FULL RAIL POWER FOR WALES

Why is Wales treated so differently to Scotland and Northern Ireland? 🤯

We've missed out on almost £8 BILLION in rail funding because we don't have the same powers.

It's time to fully devolve rail to #Wales! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

DEVOLVE THE CROWN ESTATE

Plaid Cymru has long called for Wales-specific Crown Estate figures.

Now we have them - and the case for devolving it is stronger than ever...

When Wales creates wealth, Wales' communities should benefit. 

It's time to devolve the Crown Estate.

TIME TO DEVOLVE POLICING

Scotland, Northern Ireland and even London and Manchester have control over policing – but not Wales. 

 

Decisions about the safety of our communities shouldn’t be made in Westminster.

Labour in Wales’s ( and Labour in Westminster’s ) default position towards devolution and towards Wales and Welsh interests is NO.

Self interest and the interests of the Labour Party will always come first…

Plaid Cymru is the only party fighting for these powers to be brought into Welsh hands.

THE DEVOLUTION OF THE CROWN ESTATES BILL

Plaid Cymru’s Crown Estate Wales Bill has passed its third reading (unopposed) in the House of Lords today, (20th January) this marks a symbolic victory for the long-running campaign to bring control of Welsh natural assets into Welsh hands. 

The Bill was first introduced by Plaid Cymru peer Dafydd Wigley, who has argued that Wales should have the same powers as Scotland over its Crown Estate. The legislation calls on the UK Government to devolve responsibility for the Crown Estate in Wales to the Welsh Government.

The Crown Estate controls large swathes of the Welsh seabed and coastline, as well as around 50,000 acres of land, generating significant revenue that currently flows to the UK Treasury and the monarchy rather than being reinvested directly in Welsh communities.

Despite the smooth passage of the Bill through the House of Lords, the Labour Westminster Government has clearly reiterated its opposition to any devolution of control of the Crown Estates. Lord Livermore, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said ministers believe the current arrangements “provide the best outcomes for Wales and the wider United Kingdom”.

Plaid Cymru has signalled that the issue is far from settled. Llinos Medi, the MP for Ynys Môn, confirmed she will reintroduce the Bill as a Private Member’s Bill in the House of Commons. Whether it progresses will depend on whether the UK Government agrees to allocate parliamentary time.

Ms Medi has also pledged to table an Early Day Motion to increase pressure on ministers to allow the Bill to be debated. The move follows a failed attempt last year to amend the UK Government’s Crown Estate Bill.

Back in February 2025, Ms Medi proposed an amendment that would have given Wales parity with Scotland by devolving Crown Estate powers. The amendment was voted down, including by every Welsh Labour MP.

Since then, support for devolution has grown within Wales. All 22 local authorities have passed motions calling for the Crown Estate to be devolved, while a leaked Welsh Labour election strategy acknowledged that the party has “proudly made the case” for devolution, despite it not yet being delivered by the UK Government.

Dafydd Wigley, speaking after the Lords vote, said: “I am very pleased that this Bill, that I first introduced to the House of Lords in September 2024, has today passed its final stage. Plaid Cymru and I have consistently made the case that Welsh resources should be in Welsh hands, and I am glad to have secured support from across the House that this is the most logical way for Welsh communities to benefit from the wealth they generate.

“I now look forward to the Bill progressing to the House of Commons, where Llinos Medi will proudly present it. The UK Government should make time for the Bill’s consideration because it is what Wales deserves.

“When the Bill was passed in the Lords the government chief whip announced that ‘the King has signified his consent’, which is the normal procedure, but in the Commons the government will be pressing MPs not to make time for it. What would be really interesting would be if some Welsh Labour MPs were prepared to support it.”

Llinos Medi MP added: “The passing of this Bill in the House of Lords today ensures that the devolution of the Crown Estate to Wales is firmly back on the agenda here in Westminster. It remains deeply disappointing that not a single Welsh Labour MP supported my amendment to bring these powers into Welsh hands last year.

“This was a missed opportunity to stand up for their own constituents, who would directly benefit from ensuring that the wealth generated by Wales’s natural resources is retained and reinvested in our communities, rather than continuing to be siphoned off to London.

“For far too long, wealth has been extracted from our communities in Wales, and we have very little say over how it is managed or where the profits go. This Bill presents a real opportunity to begin redressing that historic imbalance. We only need to look at Scotland, which has had full control over its Crown Estate since 2016 and since then has reinvested millions of pounds each year back into local communities. Wales deserves the same parity of power.

“It is not only Plaid Cymru calling for this either – every single council in Wales has now voted in favour of these powers being devolved, demonstrating a clear national consensus. I therefore look forward to making this case once again to the UK Government when I reintroduce this Bill to the House of Commons as a Private Members’ Bill. The UK Government should make time for it, because Wales cannot be denied control over its own resources any longer.”

Last month, the Labour in Wales Welsh Government announced it was setting up a new expert group to examine options for reforming how the Crown Estate operates in Wales. The group, which first met in December, is exploring governance, accountability and the potential devolution of powers, reflecting growing momentum behind reform.

LABOUR ‘DELETE’ CALL TO TACKLE CHILD POVERTY

Welsh Government statistics published this week show that child poverty has risen by 2% to 31% in Wales, the highest rise of all UK nations. However, ahead of a Plaid Cymru debate in the Senedd on April 2nd 2025, where they will call on the Welsh Government to implement a child payment, the Labour Welsh Government have deleted the calls in their amendment to the original motion.

 

Instead, the Welsh Government have focused once again on a ‘commitment…to engage with the Scottish Government to better understand the Scottish Child Payment and how it operates’ despite this having been a matter of discussion for a number of years in Wales.

 

Plaid Cymru Social Justice spokesperson Sioned Williams has criticised the Government’s decision to delete the call, accusing Labour of ‘stalling’ and ‘refusing to take direct action on tackling child poverty’ calling it out as a ‘national stain’.

 

This comes in the same week as the UK Labour Government announcement to cut almost £5 billion in welfare spending, a decision that will push a further 50,000 children into poverty across England and Wales.

 

Plaid Cymru announced a direct child payment to tackle child poverty in their Spring Conference in Llandudno last week. The payment will ‘boost support by putting money in the pockets of those struggling’.

 

A similar scheme in Scotland has had a transformative impact on child poverty, helping Scotland become the only nation in the UK where child poverty levels are expected to decrease.

 

Plaid Cymru’s spokesperson on Social Justice, Sioned Williams MS, said:

 

“Labour are failing our children and young people as the Government’s own figures released this week show.  Not only is child poverty growing in Wales, but it is growing at the fastest rate of all UK nations. This is the result of 25 years of Labour inaction in getting to grips with the national stain that is child poverty.

 

“Their choice to ‘delete’ Plaid Cymru’s calls to implement a child payment is just another example of their refusal to take direct action on tackling child poverty. How long will Labour be content to talk around the issue when the actions needed are known and proven.

 

“Plaid Cymru has real, ambitious, tangible solutions to tackle child poverty. In Government we will take action to support the 31% of children that are currently growing up in poverty, living in households which are struggling to make ends meet, by implementing a child payment.

 

“While Labour are happy to stall, Plaid Cymru will act. While Labour chooses to cut almost £5 billion in support to the most vulnerable, Plaid Cymru look to boost support by putting money in the pockets of those struggling. While Labour are happy continuing with the status quo, Plaid Cymru offer a fresh start.”

 

- ENDS - 

A WIN-WIN FOR WALES

Rhun ap Iorwerth MS will today use his keynote address to his party conference in Llandudno to set out how a Plaid Cymru Government would offer a “win-win for Wales”, both rebuilding public services and the economy in Wales, and standing up to Keir Starmer and UK Labour.

 

Addressing Conference delegates, Rhun ap Iorwerth MS is expected to say that if elected First Minister after the Senedd Elections next May he would put the Prime Minister “on notice that the relationship will change because our destination demands it.” 

 

The Plaid Cymru Leader will say that the current relationship between the Labour Welsh and UK Governments represents “a lose-lose for Wales” and that a government under his leadership would be “A government which understands our communities, which cares for our nation’s future, which will never let private profiteering infect our NHS, and which will take responsibility for its own actions rather than deflect to Westminster.”

 

Due to speak on Friday afternoon, Rhun ap Iorwerth MS is expected to say:

 

“The truth is that the establishment wants to stifle, even obstruct, our ambition. On one hand, Keir Starmer makes life more difficult for the most vulnerable – his and Rachel Reeves’ Tory-inspired benefits cuts will hit some of the most vulnerable people in coming weeks, and on the other, Eluned Morgan doesn’t want the powers that could make a difference to people’s lives.  

 

It’s a lose-lose for Wales.  

 

The SNP has secured more powers and a better deal for Scotland because of their determination to stand up to Westminster. 

 

Meanwhile in Wales, we have a Labour First Minister blinded by party loyalty, too afraid to rock the boat, pandering to Starmer, stuck in the middle of the road and failing to move our nation forward.”  

 

The Plaid Cymru Leader will add how the relationship between Wales and Westminster would be radically different should he be elected First Minister:

 

“So, whilst Labour’s failures feed Reform’s fear-mongering, we are here to offer hope.   

 

An end to Labour-led rule in Wales after twenty-six years.  

 

A government which understands our communities, which cares for our nation’s future, which will never let private profiteering infect our NHS, and which will take responsibility for its own actions rather than deflect to Westminster.  

 

And my first meeting with Keir Starmer as Plaid Cymru’s First Minister of Wales? Well, it’ll mark a new beginning – the start of discussions on building a new Welsh nation. 

I’ll do all I can to make it a constructive relationship, certainly, but for one thing, the future of Wales will clearly be the only focus for me – no party loyalties to balance, or blind loyalty to a broken Union. And there’ll be a plea to see Wales differently in so many ways.  

 

Not just as fertile ground for electoral fodder, or for fleeting campaign pit stops and photo-ops. 

 

Not just an afterthought – fourth in line behind England, Scotland and Northern Ireland because their First Ministers and Mayors refuse to settle for less.  Not just a dead cat or a nodding dog to change the subject or cheer him on when times are tough.  

 

But a nation whose people deserve the respect of being heard, of being listened to.  And there can be no ducking the HS2 issue, no dodging when the Crown Estate should be on the agenda or turning away when fair funding HAS to be on the table. The UK Government will HAVE to respond.  

 

Our vision of Wales – open, inclusive and internationalist – is of nation where decisions affecting its people are made in Wales for the benefit of its people. 

 

Our ultimate-aim is to future-proof Wales by not allowing ourselves to depend on the whims of Westminster. We want to be good neighbours but equal neighbours.  

But so long as we are tied to the unequal union, we must leverage the prospect of Wales standing on its own two feet. And becoming a genuine partner in a redesigned Britain. 

 

As Mark Drakeford said, when Scotland speaks, Westminster listens. 

And when Wales speaks with a Plaid Cymru First Minister at the helm, they’ll need more than platitudes to silence us. Be in no doubt – it’s a win-win when we negotiate with the mindset of an ambitious nation, focused on rebuilding public services and the economy in Wales whilst also standing up to Keir Starmer and UK Labour.”

 

- ENDS -

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. 

FIGHTING LABOUR’S AUSTERITY 2.0

Following Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s warning of a ‘painful’ budget coming this October, Plaid Cymru’s Luke Fletcher will in stark contrast offer a message of hope at the SNP’s 90^th Annual Conference in Edinburgh today (Sunday 1 September 2024).

 

Mr Fletcher will say that Labour’s austerity 2.0 and the threat of the far-right must be stopped by taking “a radical vision for real, ambitious and deliverable change” over the next 18 months ahead of the devolved parliament elections in 2026.

 

Addressing delegates at the SNP Conference, Plaid Cymru spokesperson for economy, Luke Fletcher MS will say:

“Labour have chosen – and it is a choice – to stick with Osbornomics – to double down on a failed economic model which has slashed investment and hollowed out our communities. Austerity 2.0: bought, signed, sealed and delivered by and for the vested interests that are very happy with and profit from the status quo.

“And let’s be in no doubt – there are those who will look to exploit – who are already exploiting – the further hardship and suffering that Labour’s austerity will cause in our communities. The snake-oil salesmen of the far-right are looking to sow and deepen division.

“Conference – we cannot and we will not let them. We will beat them by offering hope – a radical vision for real, ambitious and deliverable change.

“Over the next 18 months, and building on our successes at this year’s Westminster election, we will be taking that vision to every doorstep in Wales.

“A Plaid Cymru Welsh Government will overturn 25 years of economic stagnation under Labour – delivering economic renewal through setting measurable and ambitious targets for an economy that prioritises decent work, sustainability, and economic well-being.

“A new development agency for Wales will prioritise growing and supporting Welsh-owned businesses, underpinned by a new deal for small businesses on rates.

“A new funding settlement for our universities will help to drive innovation.

“A skills audit and new supports for vocational training will see our young people equipped with the skills they need to secure high-paying, high-skilled jobs in the green economy.    

“And above all, new supports for social enterprises, community-led ventures and co-operative businesses will build, retain and recycle wealth in our communities.”

 

Mr Fletcher continues concludes by reaffirming Plaid Cymru’s “productive working relationship” with the SNP;

“Friends, in delivering all this and more, we will be following an example you have set. SNP Scottish Governments have led the way in showing that there is a different, more progressive path to follow. From the Scottish Child Payment to the community right to buy, the baby box to free personal and nursing care: we have and will continue to learn from our sister party.

“We were proud to renew our productive working relationship following this year’s General Election, and as we look to Scottish Parliament and Senedd elections in 2026, we do so facing joint challenges and opportunities.

“We will continue to work together – in Westminster and beyond – to secure the fairer funding that Wales and Scotland are owed, and our shared right to determine our own constitutional destinies. We will continue to build our shared vision of Wales and Scotland as progressive, independent nations, claiming their place in the European and global family of nations.”

- ENDS -

A MATTER OF ACCOUNTABILITY

Profits derived from the Crown Estate which include natural resources including tidal power, have been valued at a massive £853 million. Imagine what this could do for our communities - and yet, gains are redirected straight to the UK Treasury, with a portion handed directly to the Royal Family.

This is first and foremost an environmental issue. The devolution of powers over the management of the Crown Estate would bolster our efforts in Wales to reach net-zero through the integration of energy policy with our Net Zero Wales plan. Reinvesting profits in Wales could create thousands of well-paid green jobs, helping to address the persistent problems of low pay and job insecurity. It is also a matter of fairness. 

Plaid Cymru has long argued that it is the people of Wales who should be able to determine how best to benefit from the economic opportunity of renewable energy, not Westminster.

At present the Welsh Government has control over over agriculture, forestry and fishing, education, environment and Health and social care, but devolving The Crown Estate to Wales is something the party - and others - have long called for.

The Crown Estate is an independent company which belongs to the monarch for the duration of their reign, though the revenue from its £16 billion pound property portfolio flows directly to the Treasury.

A taxpayer-funded payment, known as the Sovereign Grant, pays for the royal family's official duties each year. It is currently set at 25% of the Crown Estate's annual profits, including a 10% uplift to pay for the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace.

For decades, the seabed was simply an add on sideshow to the Crown Estates largely land based property empire. Over more recent years the sea bed’s value has soared in value, as a result of the rapidly expanding market for renewable energy. After rising incrementally for years, the value of the seabed doubled between 2020 and 2021. 

Back in 2022, the Crown Estate estimated its marine portfolio was worth £5 billion. 

Around the world, there has been a dramatic growth in ocean-based industries, with the OECD projecting that the ocean economy could exceed $3 trillion by 2030.  The UK, with its 29,000 kilometres of coastline, has been an early mover in commercialising its coastal waters beyond the traditional sectors of oil and gas, seafood, and shipping. 

The Crown Estate has facilitated and profited from much of this new activity, working in tandem with the government to rent out areas of ocean to companies that want to install offshore wind turbines, dredge up sand and gravel for the construction industry, lay cables for internet traffic and electricity, or build pipelines for oil and gas. 

The Crown Estate is also responsible for handing out the rights to store carbon—a potentially lucrative future industry. While not all the money generated by the seabed around England, Wales, and Northern Ireland funds the Royal family. 

The estate's holdings north of the border were devolved to Scotland in 2016, and its revenue now goes to the Scottish government. In Wales nothing has been done to make the Crown Estate publicly account’s to the Senedd and the Welsh people. The Crown Estate owns the UK seabed out to 12 nautical miles. 

This mens that in Scotland there is a very different system, where the Scottish government takes 100 percent of the profits generated by the Crown Estate Scotland, a separate entity. Ironically Westminster recognises that the Scottish Crown Estate should be managed by the Scottish Government and devolved those powers back in 2017. If it’s good enough for Scotland, so why not Wales?

During new Monarch’s reign, Crown Estate commissioners will make decisions that will permanently change Britain’s seabed—choosing which companies and industries get priority in an increasingly busy sea. Already, the high cost of leasing the seabed to develop offshore wind projects is shutting small companies out of the process. 

And as competition to store carbon under the sea heats up, there is a danger that the new seabed economy will look disturbingly similar to the old one, with a handful of oil and gas giants dominating and locking in a future based on fossil fuels.

The Crown Estate is in the middle of process that is turning the seabed into a major source of rental income for the Crown Estate.  Historically the Monarchy has not always claimed ownership of the seabed. When oil and gas were discovered off Britain’s east coast, companies eager to start drilling demanded clarity on whose property, exactly, they were about to bore into. 

The problem was that back in the 1940’s the then foreign secretary Herbert Morrison stated that the seabed was res nullius— literally nobody’s property—effectively creating by default a decidedly legal gray area. 

So in 1964 the government passed the Continental Shelf Act, effectively passing ownership of the UK seabed to the business managing the rest of the monarchy’s property portfolio from that point onward basically everything in the marine environment, in the absence of anyone else owning it, effectively belongs to the Crown Estate. 

It wasn’t until the turn of the millennium (under Tony Blair’s Premiership) that the Crown Estate launched what would become its most profitable seabed industry. In 2000, the first two offshore wind turbines were installed on the seabed, near the English city of Newcastle. 

Since then, the UK’s offshore wind industry has grown massively, providing almost a quarter of the country’s electricity last year, and it is now second only to China's in size. Today there are more 2,700 wind turbines off the country’s coast. The world’s biggest offshore wind farm—the size of 66,000 soccer pitches—is situated 70 miles off the coast of Yorkshire, in the northeast of England.

Encouraged by New Labour, the Crown Estate saw an opportunity in this very early on, as the Crown Estate did not simply just lease the seabed, they actually played a key role in developing the sector. Offshore seabed developments are just getting started. The UK is planning for a massive, fivefold increase in offshore wind capacity to 50 gigawatts by 2030.

So far, the Crown Estate has held four major auctions, with companies biding for the rights to build wind farms on designated sections of seabed. As the technology evolves, each auction allows wind farms to build bigger turbines that are installed farther out to sea. The offshore wind market has become so competitive that the Crown Estate is now in a position to charge companies enormous option fees—just to reserve the right to build on the seabed.

Back in 2019, a partnership between BP and German energy provider ENBW agreed to pay £231 million ($290 million) in annual option fees alone. As the offshore wind industry booms, the Crown Estate is already eyeing the next opportunity to cash in on its seabed empire: carbon storage. 

The seabed around the UK has room to store 78 billion tons of carbon dioxide—more than enough space to cram in 200 years' worth of the country’s annual emissions. Increasingly, the North Sea is being seen as a destination to store carbon captured from hard-to-decarbonize industries, including steel, cement, and fertilizer production.

Although it’s still the heart of the UK’s fossil fuel industry, the North Sea will play an important part in the country’s decarbonization plans. In 2019 the Committee on Climate Change—a public body that advises the government—concluded that carbon capture and storage is a “necessity, not an option” if the UK is going to achieve its legally binding goal of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

So far carbon storage plans have had a rocky start, in 2011 and 2015 the Westminster government canceled major carbon capture and storage projects, attracting criticism from those who say the UK has been slow to capitalise on its natural storage assets. That is starting to change.

The UK has set itself the target of capturing up to 30 million tons of carbon dioxide every year by 2030, with the first carbon capture clusters centering around industrial towns and cities in the northeast and northwest of England.

What this means is that the Crown Estate is now sitting on another valuable asset deep beneath the sea. The estate is responsible for granting the rights for carbon storage under the seabed around England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, as well as leases for pipelines that would transfer carbon dioxide to these underground stores, most of which are located in the North Sea. 

Storage licenses are approved by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), a public body that regulates the oil, gas, and carbon storage industries in the North Sea.

So far, the NTSA has granted seven licenses for seabed carbon storage around England. 

One of those licenses—granted in 2013 to Shell—has expired, so there are now six active carbon storage licenses, covering five sites in the North Sea and one in the Irish Sea to the west of England. In September 2022, the NSTA closed bidding on the first public round of carbon storage licensing after receiving bids from 19 companies for the 13 carbon storage sites offered up. 

Any company that wants to transport and store carbon under the sea will also need to purchase rights from the Crown Estate. So far only one project holds an agreement for lease from the Crown Estate: a chunk of the North Sea being explored by a partnership between BP, Carbon Sentinel, and Equinor New Energy for its carbon storage potential.

The seabed is now facing a massive moment of transition, with vast potential to support nature recovery, unlock huge opportunity for renewable energy, and play a major role in energy security means it is becoming increasingly busy, with more demands on it than ever before. These demands are only set to grow in intensity in the future and the profits are only going to grow. 

As with offshore wind farms, this raises the question of who gets to cash in on the race to net zero. Of the six active carbon storage licenses granted on the UK continental shelf, five of them are owned by oil and gas companies. 

Freedom of information requests which were put in to NSTA has revealed that prior to September 2022, there had only been nine applications for offshore carbon storage licenses. So basically pretty much every single carbon storage application was successful, and all but one of those licenses went to an oil or gas company.

None of this should really surprise anyone as storing carbon under the sea will mean drilling wells hundreds of meters under the seabed, exactly the kind of thing that oil and gas companies have been doing in the North Sea for decades. 

These companies have another incentive to encourage carbon capture and storage: If the technology is used as a way to reduce emissions from fossil fuels, then it could be used to justify continued drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea. The NSTA has already licensed new areas for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, a move decried by some campaign groups as illegal.

The transition to a lower-carbon economy means finding new uses for the ocean, but there are still serious questions over the impact that marine industries have on the seabed, and about which companies will profit from this new undersea boom. 

In the Pacific, mining firms are currently exploring the seabed for polymetallic nodules packed with metals that are essential for manufacturing electric cars. Starting in July 2023, the International Seabed Authority will start taking applications from companies that wish to mine the ocean floor. 

A whole new era of ocean exploitation beckons—this time in the name of limiting carbon emissions and adapting to climate change. For years, the ocean has suffered as a result of human activity. Marine heat waves have prompted coral bleaching, microplastics are messing with ocean food chains, and falling underwater oxygen levels mean marine animals are finding it harder to breathe. 

Human impact on the ocean ecosystem has not been good, regulation and review of offshore activity during the on going gold rush to cash in and exploit the seabed threatens to repeat the mistakes that we have made on land, particularly if much of the development is undertaken by companies whose environmental record is not good. 

The revenues do not belong to the monarch and surplus revenue from its businesses are paid each year to the Treasury. The Crown Estates revenues in Cymru / Wales are not vast at the moment, but, the assets have what could best be described as game changing potential. 

That's why control of these marine and and coastal assets particularly in the case of renewables and off shore wind generated hydrogen could our nation to opportunity to reboot our economy and make a significant contribution to fighting global climate change.

Our energy and water resources including the responsibility for sewerage for the whole territory of Wales should be the responsibility of the Welsh Government. The Crown Estate still remains largely unaccountable to the people of Wales and all profits from its holdings (which includes on and off shore wind farms) are passed to the UK Westminster Government. Profits from these holdings are likely to grow significantly mostly due to the growing demand for renewable energy. 

For way too long our natural resources have been run for the benefit of others with few real or lasting benefits trickling down to the people of Wales. Ownership and control over the Crown Estates in Wales should be transferred to the Welsh Government. 

The final say on how our natural resources are exploited and developed should be the direct responsibility of the Welsh people (and the Welsh Government) with 100% of the profits or dividends directly benefiting the people who live here rather than opaque absentee landlords or indifferent unaccountable Treasury officials.