FOLLOW THE MONEY?

Our nation, as one of the poorer parts of these islands (we are currently also, but not for long, one of the poorer regions of the European Union), we will have received more than £5 billion in so-called structural funds by the end of 2020. One of the consequences of BREXIT is that this source of funding will cease. Now the Conservatives have said the new Shared Prosperity Fund is intended to reduce inequalities across the four UK nations. 

One of the major flaw in this argument is that the current crop of Conservatives are unionists and centralisers - who at a fundamental level don not believe that sovereignty lies with the people, but, within that decaying gothic monstrosity on Thames, which means that the new fund could be used to draw decision making back to the gothic pile and away from the devolved governments.

That is of course, the other problem, in that can we actually believe them in relation to the new Shared Prosperity Fund. If you think about it rationally, especially considering that historically they blocked regional aid to Wales in the 1980’s and early 1990’s and considering that one of the underlying feature of the UK has always been that the failure when it comes to the centre promoting sustainable regional economic development, why would we?  

When you use public money, the old sensible adage is that you should work it extra hard, squeezing out every possible benefit. In recent years, the funding from Brussels has been used for a wide variety of diverse infrastructure projects from the Ponty Lido, Swansea University's Bay Campus, the Heads of the Valleys road, Harbour Way link road and the National Sailing Academy at Pwllheli. EU funding has been used to fund educational and training courses and other programmes via our Universities and colleges. 

When you spend public money, you should also openly audit how it’s spent and chase down any waste. I fundamentally believe that a new Plaid government should commit to carry out a fully comprehensive review of just exactly on what? And how well the money has been spent along with examining in detail how the funds were spent and what the end results were - before any future funds (if they ever arrive from Westminster) are thrown at any potential problems and projects in the future.