I am, of course, going to support the motion. The motion would have been very different, I'm sure, had it not been tabled before the flooding that we've seen in recent days, but it is an opportunity to look at the responses that are required. Of course, I did call for financial support for those affected over the last week, and I'm very pleased that the Government has committed to the same level of support for those affected this time as was provided last year. But there are lessons to be learned from that too, as we've already heard.

It's important that the delays we saw in getting those payments out last time aren't repeated. It's not acceptable that it took up to two months for those people who had been affected to receive the support, because they need that support now. It's now that they're losing their salaries and it's now that they need to respond to the mess and destruction in their homes and businesses.

They also need practical assistance in terms of improving the resilience of their homes immediately, because many, of course, fear similar things happening in the next few weeks, and it's not just those who've been impacted but those who were almost affected too, because we are talking here about things like flood gates, which could prevent damage to homes that came within a hair's breadth of being damaged last time. We need a plan in place that can respond in order to provide that immediately. 

We need to strengthen as a matter of urgency the infrastructure that has failed over the past few days. I know in Rhuthin that local residents are very concerned that neither the council nor Natural Resources Wales, nor anyone else, has actually strengthened the bund that failed last week. So, we do need to provide people with peace of mind by resolving those problems, but also ensure that this doesn't happen again in the short term whilst the long-term solutions are also implemented.

Yes, we need to continue to invest in hard infrastructure, but we need better soft infrastructure too. This is a theme we return to regularly: natural flood management; more flood plains; more trees planted, as we heard in the opening remarks; dealing with culverts and so on. The Government has been talking about this for years. We haven't seen the interventions at the level that we would have expected or would've hoped to have seen. We need the capacity for NRW, in terms of staffing, and we need to improve flood maps, which are very often nothing more than a finger in the air. So, there's a great deal that can be done and I would take this opportunity in this debate to encourage the Government to take action on all of those issues.