3. Statement by the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs: Response to Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:05 pm on 8 April 2020.

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Photo of Lesley Griffiths Lesley Griffiths Labour 3:05, 8 April 2020

Around BPS, that is something I will monitor—whether we need to do it in October, whether we need to do the loan scheme again. As you said, we’ve done it for two years now. I still haven’t had a commitment from the UK Government around the 15 per cent modulation; we’re still awaiting that.

The timescale for fisheries, I hope this week—. Certainly, last week, I had a discussion with the Welsh Fishermen's Association, with Jim Evans, and, again, we’re working to the timescale of this week.

You raised the issue around Polish beef, and that was raised with me by the NFU last week and at my regular weekly meeting with DEFRA and the Scottish and Northern Ireland Government with the retailers—it was raised there also. You are right: both Asda and Sainsbury’s have said that it is a one-off, because they had such a demand for mince particularly at the start of the pandemic when I think people were panic buying much more than they are—well, I don’t think panic buying is happening now in the way that we saw initially.

The need for them to support our producers is something I’ve spoken about with every major supermarket myself. One of the concerns that were raised with me very early on was that perhaps some supermarkets were looking at rationalising their products, and it could be the small Welsh producer that’s affected. I heard of one example of that. I took it up directly with the supermarket and it was reversed, for which I’m grateful. So, I think all supermarkets recognise that we need to promote and support Welsh food producers where we can.

In relation to the supermarkets and the shielded list, I lead on this area; however, I do work very closely with Julie James, the Minister for local government and also with Vaughan Gething, and the three of us meet twice a week and have continued to do that around supermarkets. So, you did hear the First Minister right. It’s been a significant piece of work to do this with the supermarkets, because data protection is very important, and I wasn’t prepared to just release data without going through all the hoops that we had to do. So, my understanding is that data contracts with all eight major supermarkets will have been completed by today, and those slots will be protected for the shielded group. You make a very good point that I want to reiterate: that it’s not the vulnerable group, it’s the shielded group. So, as you heard me saying in my statement, about 85,000 letters have gone out; those are the shielded group, and so, for those people, those priority online slots will be made available. Both Sainsbury’s and Tesco told me on Monday that they have about 100,000 of those slots right across the UK.

There has been quite a lot of noise, I think, around vulnerable people, and I absolutely appreciate that, but if you look, we think, across the UK, there are about 15 million people who would be classed as vulnerable in the way that we’re talking about, so the supermarkets just could not cope, obviously, with that number of online shopping slots. So, it was most important to ensure that we have those online priority slots for the shielded people, and that’s what we’ve done.

You ask about rights of way, that’s obviously an area that Hannah Blythyn leads on, and as you rightly point out, it is local authorities that have the powers to close those footpaths and I know that the Deputy Minister is working with local authorities in that area.

I think it’s really important to clarify that, all I have done today is say that we will put the draft regulations on the Welsh Government website. They are not being introduced. As you say, we cannot accept agriculture pollution at the level we’ve seen. We've had a spike recently—you may have seen the press release that came from Natural Resources Wales—we've seen a spike over the last few weeks. Agricultural pollution is not something that most farmers would ever allow on their farms, so those following good practice will not see any major change as a result of those regulations. The information in those regulations has been seen by many people and I felt it important to share that information. You'll be aware of the UKCCC report, and I had to publish, I would say, by the autumn. I did commit to publishing and introducing the regulations by Easter; I am not doing that, all I'm doing is publishing the draft regulations, and there will be plenty of time to debate those in the Senedd.