, Plenary
Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs: Wales's World-class Recycling
Diolch yn fawr iawn. Thank you so much for those comments and thank you for opening your remarks by congratulating the people of Wales because truly that is what has happened. It's not a transition, our seismic step from what I have publicly described before…
, Plenary
Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs: Wales's World-class Recycling
Janet, first of all, thank you very much for the welcome and your recognition that this is actually driven by people power—it really is. It's been a challenge for individual households when we went through this, and there was a lot of controversy originally…
, Plenary
Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs: Wales's World-class Recycling
I'm especially proud that it is also an achievement that is built on a very Welsh way of doing things. This achievement belongs to everyone. It is testament to the partnership working and the team effort right across Wales, from people embracing recycling in…
, Plenary
Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs: Wales's World-class Recycling
Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. On World Environment Day on 5 June, it was announced that Wales has now climbed to second in the world for recycling. This is rightly a cause for celebration, but it's even more remarkable when you consider that we've gone from a…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
There's been no direct engagement on that, Sam, and it's simply because we've been thrown unexpectedly into the hurly-burly of an election. We thought it was going to be a little bit longer. We simply haven't had those discussions, and I suspect all parties…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
So we do have to work at pace.
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
There will be a point where we absolutely have to do that, but I think that point comes when we crunch through—with the help of the ministerial round-table—the details of what that scheme will look like, because we're not quite there yet, and that's what the…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
From my position, not as one of the experts trying to crunch through this, how we reflect this within the scheme, I think my observation is, at this moment, in the universal actions and the other levels, that social value needs to be reflected in the piece…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
Go ahead, Gian Marco.
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
What we can do is we can make it easier, through the SFS and otherwise—and these are active discussions that we regularly have, and with other colleagues within Government—to say how do we help schemes in Wales that actually deliver the woodland, which is…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
For such a small question, that carries a massive answer. I'll try and short-circuit it. The first thing we need to be doing, of course, is dealing with what we can do within our land management generally—not on farms, land management—and actually reductions…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
Yes, definitely, Cefin. As we mentioned earlier, with the challenges of taking forward the HWS, one of the benefits we have from it is we have a set of mapping and data. It's imperfect, but that does give us the opportunity now to go out from here and into…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
Yes. So, we've—. I'll bring Gian Marco in in a moment. We've continued the support of the BPS, and we've continued the support of things such as some of the small grant schemes. We were talking earlier on about nitrate pollution—so, some of the on-farm…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
Thank you, Cefin. Well, first of all, I would say we're not delaying indefinitely. When we say there's a preparatory phase, we genuinely mean that. There is work to do. I've described already the pace at which we're doing this and the intensity, and I should…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
Yes, certainly their views are represented on the—. This is not a Camelot-style round-table that has rings and rings and rings beyond it, although we've also got wider stakeholder engagement going on as well. But their views are being represented very keenly…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
Yes, we're committed to making sure that happens and working through that with the ministerial round-table. It's no surprise that this is one of the issues that has emerged. One of the ways forward, for example, possibly could be if graziers were to…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
So, the first principle is to say that need to make sure that those universal actions are genuinely available to every type of farmer that wants to be part of this—not every farmer will. But whether it's upland, lowland, intensive, extensive, whether it's…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
Yes, and I think, from the interim response to the consultation, and from what we've heard from farmers—all of us have heard—and what we've heard from environmental groups and others, I think we're pretty clear where, as I've described before, some of those…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
It is imminent. I know we've said the sheer scale of the consultation we've had. We've seen and we've shared with the ministerial round-table some of the interim analysis, but it's still interim. But we're within weeks of it being completed, and also bringing…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
It does give us the opportunity now, actually, to go back to farmers and work with farmers and say, 'Well, look, here's what we've got, help us make it more accurate.' From here into the summer, we'll be working with farmers to say, 'Help us with that data…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
And Sam, the other piece of the preparatory phase that we haven't mentioned is, on this side now of the Habitat Wales scheme and the lessons that we've learnt of it, one of the things that we can do usefully is, with the data that we've had, which—. Some…
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
Richard, did you want to come in?
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
Yes. Let me bring Gian Marco in on this.
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
I'm not sure we have, because that flowed after the event. We didn't do it at the meeting, it was—
, Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee
Inquiry: Welsh Government’s proposals for a Sustainable Farming Scheme
Very much. They're a wide group of stakeholders, including those with direct farming experience, but also environmental organisations and others. We're pretty confident—we're very confident that the right organisations are on there, and also, by the way, on…
