So, last year, China had a nearly 5 per cent increase in its global emissions, and India 7 per cent. India, in 2018, increased its global emissions by 10 times Wales's total annual output of carbon dioxide. So, even if we were able to close down the entire Welsh economy and, indeed, if Wales didn't exist on the planet and suddenly was vapourised, India would make up the gain to the word in carbon dioxide reductions in a mere five weeks. So, why are we actually going to impose these massive burdens upon the people of Wales? And they're not just economic burdens, of course, they are environmental burdens as well.

I believe that the conscious, deliberate policy of imposing such burdens upon the people least able to bear them is actually grossly immoral, as well as absurd, because they won't achieve their object.

Wales needs economic development, and it needs poverty eradication. Because even on the latest report of the Welsh Government, fuel poverty in Wales stands at 12 per cent. That is an eighth of our population that has to spend more than 10 per cent of its income on keeping warm in the winter.

Large-scale renewable energy schemes, of course, are financed by ordinary people, and the money is transferred to major development companies and it's the largest transfer of wealth that's occurred in my lifetime from the poor to the rich. It's rather surprising that a Labour Government is countenancing such a policy and indeed pursuing it so enthusiastically.

Of course, the Welsh economy is changing. The old-fashioned industrial base of Wales has gone or is going. We're developing more and more rapidly into a service economy. In 2010 there were 39,500 financial and business services. That's gone up to 53,500 in 2018, and there were, in 2010, 52,000 retail and tourist businesses. That's now gone up to 60,000. These are the kind of businesses that mid Wales is going to see as its future, and therefore the extent to which these climate change policies are going to make it more difficult for tourism and related industries to make a profit is going to have a significant impact upon the economic well-being of my region.

There is a presumption in this document in favour of development for windfarms and similar schemes that are going to desecrate the landscape. I drove from Glasgow down to Carlisle a few weeks ago. I hadn't been there for a great many years, and I was amazed that every single hilltop along that stretch of road seemed to be covered with windmills—absolutely appalling. It completely ruined the view for anybody who was interested in visiting that part of the country in order to enjoy the countryside. I don't want to see that happen to mid and west Wales, because I believe that, not only is that wrong aesthetically, but I believe it'll also have a massively adverse economic impact upon our region.

Ogden Nash, the American comic and comic writer, wrote in the 1930s, when billboards were popping up along major road routes through America—he wrote and said:

'I think that I shall never see / A billboard lovely as a tree. / Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, / I’ll never see a tree at all.'

Well, I feel that the windmill or wind turbine is today the equivalent of 1930s billboards. We introduced advertising controls directly as a result of the development of advertising boards along the arterial roads leading out of London in the 1930s. Yet, now we have a Government that is deliberately and quite consciously going to wreck our countryside, all in the name of some mythical target, which we can never actually reach.

So, this is massively unpopular, of course, with the people who are going to live with these things. The Council for the Preservation of Rural Wales—I declare an interest as a member of it—has said that widespread industrialisation and irrational destruction of our landscapes is what is in prospect here. Acceptance of landscape change can't be assumed, it must be democratically mandated.

In England, onshore windfarms require majority local approval, and Welsh communities should have no lesser rights. I fully support that objective. The Plaid Cymru leader of Gwynedd Council has described this framework as 'comedy gold' and said that this document isn't fit for purpose in tackling the needs of rural Wales and the market towns that feed the wider economy. I don't agree with Plaid Cymru on much, but I do agree with him on that.

Welsh Government does believe that Wales would benefit from inward investment and economic growth as a result of these renewable energy schemes. I don't believe that there's any evidence that that is possible. Just look at some of the projects that have been proposed and have completed so far— let's take the three schemes at Hendy, Bryn Blaen and Rhoscrowther. These windfarms all have their own companies, but they all have the same registered office at 7a Howick Place, London SW1P 1DZ, and they all list a Steven John Radford as director. A company based in Shrewsbury called Viento Environmental Ltd, run by a Fran Iribar, has also been involved and this is all being directed by another London company called U and I Group plc—there's no Welsh involvement whatsoever in this development. As I said earlier, I believe that it's the largest transfer of money from the poor to the rich in my lifetime. Labour pose as the Robin Hood of society, but in fact they are the allies of the Welsh equivalent of the Sheriff of Nottingham.

In the case of the Hendy windfarm, as is well known, it was rejected by Montgomeryshire county council, it was then further rejected by the planning inspector appointed by the Minister herself, and then she overrode the planning inspector's report. She had the legal power to do it. I don't believe she had the moral power to do it, because it's as though it was never worth having the inquiry in the first place, because the Labour Government's policy priority of decarbonisation and renewable energy overrode all the objections that the planning inspector raised in the course of his report.

The Bryn Blaen scheme at Llangurig apparently has never actually even generated a volt or watt of electricity, and I see from the latest accounts of the company that is developing it that they have projected targeted gains for their company of £6 million to £8 million—they will get £6 million to £8 million out of this without generating the slightest electricity at all, and, in the process, of course, have erected eyesores in the landscape. I mean, this is utterly, utterly irrational.

Jac o' the North, a famous blogger, who has been mentioned in the Chamber only recently by the ex-leader of Plaid Cymru, has said, to explain what has happened here, that U and I—or Development Securities is the company developing it—planned three windfarms of a size so that, even if the local planning committees voted against them, their bacon could be saved by the Planning Inspectorate, or, as a last resort, the Welsh Government:

'No doubt, the developers had hoped to get planning permission for all three developments, netting them as much as £20 million. Being more realistic, they were probably prepared to settle for two out of three. But the High Court going against them on Rhoscrowther in September meant they were left with just Bryn Blaen, and so they were only going to make a small profit.'

But £6 million to £8 million is a lot of money to you and me, I hope you'll agree, Deputy Presiding Officer, and therefore I believe that this policy is wholly misconceived, grossly wrong and immoral. And I believe that it is opposed by the overwhelming majority of people in mid and west Wales because it poses a tremendous threat, I believe, to the economic future of our region by undermining the very basis of the local service economy.