National Assembly for Wales (Legislative Competence) (Agriculture and Rural Development) Order 2009

I begin by welcoming the broad agreement that exists towards conferring on the National Assembly for Wales the powers set out in this draft order. The order was subject to pre-legislative scrutiny by a committee of the National Assembly in Cardiff Bay and, here at Westminster, by the Welsh Affairs Committee and by this House's Constitution Committee. The Government are grateful to these committees for the scrutiny they have undertaken. I am pleased to say that the Welsh Affairs Committee concluded that, ""the Welsh Assembly Government has identified a clear need for the proposed Order"," and that the competence it confers, ""represents a useful addition to the Assembly's powers"." The committee made no recommendations to change the proposed order as a result of its scrutiny. The Constitution Committee similarly confirmed that the order did not raise any matters of constitutional principle. This draft order, which forms part of the legislative programme set out on 15 July 2008 by the First Minister of the Welsh Assembly Government, the right honourable Rhodri Morgan, has already been approved by the National Assembly for Wales, in plenary on 31 March, and by the other place on 18 May this year. The order would enable the National Assembly to legislate in relation to the promotion and development of the red meat industry in Wales. It inserts a single matter into field 1 of Schedule 5 to the Government of Wales Act 2006, which covers agriculture, fisheries, forestry and rural development. Specifically, this order would enable the Welsh Assembly Government to fulfil their policy aim of conferring on Welsh Ministers the functions currently carried out by the Welsh Levy Board, including raising a levy on the Welsh red meat sector. This is not possible under existing powers. The Committee may find it helpful if I briefly summarise the background to this order. The Radcliffe review of 2005 considered the then five Great Britain and United Kingdom statutory agricultural and horticultural levy bodies, covering potatoes, horticulture, cereals, meat and livestock and milk. The Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, the NERC Act, led to the abolition of these boards and the establishment of a new Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board—the AHDB. The 2006 Act also allowed the Welsh Ministers to create separate Wales-only bodies for the development, promotion and sustainability of their respective industries. The Welsh Assembly Government consulted the agricultural industry in Wales about how best to manage future promotion and development in each of these sectors. The industry wanted separate arrangements for the development and promotion of the red meat sector in Wales because of its importance to rural community infrastructure and the wider rural economy. As a result, in February 2008, Welsh Ministers established the Welsh Levy Board to set and raise the red meat levy in Wales. The AHDB administers the other levy-raising sectors in Wales as part of GB-wide arrangements in respect of the horticulture, milk and potato sectors, and UK-wide arrangements for the cereals and oilseeds sector. The Welsh Assembly Government’s general policy is to ensure that, wherever possible, functions are exercised in-house rather than by arm’s-length bodies. Welsh Ministers are able to create separate Wales-only bodies for the development, promotion and sustainability of the respective agricultural industries as a result of the NERC Act. Crucially, however, the Act does not allow the National Assembly to confer those functions directly on Welsh Ministers. The Welsh Levy Board currently sets and raises a levy for the Welsh red meat industry to fund the promotion and marketing of the industry. In practice, the board has delegated many of its functions to Hybu Cig Cymru, a company limited by guarantee and wholly owned by Welsh Ministers. As a result of the competence conferred by this order, the Welsh Assembly Government would be able to bring forward legislation in the National Assembly to abolish the Welsh Levy Board and confer its functions on Welsh Ministers, including raising a levy on the Welsh red meat sector. This would make Hybu Cig Cymru directly accountable to Welsh Ministers, streamlining the levy-raising process and making it more efficient and accountable. The scope of the powers that this order would confer on the National Assembly reflects those functions already given to Welsh Ministers and the Secretary of State by the NERC Act. This ensures that levy-raising powers are set within a broader context of developing the red meat industry in Wales. The levy is simply a means of developing the industry through financial support. It is what gets delivered as a consequence of the levy that really matters. The UK Government’s commitment to devolving legislative competence to the National Assembly for Wales is once again demonstrated as a result of this order. That is a slightly otiose sentiment since I know that nearly every noble Lord in the Chamber participated in the Wales legislation and is more familiar than anyone else could be about the detail of these issues. Just in case there is a noble Lord who did not participate in our deliberations, I should reiterate these points. It shows that the system of conferring legislative competence on the National Assembly by means of Orders in Council, or legislative competence orders as they are now better known, is working well. I am sure that noble Lords will recognise the importance of the red meat industry to Wales. Red meat contributes some 39 per cent to Wales’s agricultural output, and Wales accounts for over 25 per cent of the total levy on sheep collected in Great Britain. A thriving red meat industry is vital to Wales and important to the UK as a whole. It is surely right therefore that this order will enable key decisions about Wales’s red meat industry to be taken by the National Assembly and, if it so decides, by Welsh Ministers. It will enable the best possible framework to be put in place to ensure effective leadership for the industry during these challenging economic times. Accordingly, I commend the order to the Committee.