THE FIFTH ESTATE

If journalists are the fourth estate then perhaps the fifth estate (at least in Wales) is perhaps the Crown estate largely out of sight, out of mind literally under the sea and depending where you are standing under our feet. A proposed new law to bring to an end the extraction of wealth from Wales (aside from being long overdue, as devolution, even with its deliberately flawed constitutional settlement has been in place since 1997) has restarted the debate around devolving the Crown Estate (as has already happened in Scotland). 

Plaid Cymru Peer Dafydd Wigley, has put forward a private members bill which calls for increased democratic control by Wales of the Crown Estate - a significant and diverse collection of assets owned nominally by the British monarchy which includes the seabed to a distance out from the foreshore to 12 nautical miles, and about 65% of the Welsh foreshore, along with riverbeds and a numbered of ports and marinas. 

The seabed is important if not vital for offshore energy developments (including wind turbines, tidal turbines, tidal lagoons and tidal fences) from which currently any leasing profits are conveniently paid to the UK Treasury, which then pays a percentage (15% thanks to David Cameron) to the Crown. The Crown Estates are devolved in Scotland, which means that’s net revenues are retained and allocated locally. 

Understandably this has led to increasing calls over then last few years for the Crown Estates assets to be devolved, which would give Wales by default powers to make its own decisions over what’s happens with the assets rather than simply hooping that Wales will receive a fair proportion of the financial settlement it receives from the UK Westminster government each year. 

Lord Wigley rightly states that struggling councils are forced to spend thousands of pounds every year on maintaining access to the coastline and public footpaths as the income of the Crown Estates coastal assets continue to rise as a result of the increased levels of investment continues to grow in renewable energy developments. 

The bill, which received its second reading in the House of Lords on Friday (7th February) is understandably (from a Westminster and unionist perspective) opposed by both the Labour Westminster government and the Conservative opposition (which should tell us something about Labour and the Conservatives) as it has been set out the bill would devolve control of assets of the Crown estate (to Wales) this would apparently disrupt important energy developments including the construction of renewables energy infrastructure and new connections within the energy grid. 

Polling suggests that there is perhaps an appetite to devolve control of the assets of the Crown Estate to Wales’s as indicated by a YesCymru poll (in 2023) conducted by YouGov which showed that 58% of people supported the devolution of the Crown Estate to Wales. Even members of the Labour Party (in government in Wales and when in opposition in Westminster (before July 2024) have indicated that’s Wales’s should control its own assets and have a fairer financial settlement. 

Westminster has said (well it would wouldn’t it) that’s the devolution of the Crown Estates assets would not see Wales’s benefit financially, but, that say we’ll be open to interpretation and to what a Welsh government choses to do with any new power and newly acquired assets. 

While understandably such a transfer of assets would involve working out solutions to realm practical issues there is a practical precedent with the creation of Crown Estates Scotland back in 2017 - and that was under a Conservative Westminster government - that was tearing itself apart with BREXIT. 

Any monies aside, the divide and rule aspect of having different devolved nations within these islands having different levels of control of their own natural resources and assets and the wealth they can generate is simply unfair, undemocratic and does not make sense.