Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:15 pm on 14 September 2016.
Well, it’s true that the European Commission will be the body that does the negotiating, but anybody who knows anything about the EU knows who calls the shots within it. I have been a member of the European Council of Ministers, albeit some time ago, but, if you think that Germany will have little influence in these decisions, I’m afraid you’re not living in the same world as the rest of us.
Again, agriculture is important to us, not least to my region, Mid and West Wales, but, even on food and drink, we have a £17 billion a year deficit with the EU. It’s massively in their interest to maintain the freest possible trade between our two bodies—Britain and what remains of the EU. Being out of the EU gives us the opportunity to make changes to the law that affects our industries, which we can’t do within it because of the very reason that Steffan Lewis alluded to a moment ago, that you’ve got to get the agreement of 27 or 28 other countries in order to pass EU legislation. So, as regards the steel industry, as we know, we will have the opportunity to make significant reductions in energy prices, if we want to take those decisions, which we can’t do at the moment, or we can only do imperfectly at the moment. Energy prices are 6 per cent of the costs of the steel industry overall, so, if we could halve our energy prices, even to what they charge in Germany, that would be a big benefit to our British steel industry, and not just the steel industry in Port Talbot but also Shotton as well.
So, I just don’t understand how we can have a nationalist party opposite that doesn’t want its laws made in Cardiff and is happy not just to have them made in Westminster, but also even further away in Brussels. This seems to me a massive opportunity for Wales, not just for the UK, to devolve lots of issues to Cardiff rather than to Westminster. So, I have no fears for the future of Wales’s ability to compete in the world at large. James Dyson, one of our great entrepreneurs, a massive exporter, points out that we have a £100 billion a year deficit with the EU in our trade and, even if import duties were to be imposed upon us, then, in comparison with currency swings, that is marginal. So, the world of uncertainty in which business lives already has to cope with the kinds of uncertainties that have been added to by Brexit, and they cope very, very well.
Being out of the EU gives us the opportunity to amend agricultural policy, for example, in particular the second limb of our motion today, and to design an agricultural policy that is tailor made for the specific circumstances of Wales. We have a lot more upland farmers in Wales than is true of the rest of the UK, and certainly than is true of the rest of the EU. We will be able to design an agricultural policy that is specific to their needs. It’s up to us. I hope that agricultural policy will be fully devolved to us here in Cardiff. And, as a result of leaving the EU, all the responsibilities of the European Commission will come to this Assembly and to the Welsh Government, because that will enable us—[Interruption.] Yes, and the cash, too. I’ve already said many, many times, responding to Carl Sargeant, that Wales should get every single penny of public money that currently is spent in Wales by the European Union. That involves, I suppose, a negotiation with the UK Government, but we shouldn’t shy away from that and it’s our money, so there is a Brexit dividend on top, because, as we know, £10 billion a year of our money is spent elsewhere in the EU, not back in the UK. So, we want our share of that as well, which, on a per-head basis, would be an extra £500 million a year to spend in Wales for the benefit of the Welsh people.
Being outside the EU gives us the opportunity to make micro changes to agricultural policy as well, on herbicides and pesticides regulations, on health and safety issues, where the costs that are imposed may be wholly disproportionate to the benefits that are achieved. So, for example, let’s take a very mundane and prosaic example of bracken control on the hills: we will be able to relicense Asulam as a means of controlling bracken, which we can’t do now, which was fully accredited under the previous control regime, and we had no problems with that. But when control was vested in the European Union then we had no say and that was banned. So, there are lots of instances of that kind also where we will have the opportunity to reduce the costs of our manufacturers and farmers and other trading bodies so that we will become more competitive in the world. It’s a combination of taking advantage of new markets, which we’ll be able to because we will now have the freedom to negotiate free trade agreements on our own account with other parts of the world—