I'm here to ask questions
of this Government that serves the people of Wales. And I
think that it's very important that people recognise the
failures of your Government, and previous administrations,
to properly manage the European funds that were at their
disposal. We've gone backwards in terms of our wage growth
when compared to—as a proportion—other parts of the UK. And
I find it pretty appalling, frankly, that you're not
prepared to acknowledge the failures in a way that other
Labour backbenchers, and Ministers previously, have
acknowledged in terms of the way that those funds have been
spent.
Can I ask you a question in terms of the way that your
Government hopes to distribute those funds? You will be
aware that the UK Government is keen to establish
a shared prosperity fund, that those
funds will be available to Wales, and that there are many
parts of Wales that are not able to benefit from the
current European structural funds that would likely be
able to benefit under different arrangements through a
UK shared prosperity fund. Do you accept
that many people don't trust the Welsh Government to
distribute funds in Wales, given the way that you carve
up local government settlements, given the way that you
carve up other funding, and seem to distribute it in
places according to your political preferences, rather
than those places that actually need the sort of
investment that is actually available?
And can you tell us what the timetable for the work of
this steering committee that has been established
actually is, in terms of the recommendations that it
might make, and whether you will put in the public domain
all of the minutes of those meetings, who attends them,
and precisely the agenda that those meetings have going
forward? Because I think many people will want to see the
range of activity that is being undertaken by the Welsh
Government in order to look at how you might manage
structural funds in the future, given the failures of the
past.
Looking forward, there is an opportunity to look at
how we manage regional investment in Wales in a way
that enables them to be better aligned with
priorities that we have in Wales, better aligned with
investment that Welsh Government might make through
other sources and, indeed, that local government
might make through other sources across Wales. All of
those are significant prizes, if we can devise the
right way forward.
But, again, I would say to him that, if he thinks
that the solution to this is a UK-Government-managed
fund, he needs to look at the failures of the UK
Government in its work in Wales over the last few
years. And if he thinks that people don't trust the
Welsh Government to manage these funds—I think he's
being very, very optimistic if he thinks that anybody
in Wales might trust the UK Government to manage
these funds better.
