6. 6. Debate by the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee on its Report on the Future of Agricultural and Rural Development Policies in Wales

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:29 pm on 28 June 2017.

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Photo of Mike Hedges Mike Hedges Labour 5:29, 28 June 2017

Thank you very much. Jenny Rathbone—post Brexit—. Well, the starting pistol has been fired. Our dependency on immigrant labour, we know. The effect of tariffs on lamb exports, we won’t have—well, we will have very, very few. And the quality of food is important. I think that something we all we all need to think about is what we’re putting in our stomachs. Eluned Morgan said it was an excellent analysis and congratulated the committee—another person who, after 30 seconds, would have been great to stop, but went on to say some very important things. World Trade Organization rules are there to allow everybody to trade, but it doesn’t make it easy for people to trade outside the trading bloc. Food processing is important. If anyone’s read my little pamphlet on the Swansea city region, one of the things I say is why we don’t get the benefit of the processing of food. We produce it and then the processing—the high value—goes elsewhere.

Can I just thank the Cabinet Secretary for her response, welcoming the report—an excellent report? There’s the White Paper, which I think that most of us are in total agreement with, and that all four nations must agree. We can’t have ‘What’s good for England is all that matters’. The involvement of stakeholders, I think, is really important and the financial support until 2022 is probably the one thing that’s going to please lots of farmers coming out of what’s been said today. Thank you.