Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:40 pm on 9 July 2024.
Vaughan Gething
Labour
3:40,
9 July 2024
Can I welcome the conciliatory and positive remarks that the Member made at the start? I do regularly reflect outside this Chamber that the Member has had a history of having to work with Labour local authority leaders and being able to do so in a pragmatic way to get things done. I wanted to do that with the previous Government. There were times we were able to do that, but I hope we'll have more opportunity to benefit the country now. And I respect the fact that the Member will scrutinise and challenge us throughout that process.
When it comes to food and food security, I welcome the future generations commissioner's initiative. It's actually about looking at how we provide food in a secure and sustainable way for ourselves, and also what it means for food exports. Actually, the significant growth in the Welsh food and drink industry has been a real success story that we don't talk about enough, and that's a genuine success story in lots of parts of Wales. And it's adding value to that as well, so we're not just selling the raw product. I know Alun Davies isn't in the Chamber today, but when he claimed we were going to be increasing the food and drink output of the country and its economic value, lots of people thought that we would not achieve the difference he talked about. Actually, we outachieved that. And there's also the point about getting further upstream for economic value and food manufacturing. Those are still things we need to do and we can do in a genuinely sustainable way.
I think this is actually a good example of where you don't need to change the law to improve outcomes. Actually, it's the way in which we balance our environmental responsibilities for high-quality food and drink production. That will help us in food security and understanding where our food comes from—the food that we export and import—in a way where we have a genuine eye to what sustainability looks like in a whole food system. That will also deal with some of the challenges that I think we'll get when it comes to some of the comments that Jenny Rathbone makes on a regular basis about needing to understand the public health impact of food that is not healthy and how we deal with ultra-processed food as well. I think this is a rounded debate that we can have that doesn't necessarily require a large-scale change in the law but does require a difference in approach and in the levers around resource and policy.
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