Extract from Welsh Parliament Questions to the First Minister: The Shared Prosperity Fund - Mar 16

Wednesday, 17 March 2021 08:13

Alun Davies MS: What assessment has the First Minister made of the proposed funding allocations to Wales resulting from the UK Government's shared prosperity fund? Mark Drakeford MS First Minister of Wales: Dirprwy Lywydd, our assessment is clear: the UK shared prosperity fund fails to honour repeated public commitments made by the UK Government and 'leave' campaigners in Wales...Request free trial

Alun Davies MS: What assessment has the First Minister made of the proposed funding allocations to Wales resulting from the UK Government's shared prosperity fund?

Mark Drakeford MS First Minister of Wales: Dirprwy Lywydd, our assessment is clear: the UK shared prosperity fund fails to honour repeated public commitments made by the UK Government and 'leave' campaigners in Wales that exiting the European Union would mean not a penny less and no devolved powers lost to Wales.

Alun Davies MS: Thank you, First Minister. We have heard much but seen little of either the shared prosperity fund or the levelling-up fund, both of which are becoming more and more like a publicly funded Conservative election fund than a serious attempt to share the prosperity of the United Kingdom. First Minister, do you share my concern that Wales will lose out, that investment funding in Wales will be cut, and that support for Welsh communities recovering from COVID will be cut by a UK Tory Government that has, over the last year, delivered more funds to its friends and donors than it has invested to sustain the Welsh economy? Therefore, do you agree with me that we can only trust the Welsh Government to deliver for Wales, and not a Tory UK Government that only looks at us with disdain from afar?

Mark Drakeford MS First Minister of Wales: Those cuts are already happening. Those cuts are guaranteed now by the way the UK Government has published its plans for a levelling-up fund, so called, and for the shared prosperity fund. Wales will miss out on millions and millions and millions of pounds, and communities like Blaenau Gwent will be at the sharp end of that—communities of which this Conservative Government knows little and cares less. In those practical decisions we are going to see, instead of the seven-year funding that we had under structural funds, instead of a partnership approach with players here in Wales at that local level, determining how that money should be spent—we are going to see a random, divisive, bureaucratic and wasteful set of arrangements imposed upon us.

I very much share the anxiety that Alun Davies expressed in his opening supplementary question. We are going to be in the hands of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, a ministry of which the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said, in July 2019, on the local enterprise funds in England, that despite spending £12 billion, that ministry had no understanding of what impact that spending had on local economic growth. The same committee, commenting on the towns fund and decisions made by the Secretary of State Robert Jenrick, said that he had

'risked the Civil Service’s reputation for integrity and impartiality'

and that he had acted in ways that

'fuelled accusations of political bias'

when he picked a scheme that was 536 on the list of 541 ranked by his civil servants and decided to fund it. It's little wonder that the conclusions were drawn that that decision was driven by those narrow, partisan and politically motivated ways of conducting business. Now, Wales will be at the same mercy of a UK Government making decisions in Whitehall, bypassing people here in Wales. We will look every day at the way that those decisions are made to make sure that pork-barrel politics of the sort we see by this Tory Government in Whitehall—that we are not polluted by it here in Wales.

Mark Isherwood MS: Speaking in the House of Commons last month, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales said the amount of money that's going to be spent in Wales when the shared prosperity fund comes in

'will be identical to or higher than the amount of money that was spent in Wales that came from the European Union',

and that the UK will continue to engage with the Welsh Government as they develop the fund's investment framework for publication. Speaking in a joint meeting of the Senedd's finance and external affairs committees last week, the Secretary of State for Wales said the funding being made available to Wales, underpinned by the 'not a penny less' guarantee, will provide opportunities for Wales to do even better than it has previously done in terms of funding streams, and that they're asking local authorities to join with stakeholders, their MSs, Welsh Government officials and with MPs to come up with really innovative ideas either as individual authorities or jointly with other authorities, and bid for the money available, where the lessons learned from this year will form the basis of the actual shared prosperity fund, which is a much larger package of money from the end of 2021 onwards. How will you engage with that and avoid, as you say we must, narrow, partisan and politically motivated approaches?

Mark Drakeford MS First Minister of Wales: The fact that nonsense is spoken on the floor of the House of Commons doesn't make it any less nonsensical. And it's plainly nonsensical. Next year, the community renewal fund—the latest rebadging of the shared prosperity fund—is worth £220 million for the whole of the United Kingdom. Wales alone had £375 million in structural funds. And we're not guaranteed—to use that word—a single penny of it. It is a UK fund on a bidding basis. There is no money in it that says 'Wales' on it at all. You'll be able to bid and then a Tory Minister in Whitehall will make decisions against the track record that I just set out for Members here. In what possible sense—in what possible sense—could anybody defend that as a way of treating Wales? We are being cheated out of money, we are being stolen from when it comes to our powers, and the unfolding record of the UK Government in Westminster short-changes Wales every single day.

Extract from Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for European Transition: The Shared Prosperity Fund

Huw Irranca-Davies MS: What discussions has the Counsel General had with other law officers regarding the constitutional implications of the UK Government's proposals for the shared prosperity fund?

Jeremy Miles MS Counsel General and Minister for European Transition: The implications are clear: this is an attempt to take things back to decades ago, when Westminster supposedly knew best. Bypassing the elected institutions of Wales is not just an insult to the people of Wales, it will clearly result in worse outcomes for Wales as well.

Huw Irranca-Davies MS: I thank the Counsel General for that response. And I draw his attention to the Secretary of State's appearance last week in front of the External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee, where it was made very, very clear that there is no intention from the UK Government to engage with Welsh Government, and that the Secretary of State for Wales's interpretation of devolution—and of subsidiarity and decision making—does not include Welsh Government, nor does it include regional economic partnerships either. But moreover, there was a worrying ignorance—intentional or otherwise—of the policy framework in Wales, including the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 framework. Now, surely, Counsel General, this has not only financial implications for Wales, but real constitutional implications for our current devolution settlement.

Jeremy Miles MS: I thank Huw Irranca-Davies for that supplementary question. Through the shared prosperity fund, it is certainly the case that the UK Government seeks to be delivering in devolved areas with no input from the Welsh Government on its plans, and without any stakeholder engagement or public consultation. And in practice, that would mean that the UK Government is taking decisions on devolved matters in Wales without being answerable to the Senedd on behalf of the people of Wales. That, obviously, defies the constitutional settlement. And, whilst I note the comments of the Secretary of State for Wales in another context, which highlighted the little status, I think, which he thought the Welsh Government was concerned about, I would encourage him to remember that this is a constitutional settlement, which people in Wales have voted for democratically, and that the decision to proceed in defiance of the constitutional arrangements in Wales is a grave matter from a democratic point of view, but also is ineffective in terms of delivering benefits to people in Wales. And the grievance that we have, and people right across Wales have, yes, it's constitutional, but it's also about a fund that is not going to be effective, has not been consulted upon, does not reflect the priorities of businesses in Wales, cannot be integrated and, where decisions will be taken by a UK Government department whose mismanagement of the towns fund has already been criticised severely in Parliament. And, at a recent meeting, with both the relevant Secretary of State for Wales and the Secretary of State for the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, it was absolutely clear that the intention is for MHCLG to make these decisions, including on the basis of officials appointed in Wales to do so. This Government regards that as fundamentally unacceptable constitutionally and, also, not in the interests of the economy of Wales.