When I travel along north Wales, either by rail or road, walk the coastal path or visit the beautiful seaside resorts, the view out to sea is of wind turbines, and those turbines are owned by German company RWE, who generate a third of all Wales's renewable electricity. They lease the land from the Crown Estate. BP have won the right to develop more wind turbines on the Irish sea after the Crown Estate auctioned off more of the area, making millions of pounds in rent over the next decade. Unlike in Scotland, the Crown Estate is not devolved in Wales, and so this money, generated by Welsh natural resources, is not reinvested directly into the delivery of improved infrastructure that will benefit the people of Wales, nor is it used to ensure prices are kept at a rate ordinary people can afford. French publicly owned EDF sells electricity to the UK at a high price. That is about to increase by 54 per cent. But, in France, the Government has ensured it is capped by 4 per cent. In Europe, and in countries that have their own nationally owned companies, the price is a third lower than in the UK.

We are surrounded by companies making profit for shareholders, but, sadly, this follows a long history of Wales's natural resources being plundered whilst the interests of the Welsh people are cast aside. Whether it be coal, water or wind, this is a pattern that must come to an end. The energy crisis we now face demonstrates how a total imbalance exists in the system. How can it be right that, whilst people across Wales struggle to heat their homes, BP and Shell continue to make billions of pounds in profit and their North sea operations paid zero tax for several years? The entire system benefits a few very rich shareholders at the expense of the many.

Privatisation of the UK's energy grid, the national grid, is ripping off customers. Twenty-five per cent of energy bills are paid out to network companies. This is used to line the pockets of shareholders, with over billions of pounds paid out in dividends. We need to be harnessing our own natural resources to create renewable energy for the people of Wales, and I firmly believe that public ownership will be necessary to address this imbalance, and preferably direct energy, and not sleeving it into the national grid for them to make profit. And we know this is possible. In my region of North Wales, energy projects in Abergwyngregyn have a social element built into them to ensure profits from the hydroelectric scheme benefit the local community, and the award-winning Swansea Community Energy and Enterprise Scheme is a community-owned solar project, working to provide cleaner and more affordable electricity for each building, as well as a valuable education resource for the local community, and it's a shining example of what can be achieved.

But managing natural resources effectively is not just about energy production; it's about protecting what Wales has to offer for the benefit of today's generations and those yet to come, and this takes significant planning. It is important that we begin to put in place a well-thought-through strategy in which permission is sought for land use. Land is one of our biggest resources, and currently it is also being bought up by large businesses to negate their corporate responsibility through carbon offsetting, and the people of Wales should decide how best to use our land and should be the ones to benefit from that. In summary, we need a reformed United Kingdom in which decisions that impact Wales are made in Wales, and the powers to make decisions on Wales's natural resources should be devolved to Wales so that we can forge a path that ensures our resources are used for the benefit of the many and not the few. Thank you.