Diolch for those questions. You're quite right; Welsh food and drink is seen as being of the highest quality, and also you referred to farming, and clearly our animal health standards and our environmental standards are very high. One of my concerns when we left the European Union was that it could be seen that we would take a reduction in those standards, but we've made it very clear it's very important to do that. And obviously, we recognise that, if we are going to sell our food to the world, we need to maintain those standards. There are challenges. Clearly, COVID has presented a massive challenge to the food and drink industry, and leaving the European Union has, and that's why it was so important to work on the exports. And as you say, there is a great deal of uncertainty, and one of the reasons that I announced that I would be keeping the basic payment scheme for two years was to give some certainty to our farmers. It is clearly a matter of great concern that the UK Government are going back on their word around that we would not lose a penny less if we left the European Union, and those discussions are ongoing. But, as I say, I have committed to the BPS.

You referred to seafood, and seafood was well represented at BlasCymru. We have a seafood cluster. I mentioned about the cluster work that's undertaken in the food and drink sector, and we do have a seafood cluster. They showcase their seafood at BlasCymru. We had freshwater fish, we had sea fish, we had shellfish—really iconic produce from our Welsh coastal and inland waters. You referred to the lack of a strategy, and I think it's important—. Strategies can sit on shelves sometimes; what's really important is to be out there selling our seafood, and again we've had some real issues since we left the European Union, which you'll be aware of, that I'm trying to help the UK Government resolve, because we really did have a cliff edge with exporting our seafood. 

You mentioned the lack of processing facilities, and again I've worked very closely with the sector. We've given funding to dairy processing units. We had the processing plant that was closed in north-east Wales and we've worked to try and find buyers for that. We had milk going out to England to be processed, as you referred to. So, it's really important that if we can, we increase the processing facilities that we have in Wales.

Somebody else has mentioned abattoir concerns to me. I haven't heard anything about those concerns, and I did ask officials to look into it, but at the moment, I think our abattoirs are able to process the meat here in Wales that they are asked to do.

You referred to protected food names and the new UK GI schemes, and what consultation went on with the UK Government. This is something that, at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs inter-ministerial group meetings, the four agricultural Ministers have discussed, probably for about four years, so there's been a great deal of work. I mentioned that we had the first one in Wales; we had the Welsh Gower salt marsh lamb, and certainly, I went to the launch of that, and they believe that it will bring a great deal of business, being part of that UK GI scheme. And of course, once we left the European Union, we had to have our own UK scheme, and I'm really pleased that, as I say, we had the first one, I think we had the second one, and we have others in the pipeline, because the businesses tell me that because people know exactly where that meat is sourced from and how it has come about, that they place great value on that.

I think Cywain should really be praised. It was great to see the rising stars there, the new products. I found it really hard to believe that we'd had 200 new Welsh food and drink products during the pandemic, at a time when it was really difficult to do the work that we quite often do with the sector, so it was great to see those new rising stars there. And I have to say that Menter a Busnes is the organisation that runs the project and they really support the development of that sort of growth-orientated businesses. We've got 950 businesses in that project, so you can see the importance of the work that Cywain do.

I haven't had a specific discussion with the economy Minister about the young people's guarantee, but I have certainly discussed it from a skills point of view, because it's really important that we do have those skills that the food and drink sector require. I mentioned in my original statement today that one of the things I think we need to do is sell the food and drink sector in a much better way than we do. It's probably about four years since we had a couple of conferences that the Food and Drink Wales Industry Board organised, where we had a sort of pyramid, if you like, of all the skills, and perhaps there are skills that people wouldn't recognise as being required by the food and drink industry, but when you come down that pyramid, you can see that they're very much there. And as I said, it's the largest sector that we have in Wales. If you think about the whole of the sector, I think it employs about 0.25 million people, so it's incredibly important to our country.