I welcome and support this legislative proposal. In listing many of the steps that could be taken, it started to sound like the Plaid Cymru manifesto back in 2016, but certainly I am very pleased to see that the ambition of seeing Wales being a world leader in this area is one that's included within the motion. Because, I have to say, we haven’t seen enough done by the Welsh Government on this to date, and this joint working with the Westminster Government—well, they are not in a particularly good place at the moment. I think they are slightly too dysfunctional to be operating at the pace that we would like to see them operating at. In the meantime, we see Scotland forging ahead to implement some of these ideas. So, I think there is a lesson for us in that regard.

Now, the climate change committee has been looking at this area and has called for a 10-year strategy to reduce the use of plastics and, however we do that, it’s important we look at particular sectors, be that social care, agriculture, tourism, construction or health. I noticed this week that the NHS in England had pledged to cut 100 million items of plastic per year from English hospitals, including straws, cutlery, cups and so on. So, where are we in Wales? Why don’t we share those same ambitions?

Now, a deposit-return scheme is something that we in this party have said needs to be implemented for years. 10 per cent of waste comes from plastic bottles and cans that could be recycled through such a scheme. Extended producer responsibility—we have to shift the cost from the taxpayer to the producer of dealing with this waste, and, if we do that, then it won’t be long until they do respond by taking action and working differently and producing less of this waste in the first instance.

We heard of the possible contribution of different levies and I agree—we need to look at things such as clothes that include plastics, we need to look at balloons, we need to look at single-use pens. One of the things that angers me is receiving all of this packaging in the post. We do have to be far less content to accept these situations. We need to look at exemptions for zero-waste shops. And another thing we’ve been calling for consistently over the years is that we need to change planning regulations for licensing festivals and public events, which means that, if there is any use of single-use plastic, then that event can’t happen. It can be done, so come on, Welsh Government—where is the momentum? Where is the enthusiasm? Because time is not in our favour and my patience is starting to run out.