Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:52 pm on 21 January 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:52, 21 January 2020

Well, in terms of the Welsh Government listening, Llywydd, I myself addressed the National Farmers Union council yesterday afternoon, as I did to the FUW's annual conference last year in Aberystwyth, as I met with the FUW with Lesley Griffiths to talk with them specifically about TB. I want to recognise the sense of strain that there is in farming communities here in Wales as we leave the European Union, with all the uncertainty that that brings for farming communities, and that is very real, as they told me yesterday when I met with them, alarmed by what the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to say at the weekend about not pursuing regulatory alignment, for example.

As far as long-term indicators of TB in Wales are concerned, there's been a 37 per cent decrease in new incidents over the last decade, a 4 per cent decrease in animal slaughters over the whole of that period, and there were 393 fewer herds under restrictions at the end of 2018 than at the end of 2009. We do need to do more. I acknowledge that. It's why I met with Professor Glyn Hewinson, with Lesley Griffiths, not last week but the week before—the world's leading expert in bovine TB who we have brought here to Wales, we have established with a new institute in Aberystwyth under the Sêr programme, drawing in other major figures from this world. He said to us that he thought there were new things that we would be able to attempt in Wales as a result of the research that he is carrying out and that what we will need is a differentiated package to deal with TB. TB is different in different parts of Wales, the underlying causes are different in different parts of Wales, and as a result of his work and the work that we're doing with others, for example in the Gower, where we have a very particular project hand-in-hand with farmers, we will find new ways of tackling a disease that has such a devastating impact on farming families.