| UPDATED: 21:18, Fri, Mar 12, 2021
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The Scottish Government Finance Secretary Kate Forbes, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Shadow Chancellor Alison Thewliss MP and Scottish National Party (SNP) Westminster leader Ian Blackford have all called for Scotland to have greater fiscal autonomy in order to be able to fully recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Mr Blackford said during Prime Minister s Questions over the summer: The UK faces the worst health and economic emergency in decades – and it requires an unprecedented
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The news has been described as deeply worrying .
Some £115m was provided to 68 projects here over a four-year period from April 2018 to March 2022 under the European Social Fund (ESF).
Westminster previously committed to replace this funding via a Shared Prosperity Fund.
In Chancellor Rishi Sunak s Budget this was renamed the Community Renewal Fund, however Finance Minister Conor Murphy has said it is light on detail on how the fund will operate here. What detail there is sets out a competitive fund to be administered from Whitehall with sign-off by British ministers, he said in response to an Assembly question tabled by the SDLP s Mark H Durkan.
MS for North Wales Questioning the First Minister, I quoted constituents unable to walk safely in their local areas and struggling with mental health issues due to isolation, who asked me to appeal to the Welsh Government for an extended travel rule ‘so that we can talk, cry and support’. Responding to the Health Minister’s ‘Vaccination Rollout’ Statement, I quoted constituents who contacted me asking “why is it that England are seeing consistent and indeed increasing, vaccination numbers, as ours fall?”. In the Debate on petitions concerning the Covid-19 vaccination programme submitted to the Senedd Petitions Committee, I highlighted the 10,879 signature petition to ‘Give Police Officers the Covid Vaccination’, and criticised the Welsh Government for having dodged calls by North Wales Police Federation for Officers to be prioritised on standby lists.