Subsidy Control

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:43 pm on 17 January 2023.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:43, 17 January 2023

Alun Davies makes a number of very powerful points there. I should remind Members of the Senedd that, of course, this Senedd denied legislative consent to the UK Bill on 1 March last year, and then the Sewel convention was disregarded and the lack of consent from this Parliament was simply ignored by the UK Government that went ahead and imposed this solution on us anyway. Here are just two ways, Llywydd, in which the new system acts against the interest of Wales. First of all, it removes any sense of assisted areas from the subsidy regime. Indeed, the first draft of the Bill referred to the levelling-up principles of the UK Government. That was abandoned by the time the Bill reached the statute book. So, as my colleague Rebecca Evans said in her letter to the UK Government before our consent motion was debated, the Bill puts Mayfair and Merthyr on exactly the same basis when it comes to providing subsidies. That simply means that those with the deepest pockets will use that advantage to make themselves even more advantaged, while those with the least will end up with the greatest struggle.

And here is just a second example, Llywydd. The UK Government insisted that agriculture and fisheries should be brought within the scope of this Bill. They never were, while we were members of the European Union; they were dealt with separately. We asked the UK Government what the evidence was for bringing agriculture and fisheries within scope. They said to us that it was to be found in the responses to consultation. We asked them where the responses to consultation were to be found. We were told that they hadn't been published. We asked if we could see the responses that justified this inclusion, and we were told that, no, we couldn't. So, here we are. We have a major change, which has, I think, real implications for Welsh agriculture, because the system is based on seven principles, the third of those is that any subsidy must be designed to bring about a change of economic behaviour of the beneficiary. Where single farm payments fit into that, I really do not know. But we can't know, because the whole basis on which the UK Government decided to make this major change was unexplained by them, and the evidence that they pointed to was never made available to us.