Ben Lake MP: After decades of under-investment from the UK Government, Wales cannot now be left worse off
4 min read
Plaid Cymru's Ben Lake MP writes in advance of his party's spring conference about upcoming changes to the European Structural and Investment Funds after Brexit.
Assuming Brexit goes ahead, European Structural and Investment Funds are set to be replaced with the UK Government’s single DIY equivalent - the Shared Prosperity Fund.
This week at our Spring Conference, Plaid Cymru will set out in a new report our vision of how this Fund can amount to more than a bargain basement imitation of the status quo.
The relationship between Wales and EU funding is a beneficial one. As one of the poorest parts of Britain, we receive an average of €140 per person each year - nearly four times the UK average. Of course, no nation takes pride from its impoverishment, but it is true that while successive Westminster Governments – of both blue and red tint - have invested heavily in London and the south east of England, the EU has for decades invested quietly in Wales.
Year in, year out we have benefited from energy projects, skills development schemes, and small enterprise grants. Structural funding has proven to be an important source of support, and as such, it is imperative that Wales does not receive a penny less under the new Shared Prosperity Fund. After all, this was a key promise of Vote Leave and it is a promise for which we intend to hold them accountable.
After decades of under-investment from the UK Government, Wales cannot now be left worse off. Indeed, we urge the UK Government to embed uplift adjustments into the design of the Shared Prosperity Fund, recognising both inflationary and population changes affecting Wales.
We also make the case that the Shared Prosperity Fund must operate on the basis of multi-annual financial allocations of at least seven years. Inconvenient though this will be for the Treasury’s Spending Review cycles, Westminster must be prepared to put Wales’s economic necessity ahead of bureaucratic convenience.
Longer timeframes will allow for more effective planning and implementation of large-scale infrastructure projects. The types of projects needed to support jobs, boost wages and increase living standards in underperforming areas.
We envision that Shared Prosperity funding for Wales would be pre-allocated to projects, rather than assigned via expensive, wasteful competitive bidding processes. Rejecting such scarcity mentalities is key to ensuring investment is based on need, not the pursuit of flashy headlines. These decisions, however, ought not to be the purview of MPs like me, but the responsibility of colleagues in the Senedd.
Indeed, such important decisions should be taken by institutions that are as close as possible to those most affected by them, and so Wales’s stake of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund should be transferred as a separate block grant to the Senedd. A separate block grant untouched by the Barnett Formula.
The Welsh Government already has responsibility for regional development in Wales, and indeed responsibility for distributing EU funds through the Wales European Funding Office (WEFO). As such, common sense, as well as the constitutional settlement, must surely dictate that an equivalent Welsh institution continues to allocate comparable funding after Brexit.
It would be difficult to justify Wales’s share of the Shared Prosperity Fund being orchestrated from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, a department which is otherwise solely responsible for England. Perhaps such a justification could be made if the UK Government was to demonstrate some competence and an understanding of Wales. Its unedifying management of the complexities of Brexit demonstrates all too clearly that it possesses neither to any notable degree.
The devolved administrations must have responsibility over their fair share of the fund. Not one UK Shared Prosperity Fund but four funds – able to differ and diverge as necessary to best support and benefit communities.
Securing a sensible design for the Shared Prosperity Fund, and fair funding for Wales is just the beginning. Plaid Cymru fundamentally believe that the status quo is not good enough, and that Wales deserves better.
Ben Lake is the Plaid Cymru MP for Ceredigion
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