Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 1:53 pm on 8 March 2017.
Andrew RT Davies
Conservative
1:53,
8 March 2017
Cabinet Secretary, access to the countryside is something to be welcomed and hopefully it creates a greater understanding of what the countryside is for, which primarily is to produce food for us—to live off the fat of the land, as many people might say—but there is a serious issue about educating people when they do access fields and they do access the countryside that there are risks and there are dangers. In my own area of South Wales Central, only a couple of years ago several walkers sadly were trampled by cattle in the St Fagans and Radyr area. Across the UK, it is one of the biggest killers of people in the countryside: livestock interacting with people who aren’t aware of the safety precautions they need to take. Would you, along with your incentives to open up parts of the countryside, make sure that there is a robust education campaign and public awareness campaign out there, so that tragedies like those that have happened in my own region can be avoided wherever possible?
The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.
It is chaired by the prime minister.
The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.
Cabinet ministers are appointed by the prime minister and chosen from MPs or peers of the governing party.
However, during periods of national emergency, or when no single party gains a large enough majority to govern alone, coalition governments have been formed with cabinets containing members from more than one political party.
War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.
From time to time the prime minister will reorganise the cabinet in order to bring in new members, or to move existing members around. This reorganisation is known as a cabinet re-shuffle.
The cabinet normally meets once a week in the cabinet room at Downing Street.
