Who’s King of the Sand?

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A campaign to devolve the Crown Estate packed St. Davids city hall.

Vicky Moller, Grwp Resilience

The King owns Wales’ coast, seabed and inlets such as Milford Haven. His crown estate in Wales is worth £600 million which is set to rise to unknown heights with the advance of giant renewables. Pembrokeshire is an epicentre of this expanded value. Tenders are now invited, with many companies applying to build floating wind turbines, each as big as the Shard. Three companies will win, each can generate 1.4 Gigawatts p.a. off our coast, adding £1.4 billion gva to the estate. Profit from the Crown Estate goes to the UK treasury. Scotland succeeded in taking back their crown estate in 2017 and receives the income directly. Should we do the same?

A campaign started by Pembrokeshire people is seeking this outcome. A packed meeting on Saturday explored the idea as a headline event at Tir a Mor, St. Davids Land and Sea festival. The key players were in a panel and we grilled them.

Before the event many of us had groaned that it was two hours long. Afterwards we commented that it was so feisty, fast moving and informative that it felt like five minutes.

We learned the history of the Crown Estate. Its purpose today is simple: Lasting and shared prosperity for the nation. ‘Lasting’ so it can plan longer term than UK governments. Rebecca is the only one in Wales out of hundreds employed by the Crown Estate. She made up in quality for the lack of quantity, explaining she is backed by an army of expertise - the staff are one team, not area based.

I met with other Crown staff last year. I urged them to ensure social benefits were a condition for giving businesses a licence. They said they would try. Today we learned that social benefit is indeed a requirement they will be judged on to select the winners.

Childhood poverty in Pembrokeshire stands around 25% we learned. Tom Sawyer asked: “Are we to see families in Milford and Pembroke Dock looking out of their windows at multimillion pound developments dominating the sea-scape, powering the equivalent of every home in Wales from the free wind?” Many already cannot afford heat or carpets. The Celtic Freeport will cover 600 hectares between Pembrokeshire and Port Talbot. The CEO of the Trust Port believes that its business rates can be retained for local benefit.

Beth Winter MP lit up the room with her passionate questioning of assumptions. Without ownership of our estate we cannot rely on benefits to the area. Scotland receives £100 million p.a. straight to their nation. How they use it can be improved but the income is secure. The Crown estate owns 45 km out to sea, half way to Ireland. This is a massive asset. For too long we have seen Wales’ wealth extracted, to power the industrial revolution globally with our coal, to roof houses across the world with slate, and always the population is left with a begging bowl asking for crumbs. We have

cultural Alzheimers! Let’s try to learn from historic mistakes, not repeat them.

Beth had no qualms supporting this campaign, organised by the same people that started Siatr Cymru, the campaign that has already changed rules for second homes. How should the income from the crown estate be used in Wales? She believes we need a sovereign wealth fund such as Norway has accumulated, for major challenges and changes ahead, it should not go on vanity projects. The wealth fund should support our Future Generations goals. We can use innovative democracy to manage funds, learning from Portugal and Ireland.

Getting change in parliament is hard. Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville Roberts led a motion to devolve the crown estate, with cross party support. It was blocked. Simon Hart said in parliament that there is no appetite for this in Wales on the same day a petition to devolve the

estate exceeded 30,000 votes. A poll showed 77% in favour.

Nick Tune, infrastructure commissioner, investigated Wales constitutional arrangements. The conclusions were clear, Wales needs the power to act. For example we simply cannot land the power created in our seas because the National Grid is centralised and not one inch of new grid is planned for Wales, only some areas for improvement. Scotland has many miles of new grid planned. He feels for Welsh Government with one hand tied behind its back. It lacks powers over the grid and cannot influence large energy installations as these are decided at UK level. Still there is a desperate need for better leadership from somewhere. We are owed £4 million from the HS2 debacle in consequentials. Where is the fight for this?

John Osmond, local writer and IWA founder, chairing the meeting, asked if UK reduced the

b lock grant to Scotland because of their crown estate income. They did, but having it go direct to the nation felt safer.

Questions from the floor showed an audience as informed and passionate as the panel. Beware: freeports are essentially tax and regulation avoidance schemes. Tom Sawyer argued that “the ‘ tax efficiency’ would be different here with a consortium dedicated to fair work and social partnership.”

We live in a climate and nature emergency, we need the skills to respond to this opportunity, the jobs of tomorrow have not been invented. Our engineering businesses are cutting back production due to lack of skills. Teachers asked the panel to bring role models and future employers to inspire junior pupils as this is the age children are most receptive to new ideas. Can jobs be ring-fenced for locals? Tom explained: “No, but a recruitment requirement can be to live locally for emergency response reasons, and we can provide apprenticeships via local schools and colleges. This will have similar effects to ringfencing.”

The gripping event was democracy in action, with the informed public and those in charge in the same room being urgent, frank and polite. We all wanted the same thing. I concluded that we must continue down the path of this quality of deliberation, of co-owning our future, to be the leaders we lack.