I thank Paul Davies for the comments, for welcoming the statement, and for his questions. You’re absolutely right, we have to work very closely with the industry, with the farming unions, with the vets, with the individual farmers who aren’t members of farming unions, and also with all stakeholders. I do want to assure Members that that absolutely is the way that we’ve approached this. You’ll be aware that there were several summer agricultural shows—I always took the opportunity to talk to people about our enhanced eradication programme, and as I said in my opening remarks, my officials have certainly done intensive engagement with our stakeholders and with the sector over the summer ahead of the 1 October start date.

In relation to your specific questions, you asked about targets, and I said that I’m hoping to be in a position, certainly by the end of this year, to come forward with a target, and certainly as this is being developed by officials, we are looking at whether interim targets would be beneficial. You ask about what agreed action I’ve taken with the DEFRA. Well, as I said before, I haven’t had specific discussions with DEFRA about this. This is obviously a matter for us, so I haven’t actually agreed any specific actions with DEFRA, but I know my officials do have discussions around the programmes. For instance, I’m aware that England and Scotland are now consulting—one of the things is around a reduction in compensation and having a compensation cap such as we’ve brought in here in Wales. So, those discussions are ongoing, but I haven’t got any agreed actions because, as I say, this is a matter for us.

You mentioned about informed purchasing. Absolutely, that is still the intention—to introduce a mandatory informed purchasing scheme. It’s really important, I think, that farmers display TB information at the point of sale, and you’ll be aware that we have given funding to livestock markets, for instance, but I’m still not happy that that information is always there. So, I think it’s really important that all our livestock markets upgrade their facilities. As I say, we have provided funding for that to be done, and more information does need to be provided to sellers. It’s really about empowering farmers so that they can make those informed buying decisions going forward. So, yes, that is absolutely still our intention.

You also asked about pedigree farmers in your own constituency and around their reservations, being in a high TB area. I absolutely understand the reservations that a number of farmers have about being included in a high TB area, and certainly when I came to the Pembroke show that was something that I discussed. But I’m really confident this approach will allow us to speed up progress, and that’s the message that I’ve given to the sector. I really want to reduce the number of breakdowns and the severity of each breakdown, as you yourself have said also.

I think your final question was around biosecurity, and you’ll remember that this enhanced eradication programme came about after we’d been out to consultation. As part of that consultation, I did task officials with developing a standardised, online biosecurity package, which really built on previous work that had been undertaken in this area. So, there’s a number of biosecurity tools available to farmers at the current time. What I want to do is really standardise the advice, because I think we don’t want—. You mentioned bureaucracy, and we really want to make it as simple as possible, and take out that complexity. So, what I really want to see is a single, comprehensive biosecurity package to enable farmers to fully assess their disease risks and then mitigate accordingly.