Moments ago, the First Minister told us in relation to the M4 decision, and I quote from his statement, 

'Llywydd, this decision is being made at the point of maximum uncertainty about our financial future. Unprecedented austerity in the public finances is combined with a complete lack of clarity over our...budgets for the coming years, and is exacerbated by the uncertainty surrounding Brexit.'

Now, this was one of the reasons why he's decided not to pursue the M4. Well, if it's relevant to the M4, surely it's even more relevant in relation to the impact that Brexit will have on the agricultural sector.

I've said it before and I am going to say it again: Welsh farmers need stability. They need stability, certainty and consistency, and embarking, as you propose to do, on this never-before-tried model is a huge risk. It's only you and Michael Gove now, walking off together in this direction. The Scottish Government, Northern Ireland and the 27 countries in the rest of the EU, they're all sticking, they're not twisting with the future of our family farms and the future of our rural economy. Now, I'm not opposed to change, but introducing these changes at this particular time, I think, is too much of a risk.

Can you tell us what the trading conditions will be for Welsh farmers in six months' time? I don't know what they'll be; I don't think you know what they are. Will we be facing crippling tariffs? Will we be facing huge imports of cheap food? We don't know. So, how can we design a programme without knowing some of these answers? You said it yourself—you have no idea what budget you have to work with, so how can you design a scheme without knowing the scale of budget that will be available to you? Yes, people have made promises, but some of those very same people are now being summonsed by courts to come and answer accusations of misleading people. So, I'm not taking these people on their word.

So, you don't know. And, of course, if Michael Gove doesn't like your proposals, or at least if you can't agree a consensus with him on WTO obligations, then he can pull the plug and he can block any proposals that you wish to make. So, with all of this uncertainty and instability, I have to say, Minister, that removing the element of a basic payment basically means that you're pushing Welsh agriculture blindfolded off a cliff. That is my concern, and that is the reality that we're facing here.

Yes, we need to get it right, so why plough on before we know what Brexit looks like? The nature of Brexit surely should influence the nature of the support that the sector gets in any future scheme. How can you undertake any meaningful impact assessments and modelling when you can't answer any of those questions that I posed to you a moment ago? All of these goalposts will move in six months' time, and quite possibly move again after that. The stakes are too high to work blind on this. Wrong decisions will cost livelihoods, will cost in terms of the social cost, in terms of the economic cost, and ultimately losing people on the land will have that environmental impact that will take you further away from where you want to get to and not achieve some of the goals that we all aspire to in this Assembly.