Thank you, David, for your very thoughtful contribution.

There's nothing more enticing, but misleading, than this slogan of taking back control, and one of the things that the Brexiteers have to do now is, as David says, define what we actually mean by that. And far from taking back control, I feel that we may lose completely control of something that is fantastically important to all of us, which is the quality and safety of food. For decades, the food on our plate has been protected by our membership of the EU. What now is going to happen to food standards, and who will regulate them in Brexit Britain? How are we going to avoid another horse meat scandal?

We in Wales are very proud of the Welsh food that we produce and that which we export, along with live animals, to the EU, and we hope that we’re going to be able to continue doing that. But, in gross terms, the amount involved is tiny compared with the manufactured industrial goods or services that contribute to our balance of trade. I looked in vain for the list of foods in the table of goods exported in the Welsh White Paper, and of course it's not there, because the amounts involved are below the top 25. So, it's a real danger that food safety will be traded by other much more powerful forces that will influence the way in which Theresa May will approach these negotiations.

Now, Theresa May has stated really clearly that she doesn't want the UK to stay in the single market, and it looks increasingly likely that tariffs will be imposed on UK goods, as we fall off the end of the two-year process. That means the UK will impose tariffs on EU goods in retaliation. However, I don't think tariffs are the main risk to Welsh agriculture. The fall in the pound has already produced a post-Brexit boost to Welsh exports, which is to be welcomed, but there’s a much greater danger to agriculture in Wales, and that is a flood of cheap imports from other parts of the world, with none of the safeguards on food quality that we rely on within the EU.

Theresa May seems extremely keen to strike a deal across the pond with Donald Trump, and in an interview on BBC radio a couple of weeks ago, the chief economist of the American Farm Bureau Federation made it crystal clear that any US trade deals struck by Theresa May would be contingent on the UK public stomaching imports of US foods that we have previously rejected. We are talking about beef from cattle implanted with growth hormones, chlorine-washed chicken, and unlabelled genetically modified foods. We would have to swallow the 82 pesticides used in the US that are banned in the EU on health and environmental grounds. Amongst these is atrazine, a herbicide thought to affect the immune system and linked to birth defects. Talking about GM foods, in the EU we are protected by the fact that anybody making food using GM ingredients must clearly label that. The only GM foods currently on British shelves are sweet American junk foods like popcorn and cheap cooking oils aimed at the catering trade. In the US, GM is everywhere and doesn’t have to be labelled. The only way you can avoid eating GM ingredients is to buy organic food, cook at home and never eat out.

So, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have all effectively banned GM cultivation; that is our political decision. And what relevance will the Sewel convention have if Theresa May strikes a deal with the United States, which means a flood of GM foods into the UK market? It’ll be impossible to hold that policy. So, we have to appreciate the possibility of all these adulterated foods flooding our market and certainly potentially putting out of business our agriculture, and that is completely scary to me.

In terms of our negotiations on Brexit, it means that we could be expelled from the network of agencies that regulate and provide intelligence in relation to food adulteration activities. We already face major challenges on our food and we need to be really mindful of how we can protect our consumers by remaining part of the European Food Safety Authority, which I understand we can do even if we are chucked out of the single market. We have to bear in mind that, at the moment, we could be shouldering greater responsibility for enforcement of proper food when local authority resourcing of food safety controls are already under strain, and the Food Standards Agency has been narrowed at the moment, and no longer has the sort of expertise that would be required on what is already a global industry.

So, these are major concerns that I hope will be taken into account by the Welsh Government and by the UK Parliament.