Gove pledges a ‘comprehensive free trade deal’ will protect Welsh farmers

ENVIRONMENT Secretary Michael Gove has promised that Welsh farmers’ interests will be taken care of with a comprehensive free trade deal with the European Union.

Mr Gove was speaking on the opening day of the Royal Welsh Show. Asked what certainty he could offer Welsh farmers about trade, Mr Gove said: “We can offer them the fact there’s going to be a comprehensive free trade deal between Britain and Europe.”

Challenged on how he could offer that certainty, he replied: “Because it’s in the interests of every party.”

Mr Gove promised that farm support would be funded for at least the next five years. He said: “We were planning to assure that farming would be guaranteed until 2020 – we’re now making the promise that it will be guaranteed until 2022, which no other government and no other party has pledged to do, and I want to assure, as I said last week, that we have the most generous possible support for agriculture in the future.”

Mr Gove said the interests of Welsh farmers would be protected in the negotiations over Brexit.

He said: “I said last week that in shaping any new system of agricultural support we had to support upland farmers. Sheep farmers do an amazing job not just in producing a high-quality product but also in making sure that Wales stays beautiful and a magnet for tourism, but also there are environmental benefits. So I will assure that we have a system of agricultural support and also access to markets that ensures Welsh hill farmers continue to be supported in work that they do.”

The Environment Secretary was asked about his meeting earlier in the day with his Welsh Government counterpart Lesley Griffiths.

He said: “I said to Lesley that what I wanted to do was make sure that we had an approach going forward where Wales was happy with what we wanted to do and we’re going to have meetings in September. It would be perfectly possible for the UK Government to say unilaterally ‘This is what we want’ and the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland governments are going to have to fall in behind. The reason why there is a question about exactly where the powers will lie is because we want to hear from Wales.”