I wouldn't say it'll fatally undermine confidence in the sector. I don't think it'll kill off everything that exists, but it will cause real damage—damage that is avoidable as well. But the problem is that choices that have been made at a UK level take that money out of the sector, and the deliberate design of the shared prosperity fund in particular was to exclude higher education from that. And if we were having this debate in England, they'd have exactly the same complaints about how they've been carved out of it, and it's a real problem; it's a real and undeniable problem, and you don't normally hear higher education vice chancellors talking about the fact that hundreds of well-paid jobs that we want more of, not less of, in Wales and in every region of the UK, are going because of that funding choice.

Now, the UK Government are aware of that, and, in the conversations I've had directly with George Freeman, the science Minister in the UK Government, they're aware there's a problem, and the challenge is that different parts of the UK Government are not connected with each other in the choices they're all making. I think it'll be too late for some of those people, I'm afraid, and, even with all of the ways that we have tried to work alongside people, the reality is our budgets only stretch so far and we can't fill in all of the damage that has been done. It's why we're looking for a stable relationship with the UK Government, and one where there's honesty about how money will be spent, and to move away from some of the damaging and short-sighted competitive processes and just some honesty about keeping their promises on the money. We will be clear about how we're using the money that we have; we will be working with the university sector on how we use that money on the missions and how we're going to move to look forward, and how that has a genuine translational impact into Welsh communities now and in the future. There are still opportunities, but we could do so much more if we weren't starting from a position where damage has been done with foresight and knowledge of what was to come.