Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:55 pm on 12 October 2021.
Diolch, Carolyn. Thank you very much. I, too, have visited the botanic gardens relatively recently and have seen the really excellent project that you're talking about. It is a real matter of concern to us that the UK Government has not held to its promise to make sure that Wales is not a penny worse off as a result of leaving the European Union. Research projects such as that which you've just mentioned are absolutely in the front line of losing that kind of funding, and we are working very hard with them and others to make sure that what we can do to replace at least some part of that can be done. But I cannot urge Members enough here, particularly the Conservative Members, to urge their Government to do more in this space, because we really, really need them to make sure that Wales really is not worse off as a result of us leaving the European Union. And, as we stand today, we certainly do look as if we're very considerably worse off.
I was very impressed by both the national seed bank and the DNA project down at the botanic gardens. Projects such as that are the sorts of scientific advice we need to be able to assist our local authorities and our other landowners across Wales to understand what needs to be done to recover our biodiversity. The seed bank there—I know you were there to look at this as well, Carolyn, at least in part. One of the things that I think Jenny mentioned was the issue about the mowing of grass verges, and so on. Not only do we want councils to very seriously consider not mowing the grass verges, we want them to very seriously consider planting native wildflower species across those verges so that we have pollinator corridors all along our arterial routes. It's very important that they are native seed species as well as just wildflower pollinators for obvious reasons, because we want to enhance the natural biodiversity of our native species. I knew that you were visiting, and I look forward to hearing more from you about your trip down to the botanic gardens in due course, and I hope that we can use it to inform our policy going forward.