Wales is losing out on £540 million a year in funding according to new research from Plaid Cymru

This morning's Plaid Cymru press conference was taken by party leader Leanne Wood AM and Plaid's financial Guru ,Eurfyl ap Gwilym. The focus of the presser was, as it has been in many of their briefings lately ,on the state of the Welsh Economy.

But this time our attention was drawn to new research by Plaid that indicates that Wales is missing out on up to £140 million more per year than was originally estimated by the Holtham Commission.

Plaid says it has looked at Treasury figures for 2010/11 published in Public Expenditure, Statistical Analyses and has found that the actual funding shortfall for Wales in that year totalled £540 million, a figure substantially more than was estimated by the Holtham Commission in July 2010.

Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood is urging that the underfunding must be tackled by the Welsh and UK Governments immediately:

Put simply, the Barnet Floor is a device proposed by the Holtham Commission as a way of dealing with future funding for Wales and Scotland. It is a creative way of stopping convergence or in otherwords , a way of stopping the shortfall to Wales getting any deeper.

Plaid Cymru is saying that it favours this " Floor" as a short term fix but believes the means of funding Wales via calculations made by the Barnett Formula must be overhauled rapidly. It claims the system is both unfair and not fit for purpose.