I thank the Welsh Conservatives for tabling this motion. It affords an early opportunity for this Senedd to debate a critical topic, namely the health and future of our country's waterways. The motion asks us to note the adverse impact of a Government policy on Welsh agriculture. I do think somehow that that's pretty rich coming from a party that would sell Welsh farmers down the river for a free trade deal with Australia, and a party that's imposed £137 million UK budget cut on Welsh rural communities.

But I'll put that hypocrisy aside, because the salient point to argue today is that the all-Wales nitrate vulnerable zone will have no such adverse impact, and the standards in the regulations are in no way, in my opinion, excessive. Rather, they establish baseline standards for production in Wales that are comparable to the rest of the UK and also Europe. And that alignment will be critical to future trade, especially if Wales is to market brand-Wales produce based on sustainability.

We've heard again today why the regulations are urgently needed. Having represented Mid and West Wales since 2007, I have lost track of the number of incidents of serious river pollution from agriculture in that time. But I was still shocked to read the figures in black and white: nearly 3,000 substantiated agriculture-related pollution incidents in Wales since 2001; an average of 148 a year for the last 20 years; and more than three a week in the last three years alone. That is definitely not acceptable, that is definitely not sustainable, but it is entirely preventable, and it is our moral duty here to do something about that.

The evidence also clearly shows that this is a Wales-wide problem and it requires a bold, clear, national solution. 'The State of Natural Resources Report' for 2020 states that two thirds of our river water bodies failed to achieve good ecological status under the water framework directive classification. Evidence published by NRW in January on our nine river special areas of conservation identifies agriculture as a major contributor to pollutant levels in these nationally important waters that exceed legal limits. More than 60 per cent of protected rivers in Wales exceed phosphate pollution limits, so I think it's a bit disingenuous for Plaid Cymru Members to suggest that we can achieve the crucial environmental benefits they say they want to see just by tinkering around the fringes of this with voluntary and local regulations.

The truth of the matter is that unless we take urgent action to control pollution at source, it'll be too late to recover our river ecosystems. The all-Wales nitrate vulnerable zone regulation is a wholly proportionate tool that will help tackle the nature and climate emergency and thereby support sustainable farming both now and in the future.