National Assembly for Wales

The UK Government department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy are the secretariat for these meetings, the first of which took place last month.  As part of the process of ensuring maximum benefit from these meetings, Welsh Government officials are working with officials from BEIS and the other devolved administrations on a range of procedural issues surrounding the quadrilaterals including how the outcomes of future meetings are captured and reported, so as to enable information to be disseminated consistently to relevant parties such as to the National Assembly for Wales.

In the meantime I will provide a more detailed account of the Business and Industry Quadrilateral Meeting held on 4 April 2019, which builds on my written statement of 29 April 2019.

As I set out in that statement, the meeting was attended by myself on behalf of the Welsh Government, Ivan McKee MSP from the Scottish Government, and Kelly Tolhurst MP on behalf of the UK Government. Northern Ireland was represented by a senior member of their Civil Service.

This was the first Business & Industry quadrilateral meeting which was intended primarily to explore the most effective ways of joint working across a range of business issues, largely in relation to the UK’s Exit from the EU and the matters arising from that.   These initial discussions on engagement are vital to ensuring the success of the meetings moving forward.

The quadrilateral discussed the importance of providing clarity and resolution around the nature of the UK’s departure from the EU to businesses across the UK.

Devolved Administrations expressed concerns about the economic impact of tariffs.  The need for potential prioritisation of exports if the UK were to leave the UK without  a deal was also considered with the need to engage the Devolved Administrations in a timely fashion was emphasised, given the time sensitivity of some exports and the consequentially greater impact of border delays on some goods.

Access to skills and labour as a result of the UK Government’s draft immigration policy were also discussed and it was agreed to return to this at a future meeting.

The Devolved Administrations recognised the importance of the impact of leaving the EU on the rural economy, particularly in the case of leaving without a deal, and the need to consider regional imbalances and disadvantages when developing our responses.

We agreed on the importance of local knowledge and that further joint working around cross border flows was required.

Attendees shared intelligence on current business preparations for Brexit, and agreed that our engagement with businesses needed to be complimentary and consistent. We agreed to ongoing information sharing, particularly with businesses, and that the speed and the timeliness of consequent interventions were important. It was recognised that UK Government and devolved policy levers need to work effectively together for maximum effect and to avoid any potential negative unintended outcomes.

Looking to future agendas, the imperative that Devolved Administrations voices being heard in discussions on the UK’s future relationship with the EU was emphasised strongly, and the possibility of these quadrilateral meetings becoming the mechanism for ministerial engagement on Future Economic Partnership negotiations was explored.