We haven’t mentioned nitrate vulnerable zones yet, which is one of the tools that the Government is proposing to use to tackle water quality and run-off. Can I draw the Minister’s attention to the approach being taken in parts of France, and particularly in Brittany, which I saw over the summer, where they use an agroforestry approach called ‘bocage’, or ‘argoed’, as we would call it in Welsh? I think the Bretons have a similar word, but I won’t try the Breton pronunciation. This is the planting of hedgerows and trees, on which an EU report says the following. It demonstrates

‘that nutrient uptake by trees reduces soil nitrate concentration, and that denitrification can reduce the loss of nitrate. At a watershed scale, the nitrate flux brought by water surface decreased when the hedge tree density increased’.

So, there are alternatives, perhaps, to some of the models that the Government is considering, and I would urge her to look at how we could use some natural features and natural tree and hedgerow planting to deal with nitrate run-off, perhaps as an alternative in the nitrate vulnerable zones.