Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for European Transition (in respect of his European Transition responsibilities) – in the Senedd at 2:53 pm on 27 January 2021.
Can I first welcome Janet Finch-Saunders to her new responsibilities? What I want to say at the start is that we obviously welcome the availability of this sum of money. It isn't a fund that has been co-designed, as it ought to have been, with the devolved Governments, and the detail on eligibility and roll-out remain, I think, at this point very vague, so we are working and hope to work with the UK Government to understand that better. What I should say, though, is that the challenge that the fisheries sector is under is entirely the responsibility of the UK Government in relation to the decisions it has taken as a matter of political choice in the negotiations with the European Union. We as a Government were fearful that this would come to pass, and hence our call for the UK Government to prioritise smooth access to markets, which they have failed to do. Many people prioritise their Ruritanian sense of sovereignty above the livelihoods of fishers and others, and those people will have to account to those sectors for having taken that view, and I include the Member in that. Fishers deal with products that are very perishable, and I suspect that the political reputations of those who have been complicit in the deal, which has undermined the well-being of the fishing sector, will find their own political positions perishable as well, in due course.