8. Plaid Cymru Debate: Welsh resources

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:47 pm on 9 February 2022.

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Photo of Janet Finch-Saunders Janet Finch-Saunders Conservative 4:47, 9 February 2022

Where I would agree with you is that Welsh Government are not particularly driven to do anything as regards this, but there we go. [Interruption.]

A milestone moment was achieved for the Welsh offshore wind sector, through the signing of an agreement for lease of the proposed—. Oh, I've already said that. Continuous opportunity to access the sea bed for wave or tidal stream projects have been offered, and 683,000 tonnes of marine aggregates delivered to our Welsh ports. In fact, there is actual real and documented evidence of the Crown Estate absolutely working for the best interests of Wales. They grant landowners rights over the foreshore at Rhyl to Denbighshire County Council to assist in a 600m £27.5 million seafront flood defence scheme to protect 1,650 homes in the east of the town, and work, for example, with the Welsh Government to support its work on the implementation of the Welsh national marine plan.

The Crown Estate is making an invaluable contribution to the management of our resources in Wales, so why risk that success by burdening this failing Welsh Government administration that obviously is propped up by Plaid with even more responsibility? Your coalition should focus on a mess of the Welsh Government's own making. You target to plant 43,000 hectares of new trees by 2030, rising to 180,000 hectares by 2050, and yet that could see the afforestation of 3,750 Welsh family farms.

Now, when I raised concerns about this in the Senedd, Jeremy Miles MS, Minister for Education and the Welsh Language, advised that meeting woodland creation targets should not affect communities nor change the type of landowners, yet it is. The proof is piling. Valleys are shifting to vegetation, forests are forcing out farmers. Figures obtained by the Farmers Union of Wales have shown that 75 per cent of the afforestation applications in Wales for over 50 hectares of planting are from charities and private companies based in England. There has been a 450 per cent increase in afforestation environmental impact assessment applications to NRW from 2015 to 2021, and yet only 20 per cent of applications were from private individuals or businesses based here in Wales.

We are heading in the same direction as New Zealand, where their emissions trading scheme led to a rapid surge in the purchase of good farmland by carbon investors seeking to sell carbon offsets in the future through forestry creation. I understand that, within a three-week period, 80,000 stock units have been lost in the southern part of the North Island to tree planting, two thirds of which is owned by foreign companies and will cost the area in the region of $35 million due to lost productivity. That is not the future I want for Wales, so we will be voting against the motion and amendment today. But I would conclude by asking this Senedd to work cross-party to pursue the idea of establishing a just transition commission, to ensure the burden of decarbonisation does not fall unequally on our rural communities and have a negative impact on the historically thriving Welsh language in rural Wales, and I will repeat: we are much better off to leave the Crown Estate looking after us in Wales, as they do so well.