Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 2:52 pm on 24 October 2018.
I think it's quite right that the Cabinet Secretary should have an open mind about the future of agricultural policy and the opportunity that Brexit provides, but I think she has to recognise that farmers in Wales are far more reliant upon the common agricultural policy than farmers in England; it can make up to 80 per cent of farm incomes in Wales, whereas the average in England is only 55 per cent. Therefore, it's very important, in my view, that we should take this step by step, and not rush into making wholesale changes in too short a time, which would make it very difficult to manage a transition. Given that 85 per cent of the farm subsidies that are paid are under pillar 1 rather than pillar 2, so therefore they are direct payments rather than for environmentally related schemes, it's quite difficult for me to see how we could move very quickly to making those pillar 2 type of schemes sufficiently robust to maintain current levels of farm income. Given that farm incomes are less than £20,000 on average and the amount of subsidy that is received in direct payment is on average about £16,000, I'm sure the Cabinet Secretary will understand why a lot of farmers are very, very worried that they will lose substantial amounts of income, which they can ill afford, and tip their businesses over from small profitability into loss-making enterprises. That could have devastating consequences for the countryside in general.