Thank you, Presiding Officer. Welcome to the field of dreams on a Wednesday afternoon after passing a bit of legislation and now into the debate session. It's good to see we've got a better turnout than we normally have on a Wednesday afternoon, we have here, for an opposition day debate. I don't think it might last and I think a cup of tea next door might be calling some Members. But we can try to hold you, and I am told there are a few doughnuts outside as well, if anyone wants them. 

It is a real pleasure to move the debate this afternoon looking at some of the issues around Natural Resources Wales, its creation and obviously some of the well-publicised problems that that particular organisation has gone through over recent years, and how maybe we may be able to address some of those shortcomings in such an important part of the Welsh fabric, i.e. our natural environment, and what we can do to make sure that all the tools are available (a) to protect it and (b) to enhance it.

If I can just deal with the amendments that have been tabled today, we won't be accepting the Government amendment in the name of Rebecca Evans that has been tabled. I'm not quite sure how it adds or puts anything of benefit into the debate at all other than seeking to delete points 3 and 4. Well, if you actually look at points 3 and 4, it just merely—in particular point 3—highlights the blindingly obvious that the scandals around the timber sales have blighted the reputation of NRW, and the work of Grant Thornton has highlighted exactly the points about heightened exposure to risk and fraud. So, I can't see why you'd want to delete what has actually been accredited to via the public accounts investigation and other well-documented reports into this sorry tale of ineptitude. So, regrettably, we won't be accepting the Government amendment, and, in respect of the Plaid Cymru amendments, we won't be accepting the first two Plaid Cymru amendments, which try to delete our point about saying that NRW has, sadly,

'failed the people of Wales through a number of high-profile scandals' with the words 

'Regrets the series of high profile failures in NRW'.

I'm not quite sure quite how that adds anything to the motion at all, but I'm sure we'll hear that from the speaker when he addresses those amendments, but we will be accepting the final amendment, amendment 4. It is critical that NRW is resourced to actually carry out its functions and, in particular, when you look at the legislation over recent years that has been delivered in this particular area—the Environment (Wales) Act 2016, the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015—and the obligations that have been placed on NRW, it is vital that, obviously, the resource follows the competence, if you like, that we are passing over to this organisation.

It is worth reflecting that, when NRW was created back some six years ago, there were some very high-profile figures who obviously questioned whether it was wise to put three such diverse organisations together—the Environment Agency, the Countryside Council for Wales and the Forestry Commission. In particular, Jon Owen Jones, who was chairman of the Forestry Commission at the time, highlighted the weakness of the business case that was before the Assembly at that time, looking at some of the policy objectives that the Ministers were trying to promote and indeed questioning the viability of bringing forward these three organisations into one organisation, and how true his words were, and they've come back to haunt us, to be honest with you, because, obviously, as I said in my opening remarks, highlighting the well-documented decline in the forestry sector here in Wales, but in particular the loss to the Welsh taxpayer by poor contracts that were agreed by NRW and the complete demoralisation of the staff within the organisation.

The organisation is only as good as its staff, and there are many, many talented individuals who came from the three previous organisations into NRW and have a passion and a calling for working in this particular area, but who, sadly, have been let down through poor leadership, lack of direction and just the sheer volume of work that has been placed on their desks and in their in-trays. Staff survey after staff survey has highlighted, regrettably, some of the pressures that many of these staff have faced on a year-by-year, day-by-day, week-by-week basis. Only 11 per cent of the staff had confidence in the decisions being made by senior management in one staff survey; 15 per cent believed the actions of senior managers are consistent with the organisation's values; only 10 per cent said the organisation as a whole was well managed.

In 2016, the organisation actually stopped printing the outcomes of staff surveys because the evidence was so damning. We as politicians obviously owe it to the staff to make sure that their voice is heard and, ultimately, that the improvements and the safeguards are put in place. And as recently as 2018, in a major consultation with the staff, NRW did not believe that the reorganisation that was going on in the staffing structures would provide a basis for taking the organisation forward. They believed that a lot of these new teams that were being created would create jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none, and in the highly specialist field that many of these staff work in, it is vital that the expertise is allowed to flourish and allowed to deliver those safeguards and promotional activities that we require of NRW.

In particular, Grant Thornton's report, the most recent report, which did look at the timber sale scandal but also looked at the way the organisations had merged over the previous six years, highlighted how there was still serious silo working within the organisations and that the forestry sector, the countryside council and the environment agency still very much looked at themselves as individual organisations under one banner. And this is some six years after the three organisations came together.

That has to be a major, major concern for us here as the legislature but, in particular, for the Government, because another part of the motion before us today highlights some of the Government's interference, I would suggest, in the affairs of NRW, in particular around the ban on pheasant shooting, where independent advice was sought at a cost of £48,000—NRW did the right work, they went out, they got the independent advice, they took that advice and said the status quo should prevail—and then the Minister intervened to overrule. And I note yesterday that the judicial review was dismissed, which was brought forward, because it clearly stated that NRW's board had no discretion in this particular instance when the Minister had intervened. And so the Government do carry a very heavy liability for some of the issues that have come about through the sheer lack of leadership that the Welsh Government have offered—