about the impact of the UK Government's failure to secure participation in Horizon Europe? What impact is this having on Welsh universities being able to contribute to local economic development?

Llywydd, I thank Mike Hedges. It was very good to be in Swansea with him at the start of this month, and a chance to put on record once again: congratulations to Matt Warren, who founded Veeqo less than 10 years ago, and has made it such an outstanding success. In his contribution at that ceremony, he focused on the quality-of-life advantages that come with living in the Swansea area, the quality of the workforce that he had been able to recruit—particularly the level of skills that had been developed from young people in universities here in Wales—and he focused on the quality of infrastructure now available in that part of Swansea. And it is a genuine boost to the region's growing tech sector that we've seen such a success in a company that now operates on that global scale.

In terms of the second part of Mike Hedges's question, our universities undoubtedly face a series of headwinds when it comes to being able to invest in the sorts of new initiatives and skill development that led to Veeqo's success in Swansea. We know that we will not be able to replace for Swansea University the £135 million, which is the most conservative estimate of the benefits that they have derived from European funding in the last seven-year multi-annual framework. The UK Government has comprehensively failed to deliver the absolute guarantee that we were offered, that Wales would not be a penny worse off, and not only is the amount of money not available to Wales, but the people who benefited from it aren't able to benefit from it either. So, whereas, in Wales, the Welsh Government was able to benefit from that—that's how Business Wales has been developed; that's how the Development Bank of Wales has had some of its success—neither our universities, neither our private businesses, neither is the third sector able to take any advantage from the reduced funding that is available to us.

And at the same time, Swansea University particularly has drawn attention to the failure of the UK Government to reach an agreement over participation in the next iteration of the Horizon programme. Wales drew down a far greater proportion of funding out of Horizon than we would have been entitled to on a population-share basis, and Swansea University itself secured €18 million of EU funding with 51 different Horizon projects over the 2014 to 2020 period. Now there's nothing. We don't have association with Horizon and we don't have certainty from the UK Government about any plan B successor programme, and it is no wonder that the university has issued the warning it has about redundancies and retrenchment in those very areas where the Veeqo development shows how success can be created.