Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 6 October 2021.
Yes, so again, this is about not being able to have your cake and eat it. So, you can't both say that you're in favour of doing something to mitigate climate change and then complain about every single measure that we put in place in order to do that. So, we have to do things differently. Councils have to step up to this, alongside all the other partners. We cannot continue to just build willy-nilly all over our floodplains, regardless of the pollution, regardless of the sewerage systems that you have just been telling me about, regardless of the ability of the infrastructure to cope with that and keep our watercourses clean. So, we absolutely have to do things differently.
So, this is about getting a group of people together to make sure that we work together across all players—and we've already listed them numerous times today—all players in Wales, to make sure that, when we do build things, we build them to the right quality with the right systems in place, that they do not overburden the current sewerage systems, that they do not burden the treatment plants to the point where we have the spillages that you've just been telling me about, and that we do that so that we enhance and increase both the water quality and the biodiversity. There isn't any other way forward. We cannot just complain that we can't build on the one hand and say that we love the planet and want to do something about it on the other. Those two things are just not compatible.