3. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on the development of agricultural land in South Wales West? OAQ52142

Thank you. I am currently consulting on a revised version of 'Planning Policy Wales'. Consultation on this important national land-use policy document continues until 18 May. The revised version of 'Planning Policy Wales' continues to state that agricultural land of grades 1, 2 and 3a are the best and most versatile and should be conserved as a finite resources for the future.

Thank you very much. That's an interesting answer. You said in your statement yesterday that you want to see land managers kept on the land and that food production remains vital to the Welsh economy, but when I wrote to you asking for you to rule out adopting a Welsh version of Labour's proposed English sovereign land trust, which proposed granting powers to Government to compulsorily purchase agricultural land for housing at potentially reduced prices, you refused to rule that out. So, do you stand by your statement in that response that this land-grab proposal is a tool for the redistribution of land value, as you wrote in March, or will you now rule out those plans, bearing in mind your ambitions that you expressed in yesterday's statement?

Well, I know I sent the Member a detailed response on this issue, and I don't have anything further to add to that. One of the things I have done—I launched it at the winter fair back in November—is our new agricultural maps, because I think it's very important that, when plans go before local authorities, they're aware of where the best agricultural land is. So I'm very pleased that those maps are now available—we're the only country in the UK that has them—to assist local authorities in that way.