Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 1:47 pm on 28 June 2017.
I’ll be happy to write to the Cabinet Secretary, if she would appreciate that. At the current time, a lot of uncertainty obviously exists in rural communities about the impact of Brexit, and this uncertainty is likely to continue for some time. I think it’s very important that we keep things in perspective. We all hope, of course, there will be a deal at the end of the day that will, broadly speaking, preserve access to European markets as they exist now and vice versa. But isn’t it important for us to recognise that agriculture, although a very important section of industry and community, is very, very small in the context of national GDP? It’s only about 2 per cent in the UK, and the report that we’re going to debate later this afternoon from the climate change committee provides some useful figures on this, that GVA in Wales from agriculture is only £385 million—0.69 per cent of our Welsh national income. So, whatever problems might be thrown up by the Brexit process, it should be perfectly possible to finance them from existing budgets once the ability of the British and Welsh Governments is given to them to do so by leaving the European Union, with which, of course, we’re in a substantial deficit. So, therefore, farmers have very little to fear from Brexit, because we’ll be able to finance whatever transitional difficulties arise.