14:31 Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru)

Our communities are facing a series of interlinked crises and interwoven threads of inequalities. There is an environmental and climate change crisis, there is a public health crisis and there is an economic crisis. More than a decade of Tory austerity casts a shadow over our communities’ capacity to respond and to develop resilience. Communities such as mine in Dwyfor Meirionnydd suffer from youth depopulation, while the young people who wish to stay can no longer afford to get on the housing ladder. Wages are among the lowest in the UK. Meanwhile, former family homes become luxury second properties or investment holiday rentals in a febrile market.

Fundamentally, however, we need to improve the resilience of the Welsh rural economy itself. Last week’s headlines alone were an unwelcome reminder of the urgency of doing so, as they announced a bad trade deal with Australia. This could well establish a disastrous precedent for Welsh agriculture, as well as increase the growing risks posed by climate change, as described by the Climate Change Committee.

Equally, our net zero pledges require urgent action to decarbonise our rural economy and build upon its key strengths. Wales is an energy-rich nation, yet we lack not only the borrowing powers to finance nationwide developments, but a modern energy transmission grid that would allow local renewable energy developments to feed electricity into it. That hampers the ability of actors ranging from farmers to local authorities to decarbonise and make the best use of Wales’s natural resources for our common good. Those are just two issues, but I hope that today’s debate will further this much-needed discussion on improving the rural economy’s resilience.

The Welsh rural economy has a pivotal role to play not only in ensuring Wales’s post-pandemic recovery, but in ensuring that we meet our net zero obligations as sustainably and rapidly as possible. The Welsh rural economy is a vital component not only of the wider Welsh economy, but of Wales as a nation. It is the heartland of the Welsh language; the origin of some of our finest food and drink; the guardian of the sustainable use of our environment; and, of course, the destination for tourists worldwide.

Plaid Cymru is calling for the UK Government to work with, rather than against, the devolved Governments, by involving and engaging with them, whether on regional and rural development funds or in trade negotiations. We urge both the UK and Welsh Governments to support Plaid Cymru’s proposals to address the second home crisis and, in order to meet our net zero objectives, to give us the borrowing and regulatory powers needed to develop Welsh renewable energy projects and connect them to a newly upgraded electricity transmission network.

[Source]

14:49 Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru)

Just as important as digitally connecting our rural economy is the need to decarbonise our transport system rapidly and responsibly reduce private car use. Local authorities in Wales have a vital role to play in developing and supporting local bus networks, such as Bookabus. However, such services do not come cheap. In Carmarthenshire alone, over 85% of local transport routes in rural areas are subsidised to some degree, with the average subsidy in 2019 in Carmarthenshire per passenger being £3.63. As such, it is simply not enough for the Governments on either end of the M4 to call for improved active travel or the adoption of electric vehicles if they are not also prepared to invest in the necessary infrastructure and improved public transport.

[Source]

14:55 Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)

Moving towards more sustainable models of travel is critical if Wales is to meet our climate targets, yet currently 87% of all journeys in mid-Wales are undertaken by car. To reduce that figure, we must drastically improve our railways. It will come as no surprise to anyone who frequently travels by train in Wales that we have historically received only 1% of rail investment, despite having 11% of the track. I encourage the Minister to look at the submission by the renowned transport expert, Professor Stuart Cole, to the UK Government’s connectivity review. He makes the case for a £20 million investment in the beautiful Heart of Wales line, which connects Swansea and Shrewsbury, and links three of the main market towns in Carmarthenshire, all of which reside within my constituency: Ammanford, Llandeilo and Llandovery. Professor Cole outlines how that investment would improve and increase service provision on the line and bring substantial economic and social benefits.

Notwithstanding my points about decarbonising transport, I believe that there is still an important role to be played by investing in road transport. I cannot miss the opportunity to highlight the very damaging announcement today by the Welsh Government that they will not invest in the Llandeilo bypass—there is a moratorium on bypass developments. There was a cast-iron guarantee for the communities I serve in Carmarthenshire that it would be built by now. There has been obstacle after obstacle, and today’s news will be a hammer blow for the Tywi valley.

Once an agricultural holding is lost to woodland, it will not return. Anyone who recognises the challenges of the climate crisis will support a policy of increased woodland. However, the debate on the issue far too often fails to recognise the contribution that grassland systems play in providing an important carbon sink. I am delighted to see my colleague the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) here. In Scotland, they have managed to increase woodland planting without supplanting agriculture, working with their farmers. We need that approach in Wales.

There is also a wider question. Carbon offsets may present a very attractive shortcut for companies to reduce their emissions, but we need to cut emissions in the first place. The UK Government are due to publish a net zero strategy before COP26. Will that address the question of corporations using carbon capture, rather than reducing their carbon emissions?

[Source]

15:06 Dave Doogan (SNP)

I had an interesting meeting recently with a renewable energy company that has floating wind farms. It has a tremendous pilot project off the Pembrokeshire coast, and it wants to do something similar off the North sea coast, off Peterhead. The dialogue that it had with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy was so slow that it represents a golden opportunity lost by the Government to open up rural and very rural parts of our economy and to meet our net zero and renewable energy targets. There is a level of disconnect. Even if the company did get the project going, like many renewable projects in mid and west Wales, the feed-in tariffs, although not so bad in Wales, are still appalling, whereas we have energy producers around London paid to connect to the grid. In Wales they will have to pay a couple of pounds per unit, and in Caithness in Scotland, very, very rural communities will have to pay £6 or £7 per unit. BEIS just holds up its hands—“It’s not us. It is Ofgem.” Such levels of disconnect from central Government in London are not acceptable. They hold our economies back.

[Source]

15:13 Gerald Jones (Labour)

We all know that Wales has some of the most stunning natural and rural areas of any nation in the world, but we all have a part to play if we are to ensure that those areas can continue to thrive and are protected for future generations. The Labour Welsh Government have used the tools available to them to take action against practices that threaten our environment and rural areas. They have used planning powers on land and sea to oppose fossil fuel extraction, including by maintaining the ban on fracking. They have also pursued ambitious policies to protect the environment, bringing forward a net zero target for Wales, creating a new national forest for Wales and driving forward major renewable energy projects, such as the Awel y Môr offshore wind farm and the world-class centre for marine engineering at Pembroke Dock. In Wales, we have reached the milestone of generating more than 50% of our energy from renewable sources.

As we have heard in the debate today, farmers are on the frontline in the climate emergency. The Welsh Government’s sustainable farming scheme will credit farmers for good environmental practices that have not been valued in the market in the past, such as improved soil, clean water and actions to tackle climate change. In Wales, we have protected the terms and conditions of agricultural workers by retaining our agricultural workers’ board, in contrast to the Government’s decision to abolish it in England. As we have left the European Union, farming subsidy schemes are being amended. The Welsh Government are committed to ensuring that all funding coming from the UK Government to replace the common agricultural policy and other EU subsidy schemes is retained for that purpose. Yet the UK Government have removed more than £130 million in rural development funding for Wales, which threatens our rural economies.

[Source]

15:20 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (David T. C. Davies)

We are also very, very ambitious as to what the growth deals can do in helping to support our efforts to become net zero by 2050. The hon. Member for Angus mentioned floating offshore wind. I suspect I know which company he met with and I know it is very enthusiastic about getting floating offshore wind into Scotland and off the coast of Wales. I do not know what is going on in Scotland, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman that I personally signed off a cheque for some of the money for the Swansea Bay city deal, which will help build infrastructure at Pembroke Dock to enable floating offshore wind companies to trial their products there.

[Source]