Can I thank the Minister for her statement this afternoon? I will just raise a few concerns that I have about the way in which some local authorities are trying to squeeze further recycling rates out of their local communities.

As you will know, Minister, one of the issues that is causing some consternation in my own constituency is the advent of four-weekly general waste collections by Conwy County Borough Council. It's important that we take the public with us on a journey of behavioural change and you can see from the results across Wales that people don't need to collect waste on a four-weekly basis in order to hit the targets. Some of the best performing local authorities are still collecting their waste on a fortnightly basis. So, there are other ways of achieving greater recycling rates, without actually simply just axing services for local communities. What concerns me, I think, is that there needs to be more consistency across Wales in terms of the way that services are being provided, particularly those waste services from people's homes at the kerbside, because if you've got greater consistency, then you've got greater familiarity from members of the public, and you can potentially achieve far bigger economies of scale for people, and therefore better, more efficient recycling services.

One of the big problems with the situation in Conwy at the moment—and I'd appreciate hearing the Welsh Government's position on this—is the concern about public health. So, not only have we got more litter on the roadsides—and I charge anybody to drive down the A55 at the moment or through some of the trunk roads in Conwy at present, where they are absolutely strewn with litter, absolutely strewn with litter—but, you also end up with more fly-tipping. We've had a big, significant increase in fly-tipping in that community, even though the recycling rate is marginally better. And then, on top of all of that, we've had increases in pest control problems, and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health have expressed serious concerns about the public health implications of four-weekly waste collections, particularly with pet waste going into people's bins and the problems that that can cause.

So, what we need, I think, is greater levels of consistency so that people can have better access to consistent services across the country, so that when they move from one local authority area to the next, they roughly know what they're dealing with. But, when you have waste collections on a four-weekly basis, if you miss one—if you miss one collection, as people can do from time to time—then it's eight weeks by the time that your bin is collected again. That cannot be acceptable in a modern nation like Wales. I'm all for championing recycling, I'm all for supporting behavioural change. I was one of the first to declare support for a carrier bag levy in this Chamber almost 10 years ago now. And I think that it's time that, as a nation, the Government was able to set a standard below which the frequency of waste collection should not fall. So, I urge you, Minister: please give some consideration to this, please give some consideration to allowing some local flexibility whilst still maintaining certain levels of service and, in particular, a level of service with regard to the frequency of waste collections.