Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd, and I formally move. Amendment 49 puts the stated objective of this Bill, which is to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill, on its face. From its introduction, this Bill has been described as having an environmental purpose rather than a fiscal one. So, the Cabinet Secretary has said that the Bill is intended to help the Welsh Government achieve their goal of a zero-waste Wales—a goal that we share. It may be unusual for a tax to have its fiscal and policy purposes linked in this way, but in this case the tax is more about the impact it will have on public behaviour than about the money it will raise. Therefore, we believe it appropriate for the policy objective of this tax to be enshrined on the Bill’s face.

As other Members have said during the scrutiny of this Bill at committee stage, landfill disposals tax is unusual because it seeks to become less financially beneficial over time, and because this tax should reduce the amount of waste going to landfill, the amount of money raised will also be reduced. It is possible at some point to envisage a time when the cost of administering this tax may become greater than the revenue raised, but it’s vital that the tax is not abandoned at this point. That would have the perverse impact of re-incentivising landfill and potentially undo the environmental progress we hope to make.

When we reach the point where we need to re-evaluate this tax, its policy purpose must remain central to that re-evaluation. I understand that there may be exceptions in some limited circumstances, so amendment 49 does include provision for Welsh Ministers to have regard to other matters as they think appropriate when exercising their powers under the Bill, in addition, of course, to the primary environmental objective. By ensuring that the environmental objective is preserved on the Bill’s face, we can be certain that the landfill disposals tax will continue to have an environmental objective both now and in the future. It’s important to futureproof this legislation, so that any future Government that might seek to abandon the environmental objective will require a change of the law and the approval of the Welsh Parliament in order to do so.