Thank you very much, Llywydd. I move amendment 9. I make no apologies for returning to an area that we discussed yesterday, but I won't rehearse everything that was raised yesterday either, but I just wanted to emphasise why we have returned to this issue. As Members will hopefully recall, although a great deal has happened since yesterday, the Bill as it currently stands doesn't include a specific reference to some of the environmental principles that underpin current European legislation.

Now, the Government's argument yesterday was that we have legislation in Wales that either derives from the European Union or directly Welsh legislation that has been drawn up in the context of European legislation that would do the job, and I'm not convinced that that's sufficient. And, if you like, the position that I and Plaid Cymru are taking here was endorsed just half an hour ago in the Scottish Parliament, where an amendment similar to this was passed by the Scottish Parliament, placing environmental principles on the face of their Bill in the Scottish Parliament. And who moved that amendment? A member of the Labour Party—a member of the Labour Party against the SNP Government in Scotland. So, we have the Labour Party in Scotland wishing to place environmental principles on the face of their Bill, and you have the Labour Party here rejecting an amendment that does exactly the same thing. Well, there is no consistency there, so I make no apologies in returning to this point.

The amendment that you have before you today is different from the one you had yesterday—it’s better, if anything. Of course, we’ve had at least 24 hours to think about it. It’s not better for the Government, because they will reject this even more robustly. But the part of the amendment that’s different on this occasion is clause 4, which relates to placing a duty on Welsh Government Ministers to seek to do what I referred to yesterday, but wasn’t included within the amendment yesterday, namely to close the governance gap in this area. As we leave the European Union, as I said yesterday, there will be no direct right for Welsh citizens now to go immediately to the European Court of Justice on some of these issues, and we don’t know what the Westminster Government will put in place of that. We don’t know what will be put in its place. And therefore this amendment has a clause added to it, which ensures that those functions that were carried out by the Commission and the European Court of Justice should now remain for public authorities in Wales, and that there will be a duty on Welsh Government Ministers to seek to do that. We can’t bind anyone because we are leaving the European Union—this Bill is just a continuity Bill; it can’t add anything that isn’t already there. But the point that we make is that it is already there. We already have this access to the European Commission and the European Court of Justice.

I asked the question on this issue directly to Lesley Griffiths today—the complaint from Afonydd Cymru, the six river trusts in Wales, about the state of Welsh rivers. They have the right to go to the Commission. I’m sure the Government has a very good defence, but they have that right to approach the Commission. When we leave the European Union, we’re not sure what those rights will be. So, that amendment closes that gap, to a certain extent, but in an appropriate manner, and restates those environmental principles that I covered yesterday.