"Policy innovation is difficult at the best of times, but it is far easier to bring about in Wales, in which the ‘London media’ take little interest, than in England. The peripheral nations have been better at social and environmental reform, introducing smoking bans, plastic-bag charges, and the linking of social care and health budgets. When reforms in other parts of the UK are seen to work and not to provoke a deluge of media criticism, they follow in England. Will Wales be allowed to innovate in the way in which agricultural policy is reformed, and could this lead to a softening of the demarcation lines between forestry and farming? Hope springs eternal."