Before I respond to the actual legislative programme, can I just pick up on one point that Simon Thomas made about the issue of plastics and plastics in the marine environment, as well? Whilst it doesn’t figure in here, I suspect this is something we’re going to need to return to, and I might suggest at the end of my short question to the First Minister where that might actually be done as well. But I shouldn’t worry too much about the allegations of déjà vu or groundhog day or whatever. It’s the old nostrum: you tell people what you’re going to do, you do it, and then you tell them afterwards that you’ve done it for them. We produced the manifesto. We’re getting on with the manifesto. We’ll deliver it, and people will thank us for doing it as well, and not least, I have to say, in taking forward proposals that are in this legislative programme on childcare. It is, as Julie Morgan and others have said, the most ambitious childcare package, and anything, particularly the proposals in here that make it easier in terms of registration for people, and clearer on the registration as well, will be welcome, in addition, I have to say, to the measures that have already been announced. We’re not going to have to wait until 2020 for this. It will be phased forward. So, there will be benefits each year as we go forward. I do welcome that.

On the minimum unit pricing on alcohol, yes, this is a difficult issue, yes it’s a contentious issue, but I have to say it’s exactly the sort of progressive policy that this Assembly should be looking at. And it isn’t to do with pricing people out. We can’t be puritanical about this, and I certainly can’t be puritanical about this. I’m not going to put knee breeches on and a black stovepipe hat and say ‘I’m now joining the temperance movement’—although I have to say my old Labour Party branch used to meet in the Rechabite Hall in Gowerton, one of the forerunners of the temperance movement. They weren’t all temperance people themselves, I have to say, amongst those Labour Party people. But this is the right thing to do, because, again, it’s part of that signalling of the responsible use of alcohol. It’s not saying to people ‘Do not drink, do not have a drink, and do not celebrate’. It’s not that, but it is about managing alcohol within lifestyles, because it isn’t only to do to with the individual. It is also, I have to say to Neil and others, about the impacts of this not only on individual health but on the costs to the NHS as well. And I know that he will recognise that. It’s not the fact of one, two or three pints a day; it’s when it adds up on a regular basis, and that adds to mortality issues and so on. I see it in my own constituency.

I welcome very much the legislation on greater collaboration and efficiency in local government. I have to say that that builds on the work that has been done by the Cabinet Secretary sitting to the First Minister’s left there, and it goes with the flow of local government thinking in Wales now, which is to drive more efficiency and to drive more collaboration. But giving it that push, giving it that shove, I think is welcome, and it will be welcomed by those progressive forces within Welsh local government as well.

I welcome the fact that within the statement the First Minister did pay regard to the continuity Bill. I won’t get into who mooted it first and so on and so forth, but I do understand why it’s not being worked up as a Bill in itself. But I welcome the fact that it has been mentioned, because I think all of us in this Chamber would hope that a continuity Bill would not have to be prepared and would not have to be used. But, as a backstop, I have to say—as the big stick being carried behind your back there—I think it needs to be quite clear to the UK Government that if they were to overstep the mark here, and we were to see damage to the devolution settlement because of lack of respect, ignorance, or whatever, then I think we need to have that thought going on within Government and within the civil service.

But the thing that I would like to see brought forward—and it is an early bid, if you like, and it comes back to this issue around the plastics—. Last week, a consultation began by the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs. It was called ‘Taking forward Wales’ sustainable management of natural resources’. We have shown such leadership in Wales on the natural environment over the last few years, not only in legislation, but in groundbreaking policy as well. Within that consultation, it deals with issues such as access to the outdoors. Nothing is more political than access to the outdoors. Taking a step in front of each other in the open countryside is the most political act ever, ever since the Kinder Scout trespass. That is an interesting piece of work that I suspect if we bring it forward will need a legislative slot at some point, whatever shape that will take.

There are also things in there to do with water abstraction—a critical issue, as we know—and drainage, and waste in environment policy. But my favourite, most of all, are sanctions under section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990—the ability to tackle rogue operators who do not treat waste the way they should, who dump it illegally, who do not look after it, and where they are dumping it, and so on and so forth. It’s the ability to step in as Government and to give power to that Act and say ‘We’re going to put padlocks on, we’re going to stop you doing that.’ So, my bid would be, if we do have the opportunity in the near future, along with the legislation on plastics, which might possibly be weaved into that consultation somehow—let’s look for the slot for that within the legislative programme in future.