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A shocking new report has exposed the difference between Westminster spending priorities and the EU's - and the impact it would have on Wales when we leave the EU.

Taking away the structural and agricultural funds that Wales gets from the EU and redistributing the cash according to Westminster's spending priorities would be the equivalent of stripping £743 from every Welsh person and giving £200 to every London, according to the study.

The report comes from a coalition of community leaders and charities called Communities in Charge and suggests Wales will lose far more money that any other area of the UK.

When we leave the EU, the funds that the EU allocates to different parts of the UK will instead be retained in Westminster.

According to the UK government these will then be allocated to other parts of the UK through the Shared Prosperity Fund. However there has been very little clarity on how these fund will be allocated.

So what does the analysis show?

The headline figures for Wales (between 2021-2027) are:

Every person in Wales will lose out on £743.11 if the UK's spending priorities don't change after we leave the EU

Wales receives 5.8% of the UK's economic affairs expenditure but 21.9% of the EU's structural funds.

Every person in London will gain £215.32

In total, Wales will lose out on £2.32 billion

Of the six other areas that lose cash, Wales loses more than all of them combined. The south west of England is the next most at risk area and would lose £1bn.

Speaking to the Huffington Post Tony Armstrong, chief executive of Locality, one of the organisations running the campaign, said: "It will be like handing every Londoner a cheque for over £200 and taking £700 from every Welsh person.”

Under this analysis, Wales is one of seven areas of the UK which would receive less funding after Brexit if the UK's spending priorities don't change.

However the losses of the south west, north east, Northern Ireland, west midlands, north west, east midlands and Yorkshire and Humber combined are less than Wales.

(Image: Communities in Charge)

Recently Wales was found to be the only UK nation to see a rise in child poverty with parts of the Valleys found to have the highest rates in Wales.

Parts of Wales already struggling following brutal cuts to local services.

A recent report from United Nations special rapporteur Philip Alston, found that “austerity policies have deliberately gutted local authorities... eliminated many social services, reduced policing services to skeletal proportions, closed libraries in record numbers, shrunk community and youth centres, and sold off public spaces and buildings”.

He added: “It is hard to imagine a recipe better designed to exacerbate inequality and poverty and to undermine the life prospects of many millions.”

How is this worked out?

In order to do this they have taken the amount of cash each area receives under the EU structural funds. These funds are targeted by the EU at the areas of highest deprivation across the 28 member states.

These can be seen in this graph:

Then they look at how much each area of the UK receives from the UK government.

These can be see in this graph:

As you can see Wales gets a much larger slice of the funds from the EU - which are strictly targeted at the most deprived areas in Europe - where as London gets much less.

However Westminster's spending on economic areas like transport, employment, agriculture, economic development and science gives far less cash to Wales and far more to London.

The UK Government has promised that the EU's structural funds will be replaced by a UK-wide shared prosperity fund after Brexit. But it has not provided any detail on how this will work.

The writers of the report have have based their study on how Westminster has allocated funding between 2012 and 2017.

Welsh Government has called on the money that previously came from structural funds to come directly to the devolved adminstration.

Speaking to the Huffington Post a spokesman for Welsh Government said: “We totally reject the idea of a Whitehall-controlled UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Any proposals which seek to bypass the devolution settlement or take back decisions and funding which has been under Wales’ control for nearly 20 years are completely unacceptable.



“The UK Government first floated this idea two years ago but has failed to provide any details about how the £370m of EU structural and investment Wales currently receives every year will be replaced.



"People in Wales were promised that they would not be worse off as a result of leaving the EU – Wales should not therefore lose a penny of regional investment because of Brexit.



“We have published detailed proposals for how regional investment could work after the UK leaves the EU and we are working closely with local government, businesses and communities across Wales to put in place successor arrangements. We will use replacement funding to invest in regional economic development and reduce inequality, and we are working with the OECD to help inform our future approach."

The Communities in Charge campaign said: "At stake is around £2.5bn a year - money which groups of local people all over the country desperately need to meet their aspirations for better lives, better opportunities and better places to live."