I was in Rhosneigr at a coffee morning recently, and a group of ladies who were busy making me a cuppa at the time said, 'Can we have a public meeting to discuss the red bins issue?' I wasn't sure what they meant, so they explained: 'Oh, you know, when people register their holiday homes as businesses, they have their domestic bins changed for business ones, red ones. There are more and more of them in the village, and it's wrong, they're not paying their taxes.'

Now, in November 2018, the former First Minister told me that he didn't believe there was a loophole here. The finance Minister, Rebecca Evans, also said, 'I'm not sure that I would agree that there's a loophole in the law'. Let's have a look at definitions of 'loophole'. The Cambridge dictionary says:

'loophole: a small mistake in an agreement or law that gives someone the chance to avoid having to do something'.

The Collins dictionary says:

'A loophole in the law is a small mistake which allows people to do something that would otherwise be illegal.'

And that's the point here. Certainly, it should be illegal to buy a second home and then be able to avoid paying the taxes that other full-time citizens of that same community do have to pay, and still expect to receive the same services. What the red bins story tells us is that this is becoming more and more visible and that people are getting angrier and angrier about it. 

Now, if Government won't agree that there is a loophole here, will you agree that there is a small mistake in legislation currently that has consequences that may well be unintended, but that has to be addressed in the name of fairness and in the name of providing local authorities much-needed revenue that is otherwise lost?