Spring Budget 2024: Welsh Economy

Debate between Ruth Jones and Fay Jones

Wednesday 17th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Jones]

It is good to be able to wind up and to have a little time before Divisions. I thank hon. Members who are here today. It is interesting that this is a women’s debate—obviously women get things done, so that is fine.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith), the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) and my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), who is the shadow Minister. It is great that they are all here to support today. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) for her interventions.

It was great to have the Minister in her place. I would just like to be able to live in her world, because it seems to be a parallel universe to the one we are living in in Wales. When we knock on doors every week and ask whether people feel better or worse off, the most emphatic answer is, “We are much worse off than we were even a year ago.” That is something she needs to take back to her Government because we are here again—as my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East reminded me, we did this a year ago—and not only have things not got better; they have got worse in Wales. We need to be clear on that.

On my questions about the prepayment meters, supermarkets and other things, it would be really helpful if the Minister could write to me.

[Fay Jones]

The hon. Member is absolutely right to point out that I was remiss in not responding to that point and I will certainly write to her. If I may, I also neglected to respond to the shadow Minister when she raised the matter of her courageous constituents Mr and Mrs Smith, who have been vocal in campaigning for their son. I reiterate that the Government will publish the findings of the inquiry later this month and I will work with the hon. Lady to make sure her constituents get the answers they need.

[Ruth Jones]

I am grateful to the Minister for that intervention and for clarifying.

Agriculture Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Ruth Jones and Fay Jones

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 13th February 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Fay Jones (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)]

Q My question is on the red meat levy. The Bill irons out an imbalance that has affected many of my farmers—I should say that it is a pleasure to see one of my constituents here this morning. Are you content with that amendment, or would you suggest further amendments to the scheme to improve traceability? That question is particularly for the unions. Mr Render, would you clarify the timetable for the Welsh Government’s equivalent Bill or next steps?

Huw Thomas: On the red meat point, we are broadly content. We have been calling for this for a number of years. The issue of repatriating the red meat levy has been a bit of a running sore for a long time, so we welcome this. There has to be a will on the part of the parties concerned to use the new powers that they are about to have conferred upon them. It is all well and good to legislate, but the parties need to work together and find an equitable solution to this problem.

We are glad to see this change, but we would not preclude collaborative working at a pre-competitive stage between the domestic levy bodies on things such as red meat, health and climate, which are not directly related to the market. Repatriating the levy is certainly something that we welcome.

Dr Fenwick: We recommended precisely this sort of action in the Radcliffe review, which was published in 2006. That is how long this issue has been running for. We very much welcome that this is there, but this is the first step—it simply opens the door. Given that lengthy period of waiting, and the imbalance in where the levy has been spent, this needs to be acted on once that door is open.

Tim Render: We welcome the clause on the red meat levy, and we are grateful to the Minister, who has put a lot of effort into working with the devolved Administrations to craft this, to resolve this long-standing issue. On the way the Welsh Government are looking to take things forward, we have said that we plan to produce a White Paper by the end of this year, which will set out the framework for a Welsh Agriculture Bill. Ministers have said that they want to take that forward early in the next Assembly term in 2021.

In terms of operational measures, we have already announced that we will effectively maintain the basic payment scheme approach in 2021 as well, so we have that package of measures to take forward in our own Welsh Bill. That would, I suspect, mirror and address some of the wider issues that this Bill takes forward but are not reflected in the Welsh schedule, as well as dealing with some wider things.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

Q Mr Render, can I press you a bit further? You were saying that the legislation from Wales will have to be set in law. Yes, absolutely, but when will it actually be up and running? We accept that there will be a time lag, but it is important that it is as close as possible, because what we do not want is divergence, which you have already alluded to. We know that the border is porous, and that livestock and crops travel across it all the time. It is important that where key parts of the Bill do not apply to Wales, such as the environmental land management schemes, we make sure that Welsh farmers are not suffering detriment. I wondered what the panel’s thoughts on that were.

Tim Render: Of course, agriculture is a fully devolved policy area, so we will be developing our own equivalents of the land management approaches that England is proposing. We have already issued two major consultation documents with a lot of detail on that. What we are looking to do through this Bill is to ensure continuity: to make sure that a lot of the important operational elements that mean the agricultural market can work effectively and we continue to have the powers to pay agricultural support to farmers, will be in place and can be maintained beyond the end of this year. From a Welsh perspective, the main thing this Bill does is give us those continuity and keeping pace powers.

However, what we have explicitly decided not to take through this Bill—this is a change from the previous Bill—are powers to make radically new types of payments, analogous to the ELMS in England. We discussed that with the Assembly, and they felt that it was potentially such a large change that they wanted to be able to influence that development of a Welsh agriculture policy, so we have not taken those powers to make major changes in the future; that is what we would do through a Welsh Bill. Obviously, this will depend on the Government after the Assembly elections in May 2021, but we would expect that to be taken forward fairly rapidly as a new Welsh agriculture Bill in that period. As I say, we will be setting out detailed ideas as to what would go in that Bill, particularly the new powers, building on the very detailed proposals we have already set out in consultation documents.

John Davies: It is vital that we take our time over this, because we still do not know what trading environment we will be operating in, and there is an awful lot of volatility out there. It is absolutely vital that we get this right and do it in a co-production way. If we get it right, there are real opportunities; it needs to be a co-operative model that we not only design with the industry, but across different Departments of the Welsh Government. Recently, the Welsh Government have announced that we have hit our target for food sales from Wales, which is £7.5 billion. If we get our “sustainable farming and our land”—that is the name of our new agricultural policy —and sustainable brand values right, we will have two gears meshing, which will really benefit our climate credentials and validity by being able to prove that what we do and how we do it are totally sustainable. It is vital that we get this right and do not rush it.

Agriculture Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Ruth Jones and Fay Jones

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th February 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

Q The Bill contains a lot of powers rather than duties. To my mind, a duty means that the Secretary of State is more accountable. Do you think that the Bill should contain a duty for the Secretary of State to support all the public goods identified?

Christopher Price: Most legislation nowadays gives powers not duties. There is nothing unusual about the Agriculture Bill in that regard. The Bill is about the tool used to implement the policy; it is not the policy in itself. It would be useful to have the Government’s policy, to know what they are going to try to implement.

Having said all that, we are talking about some really quite complicated stuff. Food production, which is fundamental to our existence, is all based on natural processes that are really complicated. We are going through huge structural changes and as a country we have not been great at managing structural change. Bearing all that in mind, it is important that Government have a full range of tools to do as they see fit, in consultation with stakeholders. I would hate the idea that, for reasons of legislative propriety or whatever, we ended up constraining Government so much that they could not do things that, in a few months’ time, we might decide are absolutely essential.

Thomas Lancaster: We are very sympathetic to having more duties to balance the range of powers. A report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee the last time the Bill was in Parliament was quite scathing on that point. Clauses 4 to 6 are a positive step in setting out strategic objectives and they come with a range of duties on Ministers to have multi-annual financial plans, set objectives for those and have regard to those objectives when setting the budget for those plans. That is a big step forward in this Bill on the duties-not-powers point.

We would like to see a duty in the Bill to have an environment and land management scheme. At the moment, it is a legal requirement under CAP-funded rural development programmes to have an agri-environment scheme—you cannot not have one anywhere across the UK. We want to see that duty replicated in the Bill.

It would be interesting to look at other areas in the Bill as well. There are lots of powers in the Bill around fair dealing provisions and supply chain transparency, but there are no duties on Ministers to use those to improve supply chain transparency. That is another area where you could include a duty to clarify how those powers were going to be used and that they were going to be used.

David Bowles: Clause 1(1) says:

“The Secretary of State may give”—

and then it lists the public goods. We would like to see a “must”, and the RSPCA would like to see that too. The Secretary of State would still be applying the letter of the law if £1 went to animal welfare in the next five-year period. We would like to see some minimum payments under those particular public goods.

[Fay Jones]

Q The Bill amends the red meat levy system, in that it irons out an imbalance that has often penalised Welsh and Scottish farmers. Do you think that is sufficient, or should the Bill contain further reforms around the red meat levy?

John Cross: I had quite a lengthy history in the levy sector. The complexity around this issue is really quite deep, because it depends on where the benefit of the levy investment is secured, where the products derived from the industry are consumed and where the supported supply chains sit. As for the desire to capture and formalise a more even-handed distribution back to the devolved regions: from what I have seen of it, it does do enough. We live in a very complex domestic market; 50% of Scottish beef production is consumed within the M25. That illustrates how complex the mix is. The red meat levy is designed—yes, funded by farmers and processors—to make the best of a supply chain and to deliver business enhancement throughout for the good of consumers and producers. It is quite a complex issue and it is not just as simple as three separate lots of industry all wanting to do their own thing in isolation, because they are all interdependent.