Leaving the EU: Wales

Mark Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Bailey, for the opportunity to say a few words in this important debate. I thank the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) for speaking for the heart of industrial south Wales on this important issue. If I can do half the job speaking for rural Wales that he did for that area, I will be doing a good thing, because it was an excellent speech.

Farming is crucial to our economy, directly employing 58,000 people and with an output of produce worth about £1.5 billion. Some 80% of Wales’s land area is farmed, so there is no doubt that farming contributes substantially to the landscape, which is a vital element of our tourism, and—this is key—to producing and selling food tariff-free in the EU. Any possible funding loss to our farmers, therefore, will inevitably have a wider impact on Wales’s economy. A survey taken before the vote on 23 June revealed that two out of five businesses in the countryside depend on farms, and each of those farms contributes £100,000 to the local rural economy.

We note that funding under pillar one of the common agricultural policy will be upheld until 2020 as part of a transitional arrangement, and there was thanks from the farming community for that, but we need further clarification on the situation post-2020. We need clarification on structural and investment fund projects and agri-environmental schemes, and we need more detail on environmental stewardship policies. Despite the red tape and many criticisms over the years, the CAP did and does ensure that family farms survive. Post-Brexit, there is a huge challenge that is fundamental to the whole rural economy, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, working with the Assembly Government, needs to have a holistic rural strategy that combines food, farming and biodiversity. To date, such a strategy has been lacking. We need an early and clear communication, post-Brexit vote, on the subsidy regime and the position of seasonal foreign labour.

The maintenance of a subsidy regime to 2020 was welcomed, but the sector has been encouraged to diversify and invest for its survival. Investment, however, not least in negotiation with banks, requires certainty over cash flows and a baseline on which to continue operations. In that context, a three-year window until 2020 for the farmers whom I represent is completely inadequate. Between 2014 and 2016, net farm incomes in Wales declined by about 25% to some £13,000 a year. There is also the impact on secondary businesses in the rural economy. EU support amounted to £250 million a year, together with an investment programme of some £500 million for 2014 to 2020. Such funding is vital.

The UK Government have been giving conflicting messages. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has implied that funding will continue, but her junior Minister, the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), said at the Royal Welsh show this year that the Government cannot guarantee that future agricultural support will be as generous as the current subsidy regime. That is completely unacceptable to the rural community that I represent and would have a dreadful effect on the capacity of family farms to function in the future. The farmers and businesses of rural Wales need clarity and answers from the Government, which so far have been woefully lacking.