I speak to echo what has already been said by Rhun ap Iorwerth and some others. I’m very grateful to the petitioners and the Petitions Committee for a very detailed report on these issues, and I would also refer to the correspondence with the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee and with the Minister on these issues.

I would just like to start with the fact that this debate, despite its importance in the Assembly, cannot change this licence. This is a licence approved by NRW, but the Minister does have the power to intervene in this process, and I hope that the Minister will have listened to the debate and will do what she feels is appropriate.

I want to speak about something that hasn’t been mentioned to date, namely the fact that we have so little control over our natural resources that we have to accept this mud from the other side of the Severn to be dumped on the Welsh side. It highlights how little power we have, and the petitioners have done the Assembly a great service even in highlighting that fact. Now, if it happened on the mainland, if it wasn’t at sea, then the Cabinet Secretary for Finance would have a great interest in this issue, because anyone disposing of mud in this way would have to pay a tax, a landfill disposals tax—a new tax established under the new finance authority here in Wales. Anything in terms of construction on that land would mean that you would have to pay for the disposal of that waste. It’s part of the founding principles of environmental law—it’s the 'polluter pays' principle. That is one of them.

The fact is that we share responsibility for the Severn with England, so there is a joint responsibility that we should shoulder, of course, in looking at what is an area of special conservation—a matter that hasn’t been referred to as of yet. So, for me, there is a founding principle here. Why don’t we deal with our seas and use offshore disposals in the way that we deal with disposals on terrestrial land? It does underline how deficient the whole process has been, that something has been outsourced to a body that was newly established by the Welsh Government without any democratic accountability for that decision. In that regard, I would echo what has already been said.