<p>Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople</p>

Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 1:47 pm on 20 September 2017.

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Photo of Mr Simon Thomas Mr Simon Thomas Plaid Cymru 1:47, 20 September 2017

I thank the Minister for that. I’ll certainly continue to urge her and the Welsh Government to introduce a deposit return scheme here in Wales. But to turn to another item of unfinished business over the summer, she’ll remember coming before the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee on 20 July. She was asked there around the community energy and non-domestic rates effect on hydro schemes in particular. In her reply to the committee on 7 September, she says that hydropower schemes have been disproportionately affected by the non-domestic rates revaluation. So, I’m pleased that she accepts that. She also says that she is now working and committed to finding a solution on the impact of non-domestic rates revaluation. The suggestion is that somehow the solution is to wait for a revaluation and a re-working of non-domestic rates that might happen in 2018 rather than deal with the problem that her own Government’s policies have given rise to now. Can she please give a commitment that the difficulty with hydropower schemes, which she now acknowledges, will be solved quicker than that, and that she will work with haste and speed with the Cabinet Secretary for finance to ensure that they’re not unreasonably penalised by changing business rates?