These regulations are disproportionate. Natural Resources Wales's advice—of course, the experts' advice—to Welsh Government was to designate 8 per cent of Wales as a nitrate vulnerable zone. The Government has ignored that and gone for 100 per cent coverage. Why is that problematic? Well, it's because you're clobbering everyone, the whole of the industry, with the requirement for farms in all parts of Wales, even those who haven't transgressed, in catchments that maybe haven't experienced pollution incidents, to pay tens of thousands of pounds of money, that they don't have, actually, on infrastructure that, for some, isn't necessary when you look at the evidence.

There will be unintended environmental consequences as well, of course. Using calendar dates rather than weather conditions to dictate when slurry can be spread is an absurd proposition. The Minister herself expressed concern at this approach just a few months ago when I quizzed her on it. And others, such as the prominent environmentalist Tony Juniper, who chairs Natural England—he has said that it just doesn't make sense. It's an irrational proposition that will cause huge spikes in nitrates at particular times of the year, which could then, of course, introduce new pollution issues in areas where there are no problems currently.

According to the Government's own estimates, the upfront capital costs to the farming industry to comply with these regulations will be within a range of £109 million to £360 million. That £360 million is £30 million more than Wales's total average annual common agricultural policy budget over the last six years. Even the Welsh Government's lowest estimate places the cost for Welsh farms at 42 per cent of the total income from Welsh farming in 2019. Many farms are already operating on the breadline, and this is going to just push them over the edge. Losing these farms means, of course, losing some of our food-producing capacity, meaning increased levels of food imports, bringing with it a further environmental cost. One milk processor says that its analysis shows that possibly a third of their dairy farms will cease production. Losing those small and medium-sized family farms will mean a growth in the number of large farming units, leading to more industrial-scale dairy farming. How many times have Members in this Senedd spoken out against that?

It isn't just farmers, of course, who'll struggle to find the capital investment needed to meet these regulations; there are 1,000 council farms in Wales, and local authorities will have to find up to £36 million to pay for the necessary new infrastructure. It was only yesterday that the Government's budget had to find more money for the local authority hardship fund. Are councils really going to be able to find tens of millions of pounds of additional money, when the Government is already having to bail them out to pay for core services? So, we know what's going to happen; more council farms are going to be sold off, further reducing the opportunity for young people and new entrants to start farming.

Designating all of Wales as an NVZ isn't a silver bullet. An NRW monitoring report has shown that only two of 11 designated NVZ sites had seen an improvement in pollution levels. And evidence from other countries is mixed, to say the least. Northern Ireland has been 100 per cent NVZ for a decade, and still, even today, their water quality is worse than ours. So, the question we really should be asking ourselves here is why is the Welsh Government adopting regulations here that aren't actually delivering elsewhere, especially when we know that there are other approaches that are having a positive impact. One such scheme is the blue flag scheme. The Minister knew about it a number of years ago but is now, very belatedly, taking an interest. That programme has been running for five years. It has succeeded in reducing, on average, the nitrates leaving the farms of those involved in the scheme by over 1 tonne per farm, and that far outweighs the NVZ modelling of achieving a 10 per cent reduction of nitrates. Why is the Welsh Government settling for a cut-and-paste approach here with NVZs, instead of building on a made-in-Wales answer, tailored to our own circumstances?

We know that NFU Cymru's lawyers have written to the Welsh Government yesterday, setting out their concerns about the lawfulness of the decision to introduce these regulations. I don't expect the Minister, obviously, to comment on that for legal reasons, but I do believe that it introduces another reason for the Welsh Government to take a step back and revisit its proposals. In the interest of achieving greater consensus and more effective legislation on this important matter, I believe that these regulations should either, for now, be withdrawn by the Government or annulled by the Senedd. If this happens, then I pledge the time and commitment of my party to work with the Government on introducing a more sophisticated and targeted set of regulations before the end of the year. We all want to tackle water pollution. We all want to get to grips with an issue that needs addressing once and for all, and we need to regulate in order to do that. But this particular set of regulations before us today, for the reasons I've outlined, is not the best way to achieve that, and I would urge Members to support my motion. Diolch.