Brexit issues for cross-border farms ‘keep me awake at night’, says Welsh Gov official

Dr Nick Fenwick, director of agricultural policy at the Farmers’ Union of Wales (FUW), was also giving evidence to the committee.

He pointed out cross-border farms had consistently been the last to receive payments of any kind over the past 15 years, placing them at a ‘significant disadvantage’.

Though he suggested the ability to change EU rules which prevent one payment authority from handing out cash without another may benefit these farmers, he did warn divergence would be an issue.

“The current EU framework has strict boundaries in terms of flexibility within legislation and flexibility within financial limits,” he said.

Liberalisation

“We are looking, potentially, at a complete liberalisation of those boundaries, so they become far wider and the degree to which divergence can be market distorting becomes far greater.”

NFU Scotland director of policy Jonnie Hall told the committee industry needed to see the common frameworks being set out for the UK in order to protect the integrity of the domestic market.

“We need to ensure we are all playing to the same rulebook on a whole range of issues,” he said.

“We are unsighted on an awful lot of that. We are still trying to flush out of Governments – plural – the actions and discussions which are going on.”