Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 2:37 pm on 16 December 2020.

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Photo of Lesley Griffiths Lesley Griffiths Labour 2:37, 16 December 2020

Janet Finch-Saunders reminds us that we're in the middle of a perfect storm; I couldn't agree more with you on that. But I have always made the farmers and our food producers absolutely integral in all this. I've always listened to them. I've always engaged them. I think you'd be very hard-pressed to find a farmer that would say any different.

You referred to the national minimum standards in relation to regulations, and one of the first complaints I received when I came into this portfolio four years ago was that the regulations were too complex, there was not one place where those regulations were, they were in different parts of legislation. This is a proposal to bring everything together in one piece of legislation. Also, you've got the enforcement of agricultural regulation, which, really, is currently heavily focused on the CAP payment schemes. And outside of those schemes, it then really goes to criminal prosecution. It's a very big leap from that to criminal prosecution. I don't want to criminalise our farmers, and I think we need proportionate options for enforcing less serious offences. So, that is the plan with the national minimum standards. But, again, it's a 12-week consultation.

And one of the reasons—. Believe me, the team of officials that have worked on this, they were very, very involved at the beginning of the COVID-19 response for Welsh Government. They knew that I wanted to bring this White Paper forward by the end of the year: (1) I promised it, and (2) in order to have the full 12 weeks of consultation, and that's one of the reasons for bringing it forward now, and I pay tribute to the hard work they've done to enable that to happen.