Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Social Justice – in the Senedd at 2:07 pm on 29 March 2023.
Minister, earlier this month, it was a pleasure to welcome you to my constituency of Bridgend, so that you could visit the Sussed Wales fantastic shop in Porthcawl as part of Fairtrade Fortnight. Sussed is completely run by volunteers, and is a co-operative model shop, offering a wide range of products, including clothes, food and accessories, all of which of fair and equitable trade. I know that you and I really enjoyed buying some of those products. One of such is Jenipher’s Coffi, which is produced by an African fair-trade co-operative organisation supported by the Welsh Government. So far, Jenipher’s Coffi has supported 3,664 farmers and planted over 25 million trees, both promoting fairer work and fighting for change, and I'm sure the Senedd will join me in saying that that is remarkable progress. Also, it was wonderful that we had Jenipher here recently in the Senedd as well to show everybody the coffee.
But fair trade doesn't just have to happen outside of Wales. In 2008, Wales became the first fair-trade nation in the world, and since then, 83 per cent of consumers surveyed by Fair Trade Wales stated that they have faith in fair-trade products, and a further 99 per cent have said that they wanted to see Wales continue to be a fair-trade nation. So, Minister, whilst fair trade is becoming more and more common in Wales, there are only 34 fair-trade towns left in Wales out of an initial 63. Whilst I am glad that Porthcawl is one of those remaining towns, what more can we do to promote fair trade across Wales, which is primarily led by our wonderful volunteers, campaigners and co-operative members? Diolch.