Welsh Affairs

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Wayne David]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words. On the community renewal fund, he is right that there was tremendous concern in the Caerphilly borough and in his constituency in the Bridgend area that those valley areas were, for some mystical reason, excluded from the Government’s list of 100 prioritised areas. Thankfully, as far as Wales was concerned, that prioritisation list was pushed to one side and all local authorities bar one received support from the community renewal fund.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) on the huge contribution that he has made to this place and to Welsh politics more broadly.

The mess that my hon. Friend is talking about—the community renewal fund, the lack of information and the governance issues mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore—is symptomatic of a strategy to cut the Welsh Government out of the shared prosperity fund, and that is symptomatic of a broader strategy to completely dismantle devolution in our country. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) agree that it simply does not make sense to cut the Welsh Government out, because we need that strategic overview of what is happening with economic development in Wales? Unfortunately, this is due to a politically motivated aim to dismantle devolution, and the UK Government are using the shared prosperity fund as a vehicle for those purposes.

[Wayne David]

I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend has made, and is making, a huge contribution to this debate through his able chairpersonship of the all-party parliamentary group on the shared prosperity fund.