We also know that Natural Resources Wales prepares river basin management plans for each of the three river basin districts in Wales, and these plans should impact water quality and they should set environmental objectives and implement a programme of measures to protect and improve the environment. Whilst I welcome the fact that NRW does have the ability and should set these management plans, it's difficult to note without disappointment that although they were consulted upon three years ago, no final plans have yet been published. I think that is a real source of disappointment and also concern for us. Given this somewhat complex statutory environment, I wonder why the Welsh Government sought to exclude Wales from some of the proposals in the Environment Act 2021, which gained Royal Assent last November.

In normal times, I would always argue—and the Minister has heard me argue this—that there should be a distinct statute book for Wales where the legislation that affects Wales can be found and easily accessed. One of the criticisms made, of course, about the statute book by the former Lord Chief Justice Thomas in his commission's report is that it's very difficult to access and understand where Welsh law sits. The reason for that is complexity, and one of the reasons for the complexity is the fact that Welsh law sits in more than one place. It sometimes sits in a number of different places, which means that it's difficult to understand, not just for ourselves but also for lawyers, judges and legal professionals. That is a fair and reasonable criticism to make. I wish to understand where we are in Wales at the moment, what is the statutory framework, and how does that deliver the objectives that I think we will all share on all sides of the Chamber today and across the country. We all want to see river water quality improved, we want to see watercourse quality improve, we want to see water bodies' quality improved, and we want a statutory framework that's understandable, that's easy to appreciate and to understand, and that can then be delivered by the bodies, individuals, organisations and businesses that are affected by it.

What I don't want to do this afternoon is to criticise either the current water companies that we have in Wales or those people who provide for discharges to watercourses, because that isn't the purpose of what I'm proposing today. What I do want to do is to ensure that we have a statutory framework in place to regulate discharges to watercourses and water bodies, and then we can have the debate and the discussion about how we deliver the improvement in water quality, because that then enables us to deliver that in all sorts of different ways.

I think one of the things that's really affected a lot of us—. As somebody who grew up in the Valleys of south Wales, in Tredegar, I well remember the Sirhowy river when I was a child, which was filthy, and I don't think we can put too fine a point on it. That water contained almost anything you can imagine. I remember telling friends of mine who lived 'down the country', as we used to say, down in Llangynidr and elsewhere, that, 'Our rivers are better than yours because they've got more colour in them' and, 'It's a terrible river because you can see the bottom of it'. I think those days are gone, and I hope they have gone, but what we need now is a statutory framework that will ensure that moving forward we're all able to guarantee water quality wherever we live in Wales, and that we're able to have a statutory framework that we can all understand as well. Thank you very much.