Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:25 pm on 11 February 2020.
Nobody's questioned whether there's a need for regulation. The question here, of course, is the proportionality of those regulations. Not even Natural Resources Wales agree with your Minister's approach for a whole-Wales designation, and it's certainly been a matter of concern and correspondence for a huge number of my electors.
I raised with the Minister last week in questions serious questions about the evidence base that the proposals that we've seen thus far are based upon. We really need an opportunity, I think, when the final regulations are tabled, to really robustly test those here in this Chamber. You told us that a statement will be made shortly. I'd like to think that this Government isn't as cynical as to slip out a written statement over half term. At the very least, in the interests of transparency and accountability, we should have an oral statement here. Anything short of that would be a dereliction, really, and wouldn't be acceptable. This is the single biggest issue that I've had correspondence on from my electors for many, many months. If you just try and do it that way, I think that would be abhorrent.