9. Debate on the External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee reports on Brexit Preparedness

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:19 pm on 29 January 2019.

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Photo of Huw Irranca-Davies Huw Irranca-Davies Labour 6:19, 29 January 2019

I'm going to focus on one of the three reports, but before I do, as somebody who's recently joined the committee, can I just commend the work that the committee has done on these three reports and the thoroughness of them, and the fact that they deal with facts very directly? It isn't unnecessary scare stories or fear; it's purely what the scenarios look like, particularly with no deal, but even on a managed Brexit withdrawal, and what we need to do. But it is a stark reminder of what we are facing.

Just to pick up on David's point about sheep and lamb within Wales, we often think of those pastoral idylls in mid Wales or north Wales—light lamb and so on—but, of course, colleagues here who sit on these benches who represent the south Wales Valleys, like my own—. They wouldn't be massively dissimilar to my own. Forty per cent of the territorial area of my constituency is upland hill farm. Those farmers traditionally actually survived by not simply doing hill farming but by being the haulage company, being the scaffolder or running the bakery. That's the only way they've been able to do it. They know very much what the risks are now of cutting off the ties of non-tariff access into Europe, regardless, I have to say, of the wider potential that there is, because we have links now out into middle eastern countries, out into Dubai, Qatar and so on. And just one point on that: it's based on the gold standard of our produce—the high animal welfare standards, the high slaughter standards that we have. So, one thing that we do need to do in preparing for Brexit is to make sure that in no way do we compromise those standards, because, curiously, what has been previously criticised as the gold standard, gold-plating our regulations and the way we do it, is actually that very standard why our export markets do have the potential to grow even after Brexit and withdrawal. But we cannot lose that European market because then we'll end up back in the situation where, in the south Wales Valleys, you will have farmers on their uppers. You will have abandoned upland hill farming in south Wales, and that is not only economically important, it is culturally important as well.