Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 17 July 2019.

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Photo of Lesley Griffiths Lesley Griffiths Labour 1:50, 17 July 2019

If I can just go back to your first question, I don't have £100 million that I can just give to the agricultural sector in relation to beef prices. So, if that's what people are looking for, then, unfortunately, I do not have that level of money, and I don't think anybody in these times of austerity would expect me to do so. What I did do last year was give £2 million to the red meat sector for them to do some benchmarking. Unfortunately, not all that funding was taken up by red meat businesses, so I think that also shows something that we should take on board as well.

In relation to your question around bovine TB, and I absolutely accept the personal side of this and the distress it causes, you'll be aware of the TB eradication programme refresh that we had, and we're working through that. And the short answer to your last bit—'Do we think we should introduce a badger cull?'—the answer's 'no'.