Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 1:48 pm on 3 February 2021.
I feel that you haven't been listening to a single word I've been saying for the last two years, Minister. Nobody is denying that there is a problem that needs to be addressed; the issue here is the answer that you're proposing. It just isn't practical and it isn't proportionate and it, frankly, isn't going to work. Evidence from elsewhere around Europe, where the NVZ approach has been adopted, shows that it delivers at best patchy results. Twelve months ago, you admitted yourself that you had doubts about introducing closed periods and the whole farming-by-calendar approach. And in answer to me in the Senedd, you admitted—and we all know, don't we—that weather conditions don't follow the calendar, and that's why at the time, you were rowing back from that position. And we all know that, the weeks before and after what will now be the closed periods that you're introducing, they'll become national slurry-spreading weeks in Wales, and it happens in other countries. Rivers will run black during those weeks, as farmers are forced to clear their slurry stores before a closed period and empty them then when they're overflowing afterwards. Even Tony Juniper, one of the UK's most outstanding environmental champions and chair of Natural England—he said that closed periods do not achieve the best environmental outcomes. Why do you disagree with him?